It’s nothing new that an active social presence can accelerate brand awareness and drive sales. It’s now common practice that consumers head to a brand’s social channels to vet the brand before making a purchasing decision. Don’t you want your social profiles to look active, organized, engaging and innovative?

While your competitors are posting simple text-based posts and images, rise above the digital clutter and experiment with a variety of post types.

We know that filling up your editorial calendar can be tedious so we’ve created this post to help you add variety into your social media strategy. Different post types will keep your followers coming back for more juicy content and rise above the mundane. Let’s dive in!

Testimonials

Testimonials from current clients offer social proof to your target consumers that your product or service is a good solution. Email your clients and offer a $20 gift card for a testimonial and publish their words on social inside of a nice graphic.

Ask Me Anything 

Put aside a day or even a few hours where your followers can ask you anything on your social channels. This is a great way to humanize your social presence while increasing engagement. You can do this for a few hours one day or make it a consistent weekly event.

Behind the Scenes

Consumers are always looking for ways to relate to brands and feel part of them. Posting videos and pictures of how your brand operates behind the scenes adds a personalized element that resonates on social media.

User Generated Content

Content generated by your consumers is great fodder for your social media channels. This can be done by asking your consumers to publish their experience with your brand and then you reshare it on your own social channels. Or it can be done by having them email you with a quote and/or image showcasing their experience with your brand and you can credit them and share it on your social channels.

Blog Posts

We hope you have an active blog for your company. Share your blog posts on your social channels using a strong image and either an excerpt from your blog post or a teaser message about what your followers can expect by reading your blog post. When sharing blog posts on Instagram, update the link in your bio to the blog post you reference in your post.

Quick Tips

Gather tips that align with your industry and put them in a nice graphic to share on social media. You don’t need a graphic designer for this, there are sites like Canva that make creating images for your social channels easy.

Events

Event posts are great for social channels. It can be about a conference you’re attending or a webinar you’re hosting, etc. 

Capitalize on Holidays

Whether it’s a large mainstream holiday or something silly like national donut day, utilize holidays to inspire your posts. There are an abundance of national days and you can view them and start planning your social content using this calendar.

Lists

Think of the popularity of sites like BuzzFeed who publish a lot of lists. Lists are simple to create and are popular on social media because they offer tangible information in an easy-to-understand format.

Demos

If your brand offers a service, do a quick 3 minute or less demo of your product. Publish it on all of your social channels so that your followers can get a feel for how your service works. It doesn’t need to be professionally created, consumers often respond to videos that are kind of raw.

Industry Statistics

People love data points. Consider dedicating one day of social posts per week to consist of industry statistics. Be sure that you use reliable sources and link to them in the copy and highlight one statistic in an image per week.

Predictions

Leverage your industry expertise by making predictions about the future of your industry and how it affects consumers. These types of posts will position you as a thought leader in your industry and build trust with your current and future followers.

Case Studies

You likely already produce case studies for your brand. Promote them on social media by extracting a highlight out of them like a key result and write a teaser social post about your case study and link to it so that your followers can read more.

Infographics

People have shorter attention spans than ever and often respond to digesting information in a visual way. Infographics speak to this common consumer behavior and are a great way to showcase a lot of information in an easy-to-read way.

Memes

It’s wise to not always be super serious on social media in order to humanize your social presence. So have a little fun with your posts and post memes that are relevant to your industry. You can post existing ones or create your own with this meme generator.

Awards

Has your brand won any awards? Leverage them on social media to add more credibility to your brand. 

Polls

Consumers love to weigh in and polls are a great way for them to feel heard. Ask a simple question or a series of simple questions on social media and have your followers weigh in. Be sure to publish the results!

Giveaways

Giveaways are a great way to foster engagement on social media. An entree to win a product through a giveaway can be a variety of interactions such as following your brand on social media, resharing your post or inviting other people to follow your brand. These brand building actions grow your following and can easily be executed using a giveaway app like Rafflecopter. 

FAQs

Consumers likely have questions about your brand but don’t always feel like they can reach out. Posting a FAQ and the accompanying answer once a week is simple yet engaging.

Reshares

Don’t be a selfish social media inhabitant and read content from your followers and industry experts. When someone shares something that you feel will resonate with your audience, simply reshare it.

Employee Highlights

Whether you showcase an employee of the month or a new hire, consumers love to learn about employees at brands they support. Add this level of humanization to your social channels by taking cute pictures of your employees and writing about what makes them valuable.

Influencer Posts

Follow influencers in your industry and partner with them to create content showcasing their experience with your brand. Use their images, blog posts, videos, etc. on your social channels. Be sure to tag them so they reshare and you get the most leverage out of your partnerships. 

Are there creative social media post ideas that you have? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!