This post is part of the Series on Social Media in Youth Ministry. After reading yesterday’s post on what to post on your social media, you may have asked yourself how you are ever going to find all that content to post. That’s why today we are discussing 8 ways to find great social media content for your youth ministry page, (Tumblr)blog or site.

1. Google Alert

A great way to find relevant content to share (like blogs, posts, articles, etc) is to use Google Alert. Just register, choose good keywords and Google will send you a daily or weekly update with relevant content produced about those keywords. It may take some fine-tuning to get your keywords right, but then you’ll have all this great social media content delivered right into your inbox.

2. RSS Feeds

I must admit it, I’m a big RSS Fan (I started using Feedly after my beloved Google Reader quit). As of now, I’m subscribed to the RSS feed of some 50 blogs ranging from pure news sites, to loads of youth ministry sites and some on blogging and writing. I get a lot of ideas for my posts from this to be honest. It’s also a great way of finding good social media content. Most blogs have all social media buttons installed, so all you have to do when you find a post, blog or article you like is pick the right one and share it immediately on whatever social medium you want.

3. Twitter

Twitter daily offers a great amount of good content, you just need to find it. Here are some suggestions on how you can find social media content on Twitter:

  • Follow media who produce interesting content, like youth ministry magazines, Christianity Today etc
  • Follow certain hashtags like #youthministry , #youthwork or #stumin. This is especially easy of you use a Twitter app like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, where you can constantly follow certain hashtags in a separate column
  • Make Twitter lists of people who often tweet good links, for instance one for youth, for parents and for youth leaders stuff. Beware that you can make these lists both private and public. The great thing about lists is that you don’t have to follow people to be able to put them on a list.
  • Search on keywords like youth ministry, youth pastor or youth leader to find more people to follow
  • There are several people and accounts who only tweet great quotes. Use these to find quotes you can use.

4. Paper.li

There are several daily digital ‘newspapers’ with posts and articles on certain subjects, like youth ministry. You can find these through Twitter, because most of them are tweeted. An easier and faster way is via the Paper.li homepage by entering search terms and then subscribe to the ones you like. It may take some times to find those most relevant to you, but the upside is that they have filtered out the most interesting stuff for you already. Choosing quality content for your page is then as easy as apple pie.

5. Facebook

If you ‘like’ Pages from organizations or individuals that often create good content, you get their updates into your Facebook stream. Obviously you can do this both with your personal account or your Facebook Page. A new option is to ‘subscribe’ to people’s updates without actually befriending them (which more and more people have limited only to people they are actually friends with). If you actually visit Pages from other youth organizations or youth ministries regularly, you can also gain insight into what works for them and get some fresh ideas for your own page or site.

6. Tumblr

If you follow interesting Tumblr blogs, you’ll have plenty of stuff to share. Should you decide on using Tumblr for youth ministry, the sharing is literally a piece of cake as re-blogging or re-posting content is incredibly easy.

7. YouTube

Obviously, if you want to post YouTube videos, YouTube is the place to be. Subscribe to interesting channels to see what’s new. Check what’s trending or popular. Use the search box to find relevant videos.

8. Ask your readers

If you want to know what’s going viral at the moment, just ask some of your students to forward or post directly anything that’s interesting or funny. Just make sure they know the rules with regards to ‘clean content’. It’s a great way to get them involved in your social media strategy as well. The same goes for parents and youth leaders, ask them to share any relevant content they come across.

How do you find great social media content? Do you have any tips you’d like to add?