13 Killer Social Media Content Ideas to Engage Your Audience: The Ultimate Guide
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is about creating and sharing valuable content that attracts your target audience and keeps them coming back for more.
Once you’re receiving high engagement rates on a consistent basis for your posts, you can be sure that your social media content ideas are a success.
However, it isn’t easy to keep generating social media content ideas. In fact, it’s common to feel stuck sometimes, wondering what you should post for the following week.
That’s why we’re here to help.
Understanding Social Media Marketing
An effective Social Media Marketing strategy is about creating useful and engaging content to attract your audience.
It is also about placing yourself in their shoes and creating content that will resolve their problems or pain points. Thinking from this brand perspective allows you to create amazing social media content ideas for your audience.
When a business does not understand the main purpose of social media, they will make common mistakes such as: overselling and over-promoting their products on their page. This causes their existing followers to ‘Unlike’ or ‘Unfollow’ their page.
Social Media Content Calendar
It’s very helpful for businesses to create a Social Media Content Calendar.
Creating one allows you to keep your content well-organised in one document and avoid publishing duplicate social media posts. Additionally, keeping a calendar helps you identify new social media content ideas based on your current list.
To get started, you can use free tools such as Google Spreadsheet or Google Documents to create a simple table to plan your content.
A List of Social Media Platforms to Build Your Brand
Different social media channels help you reach different audiences.
As such, it is important to conduct in-depth research on the common platforms used by your target audience.
If you haven’t already created a social media page, here are some suggested platforms to start sharing your content:
- Facebook;
- Instagram;
- Twitter;
- LinkedIn;
- Snapchat;
- TikTok; and
- Pinterest.
Summary: Go where your audience is, and generate brilliant social media content ideas to share.
The Secret Recipe to Create Great Social Media Content
Before creating any social media content, it’s helpful to know what type of content works and what doesn’t.
This infographic below explains 5 ways to create great social media content.
So, try to put these techniques into practice when you create contents in the future.
Pro Tip: Try to avoid hard-selling your products on social media.
Doing this will very likely cause your followers to unfollow your page.
13 Social Media Content Ideas to Keep Your Audience Hooked
Here, we’ll explain 13 of our favourite social media content ideas that you can use for your page.
In addition to that, we’ll explain when you should post them and recommend some of our favourite tools to help you bring these ideas to life.
1. Create Original Pictures and Visuals
Creating original pictures and visuals are social media content ideas that are used by most businesses today. Originality and creativity are important for content creation.
You should create original pictures and visuals because it helps brands go viral on social media. It’s extremely rare to see a brand go viral from just sharing another company’s content.
Yes, it’s true – you should always create stunning pictures. However, don’t forget to create stunning pictures that are also customer-centric. In other words, create something that will attract and capture your target audience’s attention.
When To Post:
Posting images on social media should be the most common form of content used for your social media pages. It’s much easier and quicker to create compared to videos.
Recommended Tools:
You don’t need to have technical design skills to create social media images or infographics. User-friendly graphic design platforms such as Canva, Venngage, and Piktochart allow you to create graphics and visuals with ease.
2. Create Videos
Engage your social media followers with interesting video content. Every once in a while, you can promote and educate them about the features of your products or services (just don’t overdo it).
One of our favourite content marketing videos is from Apple. No, it’s not because they are a famous brand, but simply because their videos are spot-on.
In 2019, they subtly promoted their products in a video format which features their: iPad, iPhone, iMac, and Macbook. Instead of hard-selling their products, Apple told a compelling story in the video, subtly featuring how their products benefited their users in the story.
Today, the video has garnered the following engagement rates on YouTube: 7,477,854 views and 139,000 likes. This video from Apple goes to show that you can create content promoting your products without overselling them on social media.
Want to get inspired? Watch the video here:
When To Post:
Videos take more time and effort to produce than blog posts or podcasts. The size of every business’s marketing department is different. Some are big and others are smaller. As such, we’d advise you to create the number of videos based on your discretion.
Recommended Tools:
If you’re a Macbook user, you can use iMovie to create videos to attract and entertain your audience. iMovie provides basic video editing features that are well-equipped to create a decent video.
Here are other video-creation platforms you can consider: Moovly, Renderforest, Powtoon, Doodly, and Animaker.
3. Go Live
Going Live on social media is a great social media content idea. It helps to engage and add value to your audience. So, spend some time connecting with your followers in the most genuine way via a Live session.
Going Live on social media humanises your brand. It changes your audience’s perspective from seeing your brand as just another corporate image in the marketplace to one that is more friendly and relatable.
In summary, this tactic builds a stronger relationship with your audience and keeps them as loyal customers of your products or services.
Here are a few things you need to consider before going Live:
- Spend a few weeks in advance to choose your topic;
- Consider when your audience is most active on social media;
- Announce your chosen topic to build some hype;
- Prepare your ‘studio’ a few days ahead of the event;
- Gauge your followers’ interest during the session; and
- Go Live again on a similar topic if the first session did well.
Check out this link for a Facebook livestream that we did for our client, Gene Martino.
When To Go Live:
We’d recommend this tactic whenever you want to promote new products or services, create a stronger relationship with your audience, or help them understand your brand better.
Recommended Channels:
Here are some social media channels that allow you to go Live on their platform: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
4. Share Your Blog
Although this is one of the most common social media content ideas, we still think it’s worth mentioning. Sharing your blog on social media helps to:
- Promote visibility for your blog;
- Drive traffic to your website; and
- Showcase your thought leadership in the industry
Write a blog about the most trending news or topic in your industry. If you’ve found a solution to resolve your target audience’s pain points, write useful content that benefits your audience.
Too often, businesses devote a lot of time and effort to produce an awesome blog but end up wondering why no one reads it. Here’s the reason: they do not promote and share their blogs.
A good place to start sharing it is on social media. Don’t shelve your blog on your website. A blog is written so that it can be read, so bring it out into the public eye (social media).
When To Share Blogs:
Whenever you publish a new blog on your website, it is good practice to share it on your social media platforms. You can also repurpose your blog into a video. For example, our agency wrote a case study on Oxwhite which was also published in the form of video content.
Recommended Channels:
Here are some recommended channels that are highly suitable to share your blogs: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
5. Industry Statistics
For B2B businesses, you’d be doing your audience a massive favour by cutting your teeth into researching data and statistics for them. Gathering data and statistics on a topic takes immense time and effort to compile. This is why data and statistics are one of the most shared contents on social media.
If you’ve put effort into your research, share these newfound data and statistics with your followers. Be sure that your facts and data are correct. Sharing incorrect statistics will damage your brand’s reputation.
Take some time to include your newfound research and statistics in a form of an infographic. A stunning infographic will surely capture your audience’s attention, compared to plain text without any pictures on social media.
When To Post:
Such contents are best shared when there is a trending topic that your audience is interested in, but it requires immense amounts of time to research and gather data. That’s where you come into the picture and help them do the heavy lifting.
Recommended Channels:
Like images, here are some of the best channels to share your research data and statistics: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.
6. Event Promotion
For other social media content ideas, you can try promoting any upcoming events or business promotions. Social media is an incredibly powerful tool to boost event attendance. Platforms such as Facebook will notify other Facebook users that their friends are attending your event.
This will naturally increase awareness and visibility of your event. When everyone sees that their friends are attending, they’ll want to check it out for themselves too.
Here are some event suggestions you can use as social media content ideas:
- Contests;
- Product launches;
- Upcoming Live sessions; or
- Giveaway events
When To Post:
Promote these posts at least 2 – 3 months before your event to allow news to spread to your target audience. You want to get the highest number of attendance possible.
Recommended Features to Include:
For such events, a special feature to include in your social media post would be a countdown sticker.
For example, if you’re using Instagram Stories, you can set an end time and date. Instagram also allows you to customise the name and colour of your countdown clock.
7. Share Your Podcast Episode
Podcasts are portable. This makes them the easiest form of content for your target audience to consume. They could be listening to your episodes when they are taking public transport, driving to work, or even cooking in the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon.
When you publish your podcast episodes on social media, your strategy has to be in alignment with your marketing or business objectives.
An example of such objectives would be increasing your:
- Brand awareness;
- Brand engagement;
- Website traffic;
- Thought leadership; or
- Revenue generation
When To Share Podcast Episodes:
You can share your episode on social media each time you’ve recorded your podcast or when you’ve invited a special guest speaker that your audience will be excited to hear from.
Before publishing your podcast on social media, remember to design an eye-catching thumbnail for your post before publishing it on your page.
Recommended Tools:
You can create a SoundCloud or Spotify account to house your podcast episodes, and then post a link to the episode on social media.
8. Reshare Your Fan’s Posts
Today, fan posts have become the new word-of-mouth marketing. If your followers love and adore your brand, they will share your content on social media.
Whenever they post something great about your brand, why not return the favour and reshare their post? They’ll feel appreciated that you took notice of them.
If you want to learn more about how this tactic is helpful for your social media strategy, you can read this in-depth article from Social Media Examiner.
When To Share Fan Posts:
Whenever your fans share good experiences they’ve had using your product such as reviews, testimonies, and how your product helped resolve their problems.
Recommended Tools:
To hear what your fans are saying about your brand, you can use: Google Alert, Hootsuite, Mention, TweetReach, and Keyhole, to track brand mentions on social media.
9. Hire An Agency to Manage Your Social Media Content
Brand agencies such as Brand360 are in the business of creating, developing, and maintaining a strong brand for your business. At Brand360, it is our job to brainstorm and generate great content to promote your business and products on social media.
We are Branding and Marketing specialists who offer Social Media Marketing as part of our services. If you are interested in learning more about our services, do reach out to see how we can help your business.
When To Hire An Agency:
If you’re struggling to produce great-quality content on a consistent basis, it’s time to consider hiring an agency to manage your social media content for you.
10. Share Your Company’s News and Achievements
Other social media content ideas we’d recommend sharing are your company’s news and achievements. If you’ve hired a new CEO or COO for your company, you can consider sharing such news on social media. Aside from that, you can also publish posts about your company’s latest achievements such as winning a business award.
When To Post:
Publish these posts whenever there is anything newsworthy to be shared about your company. Avoid posting defamatory comments or statements in your posts about your competitors when sharing on social media.
Recommended Tools:
Here are some tools to help you schedule a specific date and time to publish your social media posts: Buffer, CoSchedule, Plannable, TweetDeck, and Sendible.
Read your post multiple times before posting it, to make sure you don’t come across as arrogant or bragging to your audience when sharing about your achievements.
11. Share Content from Other Businesses
Content curation is another social media content idea to help you save time and effort from generating original content. Resharing such content could be anything such as sharing another business’ images, blogs, videos, quotes or jokes.
When To Share Content From Other Businesses:
Avoid sharing your competitor’s content – you are in competition with them after all. Alternatively, you can share content from other businesses in your industry that produce complementary goods for your product.
For example, if you are in the business of selling cars, you can share an interesting video from a tyre manufacturer on your social media page. This is a safe approach to ensure you’re not promoting your competitor’s content.
Recommended Tools:
For easier content curation, you can use these social media listening tools to monitor the latest news and trends in your industry: Hootsuite, BuzzSumo, Awario, and Meltwater.
12. Share Greeting Cards Or Holiday Posts
Get in the holiday spirit. Creating a beautiful festival card is one of the most commonly used social media content ideas by businesses.
But if your post is beautiful enough, it will encourage your audience to share it with their friends and family. This itself increases visibility for your business.
Here’s a Mooncake Festival card designed by Brand360 to wish our followers a happy celebration this year.
Don’t forget to include your brand logo in the picture. Just make sure your logo isn’t too big and it doesn’t take the centre stage of the picture.
If you need any inspiration or references to create more content like this, visit our Facebook gallery to view all the posts we’ve created.
When To Post:
These posts are best shared during public holidays and festivals. Depending on your business’ industry, you can also create a social media post to celebrate global events such as World Environment Day or World Animal Day.
Recommended Tools:
For user-friendly tools, you can use the following platforms to create festival cards or holiday posts: Canva, Adobe Spark, and Visme.
13. Share Jokes or Memes
The last social media content idea we’d recommend posting is a joke or meme. Everyone likes a good laugh. In fact, we’d say laughter is the ultimate marketing tool to promote your business.
Jokes make you more relatable to your viewers. It humanises your brand, which helps your business go beyond just a corporate image in the marketplace. If your content is really funny, it will become shareable and maybe even go viral.
When To Post:
Although it is more common for B2C businesses to share jokes with their audience, B2B businesses are slowly warming up to this type of content.
Before posting jokes on social media, take some time to think if your audience will find such content offensive. Humour is subjective in nature. Sometimes you may risk causing unintended offences that will upset your followers.
Recommended Tools:
If you’re having a hard time coming up with original memes or jokes, here are some websites that you can check out to help you generate such content: Giphy, Tumblr, Imgflip, CNN’s Dad Joke Generator.
Ethics in Social Media Marketing
Ethics fundamentally shapes the integrity and success of social media marketing by guiding how brands interact with their audience, handle data, and present themselves online. Exploring the essential do’s and don’ts of social engagement highlights the critical importance of maintaining transparency and authenticity.
Do’s in Social Engagement:
- Respect Privacy: Adherence to privacy laws and user preferences is crucial. This includes not sharing personal information without consent.
- Promote Inclusivity: Diversity in social media content reflects and embraces the audience’s diversity, enhancing inclusivity.
- Engage Responsibly: Maintaining a polite and professional tone, even in criticism, and handling disputes privately is vital.
- Fact-Check Content: Ensuring accuracy in shared content builds credibility and trust.
- Credit Original Sources: Proper attribution respects intellectual property and enhances the brand’s ethical reputation.
Don’ts in Social Engagement:
- Avoid Manipulative Tactics: Stay away from misleading headlines that can erode trust.
- Don’t Exploit Sensitive Issues: Using tragic events for promotion can appear opportunistic and insincere.
- Refrain from Plagiarism: Copying without permission can lead to legal issues and tarnish the brand’s image.
- Avoid Inflammatory Speech: Steer clear of offensive content that could alienate parts of your audience.
- Don’t Ignore Feedback: Timely and helpful responses to customer inquiries or complaints show that a brand values its audience.
Transparency and Authenticity
Clear communication about company practices, especially regarding data usage and privacy policies, is essential. Disclosure of any partnerships or sponsorships builds trust and ensures compliance with standards. Authentic interactions that reflect the brand’s values, rather than scripted responses, foster deeper connections. Consistent messaging across platforms prevents confusion and strengthens the brand’s message.
Adhering to these ethical guidelines helps brands cultivate a strong, trustworthy, and engaging online presence, enhancing their reputation and encouraging a supportive community. This commitment is crucial for building and retaining a loyal following.
Wrapping It Up…
There you have it.
We’ve provided you with a whole stockpile of social media content ideas!
Now you have all the information you need to produce an endless supply of content for your social media pages.
We hope our article has given you some inspiration to create more interesting and valuable content.
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