9 Social Media Content Examples & Ideas to Improve Your Strategy
Are you on the lookout for new social media content ideas that’ll put a spark in your timeline and improve your social media marketing strategy?
In this post, we share a handful of content ideas for social media and provide examples for each one.
We also share tips on how to implement each idea in your social strategy and the platforms they work best with.
1. Create a regular series
Social media platforms aren’t just for promoting your latest content, products and events.
The best way to succeed on most platforms is by treating them as another dedicated content marketing platform, such as your blog or YouTube channel.
This means studying each platform, learning what types of content other creators make on it, and then creating those same types of content yourself but with your own unique twist.
That’s what one of our first social media content ideas allows you to do.
By creating a regular social media series, you can establish a sense of consistency in your own content on any platform.
As your target audience starts seeing your series appear in their feeds more and more, they’ll become familiar with your name, face and brand and will begin to anticipate more of the same type of content from you.
Here’s an example from 8bit_bonello on TikTok.
This creator creates video game-related videos on the platform, which includes a regular series in which she quizzes subscribers by challenging them to guess which video game they see based on a single screenshot.
This particular video received 5.6 million views, 575,800 likes, 9,400 comments, 36,200 favorites and 4,300 shares.
She even encourages viewers to “blind duet.” This is a feature on TikTok in which users create reaction videos without having ever seen the video they’re reacting to.
This encourages engagements, which causes the video to appear in TikTok’s algorithm more and more.
Consider your own niche and the types of series you can create for it. Focus on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube for this type of content.
Here are a few ideas to help get you started:
- Quizzes.
- Daily or weekly vlogs showing your day-to-day routine in your life or place of business.
- Showcasing progress on a single project every day or week.
- Short documentary series where each video in the series covers a different subject but all videos share the same theme.
Related: 20 Top TikTok Video Ideas Your Audience Will Love.
2. Host a giveaway
Contests and giveaways are one of the most effective ways to boost engagements on social media, even if you’re a smaller brand.
In fact, they’re a great way for smaller influencers and brands to get their name and content out there.
Twitter and Instagram work best for this type of content.
There are numerous types of contests and giveaways you can run as well as a number of different ways to run them.
Here’s an example from one of the web’s most subscribed YouTubers MrBeast.
Much of MrBeast’s content across all platforms he participates in involves him giving away money and products or spending money in extravagant ways.
Here’s a simple giveaway he did. He posted it on Twitter.
All you had to do was text the word “CRAZY” to a given phone number and be one of the lucky first 1,000 participants to do so.
The real kicker is that the giveaway wasn’t even for a free product. It was for a 99% off discount code for MrBeast’s snack company/online store Feastables.
And yet, the tweet received 112,700 likes, 2,420 retweets and 320 quote tweets. That’s pretty amazing given the fact that you didn’t even need to interact with the tweet itself in order to participate.
Beyond MrBeast being a well-known influencer, here’s why this giveaway was effective:
- Simple rules. All you had to do was text a five-letter word to a five-digit phone number.
- It was only available for a limited amount of time given the first-come, first-serve nature of it.
- While he didn’t give away free snacks, 99% is still a generous discount to offer to 1,000 customers.
- 99% is an odd discount to offer and very close to 100%, so the phrase “99% off” draws the eye as Twitter users scroll through their feed.
If you want to run a contest or giveaway that earns you new likes and follows, use a tool like SweepWidget.
SweepWidget allows you to create giveaways from their platform and control how participants enter.
It verifies whether or not participants have met your conditions before adding them to a list of possible contenders.
Conditions can include following your social media accounts, liking the giveaway post and leaving a comment.
It’ll even choose a winner.
Here are a few giveaway ideas:
- Popular product in your niche.
- Your own product or service.
- Discount for your product or place of business.
- Partner with a brand to offer a larger giveaway and boost engagements for both of your profiles.
- Amazon gift card or a gift card for a business related to your niche.
3. Start a challenge
Social media challenges provide one of the best opportunities to get your brand out there, especially on TikTok.
This is due to the “stitch” feature on TikTok. When another user “stitches your video,” a portion of your video will play in their video.
Fortunately, TikTok will tag your username in the caption of a stitched video, so other users can still watch and interact with your video quite easily.
The stitch feature is part of what makes TikTok such a unique social media platform.
It’s also a fantastic way to receive a lot of attention and engagement from a single video, including a video in which you invite other social media users to take part in a challenge.
Here’s an example of this in action.
TikTok user and art teacher sarahdipity1 created a video in which she showcased a collection of artwork from different artists, all of whom tackled the same subject: Zendaya.
She proposed that “no one can draw Zendaya” after realizing that not a single “Zendaya” drawing looked like the actress herself despite there being plenty of photo realistic drawings of other celebrities scattered across the web.
And although Sarah wasn’t intending to start a social media trend, artists from numerous social media networks have taken on the challenge of creating photo realistic drawings that actually look like Zendaya.
This is the kind of engagement you should aim for with your own challenge.
Sarah began looking into Zendaya drawings after noticing her student’s drawing of the actress was a little off.
So, consider your own niche, and think of the struggles you and your peers have had within it.
This should give you a few good ideas to start with.
Try to think of challenges that are hard enough to require a lot of time or multiple attempts.
Humans may be complex creatures, but we’re simple enough to want to put a lot of effort into something that’s hard to accomplish, even if it’s useless, i.e., the bottle flip challenge.
The next issue is deciding how to present your challenge once you’ve decided on one.
Either show yourself attempting to complete the challenge, or show yourself completing the challenge along with a few clips of your attempts and your journey toward completion.
Bonus if you can squeeze in a call to action as casual and enticing as Sarah’s “you’re probably all great artists but if you’re trying to draw Zendaya, it might not be possible.”
4. Host a Reddit AMA
Reddit AMAs are ask-me-anything threads in the subreddit r/IAmA.
They’re often hosted by well-known individuals or experts/influential figures in various industries, especially politics, tech and science.
Past AMA hosts in the subreddit have been celebrities, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, renowned scientists and even Elon Musk.
However, anyone can start a thread in the subreddit, so if you know or feel you’re an expert in your niche, consider hosting your own Reddit AMA and promoting across other social media channels as well as your main content marketing platforms and email list.
There are over 22 million members in the subreddit with thousands active at any given time.
That’s a lot of new eyes to put your brand in front of.
Plus, if your AMA thread does well, you’ll gain traction from it as it’s shared across Reddit, articles from around the web and other social media platforms.
A lot of popular examples of past AMAs are quite old by this point, as in five or more years old.
Here’s a more recent one that did well. And it was hosted by a regular influencer as opposed to the President of the United States or a billionaire.
It was a collaborative AMA by tech YouTuber Louis Rossman, who owns an electronic repair business, and founder of iFixit, “the free repair guide of everything,” Kyle Wiens.
The pair answered questions about the right to repair, specifically the right to repair electronic devices you own.
The Reddit AMA received 19,700 upvotes and over 1,000 comments, which were much higher engagement rates than other AMAs hosted around the same time.
If you’re part of a niche people may want to learn more about, consider starting your own AMA in the r/IAmA subreddit.
Here are a few other non-celebrity headlines I found. Categories are in parentheses:
- (Journalist) “I’m Olivia Carville, and I wrote this week’s cover story for Bloomberg Businessweek about the dangers of TikTok. AMA!”
- (Author) “I am Max Florschutz, author of Science-Fiction and Fantasy, back again to celebrate the launch of my latest book, Starforge!”
- (Business) “Hi, I´m Etienne Sadek, writer and CEO of the SadWolf book publishing company. Ask me anything”
- (Science) “I am a condensed matter physicist who shows that the world around us is magic, and that you can be a wizard too. Ask me anything.”
- (Other) “IAmA 2-time heart transplant recipient, currently on the list for a 3rd heart as well as a kidney.”
Keep in mind, Instagram also has an AMA feature for Stories. You could even pair this strategy with our first social media content idea and make a series about it, such as “AMA Fridays!”
5. Do an Instagram takeover with an influencer
Collaboration is hugely successful in social media, and social media takeovers are a unique way of collaborating with influencers in your niche.
Keep in mind that you may need to offer to sponsor any influencer you work with, especially if you’re a brand and not a fellow influencer.
Social media takeovers do best on Instagram. Instagram takeovers happen all the time.
Here’s an example from the official Grey’s Anatomy Instagram account.
While the show is in season, the show’s marketing department has different actors from the show take over the account and post behind-the-scenes footage as a clever way to promote the show.
This particular video post received over 447,000 views.
Here are a few tips for hosting your own Instagram takeovers:
- Decide how you want to run an Instagram takeover. Do what feels best to you:
- A proper social media takeover involves giving a temporary password to your influencer and having them post to your account for a day.
- However, you can also have your influencer record videos and take photos with their own phone so you can upload them to your account yourself.
- Make a list of influencers whose target audience matches your target audience.
- Get in touch with influencers on your shortlist and propose your takeover plans + benefits.
- If you’re a brand, offer to sponsor them.
- If you’re a fellow influencer, offer to take over their Instagram account as well.
- Promote your takeover on Instagram with posts and Stories, and provide assets to your influencer so they can do the same.
- Launch your takeover.
6. Create a tutorial for your niche
The internet is our best source for information these days, and it’s all available from devices we can carry with us wherever we go.
That’s why tutorials are such an effective content type, especially for brands.
Here’s an example from outdoor clothing company REI.
They posted a snowboarding tutorial to YouTube and received over 1.7 million views and over 27,000 likes.
They even partnered with an official snowboard instructor from the American Association of Snowboard Instructors.
YouTube is one of the best places to upload tutorials to due to its algorithm and built-in audience. Plus, YouTube is one of the most highly-used search engines on the web.
However, if you can shorten your tutorial to three minutes or less, consider posting it to Instagram, TikTok and Facebook as well.
Do a bit of keyword research for your niche to find “how to” related keywords. This will give you a master list of tutorial topics to cover.
7. Run a poll
Social media polls are perfect for on-the-fly social media posts that generate a high number of engagements.
This is especially true if you ask a controversial question or choose controversial options.
Take this Twitter poll by IGN as an example.
Here’s what IGN asked their followers: “The Witcher 1 is getting an open-world remake – which other games need one? Reply with your own picks in the comments!”
They offered four games that tackle linear-style gaming quite well.
The tweet received over 35,000 votes and 1,100 likes. Plus, as you scroll, you’ll notice the post also received a plethora of comments.
Here’s why this poll was primed for engagements:
- IGN opened with a trending topic in the gaming niche.
- Since gamers are experiencing “open-world fatigue” in gaming, asking which games need open-world makeovers can be seen as a controversial question.
- The games they used as options are highly regarded and did well as linear games, so many gamers may have different opinions about whether or not they need open-world remakes. As such, many users did, indeed, comment with their own suggestions.
While you shouldn’t necessarily aim for controversy, try to come up with a question and list of options that’ll get your followers talking.
Instagram Stories and YouTube community posts also work well for polls.
8. Tease an upcoming release
Teasers are all the rage these days. As crazy as it may seem, announcements for announcements actually do quite well.
They generate buzz for new products and send signals to your audience and customer base that let them know they should get excited.
Here’s an example from Harry Styles.
Before he released the music video for his single “As It Was” on April 1, 2022, he released a 10-second teaser two days before.
While the music video itself received over 375 million views, the short teaser received a whopping 2.9 million views.
Not bad for a 10-second clip.
If you have an upcoming release, think of a few clever ways you can tease your audience with it before your official announcement date.
9. Share a resource list
Consumers are busy people, which is why influencer marketing is so effective.
Instead of having to do their own research to determine which products are worth it and which aren’t, all consumers have to do is see what their favorite creators have to say about it.
This is why you should consider making resource lists and sharing them on social media.
You can get as technical and specific as you want.
Here’s an example from a creator who specializes in music production.
He shared a collection of “lo-fi chords for chill beats” to Instagram. He even used an on-brand, well-designed graphic to do so.
The post received over 9,900 likes despite most of the creator’s posts only receiving a few hundred each.
Try to come up with our own ideas for resource lists, and steer clear of affiliate marketing as much as possible with this strategy.
It’s designed to increase your engagements and grow your following. Focus on sharing tips with your audience instead.
Use a variety of content styles to share resource lists, including graphics and short social media videos.
Final thoughts
We hope this list gives you plenty of new ideas to add to your social media marketing strategy.
There’s no reason why you can’t take a crack at each one of them, but it’d probably be best to tackle them one at a time.
This will give you a chance to adjust to each new content type and work out any kinks that come along with them as you fill your social media content calendar with them more and more.
Try researching brands and other influencers in your niche to see how they handle each content type.
It’ll let you see what they do right, but be observant enough to understand how they may be missing the mark as well.
Research accounts with high engagement rates as opposed to accounts with high follower counts. Follower counts mean very little if you don’t receive many likes and comments per post.
If you want to streamline your publishing schedule and overall social media marketing strategy, try using a social media management tool like Sendible.
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