I was delighted to invite Lucy Jackman, copywriter and blogger extraordinaire to my Monday lunchtime livestream. It was great to see so many people watching live – it’s clear that you want to hear her top tips on how to create social media content from your blogs.
The question I asked Lucy was, “how do I generate content for my social media posts from a blog?” I chose to ask Lucy this question as she really does know the value of a blog and the way they can be used to showcase the writer’s credibility, knowledge, and expertise. Sharing relevant and insightful information from your blogs helps to build up trust with your followers, customers and potential customers.
And it’s up to you how you use your social media posts. You can simply share snippets of information taken from the blog as stand-alone posts which provide valuable information OR you can use them as teasers to drive the reader to the blog itself which sits proudly on your website. Driving traffic to your website is always a great thing to do.
Social media content and blogs
This blog will help you to think about the content of your blogs and how you can turn this content into multiple social media posts. In a nutshell – how to give your blogs that extra bit of love they deserve!
When you start adopting Lucy’s advice, your social media marketing will take on a new lease of life and creativity.
Structuring your blog
With any plan, it’s good to know where to start. Lucy advises that we think about how we structure our blog before putting fingers to keyboard as this will make it so much easier to create valuable content for our social media posts.
- Think about what it is that will add value to the person reading it.
- Give good clear sub-headings so the reader can easily find what they are looking for.
- Use short paragraphs to give definition to each point.
Here are Lucy’s top tips for social media content and how to get mileage out of every blog post:
The art of chunking up
When Lucy uses the term ‘to chunk up’ she means to separate your blog content into chunks. These chunks of content should be placed under relevant sub-headings. Or they can be detailed in bullet points. ‘Chunking up’ makes clean breaks, providing reader friendly content.
If a reader is in a rush, they’ll massively thank you for writing in this style as they can skim read the blog to find the section that answers their question.
Identify every chunk and use them to write several social media posts.
Get noticed with Listicles
Listicles are what they sound like – a blog that consists of a list. This is an example of a listicle, ‘5 mistakes you could be making on your Facebook posts’. A listicle blog should always have more than three points, any less than that and the reader just won’t bother with it. Five or more is best. And again, this forces you to ‘chunk up’ and section all of your points clearly.
Every number can be made into a social media post. Easy!
Share your Frequently Asked Questions
Have a quick look at your emails, your direct messages, etc. Identify the FAQs and turn them into a blog. You know the answers are going to add value as your audience has literally told you that these are the things they want to know about, and it will (hopefully!) stop people from continually asking you.
Turn every FAQ into a social post to add plenty of value.
WWWWWH
When you’re blogging about an event or anything that needs a lot of information. Structure the blog with Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. This can be translated into 6 separate posts.
Be a myth buster
Are there any myths or untruths floating around that don’t reflect the reality of what it is that you do or how things work in your sector? Yes – then rectify that and put your audience straight. Write a blog about these myths and use them individually to craft some really interesting social media posts.
And what’s better, you’ll showcase your knowledge in a very creative way to stand out from the crowd.
Put together a ‘How To’ or a ‘Check List’
We’ve all done it, we’ve all headed to Google to search for instructions on how to do something or to find a checklist so we don’t miss anything. Knowing that almost everybody does this should be reason for you to write them too. Everyone finds them to be super valuable.
Let’s say your ‘How To’ list has six steps in it, create six separate social media posts from them. This takes your audience on a journey with you. Why not on a Monday post step 1, and on the Tuesday post step 2 – your followers will be actively looking out for the information they crave. Brilliant!
Share three points in your posts
There’s a psychological theory which proves that most people can only retain three pieces of information. Don’t overload your posts with too much information.
In one of your future blogs, choose a subject and break it down into three sections. Share a summary of each point in three individual social media posts.
Be generous with top tips
Whichever sector you are in, you must know lots of tips which your followers will find useful to learn about. It’s also a good idea to recommend things too, so for example, I can talk about the social media tools I use such as Hootsuite and Canva, and can also recommend the best royalty free image sites to use.
All of these tips and recommendations can translate into separate posts.
Tell your followers who else they’d be interested in following
If you’ve built up a good network of people who you trust, you can promote them on behalf of your business. Everyone loves a shoutout and are likely to reciprocate and tell their followers about you too. Why not create a blog containing a list of who to follow and why?
When you share these as individual social posts, tag your recommendations in for even better reach.
The ultimate A-Z
It goes without saying that when you create an A-Z of anything, you have 26 points to make. Turn these into 26 posts and you’ve got yourself almost six months’ worth of weekly content! Plus, the blogs themselves will be long-form and packed full of SEO key words and phrases which Google favours. Good job!
How to get in touch with Lucy
Lucy’s company is called Comma Sense – head over to the website where you can find a contact page and all the links to her social media pages too.
I recommend that you head to her Training page and see what’s coming up. Her Business Blogging Masterclass starts on the 18th May 2021 which is jam-packed full of even more tips for writing blogs.
Lucy’s final thought
We’ve explored ways that you can translate the information in your blogs into social media posts, but this works both ways. Have a look at the comments you are receiving from your social media posts. What are your followers asking for? What is it they love the most? Use these indicators when you’re developing your content strategy.
Get yourself organised!
Why not head to my website and download my social media content planning tool – using these tips for extracting social media content from blogs you can plan them into this handy social media calendar for the year, you’ll fill it in in no time!
I really hope that you have enjoyed learning these practical blog tips. I know I have, which is why next week I’m going to be sharing a listicle: 7 ways to use Facebook Groups to grow your Facebook followers. Make sure you tune in live to my YouTube channel at 12:30pm on Monday 29 March 2021. (Make sure you subscribe and click the bell so you get a reminder when I go live!)
Bye for now,
Becs
