Do you need content inspiration for your monthly calendars? I know what that’s like. For most social media managers, your brand or product-related content is probably only about 20-30% of your overall calendar. So how do you fill up the rest?
Holidays and events are great conversation starters especially when they’re culturally-relevant in your markets. Inspirational quotes can also attract good engagement if utilised effectively. Interesting infographics are yet another potential piece of content that you can consider for your account. Of course, these all depend on the accounts you manage and whether they fit your social persona and brand equity.
Whenever I come across interesting websites, I bookmark them as part of my Content Bank. These are sites I go back to time and again for inspiration or to give me content fodder. Got a site to share? Leave a comment!
Did you know that 2015 is the Year of Soils? Or that March is International Ideas Month? And that 7th of March is Cereal Day? I can’t blame you if you don’t.
Days of the Year lists an event (or two or three) for every single day! Some of them sound absolutely ridiculous. But some seem kinda legit. I truly wonder how these days even occur. Who comes up with these??
Authenticity aside, DOTY is a useful website if you’re looking for a fun engagement piece to play with. Cereal brands will have a field day with Cereal Day I reckon.
2. Goodreads
“Goodreads? Isn’t that more for books?” Well, yeah but delve deeper (actually, just do a simple search) and you’ll find their Quotes section. It’s a pretty large database of (sometimes attributed) quotes by famous authors and other notable folks.
What I like about their quotes library is that they are tagged. So if you’re looking for a funny quote, or a beauty quote or an inspirational quote, you might be in luck. It’s a content goldmine! Standby your library of stock images, fire up your photo editing app and BOOM: You’ve got an Instagram post. #winning
3. Fest300
I only recently came across Fest300 and I thought it’s a good site to discover festivals from around the world. It’s really cool on a few levels.
One thing I like is their handy Fest Finder feature (say that 10 times fast). You can search by location, categories, alphabetical and date. Who knew there are so many festivals out there?!?
The second thing is that Fest300 is quite informative! They feature content about selected festivals and their listings are rich with not just actual details but user images pulled from social media, videos, etc.
There’s a lot of potential content you can use to spin for your own use. Or I see them as a great site to link to if you need to explain further about, say, the Air Guitar World Championships (which is pretty fucking awesome btw).
4. Visual.ly
Visual.ly was one of the first sites I recall that focused on infographics. Back then, infographics were not very common because we didn’t have as many free design tools to create them as we do now. Does that make me sound dated? Yeah, that’s because I was born before the innernet.
That was many years ago. Seems like Visual.ly has gone beyond just a repository of infographics but are heavily selling their creative services too. But those lovely infographics are still up there. You can search them by topics and then share or embed the ones you like accordingly.
Although there are similar sites now, Visual.ly still offers probably the finest library of infographics currently. I think there’s just something about a well-designed infographic that’ll capture anyone’s attention. It’s not easy to create a good one. Most people make the mistake of cramming excessive information or relying too much on text to tell the story instead of using the creative idea to highlight the message.
5. Pinterest
Maybe you’re more familiar with Pinterest from a user perspective instead of as a content resource. But it’s a great site that’s rich with interesting stuff! People pin all sorts of content from fashion to recipes to fitness tips to quotes to gadgets to music videos to infographics….phew!
Not on Pinterest? That’s fine. Just use it to stalk others. Search for the boards that you want. As mentioned above, there’s a huge variety of boards. Pinterest organises by broad categories so searching for relevant content isn’t too difficult. Get lost in the rabbit hole of weird and interesting pins.
I’ll be honest and admit that I’m not too active on my Pinterest account (feel free to follow if you want) these days. I check in from time to time because I still get a lot of re-pins for my content. Pinterest remains an interesting site to explore for possible content ideas, as well as for new stuff to try and buy.
To me, Pinterest is akin to a giant version of Instagram conceptually. Both wants you to capture and share instantaneously but Pinterest is not just about images and videos and offers much more interactivity for brand and users. Plus it comes with greater social sharing potential if you think about it. If they can replicate their desktop success on mobile, Pinterest can really score.