Strategically using a business’s social media platforms to share content and engage users is essential to its overall marketing strategy. With more than 4.62 billion active users of social media, you are missing out on a fast and effective way to reach potentially millions of people if you are not using social media. Using social media has brand-building benefits, growth benefits, advertising benefits, and communication benefits, and makes tracking analytics to prove return on investment easy.
For those who are exploring the most effective social media content ideas, consider the following five options for social media marketing content, all of which have proven advantages and can increase audience engagement.
Here are some of the creative ideas for social media
1. User-Generated Content
Using user-generated content, or UGC, on your social media is a great way to engage your audience and also re-purpose the existing content to save your time. User-generated content is exactly like brand-specific content that is created by users and published on social media, such as brand/product reviews, testimonials, videos, or photos of users wearing or utilizing the product.
UGC is effective because it is authentic. Indeed, it is the digital form of word-of-mouth marketing; real people share real feedback about a product. At least one survey found that consumers are 2.4 times more to say that UGC is more reliable compared to brand-created content.
There are a few ways to create UGC content. For some brands, UGC comes organically from consumers and brand loyalists; for others, asking users to post content (with a certain hashtag and get free products/giveaways) may be an effective place to start.
2. Memes
Coined by Richard Dawkins in a 1976 book, a meme is defined as an “idea, behaviour, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within the culture and often carries symbiotic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.” While the official definition may be a little tough to make sense of, a meme in today’s digital world usually refers to an image or video that represents a specific concept or idea that is distributed through social media.
Using memes for marketing can be an effective strategy, whether you are using a meme that you created internally or resharing a popular internet meme. The top reasons that integrating memes into your social content is a good idea because:-
Memes generate instant engagement and feedback
One of the best things about using memes is that they have the potential to go viral and, even if they don’t, they are able to generate instant feedback (good or bad) from audiences.
Memes can humanize your brand
Creating a meme that is brand specific is an easy way to showcase your challenges and successes, and even gently poke fun at your brand. It is something that can make your company lively and relatable to your audiences.
Memes are inexpensive for your company to make
While some forms of content such as high-quality videos may involve investing in the services of a third-party professional, memes are relatively inexpensive to make. In fact, sites like Meme Generator can help to generate your own meme easier and instantly.
Note that creating a relevant meme needs some time for research. Failing to properly understand your audiences could lead to a meme that is not effective or, worse, disastrous.
3. Series
If you are struggling with social media content ideas, just starting to create a daily, weekly, or monthly series is a great way to fill your content calendar and post something that is good in engaging. For example, you can:-
- Choose a day of the week or the month to do a staff highlight
- Create an alliterative and catchy weekday phrase for sharing content (something like “Throwback Thursdays” or “Freaky Fridays”)
- Choose an interesting topic for your audiences that you can explore over a series of posts that are rolled out over a certain time frame
- Feature a special guest on a recurring and consistent basis
Your series can feature any theme or topic that you want; what’s important is that the content you choose is relevant to your audience and deliver consistently. Depending on your strategy, telling one overarching story is also an important feature of an effective series.
As stated above, one of the primary benefits of series content is that it helps to fill your content calendar. Additionally, series content allows you to regularly focus on the needs of your audience and build audience expectations. It will establish your brand as an authentic storyteller or/and source of information.
4. Infographics
The entire purpose of an infographic is to present complex information in a simple and easy-to-digest format, which makes infographics well-suited for social media. Infographics are also, by their very nature, visual elements, which means that sharing them on social media platforms that prioritize visuals (i.e. Instagram) is highly appropriate. Of course, other brands are using infographics too.
Indeed, a report published by Content Marketing Institute found that nearly 70 percent of B2B marketers integrated infographics as an essential part of their marketing strategy. When you’re thinking about the infographic you want to create for your social media platforms, consider:
- Originality
- Relevance
- Timeliness (is this recent data?)
- Choice of visual elements
- Flow
- Strategic use of white space
- Intended social platform for sharing
Posting an infographic to your website and making it social media shareable is a great way to create content that is usable for both your webpage content and your social content.
5. Testimonials
Finally, testimonials and reviews are something that all businesses should be sharing on their social media pages. In some cases, a testimonial can be a form of UGC—for example, if a user posts a testimonial about your brand and tags you, resharing it would qualify as UGC. In other cases, though, testimonials are sent to your business privately, shared on sites like Google, collected internally, or shared to your business webpage.
Pulling and curating testimonials in this manner is more work for you, but work that is well worth it—nearly 9/10 of customers have reported that they trust online reviews as much as a recommendation, and nearly 3/4 say that positive reviews and testimonials increase their trust in a business. The only con to this content idea is that it requires outreach on a company’s part to collect client testimonials and reviews.
Wrapping up
When it comes to social media marketing, the specific type of content you post is not nearly as important as posting content that is relevant to your audiences and posting consistently. Learn more by reaching out to a social media marketing pro today.