Since so many people are staying home during the pandemic, it’s not surprising that eMarketer reports an increase in the amount of time adults are spending on social networks. However, just because you have a social media presence doesn’t mean your audience will stop mid-scroll and read what you are sharing. You need a creative social media strategy to stand out.
After all, your posts will appear next to some steep competition.
Boring posts don’t stand a chance against Jiffpom, an adorable Pomeranian who has 10.4 million followers on Instagram. Granted, it might be hard to make your posts as photogenic as this little ball of fluff, but there are still ways you can entice your audience to read your post, click on a link, leave a comment, or share it with others.
If you find it hard to be creative during this unsettling time of lockdown, keep reading. We’ve compiled a list of ways you can be inspired to give your followers fresh content.
Before You Can Get Creative, Define Your Goals
- Are you looking to build awareness?
- Do you want your followers to head to your website and make a purchase or a donation?
- Are you trying to promote the thought leaders at your company?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to goals. A small business, a nonprofit, and a healthcare practice all have different reasons to use social media, but every organization can enjoy better results by improving their posts.
Once you know the goals for your social campaign, you can start making your messages more creative. To jump-start your imagination, we have content ideas and brand examples. Use these as a starting point for your social media posts ideas.
4 Tips For Developing Creative Social Media Posts
1. Think like your followers
To understand what type of content your followers are interested in, it helps to create a marketing persona. According to the digitalagencynetwork.com, a marketing persona is a fictional representation of an actual user. If you have real statistics on your target audience, that’s great! But if you don’t, you can get inside your followers’ heads by asking these two questions:
- What are some of my audience’s biggest concerns?
- How can I help them address those concerns?
Always keep in mind that your followers are real people with hopes, dreams, worries, and needs. Then, craft your creative campaigns to provide the type of information that would capture their interest.
Casper is an example of a brand that understands how to create social media marketing that speaks directly to their followers.
As a mattress company, they realized that some of their followers might have problems falling asleep, so they put a playlist on Spotify that features “a magical slumberland of sounds, meditations, and bedtime stories to help you sleep.”
The Casper Sleep Channel is also on YouTube, which shows you should be creative in both the content you create and also the social media platform on which you choose to share it.
2. Have a sense of humor
Everyone can agree there is nothing funny about a pandemic. However, the state of New Jersey decided to have fun with their public health messages.
Like many state governments, New Jersey is using social media to keep their followers updated about plans and procedures. They wanted to remind people about the importance of wearing a mask, but just repeating that endlessly gets boring.
Look at how New Jersey adds a touch of humor to the mask message they shared on Twitter:
It’s hard to imagine that a straightforward message on this same topic would have 9,800 retweets and 35,000 likes. Humor (when used appropriately) can help your social posts stand out and prompt your audience to share your content.
3. Go beyond the obvious
An article in Search Engine Journal this February reported that Facebook has 2.45 billion users and Instagram has 1 billion users. While those numbers may be enticing, don’t just stick to the social networks with the most users. Your social campaign should include a mix of platforms. Take, for example, the University of Pennsylvania’s career services page on Pinterest.
It’s an interesting mix of 27 boards filled with topics new graduates care about such as:
- Career fairs
- What to wear for men
- What to wear for women
- Building a professional online presence
- Moving to a new city
This Pinterest page illustrates how to use our tip #1 — think like your followers. Helpful, useful content has a better chance of standing out and connecting with your audience.
You can’t expect your audience to be on all social platforms. This is where innovative solutions like a social wall enter the picture. All of the social media accounts you choose can link to this wall and it makes it easy for your audience to see all your social content in one place. In the University of Pennsylvania example shown above, adding these Pinterest boards to the website would let a student who isn’t on Pinterest see this information.
You can put your social wall anywhere — on your website or as a digital display at a retail store, a nonprofit gala, in the lobby of your corporate headquarters — wherever it makes sense to share all these posts, hashtags, and user comments.
4. Think visually
Did you know users on LinkedIn are 20 times more likely to share a post if it has a video? Since the videos on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr play automatically, they quickly capture your followers’ attention.
A few ways you can add videos to your feed include:
- Product demonstrations
- Customer testimonials
- Short clip of an awards ceremony
- Snippet from a webinar
- Political rallies or speeches
You don’t need design skills to make your posts look amazing thanks to Canva. This graphic design tool is extremely easy to use with its drag-and-drop functionality. Here, you can design any post with your brand’s colors as well as add your logo or stock photography to make your content stand out.
How Do You Write a Creative Social Media Post?
One of the easiest ways to learn how to write great posts is to read successful social campaigns. Find the top social media influencers in your industry and see how they promote their brand. Seeing how they interact with their audience will give you some inspiration to improve your social media marketing. Other suggestions to help you write posts that are more engaging include:
- Ask questions. This is a good way to keep your audience engaged. It’s easy to add a poll to your Twitter feed or your Facebook and Instagram stories.
- Ask for selfies. Fashion brands often ask people to share a photo of a new purchase. Why? It increases your credibility if a customer says these are the most comfortable shoes instead of hearing it from the company.
- Use a quote. Businesses who share content via a blog, podcast, or white paper can pull an enticing quote, make it the predominant feature on the social post, and then include a link to the actual blog, podcast, or whitepaper.
- Be conversational. Use “I, we, and you” instead of formal language like “our client” or “the company.” Pretend you are writing directly to one person.
Creative Social Campaigns Embrace User-Generated Content
Now that you’ve improved your social media posts, keep the momentum going with a social media aggregator.
By curating your creative social media with a social media aggregator, you can expand the number of people who see your content. Juicer’s social media aggregator connects with over 15 different social media platforms.
Are you taking your business online? Integrate with Instagram, Slack, Twitter, and Facebook, and promote your podcast on Soundcloud. Are you a restaurant now offering catering? Integrate with Yelp, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, and promote your cooking videos on Vimeo.
Social media consumption won’t be decreasing anytime soon. Use the ideas here to increase engagement with your followers and reach your business goals!
