In the past we have discussed the importance of staying consistent on social media. Staying consistent allows your target audience to see that yes, you are still in business. Yes, you’re still taking clients. And in fact, yes, you can help them with the problems they’re having!

Staying consistent isn’t always easy though. Aside from life happening, business isn’t always booming. You may not always have clients beating down your door. Your business may be cyclical or seasonal. So what happens in those off seasons or down times that you don’t have specific projects or client work to share?

This used to cross my mind a lot when I was first starting my business back in 2017. My business started as a photography business, so I was doing all the hustle marketing tactics—posting in local FB groups, reaching out to friends, trying to post on social media…I think I even paid for some FB ads at one point really early on with zero strategy involved. I really want you to avoid MY mistakes that I made in the beginning, so here are seven strategies for creating content when you have little to no content.

Behind-the-scenes content

When I was a photographer, one session could provide me with five posts:

1. Setting up and cleaning my gear
2. Location scouting
3. Behind-the-scenes planning process
4. Behind-the-scenes of the actual session
5. Photos from the session, which could serve as multiple posts.

Take people along for the ride by telling small stories about the process. When we purchased the property down in Kentucky, I took polls and votes on decor choices and furniture selections. All of that was content that kept the account going consistently without ever even booking a client or a guest. There is beauty in the process, so document it! Often we are so goal-oriented, myself included, that I only want to share it once it’s complete. Or I only want to share it once it’s pretty…but that’s not real life! So share it all, or at least as much as you’re comfortable with sharing.

Finally, “show, don’t tell” type of posts and interactions are great for engagement and education. Jason Feifer, CEO of Entrepreneur magazine made this very poignant post about the Rx bar and how it went from being worth nothing to being a $600 million brand. The brand took the “show, don’t tell” concept to the next level by using their entire package to show consumers what they were eating. Do this for your own business – show, don’t tell.

Repurpose old content

Scroll through your feed and take a look at the content you’ve posted over the last year. See how much of it is still applicable. If it’s still applicable, use it again! On average, about 10% of your audience organically sees your post. This percentage is changing slightly all the time, but let’s say 10% of your followers see your post…that means, theoretically, you could post the same post 10 TIMES before your entire audience has seen it. 10 times…and we hound ourselves over re-posting content ONCE!

So if you’ve been on social for a while, look back through and take the posts that had the highest engagement, and wrap them in a different bow but deliver the same content.  If it worked once, it likely will work again! And that is data you don’t want to sleep on because your audience is telling you what they need. You just gotta listen!

User-generated content

Sharing and re-sharing testimonials, reviews, wins and stories from clients.

Go deeper even—share case studies or client stories, with their permission of course. I do this all the time! In fact, the episode just before this one was a live call with a brand analysis client. This allows potential clients to be familiar not only with me and the way I communicate, but also the process they would go through as my client, as well as demonstrate the value I bring to the table for their business.

These types of stories can be found in any industry. I am going to give you another example from a separate business I run. I have run a few short-term rentals in the past, one of which is my in-law’s home. One of my favorite stories is that there is one family that comes back every summer for a family reunion. Every year they say they’re going to go to King’s Dominion, which is a semi-local theme park or some other attraction. Yet every year, they end up staying at the house the entire stay because they just love having low-key fun with each other in a comfortable place. That story shows many things about the property—it shows that it is big enough for a small family reunion to be comfortable. It shows that it’s comfortable enough for people to want to ditch the “fun” plans for the slow plans of just catching up. It shows that we have returning guests and, therefore, we offer an incredible guest experience, one that is worth coming back for. So even if we are in the dead of the winter when it’s crickets…we still have stories from previous seasons and years to share and tell!

YOU could be doing affiliate or UGC content. If you have affiliate codes for certain products you use, then make content from that.

• A couple examples from both my personal and professional life:
  • Personal: PowerSheets. Created Colorful. 
  • Professional: Flodesk. 17Hats.

Research hashtags that your target audience might be searching for and see what other content is out there. Use that as inspiration for your own content. As a prior English teacher, I do feel like I need to include a disclaimer – please do not plagiarize someone else’s content. But it is okay to use it as an inspiration or beginning of a brainstorm for your own.

If things are quiet, then use that time to get to know your audience even better. Use polls or question boxes or quizzes to gain interaction and learn more about them, their tendencies, their hobbies, their needs, their problems.

But don’t stop there, because this is where most people fall off. If you have people engaging with you, don’t sleep on this engagement! Follow up, ask more questions in the DMs, keep the “lead” warm. What I have found is that, a voice message goes a LONG way to show someone you are human and real and caring.

Educational posts

If you have content buckets made, likely one of them has to do with “education.” Educating your audience about the service or product that you sell is key! For me, so many people have different definitions of what “branding” is, so even breaking down the definition of the “lingo” or jargon that I use can be used as content. In the past, I have down a “Brand Term Breakdown” and actually made a whole series of it. I included definitions and examples of mission statements, values, taglines, brand voice and tone….everything to fully explain brand strategy.

If you DON’T have content buckets made, no worries. I have a free resource for you to download that helps you outline your content buckets. You can find that in the show notes at the end of this episode!

This may look different for you depending on what industry you’re in. But let’s use another industry as an example. Take real estate. Real estate is really heavy on technical terms—earnest money, conventional loan, owner finance, contingency, title insurance. To a real estate agent or broker, those terms are used everyday, but to some people, those terms are foreign and intimidating. So break it down for them, educate them, and even if they’re not ready to buy NOW, I can guarantee you that when they are, they will come to you because you’re familiar to them and they trust you.

Seasonal/relevant topics

If you are having trouble finding things to post about because you have “nothing to post about” (I know you all can’t see me but I’m putting that in air quotes)…then you certainly have time to research social media trends and brainstorm them to fit your business or industry.

Personal content

If all else fails, you still have a life that you can share about! We talk about a personal brand. This can include:

Ask ChatGPT.

At the ESC Conference, Abbey and Courtney of the Duo Collective suggested using ChatGPT as your marketing intern in order to brainstorm topics, content pillars, overall content ideas for your business or niche. While ChatGPT shouldn’t be creating your entire marketing strategy for you, it certainly can help you narrow down the interests of your ideal client and create messaging that speaks directly to them. You can create an overall description of your ideal client, but dive further than that. Ask ChatGPT about their psychographics, their pain points, how they determine whether they are going to buy. Then once that is established, you can dive into the type of content that they may be interested in. Without that base of knowing who your ideal client is though, the content creation could potentially not speak to who you want to speak to. So make sure that foundation is there first!

Recap

Now you are armed with seven strategies that can help you create content when you feel like you are in a dry spell or content draught. Let’s recap the strategies:

1. Behind-the-scenes content from business planning, session planning, renovations, or any part of the process…document it! It’s all part of the story.
2. If you’ve been in business a while, you can repurpose old content that has performed well. Bring it back to life!
3. User-generated content can be great. Whether that is testimonials from your clients, case studies about your clients, or YOU making affiliate content…use what you already have access to!
4. Educational posts can be super helpful hygiene content that warms up your audience that may not be quite ready to purchase from you.
5. Seasonal topics or trends that can be applied to your own industry are great when you’re looking for B-roll content in the in between times.
6. A personal brand is made for a reason—use your personal life to show off more of your personality in those quiet times.
7. When ALL ELSE FAILS—let ChatGPT be your marketing/content intern and let it do the brainstorming for you!

Armed with these strategies you should be able to be a content creation queen and attract your ideal client even when you don’t have current content.