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For a marketer, there’s nothing worse than experiencing a creative block. You’ve exhausted all your ideas: creating targeted ads, posting reels, mastering TikTok transitions, and writing articles that all seem to have variants of the same topic.
The thing is, your audience will inevitably get bored if you keep posting similar types of content. So whether you post twice a month or three times a day, you can use this expanded list of social media content ideas to never run out of ways to interact with your followers and build their excitement. No matter what social media platform they prefer, you’re sure to find something you haven’t shown them before.
The best way for your brand’s blog to get more traffic is by sharing it on your social media accounts. Just make sure that your articles are valuable and engaging as these invoke a connection with your readers. To encourage your audience to click the link, ask them a question that your article answers or tease some ideas.
Content summaries are short descriptions of your blog posts’ main points. This gives readers a preview of what you want them to read. Keep your summary 150 to 200 words in length and easy to read – meaning short paragraphs and bullet point lists – so that users can quickly scan through it.
If you know your buyers to a T, you should know what they’re going to say and ask in the first place. Create content aligned with your industry and buyer’s journey. Become a thought leader on your social media channels.
At Writrly, we provide content marketing services, so we often post about content strategy, SEO, and digital storytelling. In the same vein, if you’re working at an animal clinic, it would be confusing for users if they see lessons about real estate.
Determine what works and what doesn’t. When you’re trying to figure out which topics you should double down on, think about who’s listening to you at this very moment. Are they commenting and bookmarking your post? Do people download the infographic you made? Are people more engaged in X instead of Y which you thought was going to be more interesting?
Brands, at their core, represent the community. They’re made up of people. To showcase that personal element, show your audience the behind-the-scenes of your business – may that be a social media takeover of an employee, day-in-the-life reels of team members, or what a customer sees once they enter your store. Authenticity sells.
Social media posts are not just about products and services. They’re also about experiences. Tell your brand's story by sharing your accomplishments and your team dynamics “on the job.” There’s no need to overcomplicate things. Look at how the San Diego Zoo uses “simple content” like cute animal videos, trivia, and live cams to keep its audience engaged.
Social media is not the place to be humble. If a client says they like your work, ask if you could use their testimonial for a social media post. Also, say for instance, a customer buys your product (or avails your service), posts it on their story, and tags you, you could repost this on your social channels.
Your market wants to hear from real people, and real-life experiences of your brand. Sooner or later, they’ll get tired of seeing your content if it’s just you talking about yourself all the time. Always check where your brand name is mentioned, and see from there what actions you can take.
UGC carries more weight than any other content formats that you make yourself. It comes from unpaid, real customers. Like testimonials, UGC promotes your brand without coming off as sales-y and can be incredibly influential. If you have a dedicated brand hashtag, users can check it out to see evidence of customer satisfaction.
Investments in user-generated content help you gather diverse assets to repost across your social media platforms and even repurpose into other types of content. For example, you could collate photos of people from different countries using your product and afterward create an Instagram carousel.
Let your audience know that you’re interested in what they have to say. Asking them questions is a surefire method to boost your engagement. Also, if you’re running out of creative juices, the plethora of content you can get from this type of social media post can fill up your content calendar (you didn’t hear this from us).
An example of a popular engagement prompt is a poll about anything from feedback to random rapport-building questions. This helps you get a pulse of your market – because if social media has taught us anything, it’s that people love sharing their opinions.
You can launch weekly challenges to give your audience to interact with your account, potentially get some UGC, and subtly promote your business. For example, photography and videography challenges are perfect for photography brands.
Hosting giveaways and competitions can also push engagement through the roof, boost your follower count, and build brand awareness. After all, everyone loves freebies. You could also maintain high engagement rates with follow-up posts like reminders, more questions, and winner announcements.
Case studies are especially effective for B2B brands. Remember: B2B buyers want results, not false hopes. Exactly how much time and money did your solution save your customer? By how much % have your sales increased since you ran that ad campaign?
Pull some key points and stats out of a case study to make graphics that you could post on your social channels. While testimonials and UGC have their pros, data is a beast of its own. Numbers and statistics are solid backups to your claims.
Take advantage of trending topics and industry news. When you capitalize on topical content, you’d be joining a bigger conversation. Try to avoid political or potentially sensitive topics. Whenever we marketers try to be clever with content, we can sometimes forget that we’re crossing a line. Today’s not the day you deal with a public relations nightmare.
Another classic growth strategy is to find trending audio clips, make a reel or short video, reach thousands of people, and repeat. Although as much as you can, we recommend using original audio, as well as brainstorming your own skits.
Use the power of social media to promote job opportunities at your company – chances are, if your followers love your brand, they’ll tell others in their network. You could even share insights about your company’s culture by doing team intros, highlighting team-building events, and recording clips of existing staff talking about what they love most about their job.
Plug your podcast. If you don’t have one, it’s high time that you consider going the audio route as listening to podcasts has become an integral part of a lot of people’s daily routines. An audiogram is essentially an animation of audio waves. These audio clips are a great way to give listeners a teaser about your podcast episode. Once you pique their interest, they’ll want to know more and go on a deep dive into the topic.
Consider tapping some influencers to create content for you, whether it’s a sponsored or collaborative campaign. You don’t need a multi-million dollar marketing budget for this. Micro- and nano-influencers are budget-friendly options and can sometimes even offer better click-through rates. Just make sure to choose the right partnerships. Focus on content creators that share the same values and audience with your brand.
As we’ve mentioned, consumers want authentic, less-produced experiences with brands. So whether you’re live selling or vlogging from your car while you’re on the way to work, responding to followers in real-time fosters a more personal connection.
An ask me anything (AMA) series is essentially live Q&A sessions where you can share industry knowledge, personal experiences, and your own insights. You get to show the face behind the business.
Business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers all secretly wish that people weren’t so complicated. If only clients instantly buy your product or service right after you tell them all its features and benefits, then achieving great revenue wouldn’t be so hard. Your job wouldn’t be so hard.
But that’s the thing – humans aren’t wired that way. Leads need some warming up. They need to be educated and entertained before they can make micro-decisions that ultimately lead to a closed sale.
That’s where an effective social media strategy comes in. You can expend all your energy dissecting how a video went viral, hoping to uncover the secret formula, but the truth is, the best social media campaigns owe their success to the strategy behind them.
With all these customer touchpoints, social media platforms, and overlooked details (like what format to use, when to post, and which target audience to focus on), it takes a lot of research and experimentation to come up with content that stands out.
As much as social media has exponential reach potential, it is also home to your competitors. A social media strategy done right should be able to cut through the noise, generate leads, create conversions, and, of course, profit. It helps you build the right relationships, but you have to be in it for the long haul.
Social media marketing supports your business goals by providing a roadmap on what steps you should take to – let’s say, increase your revenue by twofold or maybe have X amount of people attend your event. Should all else fail, you should at least have enough information available that tells you how you can pivot quickly.
Nowadays, social media marketing is not just “nice to have.” It’s a necessity. With so many possible target demographics, social media is the place you want to be to get in touch with prospects and convert them into loyal, paying customers.
For your audience to resonate with your content, you need to create personalized messages and hit a chord. To do so, you can conduct market research via surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Do some social listening. Forums like Quora and Reddit can also be good references to find out what exactly people are searching about your industry.
Once you have detailed and accurate buyer personas (which include their pain points, demographics, and preferences), you should now have an idea of which social platforms are best for your business. From there, optimize your content.
Facebook is a social media network you could leverage for live videos and stories. Instagram and Pinterest are known for visuals. LinkedIn is usually used for networking. Twitter is effective for timely and relevant insights. As for TikTok and YouTube, these are the current platforms that dominate video content.
It’s worth spending time to define and recalibrate your social media goals. What exactly do you want to get out of social media? Is it enhanced social media presence, improved lead generation, a better understanding of your audience, more partnerships, or perhaps to experiment on your branding elements?
While these may all seem like enticing objectives, note that each goal requires different tactics and key performance indicators (KPIs). Narrow down your social media metrics to what actually matters. Examples of KPIs include reach, click-through rate, engagement, hashtag performance, organic and paid likes, sentiment, and views.
Now that you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve using social media, it’s time to take the first concrete steps. Analyze your marketing spend from the past – you decide on the timeframe and if the price range was reasonable for its outcomes. Afterward, update your strategy moving forward and include the following information in your budget proposal:
Get some intel on the competition. See what’s out there, opportunities and threats, and why customers still don’t think that you should be their go-to brand.
Make a list of a few competitors – for starters, look at 3 to 6 other brands in your niche. Identify the top 5 or 10 keywords that you want to “steal” from them. These can be as specific as you want. For example, if you work in the hospitality industry, you should focus on keywords like “best places to stay in [your area].”
Since this is a social media competitive analysis, don’t forget to check out who ranks high in social search results, too. What’s their unique value proposition? What types of content do they produce? How frequently do they post and interact with social media users? Find out why your audience follows them. And once you’ve gathered relevant data, take a hard look and create a SWOT analysis:
| SWOT Analysis | Positive | Negative |
| Internal | Strengths | Weakness |
| External | Opportunities | Threats |
Pursuing marketing campaigns without a strategy and content calendar is like attempting to drive without knowing how long the trip will be, the direction you’re going to take, and your desired destination. It’s like being invited to a wedding without preparing your speech or starting a business without knowing your unique value proposition. With any great endeavor, there is always some element of planning.
You have to stay organized. Everyone has to be on the same page. As to what exactly goes on your content calendar depends on your business and goals. Don’t forget to be open to feedback to ensure that it addresses everyone's needs and concerns.
Pro tip: Incorporate the 7-11-4 rule in your social media marketing strategy. Customers usually need 7 hours of contact, 11 touchpoints, and 4 separate locations (e.g., stores, website, social media, events, email newsletters) before they start feeling a sense of trust and buy from a business.
The great thing about social media is that connections can become a community of brand advocates that later draw in new customers. But just like in real life, online communities need nurturing. Engage with your community by getting back to queries, responding to comments, and asking questions through polls and surveys.
Creativity is your competitive edge in content marketing. You need to think outside the box and show originality to rise above the rest. In a crowded market, you have to fight for users’ limited attention. Nowadays, memorability is not earned lightly.
Bring your creative ideas to life by trying out a 30-day social media content challenge. It may seem intimidating, but it’s a good way to experiment which content pieces need improvement and what ideas you can build on.
We understand that it’s hard to put theory into practice, so here’s an idea of our own creative strategy at writrly.com:
Goal: Our primary object is to produce amazing content and package it in the simplest means possible for brands big and small. We make the content experience easy.
Creative statement: We like to think of ourselves as writers first, marketers second.
Relevant insights: We employ AI-powered tools to research keywords, build content briefs, and SEO-optimize content which we’ll serve on a silver platter.
Timeline and content marketing budget: This depends on the content package (number of articles, word count, add-ons) of the client.
There’s no magic formulation in creating a good social media post, but you can always look at your social analytics – including likes, comments, bookmarks, conversions, and referrals – to see if your content did its job.
Optimization doesn’t have to be a scary word in social media marketing. Simply put, it’s about making simple changes that could significantly boost content performance. It’s these fine details that spell the difference between good and great content. Some strategies are:
We’ll keep saying it again and again: Your social media analytics tell you what’s going on with your content. Ask yourself which content formats perform consistently well and which posts have interesting comments. As for your website, analyze why certain landing pages have high exit rates.
Social networking sites welcome all types of media. But one hidden gem that you might be overlooking is discussion forums – like Reddit and Quora – one of the very first forms of social media. Think of these like a bulletin board. They offer an absolute wealth of information that helps you learn more about your target market.
For one, you can find topics relevant to your audience. These can serve as inspiration for evergreen content. On the other hand, you can refer to trending hashtags and use these to get your message across to a larger audience. This way, you can increase brand presence.
Interviews are a good alternative to traditional Q&A sessions. Whether it’s a Facebook or Instagram live, interviewing a thought leader or relevant content creator is the perfect combination of education and entertainment. Learn from others in your industry. As an added bonus, you can even repurpose your interviews into audiograms, short videos, and blog posts.
If you’ve been asked the same set of questions over and over again, using FAQs for social media content would be an absolute gift for your audience. Write a blog post. Start a newsletter. Post on Instagram. Take note: You should post more than once about each question because not everyone will see it the first time around.
Be straightforward. You could simply ask your followers, “What content do you want to see more of from us?” The content creation process doesn’t have to be a guessing game. If you want more people to answer you, you could provide incentives such as free samples, gift cards, free delivery, and so forth.
Social media marketers are expected to juggle content creation, project management, and staying up-to-date with trends. It’s tough. You need to put out high-performing, engaging content as often as you can. But when you repurpose the same posts again and again, your feed starts to feel like Groundhog Day.
That’s why you need to exercise your creative muscle and have a lot of ideas up your sleeve. Give these content types a shot if ever you’re tired of posting the same old thing and stay one step ahead of the competition.
