How to Brainstorm Ideas to Discuss on Facebook

February 26, 2014 by Christine

Ever find yourself staring at your Facebook Admin Panel and wondering what to post? It’s not easy coming up with useful, relevant, witty, shareable, timely, engaging status updates day in and day out. Use the tips below to come up with ideas.

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• Daily Themes – Having a designated topic for each day of the week can help you get and stay focused. For example, Tips Tuesday and Witty Wednesday provide you with direction right off the bat. If it’s Tuesday, you know you need to focus on posting useful tips. If it’s Wednesday, you know it’s time to come up with witty quips or share a funny cartoon related to your niche.

• Define Categories – You should also know the general categories you need to focus on. Pick three to five broad categories and then break them down into subcategories. From there, try to brainstorm at least five ideas per subcategory. Once you have a list of ideas, refer back to it anytime you need inspiration. You can even use this list in conjunction with your daily themes. For instance, you could create a daily theme for each of your five broad categories.

• Use RSS – Once you have your categories defined, use your favorite RSS feed reader to subscribe to feeds related to each of those categories. Whenever you need inspiration, check out your RSS feeds. This doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily share those you find interesting, though you could if you wanted to. It also doesn’t mean you should rewrite the words of others. Use the feeds to get ideas, to find out the latest news, add your own commentary, form and share your own opinions, and stay on top of the latest buzz. RSS feeds can trigger ideas you might not have thought of on your own.

• Use Facebook Insights – When you’re completely drawing a blank, despite having a daily theme, a list of topics, and numerous RSS feeds at your disposal, head over to your Admin Panel and look at your page’s Insights Page. Insights will show you which posts reached the most people and received the most engagement. When you see a post that has far more likes, comments, and shares than most of the others, click on it. What was unique about that post? Was it controversial, did it feature a great image, did it contain industry statistics? Try to identify the “why” behind all the engagement. Once you have an idea why that post was so popular, try to replicate it by using a similar approach. For example, if it was a survey, maybe it’s time to post a new survey. If it was a commentary on an industry report that was issued, maybe it’s time to find the latest report in your industry and add your two cents.

These brainstorming tips should help you avoid writer’s block when managing content on a Facebook page. How will you put them to use in your own business?

by Thomas von Ahn – Chief Elephant Slayer – Viral Solutions LLC

Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.

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