Kirsty14th October 2019
So your business already has an active social media presence, you’ve already got a well-researched strategy, and you’re feeling pretty savvy when it comes to marketing your business over social media platforms.
Believe it or not, now isn’t the time to say ‘mission accomplished’ and start high-fiving your colleagues. A social media content strategy should be in constant development; changing with the trends and shifting with your engagement levels.
With that in mind, here are some less-than-basic content ideas that you may not have tried before when planning social…
New content ideas for businesses on social media
1. Weekly challenges – People love to be challenged. Whether it’s an industry-relevant riddle or a mini Wordsearch, it’ll offer your audience a great incentive to return to your social channels week by week.
2. Fill in the caption – A great idea for Instagram is to post an image and ask your followers to suggest the caption. Ideally, caption suggestions will be fairly amusing.
3. Live video – Live video is always popular. Give your followers a tour of the office, or host a tutorial or webinar.
4. Include user-generated Content – Show your audience that you see them and appreciate them by repurposing the images they share of your product over social media. Not only will you strengthen the bond between your brand and customers, but you’ll also be given the chance to subtly promote your business.
5. Show a day in the life – Brands who show their human side come across as more approachable and will find it easier to connect to consumers. Use your social channels to shadow a member of the team for the day. Instagram stories would be the ideal place to showcase this content.
6. Make your own weekly hashtag – Own a coffee shop? How about #SipSipSaturday? Own a sports brand? How about #FootballFriday. Use your hashtag to share a weekly tip, offer, picture, or something else entirely.
7. Share your story – Show some personality by sharing your company story. Talk about your founder, how the company got to where it is now, and post throwback pictures from the early days.
8. Inside jokes about your industry – Use GIFs and Memes to make industry-relevant jokes.
9. Host a Q&A – Hosting a Q&A (whether it’s for your customers to ask questions about your product, or for other educational purposes) will show your audience that you care about their questions, concerns, and personal progression.
10. Profiles on your team – Let your audience get to know the faces behind the brand by creating content focused on individual team members.
11. Host a Twitter chat – Twitter chats can be great for bringing your audience together to discuss particular topics.
12. Ask for ideas for your products/services – Asking your audience to contribute to the development of your products or services will make them feel more valued, and provide you with some wonderful feedback. You could also make this more fun by turning it into a competition. Cadburys is a great example here, who invited the public to design their own chocolate bar.
13. Share controversy – Nothing will get your social media channels buzzing like a bit of controversy. Don’t post anything that will cause offense, but feel free to share any news that may spark debate. Ask your audience for their opinions on the matter.
14. Do a series – You can run a series of blogs, so why not do the same for your social media content? Post across a few days or weeks about a particular topic and give your audience something to follow.
15. Weekly round-up – Gather the best industry news and information from the week to share with your audience.
16. Exclusive social media content – Give people a reason to follow you on social media by creating exclusive content. Only post about certain deals or offers on your social media channels or give your following the first look at new products.
17. Host a competition – A social media competition gives your audience the chance to be rewarded for supporting your business. It could also be pretty beneficial for raising your brand awareness.
18. Polls – Fuel debates by using polls in your social media strategy. Ask for your audience’s opinions, whether it’s about current events (e.g. who is going to win the Football), or about your brand directly (e.g. do you want our product to come in other colors).
19. Ask for audience opinion – Present your audience with questions such as ‘If you were in x situation, what would you do?’ If it’s an interesting or original scenario then it’s likely to elicit a variety of opinionated and varied responses.
20. Share quotes – These could be inspirational quotes, quotes from the team, or (positive) quotes from your customers about your business.
21. Plan your content – OK, this isn’t a content idea, it’s just great practice. Ideas aren’t any good floating about in your head. Add your ideas to a calendar, collaborate on them with your team & post them to all your channels at once.