We've all been there, you sit there staring at your phone trying to come up with a new post idea, but after you've scrolled through your gallery and come up short, you either give up and decide not to post today or re-post a photo or video you've already shared, hoping that it's far enough down your feed that none of your followers will notice.
Well, that's about to change today! We have put together 7 creative social media post ideas for you to try the next time you're faced with a creative block.
1: Celebrate National/International "Whatever" Day
There is an abundance of days dedicated to all sorts of hobbies, foods, pets, social issues, professions, and holidays that you can take advantage of. With hundreds of these "whatever" days dotted throughout the year, there's sure to be at least a dozen that are relevant to your business or industry.
If you run a pizza shop you'll want to share a special post on February 9th for #NationalPizzaDay (as executed beautifully above by @hillcrestcclnk on Instagram), for comic book shops you don't want to miss out on #NationalSuperheroDay on April 28th, accountants would want to remember #NationalFinancialAwarenessDay on August 14th, and of course, the baristas among you would have to celebrate #InternationalCoffeeDay on October 1st. Check out our list of suggested days for many more to consider.
2: Fill In The Blank Posts
Social media platforms have sophisticated algorithms which decide which posts will be shown above others, one of the major factors they take into account is the amount of engagement a post receives from the first group of people who see it. Engagement can include likes, shares, and saves, but the one we're looking for with this format of post is comments.
By asking your audience to fill in the blank with their own opinion, hopefully, they will be leaving a comment on your post to share their take on your idea. You could go for a reasonably controversial topic that may spark back and forth debate in the comments, but you're best to steer clear of anything that could be deemed offensive or in poor taste. Sports-related pages could post "_________ are going to win the Champions League this season", while a podcast for Sci-Fi fans may go with "The best movie in the Star Wars franchise is Episode __________".
The example shown above by @jmrlib is a great example of using a current event (Winter Olympics) to let people imagine a new event, receiving 6 comments on a post with 17 likes.
3: This Or That Posts
People are often polarised when it comes to rivalries, especially when it's something they're passionate about. Don't believe me? Just ask someone any of the following simple questions... Coke or Pepsi? McDonald's or Burger King? Boxing or MMA? Messi or Ronaldo?
I'm sure by now you can see where I'm going with this! You can use this tactic on your social channels by asking your followers to take different actions for each possible answer to the question. In the first example below you can see @TheMoonCarl on Twitter asking if Ethereum will reach $5,000 in value by the end of the first quarter of 2022, to answer the question his followers must leave a comment to answer "no", retweet to answer "not sure", or like the post to answer "yes".
In the next example, you can see the group, 'Cruise Withdrawl' on Facebook asking if their followers would rather go to The Caribbean or Alaska. They want the responses to be a thumbs up for the Caribbean or a heart for Alaska.
What "This Or That" question would encourage the most engagement from your followers on social media? Brainstorm at least five different post ideas and try the best one out on your social channel of choice!
4: Brag About Reviews
If you've had any reviews from previous customers on your Facebook page, Google My Business, Trust Pilot, or anywhere else on the web, you can bring them to a lot more people's attention by sharing them on your social networks.
But you don't just want to copy and paste the text, nor do you want to take a screenshot and share it. You should turn it into an image using Photoshop, Canva, or a similar graphics application, or if you're not comfortable doing this yourself, you can seek assistance from a graphic designer (or a young family member who knows how).
By creating an image from it you will make the review more eye-catching and can tie in your branding with a certain font or colour scheme.
As demonstrated on Instagram by @wearehartdairy in the example above, you can turn a customer review into a well-designed social media post that creates "social proof" for your product or service and is effectively an advert for your business to anyone who stumbles across it online.
5: Create A Tutorial Or "How To" Post
This is probably one of the most obvious ideas for a post on the list, but many people don't think that their product or service would work in a tutorial, or would be immediately put off the idea by a paralysing fear of appearing on camera. If you think either of those is a legitimate obstacle then I have good news for you... they're not!
Even if your product or service doesn't seem to be a good fit for this format, with a bit of imagination you can find a way to incorporate it into a tutorial or "how-to" post. Imagine a clothing and accessories brand, the idea of a "how to put on your jumper" post is ridiculous... but "how to organise your wardrobe" or "accessorising for a casual business meeting fashion tutorial" would definitely work, it's all about thinking outside the box.
As far as the fear of being on camera goes, it can be daunting to stand in front of a camera to present a tutorial, but you don't necessarily have to show your face. You could have your camera or phone mounted on a tripod facing down onto your hands, this eliminates the need to get your dialogue right while following out the steps of your tutorial. You could then edit the video to cut out large portions of what you're doing with your hands and leave just the essential bits, once you're happy with how the video looks just record yourself talking about what's happening on the screen and layer it over the video before exporting the final file.
The other option is to ask an influencer to make the tutorial for you, this eliminates the need for you to be on camera and also could expose your brand or product to the influencer's audience if they post it on their social channels. But it's not just you who can benefit from this arrangement, the influencer can receive free products to use in the tutorial, you could pay them for creating the content and sharing it, and they could grow their own audience and gain more credibility from you sharing the content to your audience, showing their expertise.
6: Introduce Your Team Or Staff
In this day and age, people no longer want to buy from faceless corporations, they want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Now is the time to introduce yourself and your team to your followers!
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are household names now because they made a personal connection with their audience online, if Tesla or Amazon were launched 20 years earlier people would only know the brand's name, not the CEO's. Even if your brand or product isn't as groundbreaking as the examples I've given, you can still show your personality and show that there are real people working on your offering.
In the example below you will see Randal Pich, the founder, and CEO of Live Fit Apparel (LVFT), and a few other companies. He has 306K followers on his personal Instagram (and a blue verification checkmark too), making him an influencer in his own right and securing his personal brand to carry on to his next venture if he decides to move on. But none of this would have been possible if he hadn't made himself known to the audience of his LiveFit lifestyle brand.
But even if you don't want to be the star of the show, you can still humanise your company and show some personality with your team of staff. It can be a humorous post with the office staff lip-syncing to a famous song on TikTok, a photo of a member of the team just after completing a marathon, or just an introduction to a member of staff as part of a weekly series like this example from The Claremont Hotel's Facebook page.
7: Share User Generated Content (UGC)
You should be taking advantage of the content being posted about your brand or product by your followers and customers, they are obviously proud to share their purchases with the world if they've posted it on their social channels, so how do you think they would feel if you not only acknowledge their post, but also share it to your audience? Have you ever posted about a product or business online and been over the moon when it's been re-tweeted or shared on their Facebook page? Imagine how it would feel to find your post shared in someone's blog post as an example of great content marketing... (You're welcome by the way!).
Take the example of @circulonuk above, they have asked their followers to tag them in posts where they're cooking with a circulon frying pan and then share the best of their customer's photos. It shows the customer that they have a good eye for a photograph (and probably some culinary skill too) while allowing circulon to post a great photo of their product in use without having to hire a photographer.
Why not set your customers/followers a similar challenge and ask them to tag you in their photos or use your selected hashtag to bring them to your attention, you can then take your pick of the bunch and share your freshly curated user generated content with your audience.
Conclusion:
Well, I hope you've found these 7 tips helpful and are busting to try some of them out! This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I may well put together a part 2 someday. This is the first blog post I've written for the Ublesemp website so hopefully, you've enjoyed reading it and found at least some value in the information provided. If you have a suggestion for future posts please get in touch and let me know, I'm always open to suggestions.
If just reading this list of ideas has made you realise you don't want to create posts for your own social channels we would be happy to take you on as a client and handle your social media marketing for you. (Sorry for the shameless plug!)
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