In this month’s Third Thursday Tip, Brafton’s Director of Account Management Patrick Berzai exposes one of his secrets to sourcing blog content ideas for social chatter. Watch the full video below and check out the transcript for actionable tips to use for your own content marketing strategy.

Transcript:

Hi, Patrick Berzai, Brafton’s Director of Account Management here, with this month’s Third Thursday Tip. If you’re one of the many marketers who struggle to come up with unique, daily blog content, it’s time to turn to social media.

When you tune into chatter happening all across the web, you can source ideas that you know will resonate with your audience. Sometimes all it takes to craft next month’s content marketing calendar is realizing where to ask the right questions. Here are tips to perfect social sourcing for your brand.

1. Seed a network with a question

Head to a network like LinkedIn and enter a Group related to your industry. Take a second to look at the current discussions in the community, the number of comments and recent posts received as well as who moderates the Group. By evaluating the current activity within a Community, you can understand what like-minded professionals are talking about at this exact – and you can ask vocal peers about a topic you’d like to share.

2. Learn from top social influencers

After you’ve read through recent discussions in a select Group, pay attention to what the top influencers are saying about certain topics and threads. Buddy up with these users by posing questions at them directly. Their answers and insights can teach you more about pain points of your target market to get content inspiration.

3. Co-opt the conversation

Once you’ve already engaged with contributors within social communities, take what you have learned and translate those insights into branded content. You can co-opt organic discussions to put your brand in the conversation with fresh and relevant blog topic. Share it back into the communities, and you’ll likely find it engages new audiences, too.

When you interact with social users frequently within Groups, you may realize new trends in your industry. A single productive conversation with a subject matter expert online can be enough to propel your strategy forward. But make sure you have enough of your own opinions about certain topics or else you’ll only offer readers a surface-level understanding of what’s going on in your niche field.

Patrick is an account manager and strategist at Brafton, where he advises brands about specific techniques to creatively use content. He believes content marketing should serve the dual focus of ranking in search engines and more importantly, influencing consumer buyer / loyalty decisions across web properties.