25 Content ideas to help businesses with social media posting.
1. Challenges
People love to be challenged, especially on social media. 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 regularly.
2. Fill in the caption
A great idea for Instagram and Facebook 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 or even showcase some new products.
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, great!
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, make sure you have your smart phone handy.
6. Make your own weekly hashtag
Own a coffee shop? How about #CoffeeSaturday?
Own a clothing brand? How about #FrillyFriday.
You could use your hashtag to share a weekly tip or offer.
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. A weekly team member focus maybe?
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 great feedback. You could also make this more fun by turning it into a competition.
13. Weekly round-up
Gather the best industry news and information from the week to share with your audience.
14. 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.
15. 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.
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 colours). Must be in a group.
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. For extra brand support, try and ask opinions based around your industry.
20. Day of the week
Visit a days of the week website such as www.daysoftheyear.com and share some of the more interesting days. Try and find ones that are either about your industry or similar, then find a royalty free image to support the post.
21. Testimonials
Testimonials and reviews come in all sorts of shapes and sizes across all the different platforms. Monitor these and when one comes in, screen shot it and share it across all your social channels.
22. Ask for photos
Encourage your audience to share a picture and focus on encouraging engagement. If you are a mechanic, ask your audience to a picture of their car, if you are a vet, get your audience to share a photo of their pet etc.
23. Get your audience voting
Either create a poll with a few questions or alternatively an image that asks them to vote, such as tea or coffee?
24. Share quotes
These could be inspirational quotes, quotes from the team, or (positive) quotes from your customers about your business.
25. 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 content calendar, collaborate on them with your team & post them to all your channels at once.
