Do you ever struggle coming up with creative ideas for your Facebook page or profile posts?
Well if that is you, please know that you aren’t alone.
In fact, I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t hit “facebook status-update block.”
But here is the best part, there is a solution that will help you overcome this challenge and surprisingly it is right under your nose.
The Power of Swiping Other People’s Ideas
One of the best parts about Facebook is that everything is public. This allows you to easily visit another person’s personal or company page to see what they are posting and getting the greatest response on.
This one strategy is called “swiping ideas.”
Now please don’t confuse this concept of “swiping” with “stealing” because they aren’t the same thing…far from it in fact!
The main difference between swiping and stealing is…
Swiping: Taking the concept and thinking behind what was created, and molding that same type of thinking or structure to your own implementation plan.
Stealing: Copying and pasting the exact update onto your page or profile without any credit or regard for the other person.
If you haven’t already figured out by now, the best place to find the best ideas for future Facebook posts is by looking at what other people and companies are doing.
Let me show you an example about how you can use this “swiping” technique to apply to your business.
Let’s say you go to Taco Bell’s Facebook page and see that they recently put up a status update with picture of their menu at a drive through, and in the description above the picture it said “Hello! Welcome to Taco Bell, what would you like to order today?”
(By the way, this is something they did and the engagement was OFF THE CHARTS)
For this illustration lets say you are in the restaurant business (a pizza parlor) and you thought this was a brilliant idea to implement.
So in swiping this idea for yourself as a pizza parlor, you decided to “borrow the concept of the same idea Taco Bell used” by…
1) Taking a picture of a plate of rolled out pizza dough ready for toppings
2) Posting it to your Facebook page
3) Putting a description above the image that says, “If you could have any toppings put on this pizza right now what would they be?”
As you can see from this simple illustration, you took the idea from Taco Bell, and swiped the concept and thinking behind the idea to make it your own to leverage on your personal page!
The best part is…you can do this over and over again no matter what niche you are in!
Learn On Other Companies Dime
The fact is, watching what the big brands do allows you to learn new tips and strategies on their dime.
Here’s why…
Companies like Taco Bell, McDonalds and the like spend millions of dollars paying the top advertising and branding agencies to manage their Facebook page.
Use this to your advantage!
Taking time to see what these top agencies come up with for their clients, is a perfectly free learning opportunity for you to take advantage of and leverage for yourself without paying a cent!
Who knows, you may take an idea borrowed from a big page, implement it, and reap a ton of benefits as a result of taking action.
The best part is all it took was 5-10 minutes of your time to see what the big brands were doing.
Create A System For You To Consume Top Page Status Updates
To manage this process, I recommend you create a list on Facebook with the pages that you want to watch and monitor.
SIDENOTE: If you are not already using Facebook lists, you are seriously missing the boat because you are at the whim of the Facebook Edge Rank algorithm to push content in your feed that they think you want based on your past activity on Facebook.
So…If you are an entrepreneur who is serious about implementing this strategy, you want to create a list of the pages you want to follow, so you can PROACTIVELY consume the content that matters to you.
You want to make sure that you add this specific Facebook list to the left side of your newsfeed so that you can easily click it and access the Facebook page updates from the pages within that list any time you like.
Spend at least 5-10 minutes per day seeing what they post, and as new ideas come up for you be sure to write them down and implement them for your business
Take Action
Ok now it is time to take action! Spend 5 minutes right now going to 3 of the top pages that you know have agencies running their page, and see if you can get one idea that you can implement today on your page. I recommend that you also create a list of these pages so you can start learning how they are engaging with their audience to create the greatest impact possible with their page. If you don’t do it now, you will probably never get it done!
About The Author
Scott Bradley is an entrepreneur who is passionate about helping business owners create and implement effective marketing plans, strategies and tactics. He is the owner of this website, Brilliant Business Advice, and spends most of his time creating products and services that directly serve the small business community. You can learn more about Scott on his personal website which can be found at http://www.ScottBradley.name
{ 0 comments… add one now }