With all of the importance companies are beginning to place on social media, it’s imperative to stress the right aspects of your business. When we speak with potential clients at The Go! Agency, we find that many times their focus is not on their message, but on the return they can expect.

While I think that ROI is an important topic to discuss, what’s more important with social media is the term “social”. When a business gets involved with social media marketing, what they are agreeing to is the fact that they are ready to join the online conversations that are already happening regarding their industry, and their very own company.

So….what are you going to say?

Formulating creative and engaging content on a regular basis can be overwhelming. On average, companies are putting out two status updates per day per network. So as a baseline, the average amount per week is 14 individual posts. That’s a total of 56 per month!

Here are a few ideas that you can add to your monthly content list which will help you to reduce the amount of time that you spend generating new content. Sometimes by half!

Themed Days
Above and beyond, this is the easiest way to not only create a conversation with your target audience, but help engage them in a familiar way. Have you heard of “TBT” or Throw Back Thursday? This trend has swept through the social media world and now more and more companies are using this tactic in an effective way. My suggestion is to choose one or two days per week to start. For example maybe you can use Monday and Thursday. If you are a healthcare related business, perhaps Medical Monday and Thankful Thursday and share content that is branded to those to titles and ideas. Remember to use visuals as much as you can.

Ongoing Quizzes
Asking questions is always a great way to engage your audience, but if you want to go one step further have an ongoing quiz plan. First, you can create the theme of your quiz around a certain month. For example, Breast Cancer Awareness Month for a woman’s hospital system. You probably have many interesting statistics and FAQs about breast cancer that you can share. So why not run a quiz for 5 days in a row each week – Monday through Friday. Come up with a new question (along with a visual) dealing with breast cancer and ask your audience. An example could be: “True or False: Breast Cancer is the leading killer of American Women.” Something as simple as that can work wonders!

Fill in the Blanks
People love engaging and sharing their opinion. Providing fill in the blank statements is a terrific way to get your target market talking. I wouldn’t suggest going overboard with these, but once a week why not try one out. It can also be used in conjunction with your Themed Days, for example on a Thankful Thursday you can share “Today I am most thankful for ______.” These also can help you see what your audience is most interested in.

Now, by just using these few tools listed above you can cut down the amount of content you have to create by half, if not more. Creating an ongoing content strategy is a must, and by adding these elements to the mix, you cut your work down while creating instantly engaging content for your audience!