Are you looking for ideas to freshen up your social media posts? The first goal of social media is to create conversation and community. Only about 20% of your posts should be promotional. So how do you fill in the other 80%?
Scan this list adapted from a helpful SproutSocial article. Pull an idea or two to use in your feeds.
- Create a daily, weekly, or monthly series: featured people, favorites, memories, tips, or inspiration. The theme helps you create content more easily.
- Run a contest or giveaway. People love ‘free’ and sharing their opinion. 91% of Instagram posts with more than 1,000 likes or comments are related to a contest.
- Host an “Ask me Anything” series to educate and engage.
- Conduct a social media takeover. Takeovers put the reigns of your social accounts in an influencer or celebrity’s hands, usually for one day.
- Share, pin, and Retweet letting your fans and followers do the talking.
- Create bite-sized video clips. Video gets more shares than text.
- Repurpose your content. For example, you can pull a quote from your content and repurpose it into a share-friendly image via Canva or PicMonkey.
- Team up with another brand. Share a campaign, piece of content, or special promotion.
- Develop short (less than a minute) how-to’s & tutorials.
- Go live. (People spend three times longer watching Facebook Live videos than pre-recorded ones.)
- Give customers the spotlight in features, case studies, or with your swag.
- Conduct an interview. Try a service like BeLive.
- Make a meme. (Be careful… target your specific audience with something timely and light-hearted. Avoid politics.)
- Take advantage of trending topics. Reference big events and content trends.
- Ask followers to tag a friend.
- Run a social-exclusive deal... occasionally.
- Poll your audience. These are a one-click way to get a pulse on your followers.
- Respond to your followers. Timely responses show you care.
- Go behind the scenes. Giving customers a snapshot of inner-workings builds authenticity.
- Share a milestone, success, or victory.
Remember to use social media to tell your brand’s story and build camaraderie and trust. More social media planning tips are in this article.
