10 Content Ideas for Your Brand’s Social Media
Running a business can be as difficult as trying to gain followers on your social media platforms. When the name of the social media marketing game is all about consistency, it’s important to be constantly producing high-quality content, but if you find yourself getting stumped and losing inspiration or creativity, you’re in the right place! Keep reading for 10 creative content ideas perfect for any business on social media. No matter your industry, your social media strategy will benefit from incorporating these social media content ideas into your content marketing calendar.
1. Take advantage of trends
There are endless waves of new trends on social media that appear every week or two, or sometimes even more frequently. Keep an eye on trending TikTok and Instagram Reels songs, Twitter memes, video challenges to get specific format ideas. In general, staying in the loop with the latest news in your industry, in the world at large, and with pop culture references will be useful as well. Capitalizing on these trends can keep you relevant as social media algorithms tend to showcase these on explore pages, boosting your visibility to new audiences. Incorporating trends in your social media content will also help you repackage your information in an entertaining way.
2. Involve your audience more
There are many ways to make sure you’re engaged with your followers. Including social media posts that are specifically designed to get engagement will help support your overall social media growth. By interacting with y our consumers, you’re more relevant in their minds and you become part of the overall conversation as an active company that cares about its audience. Content ideas to involve your social media followers include:
- Tag-a-friend: In the caption or graphic of these posts, encourage your followers to tag their friends, which increases your chances for new followers, more engagement, and ultimately, boost visibility in the algorithm. Some phrases you can use to do this include:
- “Tag a friend who needs to hear this”
- “Tag your favorite travel partner in the comments”
- “Sound like someone you know? Tag them to give them a hint”
- Poll your audience: People love to share their opinions, so give them a chance to do just that! Social media polls don’t have to be formal, sales-related questions. They can be casual conversation starters about topics that everyone loves talking about (travel, movies, music, food, etc.). This helps you get feedback and engagement from your followers and can demonstrate a bit more of your brand personality.
- Follower or customer spotlight: You can start a series that includes followers by highlighting any reviews they may have left regarding your services. Have them send in videos or text responses answering questions about their experience with your business, or even just give a random follower a shoutout on a story or post. This exciting chance to be seen on a big social media page can be incentive for users to follow and engage with your content!
3. Run a contest or giveaway
Content that increases engagement from followers can be difficult to create, so starting contests or games that require participation is a great, fresh way to incentivize your supporters to help boost your engagement. To run this successfully, you need the following things:
- Something to give away: This may seem obvious, but make sure that you pick out a great gift or prize that will get people excited about entering the contest. It can be as simple as a shoutout on your page, products/services from your own business, or just a Starbucks gift card.
- Terms and conditions: To ensure legal safety and reassurance, make sure to detail terms and conditions in your post, including who can participate in this giveaway, shipping information, how winners will be chosen/contacted, etc.). This will make sure that everyone is aware of the rules and what the contest entails.
- A point of contact: Include contact information for an individual or group that will answer any questions or concerns of followers and participants. This will help the process run smoothly and can even alert you to any issues that may occur.
- A creative way to enter: There are many ways in which followers can enter contests on social media, so make sure you pick the best way to increase your follower engagement and visibility. Some ideas include reposting content, tagging friends in comments, posting a picture using your tag, tweeting something with a specific hashtag, following you, etc. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t make the terms too difficult. The point is to increase engagement, but if it’s too hard or time consuming for users to do it, they likely won’t, especially if the prize isn’t that exciting.
4. Create a content series
Whether daily, weekly, or monthly, it can be very beneficial to create a content series that highlights events, giveaways, interviews, etc. This can help fill the lack of creativity and give you consistent, relevant content. If you know that you post a quick tip every Tuesday, that’s one day of the week already accounted for in your social media content plan. You can use these series to interact with your followers with polls or quiz questions or provide timely and regular updates about your business’s events.
5. Social media takeover
A really creative, simple way to come up with new content is to allow someone else to take over! Use your connections with other social media content creators or businesses in a relevant, but not competing industry to yours and have them post stories or updates throughout the day. Adding fresh eyes and a new perspective content creation to your page can be helpful in coming up with new, innovative posts. By having someone else influential taking over your social media accounts, you’ll be getting engagement from both your followers and theirs, doubling your engagement! Leading up to the takeover, you can create content to promote the event and gather questions or requests from your audience.
6. Share. Pin. Retweet. Repost.
Here’s a secret: not all of your content has to be your own. An easy route to take is to let your followers do the work. Any time you see other brands post content that’s relevant to your services or notice someone post about your business, you should share and/or repost that content. By promoting other brands, articles, and photos, you’re able to show that you’re an active, engaged part of the industry conversation and you’re not on social media just to promote your own business. This can be an easy way to fill in any social media content calendar gaps while still promoting your message and services.
7. Video content marketing
Do you know which of your content types gets the most engagement? Increasingly, video content has been shown to get more shares and views than pictures or text-based content. The best part about this content tip is there isn’t much skill or work required to create these posts. All you really need is a bite-sized clip with minimal editing to get your point across. These short but relevant videos can be fun and entertaining, making your followers more captivated by your social media presence. While the videos themselves may be short, make the most of any caption space you have to expand on the point you make in the video.
8. Develop how-tos and tutorials
Blog posts or lengthy articles aren’t the only ways to provide valuable, educational content to your audience. Short, step-by-step instructions or even quick videos highlighting how to do something can be more engaging and fun, gaining you more clicks and likes. Think of those cooking tutorials and DIY craft projects you see all over Facebook. These videos and posts are easy to digest and have all the information there. Take that idea and adapt it for your business. Educating your audience proves your expertise in the industry and gives your customers a quick win that will keep them coming back to you for more information.
9. Co-market with another brand
Taking on new content or projects can be really difficult while also trying to maintain your regular social media marketing operations. The best way to help solve this dilemma is to reach out for help. There are always many brands and teams that share a similar, relevant goal to yours. Partnering with these brands to jointly market your services can be a great way to come up with mutually beneficial social media content. When partnering with a brand, you will each have access to each other’s resources, followers, and ideas, making social media content creation much easier! By teaming up with another business on a campaign or for creating content like promotions or webinars, you can gain more visibility while doing half the work.
10. Repurpose your content
For each piece of social media content you create, it doesn’t have to end after you’ve first hit publish. In order to get the most out of each picture, video, or caption, consider repurposing them! You can reuse different aspects of your posts by highlighting and reframing a key part or adapt the post for a different format, like taking a long-form caption and turning it into a video. Another example of repurposing content is to pull a significant quote from your content and make it into its own graphic on Canva or another graphics editing tool. This will give you a completely new piece of content without having to rack your brain for a totally new idea.
