Social media is a mighty tool in your marketing arsenal and does not always require a huge budget. However, if you are going to take full advantage of the power that it holds, you need to share interesting and engaging content with your followers consistently. It can be tough to keep dreaming up new ways to communicate with your audience, which is why these posts for social media post ideas will be useful. This cheat sheet will help inspire the next killer status update for your company.
Posts for Social Media – Golden Rules
Before you get to the suggestions, remember to keep a few golden rules in mind:
- Make sure all content is relevant to your audience. You wouldn’t want to share 1980s memes if you were targeting the under-20s, for example!
- Remember it is social media, so talk to and with your audience, don’t talk at them. This is not the place for proclamations; it is for engaging and interacting.
- Everything you post should help drive your business forward. That could be by increasing your followers, helping more people hear about your brand, directing people to your website, bringing in leads or any other method that provides a net benefit to your company.
Here is some social media post ideas for small businesses that you can use today! We have also created an infographic you can save for later.
Take a Look Behind the Scenes
People who follow you have shown an interest in your brand and what you do, so let them in even further. Give them a glimpse behind the scenes. It could be funny pictures from around your office or even videos of what you get up to daily. It makes your brand seem more human, approachable, and relatable.
Host an #AMA
Further to the above, an #AMA, or Ask Me Anything, is an opportunity to engage with your followers. They can ask questions about your business, how you operate, and all manner of other queries, which you answer in public. It’s a real opportunity to draw potential new customers in.
Post a How To Related to Your Industry
So much of the internet is run on How-Tos. Just think how often you turn to Google to find out how to complete tasks at work or home. Is there anything in your sector that can confuse people? Write or film a How To to help solve their problem, and they will always associate you with being a positive force in that niche.
Ask for Recommendations
A great way of increasing engagement with your social networks is to ask for recommendations. People love to share their knowledge if you ask, and when they reply to your posts, you increase the chances of their friends also seeing your posts and joining in. Make sure the recommendations are for something related to your industry to put yourself before the most valuable followers.
Share Your Content
If you want people to visit your website, give them a reason to go there. Come up with relevant and intriguing blog posts and share the links on your social media. Once you have people on your site, they are one step closer to becoming a customer. It doesn’t have to be a blog. It could be a featured product, a link to your special offers or something else that will pique people’s interest.
Share Someone Else’s Content
This may be less obvious than sharing your own content. However, you can still score a good deal of social media credit by posting third party articles that interest or help your audience. If they see your social channels as a resource for good quality content, whoever wrote it, they will stick with you. It also helps you build relationships with key players in your sector when you share their articles.
Play the Hashtag Game
Hashtags are important on social networks such as Instagram and Twitter, with Facebook also catching up on the action recently. Make sure you try to add relevant hashtags to your posts, as they help new people find you. Whether they are international tags such as #WednesdayWisdom and #FridayFeeling or industry relevant terms for your business, you will find that users follow these hashtags and are looking for new people sharing relevant content to follow.
Follow a Content Calendar
It is a good idea to put together a content calendar so you can make sure you can stay relevant. Tailoring content around shared experiences makes a real impact. This could be major holidays like Christmas and Easter or the release of a major new film or streaming TV series. Note down the dates for events like the Grand National or the start date of the new series of The X Factor and use these as jumping-off points for content for your followers.
Mention Your Clients
A great way of keeping clients happy and showing prospective customers how successful you are is to shout out your current customers. They love the added publicity and those considering using your products or services are assured that others are already enjoying the benefits.
Cross-Promote Your Social Channels
You want all of your social channels to flourish as they all have their benefits for your business. The simplest way to boost your numbers is to point those who already like your business toward your other networks. If someone is interested enough to follow you on Twitter, the chances are they would like your Instagram feed too.
Repurpose Content Across Networks
There is no need to always come up with completely different and new content for each social network. Save yourself time and share the content across the channels, but make sure you repurpose it for that network. For example, square images work well on Facebook and Instagram but are cropped on Twitter.
Repurpose Old Content
Did you write a post that killed it? Post it again! If you put it out at a different time, you might catch a new audience and spread it even further. Similarly, if you put together a post that didn’t do as well as expected, try rewriting it, using a different image, or simply posting it on a different day. Recycling saves time and gets great value from your content.
Fill in the Blank
This is an easy way of encouraging comments on your posts, and the more that people comment, the more likely their friends will see your posts appearing in their timelines. Write a sentence with a blanked-out word that your customers must fill in to tell you something about themselves. For example, you could ask them to fill in the blank in “My favourite holiday food is _______”. Make sure the statement has something to do with your industry.
Answer Some FAQs
Do you find customers asking you the same questions all the time? If you do, then the information you have given out might not be as clear as it could be. Use your social media to tell people the answers to their questions, and you will not only save time answering people individually, but you will also give people more confidence to take the next step towards buying.
Share Your Failures
A lot of social media is whitewashed and provides a false positive impression. People appreciate the reality behind the situation, and sharing your failures helps you seem more real. Your followers will relate to your trials and feel warmer and more trusting towards your brand.
Share Stats And Data About Your Sector
Social media is full of people’s opinions, many of which are based on nothing more than that individual’s assumptions. Providing stats and hard data can seem a real antidote to that and marks you out as someone who is a serious, authoritative player in the industry. It can also provide food for thought for those whose assumptions are wildly incorrect about the work you do!
Share Your Good Press
Have you been featured in an industry publication or a local, regional, or even national newspaper? Share that with your followers. It all adds to your authority as a business and shows that important people in the industry are interested in what you are doing.
Give Away a Special Offer
One of the great things about social media, even if you have thousands of followers, is that it can feel like an exclusive club. Take advantage of that fact by giving your social followers a special offer, discount, or another kind of gift. Make them feel included in the gang and encourage them to use your business too.
Start a Series
Not all tweets, Insta posts, and Facebook messages need to stand alone. Create a series of posts to keep people returning to your channels. These could be profiles of interesting people you come across on a daily basis (think ‘Humans of New York’ for example), it could be a collection of tutorials on a single subject, a fun questionnaire with a different staff member each time or anything else.
Ask Advice
If you have a business decision to make, ask your audience! It allows them to feel some ownership over your brand. It might be a new design, a new logo or something else that you don’t mind outsourcing to your followers.
Post a Caption Competition
Ask your followers to caption a business-relevant photograph you post on social media. This sets them off thinking about you and your brand and encourages plenty of interaction and engagement with your post. People love to show off their creativity anyway but to boost the number of entries further, consider offering a prize for the best.
Nostalgia Sells
Nostalgia s big business on social media, but you need to make sure it hits that sweet spot with your followers. Usually, anything that reminds them of their formative years as teenagers seem to work well as it reminds them of a time when they were discovering the things they love the most. Work out what decade your target consumers would have spent mainly in secondary school and find some gems from that era to share.
Make an Explainer Image or Video
You need to be able to show social media users what you do in as simple a way as possible. Otherwise, they will scroll on by. A powerful image or short series of images that show people visually what you are all about is a strong weapon in your arsenal. A video that captures the attention and provides the same information is even more likely to convert.
Share User-Generated Content
Encourage your followers to post pictures of themselves enjoying your products or services and then share these whenever there is a gap in your posting schedule. People love their favourite brands acknowledging their dedication, and you can solidify some goodwill by doing so. It also proves to others how popular your brand is.
Show Yourself Giving Something Back
It is incredibly powerful when you see a brand stop selling and use its social channels to promote something to help the community. Get out into your local area, help out and let your followers know how they can assist, donate or find out more about the cause you back. It might be raising money for charity, litter picking in beauty spots, delivering goods to food banks, or anything else. It shows your human, caring side, rather than the constant on-brand activity of your feed.
Coming up with content that is relevant and exciting can be a lot to do alone, especially when you’re already juggling everything else. Supportal can help! Contact us to discuss your social media management requirements.
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