AKRON (Oct. 13, 2014) — By now you know that you need to post information your customers care about on social media, but you might have a hard time finding shareable content.

Searching it out may become time consuming and you can get pretty frustrated, so I wanted to help you out.

Here are three places to look for content that you can share with your audience:

• Connect locally

One of the greatest benefits to being an independent tire dealer is the closeness you have with your community. You are not a big chain that has no stake in a community — and that can give you an edge on some of your larger competitors. I would start following your local news on social media, whether it is newspapers, magazines, TV stations, etc. You can start with a couple of news sources and see what kind of content you are getting.

Do the schools in your area have social media? I just looked up the Facebook page for the school district where I grew up. They have a variety of posts about what is going on in the district and different accomplishments. For instance, there was a post talking about how one of the high school football teams and cheerleaders are donating $500 to the Make a Wish Foundation and explained that they made chocolate-covered pretzels to raise the money. I scrolled down the page a little and saw different PTA events running in the school district and different places around town that are hosting Halloween activities this month.

I also clicked on the area’s Chamber of Commerce, another local group that has a ton of information posted on its Facebook site. These are definite places I would check out in your own community for shareable content because it will connect you even more to the community where your customers live. It also helps identify your business as part of the community when you start sharing this type of content on social media. You can share this content or engage with it, such as liking or commenting. You can even be on the lookout for any community project that may be looking for sponsors and get involved that way.

This is also a way that you can connect with other local businesses if they are also on social media. It doesn’t hurt to take a gander at what they are doing — and who they are connecting with — to see if there are more things you can be doing.

• Swayy and other content sites

There are sites completely dedicated to gathering content geared toward your readers, packaging it with a nice bow on top and sending it your way. One of my absolute favorites is the site Swayy, but this article from Creative Guerrilla Marketing also details Klout, Contentgems, Scoopt.it, Storify, Listly and Feedly.

I would check out all of these and see which ones are the best fit for you.

I like Swayy because when you sign up, you click on the topics you want more information about/what your audience is interested in, and it then populates different articles about those topics that you can share. It’s a free site that allows you to add in your different accounts — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. — and you can Share Now or Later.

One thing I really like is that you can click share in one hour, two hours, three hours, five hours, etc., or can pull up a calendar and select an exact time. I like this system more than just scheduling an exact time that HootSuite gives because sometimes I know I want to space out my posts but I don’t want to select an exact time. I want to quickly set up three posts of content for the day: now, two hours, five hours and be done.

However, I like that you have both options because sometimes you might have other social media campaigns running and you will want to set up exact times.

They also have a “View Analytics” tab so you can see what kind of attention your shared content is getting and base future content on what kinds of response you are getting. Swayy is also a great tool for anyone weary of hashtags because, for each post, it gives you suggested hashtags to use. This is a great way to start if you are just getting into using hashtags. I am not suggesting using all of the hashtags suggested all at once, but start with a couple and see how the views on the links start to grow.

• Search engine searches

If all else fails, pull up your favorite search engine — whether it is Google, Bing, etc. — and take a look into the “News” section. This could be useful for the technology and auto-related content you might be posting to your site.

For instance, there are a lot of self-driving cars being spoken about and some even getting permits. Your customers are drivers. This could be relevant to them if one day no one is driving the car next to them. This could also be helpful if you want to give tips on speaking with a teenage driver or some car care advice. These are all things you can do general searches about. If you keep getting great content from a few sites, set those up as favorites and keep going back.

I would also look up national holiday calendars. Sure “National Chocolate Pudding Day” or “National Talk like a Pirate Day” seem silly, but I am sure you have customers who love chocolate pudding or like pirates. It is the fun, softer side of social media that often makes that engagement worthwhile.