When it comes to creating content and following social media trends, there is almost no middle ground, your creative juices are either on a high or not. Reasons why experienced social media marketers and managers would recommend using a social media content calendar, so you can make the most of that creative rush. 

But it’s not as simple as just creating any type of content and stacking it all together. Your content calendar would only be as effective if it contains a wide variety of content that can spark engagements from your audience. Recycling the same posts every day would wear out your audience, so we have collected a list of content ideas to help refresh your content calendar and get it to its maximum efficiency.

Ready to refresh your content calendar?

31 social media content ideas you should try

1. User-Generated Content (UGC)

There is no social media rule that says all the content on your feed must come from you. Let your audience help you on this one, they also can be a great and valuable resource for content that increases the credibility of your brand. 

UGCs help you fill your feed with community-made content while at the same time building trust to help convert other members. People tend to be more attracted to your product when they see other humans use your product or service and have good things to say about them.

2. Start a series

Building content from scratch regularly is hard work. Instead, look for a content topic that your audience is most likely to be interested in and cover all the angles exhaustively. This series can take whatever form you choose but ensure that you are consistent with it.

🎉 Related Article: Content curation strategies and tools in 2021

3. Run a contest or giveaway

This is particularly good for brands looking to seek awareness and you don’t even have to be overly creative to come up with giveaway ideas. It could be offering some of your products or service out for free. 

Your giveaway should always have a goal attached to it and ensure that the guidelines for winning the giveaway boost your chances of reaching that goal. For example, if your goal is to increase followers, then conditions for winning should include them following your page first.

4. Repurpose your content

Considering the amount of time and effort you put into creating just one piece of content, you should not be embarrassed to squeeze as much as possible from each content. Consider ideas for expressing your existing idea in a different way or format. A blog post can be repurposed into a carousel post, a YouTube video into an Instagram reel. All in all, let your social media platform inform what forms to repurpose into.

5. Develop tutorials about your product or service

Sometimes, the use of your product or service might not be as straightforward as you think and your customers won’t mind you walking them through every stage of its use. You can even use this to drive attention to new features or often neglected features of your product or service. Just bear in mind that social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter are not the best place to post an all-inclusive tutorial of your product. Rather, create a short reel or video that covers the major aspect of your tutorial and link to the full version of the tutorial on your site or youtube channel.

6. Celebrate holidays

Holidays are a great way to show your audience that you care about what they care about and fortunately, there are a handful of holidays you can create content around. 

It’s not compulsory to post about every holiday or international day celebration, but when you do, make sure your posts are fun, relevant, and would trigger positive engagements.  If in doubt about how your audience would receive it, then you should probably not post it.

🎉 Free Resource: 2022 Social Media Holiday Calendar

7. Behind the scenes (BTS)

You can rarely go wrong with this because your audience would always want to feel the human side of your brand. They want to see the faces behind the brand they love so much and BTS is a good opportunity to expose them to the inner workings of your brand. This can also help signal authenticity and build trust because now, they have an idea as to what goes into the product or service they enjoy.

8. Employee Spotlight

This is another excuse to showcase the great humans behind your brand. Pick members of your team one after the other and let them talk about themselves. Shift the focus from your brand to the actual person. It helps your customers relate to your brand on a more personal level because they can now attach faces to your brand allowing them to know who and who is responsible for what.

9. Community Spotlights

Whenever there is an opportunity for you to show off the members of your community, don’t shy away from it. Make them feel special, make them know you care about them enough to show them off.  It is also a subtle way to talk about your product or service without appearing sale-sy.

10. Product shots

People now discover products they love from social media, so it only makes sense to consistently showcase the different range of your products there too. The aim here is to make this post stand out when your audience is scrolling through your feed, so be creative as to where and how you take these shots.

11. Flaunt your testimonials

Would you buy from a brand online that has no sort of review or testimonials anywhere to be found? 

You won’t and that’s exactly how your audience thinks. If your product or service is getting the right reviews from your audience. Shout it off the rooftop. It helps to build trust and encourage other followers to share their reviews. The more unique reviews you have about your brand, the more convincing you are to a random person within your target audience.

12. Partner with influencers

Partnering with influencers is a great way to get your brand in the face of a wider audience. The key is to choose influencers who share a similar audience demographic with your brand. 

While deciding on who to partner with, pick engagements over numbers. Don’t just go for influencers who have high follower counts without corresponding engagement levels. Also, you might consider partnering with Instagram micro-influencers. With that, you can filter out which influencers have gotten their audience to care about what they have to say at any time, if not the goal of the partnership will be defeated. You can even go as far as allowing such influencers to take over your social media channel for a day. This can bring your account more followers, engagements, and even sales.

🎉 Related Article: How to find social media influencers for your brand?

13. Ask Me Anything sessions

This kind of post works on almost any social media platform regardless of your industry. Your customers would always want to know more about your product and industry and AMAs are a great way to share your unique insights, experience, and knowledge. It also allows you to learn about the concerns and interests of your audience. 

They can take different forms depending on the social media platform you are using. It can be in the form of tweet chats, a live stream session, or a series of Instagram stories using the Q&A stickers.

14. Create a meme

Humour thrives on the internet and memes have proven over time to be the go-to candidates to instigate humor on social media. Just one meme can spark thousands of engagements on the internet. Create memes that are relevant to your product, service, or industry.

15. Trending topics

When a topic is trending and you give your two cents to it in a well thought, engaging manner, the buzz around that topic would push your post to the screens of anyone who cares about that topic. This would mean you’d have to be alert to seize any of such opportunities because the internet moves on so quickly from things. 

👉 Worth checking: Keep up with social media trends with Sociality.io Trends

16. Host a challenge

This is a  common way to engage your followers. Start a game or challenge that somehow relates to your brand, create a hashtag for the challenge so it would be easy for you to track all the entries. This kind of post can be fun for fans while expanding their reach and impressions.

17. Go live

Live Streams provide you with a chance to connect with your audience in real-time. your reason for going live might be to host a virtual event, announce a new product, conduct an interview, or even a Q&Asession. Whatever the reason, just make sure it is worth your audience’s time.

18. Run a poll

People generally love to air their opinions, especially if its shows off some form of uniqueness. If you have a range of products, you can easily conduct a poll to determine which of your products your audience loves more. With just one click, you can get your followers to tell you their different preferences when it comes to your brand or industry.

19. Share your wins

You should be willing to celebrate your success with your social media community. In the same way, you call together members of your team to announce any huge milestone or achievements, consider letting your followers in on some of the good news also. It is a great way to signal growth and prove that you are slowly and gradually establishing yourself in the industry.

20. Inspirational Quotes

This is an age-long content idea and it’s safe to say they are not going anywhere soon. The key is to make sure there are not just generic quotes that your audience has no business with. Having good graphics to accompany the quotes also helps. Or it might not even be “inspirational” at all. 

21. Bring back old contents

This could particularly come in handy whenever you hit a roadblock. Go into your archives, look out for contents that are still relevant, update with current information if you have to, and share the updated version. Chances are you now have new followers who had not seen the content before.

22. Post a discount or special offer

Whether you want to host a flash sale or provide a discount on the product or service you offer. Your audience would always appreciate a kind gesture. It can be on your most sought-after product or service, find a way to entice your followers with your offering.

23. Share your why

This is an opportunity to trigger the emotions of your audience. Craft a story around your brand; the why, how, who, and what.

24. Post a case study

Case studies are one of the best forms of social proof. They help to show your audience exactly how your product or service can be of benefit to them. You can also select someone who uses your product and let them( in their own words) explain how your product helps them in their day-to-day life. Chances are that your audience can see themselves in that story and trigger them to take the next step, whether that be a customer, a priced membership or a more loyal supporter of your brand.

25. Promote your Blog Posts or other relevant industry Articles

Whenever you update your blog, instead of just hoping that your audience miraculously finds their way to your blog. Why not direct them to it. It is much easier to do this on Facebook, Twitter, or even Linkedin considering you can add links to your captions on those platforms.

26. Infographics

If you’ve just conducted a survey or research and you’re looking for ways to present this data to your audience in an interesting way, then infographics are the go-to guy. 

Data can be boring but when you create catchy graphics around it, it is likely to get your audience more interested in those numbers.

27. Tag a friend

Humans like to talk about things they love and enjoy amongst their friends and it’s even easier on social media platforms. With just one click, you can get a friend to see what you’ve just seen. Leverage this human behavior and ask your followers to tag their friends who can relate to that particular post. It would help the visibility of your posts.

28. Twitter chats

This is Twitter’s way of allowing you to have in-depth conversations with your followers. Pick any topic relevant to your industry, let your followers know when it is happening, invite other relevant speakers if you have t,o and just educate your followers about that topic. Bear in mind that Twitter is quite an informal app, so make your conversations much more informal or relaxed to get the best out of this.

29. Post a sneak peek into a new product or release

Creates a sense of exclusivity: Anticipation is quite a powerful emotion and posts like these help to create a buzz around upcoming products or events. Whenever you have an announcement in the pipeline, create content(without revealing too much) to build some suspense within your community. 

30. Share fun reels and videos

Video contents are now one of the most popular forms of content on the Internet—especially short-form videos. Such videos have a way of engaging you from the get-go and it should be regarded as an offense if this is not part of your content calendar.

31. Caption this

These are posts where you just post a random, witty image and ask your audience to caption it. If the image is interesting enough, it should get engagement from them. Posts like this are good for boosting the engagement rates on your socials.

Now that you have the content ideas

Don’t just go on and dumb all of these ideas into a content calendar. That would be too much for both you and your audience to put up with. Take time out to plan your social media content; understand your audience and the kind of content that works best on the social media platforms you have chosen.

You can then look for the ideas that best suit your brand from this list, experiment with them, and refer to this article whenever you need content inspiration.