When you’re short on time, it can be hard to come up with social media ideas. If you’re a marketer responsible for growing your brand’s social media presence and generating ROI, you know how important it is to produce great content. So, how do you strike a balance between the need for great content and the need to get results?
You should always plan ahead by at least one week and fill your social media calendar with content ideas that make your brand appear desirable and worth engaging with.
Social Media Ideas, Being ‘Human’ and Your Strategy
Many businesses have a hard time coming across as human on social media because they have to present themselves as a brand. It can be difficult to show the human side of a business while still maintaining a professional image.
1. Is creating “feel-good” content that isn’t tied to metrics a requirement of being human? 2. Can you grow your social presence and generate a return on investment using “feel-good” content? These are tough questions to answer. Our take is that “feel-good” content is a necessity, but you have to be strategic in how you position it. The social media ideas we’ll share can all be classified as “feel-good” ideas, but they can also be part of campaigns that help you achieve desired results.
Here are 18 social media ideas you can use to effectively plan your campaigns and make them your own.
Use Video
The use of video is rising on social media platforms and is becoming a popular tool to engage with audiences. Video is also a preferred medium over other post formats.
Though making videos may seem easy, it is crucial to plan your content and be creative.
It is recommended that you create a storyboard for your video project in order to ensure that the final product is well-organized and powerful.
The great thing about video is that it can be used to communicate anything. It may seem a little uncomfortable at first, but with more practice and experience you’ll be able to produce it more regularly.
Tag a friend
Tagging a friend in a post on social media is effective because it appeals to a human need to be seen as a good member of society.
To make your “tag a friend” posts more effective, offer an incentive for doing so. For example, if you’re an ice cream store, you could run a competition where two lucky friends each receive a free sundae.
Discounts, Coupons and Deals
The key to running a successful social media campaign with discounts, coupons or deals is to ensure that the offers are actually valuable. If the deals are not good, then few if any people will take advantage of them.
When you plan your discount offer, try directing traffic to a sales page to increase revenue.
If you’re looking for a way to promote your products on Instagram without spending any money on ads, a good strategy is to include a link to your purchase page in your bio.
Run a Competition
Reason number one for running a competition is that it will help you grow your audience. This is because people will be drawn to the chance to win a prize and so they will come to your page to enter. This means that you will get more people viewing your content and engaging with your brand.
Be sure to know how you will track your growth when you plan your competition. Looking at follower growth before and after the competition is an easy task, but take your analysis a step further.
Do a quick check to see if you can find any similarities among your new followers.
If you want to do something special to generate revenue, you can send each new follower a direct message thanking them for following you. You can also offer them a discount on a related product.
Partner With a Brand
Co-marketing with other non-competing brands is a great way to grow your brand. If you can create a compelling offer for the other brand’s audience, it will help you capture attention and create a strong pay-off.
Run a Poll
Polls are a great way to get people engaged on social media. People love sharing their opinions and feeling like their voices are being heard and considered. But you can take your polls to the next level by using the results to create an offer.
If you’re the social media manager for a restaurant, you could find out which food and drink combo your followers love the most by polling them. Once the results come in, you’ll know that the winning combo is likely to be successful if you offer it as a special.
Live Stream
More people are watching live streaming because it’s easy to interact with brands on their mobile phones. Video is a great way to promote and communicate almost anything.
If you want to maximize the benefits of your live streams, make sure to include a strong call-to-action for your audience. This could be a link to a longer video, a report, or a guide. The goal is to convert social traffic into leads for your sales funnel.
Share From Behind the Scenes
There is a trend of sharing what happens behind the scenes and it is a good idea to try it. Content that shows what happens behind the scenes lets your audience see that your company is more than just a business. It also feels like exclusive footage for viewers.
This social media idea also allows you to introduce your team to your followers, making you appear more approachable and relatable.
Create Instructional Videos
There’s no denying that tutorials make for excellent content. Many people mistakenly believe that they can only be used by makeup and cooking influencers. However, this isn’t the case. You can create tutorials for your brand, products, and services.
Hoopla Media is giving its followers a sneak peek at a new tutorial on interview lighting.
Run a contest or giveaway
People can’t resist the power of “free.”
Running a contest is a great way to get your followers to engage with your social media.
91% of posts that have received more than 1,000 likes or comments on Instagram are related to a contest, while accounts that regularly hold contests grow 70% faster than those that don’t.
Host an AMA
Popular on Reddit, an AMA series represents an awesome opportunity for you to share your knowledge, experiences and insights with your followers through a Q&A session.
If you’re experienced and have gone through difficult times, you’re probably able to do an AMA. These sessions can be interesting for both the audience and the brands when you talk about things like your success stories and personal challenges.
Why bother hosting an AMA, though? Consider how an AMA ticks the following boxes for brands:
- You get to show off your personal side, showcasing the face behind the curtain of your business
- You raise awareness for your brand without being pushy or salesy about it
- You learn more about the concerns and interests of your audience
Large teams can benefit from having each member do their own AMA to provide a fuller picture of the brand.
Conduct a social media takeover
If you’re looking for a way to spruce up your social media accounts, one option is to let someone else take over for a while. This can give your followers a change of pace and help you come up with new content ideas.
A social media takeover is when someone else takes control of your social accounts for a period of time, usually 24 hours. This is a good way to get your brand in front of new people, as well as to give your social media posts a new perspective. You can also have someone else from your company take over your account to add some variety to your feed.
Share, pin, Retweet & regram
Don’t be afraid to let other people talk about you and your work.
You don’t have to create all of your social media content yourself. In fact, it’s usually better if you don’t. Sharing content from other relevant brands, articles, and photos from your followers Shows that you’re part of your industry’s conversation, not just a parrot.
Sprout recently shared this quiz to followers who are interested in marketing.
Produce Native Ads
Native ads are more successful than other types of ads because people are more likely to be interested in them.
According to Adroll, these 7 tips will help you produce compelling native ads:
- Understand what you want your audience to do after they’ve seen your ad
- Always make the engagement valuable for your followers
- Personalise your ad to make it resonate with your audience
- Write how you would speak and not how you would sell
- Use your brand name to establish an association between it and the offer
- Keep your message simple and clear to make it easy-to-follow and understand
- Include an easy-to-understand call to action
Repurpose your content
It makes sense to try and get as much as possible out of every blog post or video you make, because of the amount of time and effort it takes to create any piece of content.
A large majority of articles only receive a couple dozen social media shares.
You can promote your blog posts and videos on social media by creating share-friendly images with quotes from your content.
Develop how-to’s & tutorials
Best part is, you don’t have to scroll through a long blog post to find the content you’re looking for While blog posts may provide in-depth explanations, social media platforms can be just as effective in teaching your followers. For example, Buzzfeed produces Instagram videos with easy-to-follow recipes that are shown in short, comprehensive clips. This way, viewers can quickly find the content they’re looking for without wading through a long post.
Go live
Plain and simple, there’s something compelling about live video.
People watching Facebook Live videos spend three times as long watching them as they do pre-recorded videos. Marketers who use live streaming, such as Seth Godin, do so in order to answer questions and educate their audiences.
Answering people’s questions in real-time helps establish a more personal connection with your followers.
You can always use your social video content again in the future. For example, you could use your YouTube videos or “sneak peaks” on Instagram.
Give customers the spotlight
The best way to demonstrate your appreciation for your customers is to give them a shout-out.
Instead of just retweeting people who mention your brand, start a campaign that really highlights your customers.
A customer of the week program that highlights your most loyal advocates and gives them swag or a prize is a great way to show your appreciation.
Make a meme
Brands shouldn’t be afraid to show their sense of humor.
Memes are a popular way to market on social media, especially for brands like Chubbies that use humor in their advertising.
Although memes can be funny, remember that they can also make you look out of touch if your audience doesn’t get the joke. If you’re targeting a younger audience or have a strong social media presence, however, lighthearted content in the form of memes could be beneficial.
Take advantage of trending topics
You never know when a great social media idea will hit you.
Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook offer brands an opportunity to take advantage of trending topics. These topics can be very popular for a short period of time, as was the case with Oreo’s tweet during the Superbowl blackout, which received nearly 15,000 Retweets.
Which social media ideas catch your eye?
Try mixing things up by posting different types of content rather than always posting the same thing. There are lots of different options available, so your social media feed shouldn’t always look the same.
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