Are you struggling to grow your social media following?
You’re not alone…
That’s one of the most challenging aspects of social media.
We all know that we have to give people a reason to follow us. In most cases, unfortunately, sharing about our normal daily routines just won’t attract much of an audience.
That can be part of a good social strategy. So can sharing the content that you create.
But what if you don’t have enough content of your own to share?
Not enough blog posts, videos, quotes, etc.?
Well, then we know that sharing other people’s content can be a great strategy.
By sharing other people’s content you become a valuable curator of content that people will want to follow. You also get respect from the content creators and authors.
Everybody loves when you share their content.
But the trick is finding great content to share.
Here are some of my favorite tools for discovering new content…
0. the Usual Suspects
Before we get into the tools that we’ll cover I wanted to cover some of the common tools that you may have heard of already. If not, then here is the list:
I’ll try to provide a few others…
1. StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is kind of an oldie, but a goodie. I still use it fairly often.
The cool thing?
You can zip through content pretty quick. If you find something that’s interesting you can take the time to check it out. Watch it. Read it. Etc.
But if it’s not looking good right away then you just hit the “stumble” button again and you’re on your way.
You can customize it a little bit and it seems to learn what you like. So the more you use it the more stuff you’ll likely like. And you can always tweak things a bit to make sure you’re getting fresh content too.
2. Reddit
It’s kind of amazing how Reddit has stood the test of time. It’s been around for so long that it seems like something else would have come along and taken its place.
But that’ hasn’t happened.
One of the reasons is that the community is so strong. You feel like you’re kind of “In” on all the topics you choose to follow.
And that’s all you need to do. Watch the feeds you care about most.
One key here would be to share a mix of really popular things for your topics along with new things that have the potential to be popular.
3. Pocket
Pocket is one of my favorite apps.
In fact, I should change this one to Longreads/Pocket.
I like to take my phone and open up Longreads. Then I’ll copy and paste the URLs into Pocket to read later.
The cool thing about Pocket is that it kind of strips out all the junk that most online publications have. They cut it down to usually just the white background and black text.
And the stories are usually great and most people aren’t always sharing them so it’s a way to find something new and fresh.
4. SlideShare
SlideShare is kind of overlooked in the grand scheme of online content. But you would be surprised what you can find there.
Do a quick search for an important term in your industry.
I did a quick search for “chiropractic” and got back over 12,000 results.
I searched for “Hollywood” and got over 45,000 results.
Search for your niche and see what you can find. People like content that’s not the usual text and video all the time. A slide deck can be a nice change of pace.
5. Archives
By this one I mean the archives on popular publications.
I’ve gotten lost in the Sports Illustrated Vault over the years.
Here is one for the Telegraph. This might be another one.
Everybody is looking for the most recent content all the time. You can stand out and find some really great stuff by digging in the archives of popular publications.
6. Foreign News Sites
Speaking of the Telegraph, foreign websites are a great source of information.
This kind of assumes that most of your followers are in the same country that you are. That’s obviously not going to always be the case in today’s world.
By the way, isn’t it cool that we can connect with people anywhere in the world?
Anyway, I like checking sites that are based in other countries.
Telegraph and Daily Mail in the UK.
The Sydney Morning Herald is another good one.
Everybody in your niche is probably sharing from the same usual suspects.
To stand out try sharing information from foreign sites that your followers may not have known about before.
7. Research Journals
One of the sites I check fairly often in the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
They publish all kinds of research and reports. There is a lot you can learn and you’re getting it right from the source.
You probably read articles all the time that cite resources like this and other research journals. The reason is that we can learn a lot from those findings, but instead of citing an article that’s citing a study, go right to the source.
Here is a big list of academic journals.
Conclusion
Those are some pretty good places to discover new content to share on social media. There is value in curating content and sharing on your social profiles. You’ll be a source of information for your followers and it’s a way for you to attract new followers if you’re not able to produce your own content.