Larry Kim — November 30, 2019 By the year 2020, there will be nearly 3 billion social media users worldwide.
That’s nearly 3 billion people that are using these online platforms to communicate, share, and express themselves.
If you want to have a unicorn business, it’s imperative that you participate in sharing social media content.
It helps to increase engagement, expand reach, and make your business stand out on social media and outshine those other donkey businesses.
I hear it all the time: business owners have social media, they know they should be using it, but they just don’t know what to post or what social media content will benefit their brand.
There are a lot of different types of social media content, so it can definitely be tough to know what to post.
I want to help make it easier.
Keep reading for 10 practical social media content ideas and methods to help you transform your business into a unicorn.
10 Killer Social Media Content Ideas
There are a lot of ways that you can utilize social media to gain new customers and engage with current customers, but here’s a few ideas to get started:
1. Share Your Story
Every business has a story.
A lot of the time, it’s a business’s story that intrigues it’s potential customers and drives them to learn more.
Sharing your business’s story is a great way to get social media content on your pages.
You can share your business’s story in a bio or an “about” section, a blog, or…you can make it interesting.
Perhaps you create a photo or video series that slowly reveal the story of how your business came to be.
Perhaps you share your story through several different status updates.
Sharing your story in social media blog content is an effective way to build loyalty and keep customers engaged with your business.
2. Share Behind-the-Scenes Photos & Videos
Sometimes, businesses can seem inhuman to their customers.
Not because the business isn’t comprised of and built by humans, but because it seems like all they do is create a product or provide a service.
Often, customers don’t know what happens behind closed doors, and rarely, do they know the many faces that make up a business.
Sharing behind-the-scenes photos and videos of your business creates social media content that makes your customers feel closer to you.
Here’s an example from Test Kitchen, where they show the behind-the-scenes process of testing out bacon recipes:
It’s interactive and it shows followers what happens behind-the-scenes at Test Kitchen.
You can use this tactic for your social media content, too.
Do you have an annual holiday party in your office? Sharing those photos will show your customers your playful side.
Does your business participate in monthly volunteer days? Share videos of the work your employees are doing to make a difference in your local city or town and show your customers your charitable side.
There’s many different opportunities to humanize your business by sharing social media content that shows what your employees do and enjoy behind-the-scenes.
3. Share Information About Your Products & Services
Here’s an obvious but extremely useful option for social media content: sharing information about your products or services.
Social media is an easily-accessible place where your customers spend a lot of time.
In fact, a lot of people like to learn through social media, including by using social media to get their news.
This is because social media often displays information in quick, efficient ways.
Creating status updates, video content, or nice-looking infographics is a great way to share information about your products and services with your customers who interact with your business on social media.
Another great way to use social media content to share information about your products and services is by implementing a Facebook Messenger chatbot that your customers can talk to.
The chatbot can give your customers information about your business, about your products and services, and more.
Here’s an example: using a Facebook auto reply bot.
A Facebook auto reply bot is a chatbot that is implemented on a Facebook post.
When users comment on the post…
…they get a message from the chatbot.
This is a great social media content idea that engages users and makes it easy to teach them about your products.
4. Share Testimonials from Your Customers
Customers believe other customers.
If you want to expand your reach and generate new leads based on the positive feedback of your previous customers, consider using customer testimonials as social media content.
Customer testimonials can be shared in status updates, graphics, video content, and more.
You can ask customers to fill out a feedback form, or, if you know for sure that one customer had a very positive experience, you can specifically ask them for a testimonial.
Using customer testimonials as social media content is a great way to show that your business is popular among its customers and that you have a good track record of impressing customers.
5. Post Polls to Collect Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is incredibly important to a growing business.
Customer feedback helps inspire future business decisions, determine areas of improvement, and increase engagement.
Customer feedback is also a great idea for applicable social media content.
Most social media platforms allow you to post polls or ask questions in status updates.
On Facebook, you can post a poll or ask a question right from the status editor.
On Twitter, you can post a poll from the Tweet editor.
On Instagram, you can post polls and ask questions from within Instagram Stories.
These polls and question boxes are great ways to efficiently gather a lot of customer feedback.
The best part is that you’ll be gathering feedback from some of your most engaged customers.
Of course, this isn’t a faultless method of collecting feedback — posting social media content intended to gain feedback comes with its share of response bias problems — but it’s a great jumping off point to see firsthand how your customers feel about your business.
Polls and questions aren’t only for collecting feedback, either.
This same social media content idea can be used purely as an entertainment method to engage and excite your followers.
Take this example from NASA’s Instagram Story:
They began their story with an interactive poll asking a question, and then followed up with information related to the poll.
6. Implement Messenger Drip Campaigns
Messenger Drip Campaigns can be implemented through a Facebook Messenger chatbot, and are a variety of social media content that is great for engagement.
Facebook Messenger drip campaigns, as opposed to typical email drip campaigns, offer higher open rates and better engagement.
They function in the same way as email drip campaigns, however; sending multiple non promotional messages slowly over a period of time.
They’re great for onboarding new customers or selling solutions that have a learning curve or benefit from training.
Messenger drip campaigns allow your business to communicate at a large scale with your customers while keeping those leads engaged.
7. Join In On Popular Hashtags
Social media is known for its ability to bring people together over common interests, often reflected in hashtags.
Hashtags (usually look something like #SundayFunday) are clickable tags that group social media content together.
When you click on a particular hashtag, you’ll see everyone’s posts that use that hashtag.
They’re a great type of social media content for expanding reach and increasing engagement for your business.
There are certain hashtags that are quite popular and will likely help your business get a lot of engagement.
Some of these are:
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#PhotoOfTheDay
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#TBT (stands for Throw Back Thursday)
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#Repost
These three popular hashtags could be highly beneficial to businesses.
Posting a #PhotoOfTheDay will allow your business to keep up with regular social media content, which improves engagement.
Sharing a #TBT to a previous product, event, or social media post from your business is fun for customers because people like reflecting on days past.
Sharing a #Repost, maybe of another user’s social media content that tags your business or shares something about your business, will show people that they could make an appearance on your page if they interact with your business.
Using hashtags in your social media content will expand your reach dramatically, helping you improve your engagement and generate more leads.
8. Run Contests
People love contests.
Holding contests not only provides your business with great social media content, it also engages your customers and expands your reach.
You can hold contests in a number of ways on any social media platform.
Contests are a great way to combine a couple of social media content ideas that we’ve covered already.
For example, your business can post a photo that asks your customers to share a video of them explaining why they love your product or service.
Then, the customers can use a hashtag to make it easy for you to view all of the contest entries.
You can share the best entries on your page, providing you with even more social media content and rewarding the engagement of your customers.
Then, you can pick any number of winners — or, everyone can be a winner, and they can all receive a discount or a free product.
9. Promote Your Offerings
Here’s another way that your business can combine previously-discussed social media content ideas while increasing engagement and sales.
Promotions are a beloved way for customers to get products.
You can push promotions through social media posts or by using a Facebook Messenger chatbot.
Perhaps, the winners of your contests can receive special promotions.
Or, those customers that send in customer testimonials can be rewarded with promotions.
There’s many ways to engage your customers with special business promotions, so get creative.
10. Host Webinars
Webinars are efficient ways to help a lot of customers at once.
They are also useful bits of social media content.
Host webinars to teach customers how to use your products, or about the services your business provides.
You can go beyond simply hosting webinars about your business, however; consider having guest speakers host webinars about industry topics like new and exciting marketing concepts, cool technology, or fun products.
Unicorn Content Means Unicorn Engagement
Having great social media content will, without a doubt, boost your business’s online engagement.
And better online engagement means and increased reach and more potential for sales.
In order to keep up with other businesses and the changing world of online communication, it’s important for businesses to keep up with social media evolution.
Social media content changes all the time, and it’s a fun process to keep up with.
Try out some of these social media content ideas and then come up with some of your own.
Originally Published on Inc.com
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