In April, I moderated a panel on social media best practices at the PRSA Austin luncheon. Over 80 inhouse and external agency representatives attended and lively discussion followed. I got a great question from a woman from LCRA – that’s the Lower Colorado River Authority to those NOT from around these parts. “What happens if you don’t have the most exciting brand? What kind of content do you share?” Apparently, no one really wants to think about the people that provide electricity, manage the water supply and environment of the lower Colorado River basin. SHOCKING! Their team was having a difficult time coming up with any interesting content, much less an extended content plan for their social channels.

Sometimes when you are around your own content every single day it loses its magic. Sometimes you forget to look at your business with fresh eyes. That’s when it is a good time to bring in someone else to brainstorm and just come up with some off the wall stuff. Not every idea will work for your brand, but looking at what is possible from a fresh perspective can help energize your own team.

The great thing about social media is that you aren’t ?writing a novel. You aren’t even trying to condense a press release. You are breaking down ?a narrative into tiny micro-stories. You have the ability to do ?share stories through video, music, written word, photo collections and more. I turned to my colleagues on the panel and in a 2 minute lightening round we came up with 20 awesome ideas. Here are a few examples:

  1. An Instagram campaign- taking photos of each dam, a history of each dam and the flow of water each day
  2. A “dam cam” – live streaming video with real time lake levels (plus it rhymes)
  3. Invite elementary school kids to catalog the animals of Austin. Post the ?findings to blog and social media. Tag the schools and encourage them to share with their parents
  4. Daily water conservation tips on twitter
  5. Stand up paddle board sponsor – have a SUP group that can help you take photos and tag LCRA in daily posts. Retweet and Repost to Instagram
  6. Facebook quiz to test your Austin water saving IQ
  7. Highlight your LCRA employee of the week and follow them around for the day to photograph what they do – post to the blog
  8. At LCRA sponsored events, have a suggested hashtag at the community outreach booth that sits side-by-side with the water conservation messaging

Just because you sell electricity or maintain dams doesn’t give you an excuse not to have rich interesting content. I challenge you to stump me. Post a kind of company in the comments below that you think is totally incapable of good social content and I will do my best to come up with a retort.