If you’re anything like me, there are some days when the creative juices are flowing like a river, and other days when they’re all dried up. No matter what you have planned in your social media calendar, or no matter how prepared you felt a month ago, there are times when you’re desperately wracking your brain (or your team’s brains) for ideas of what to write about, what to take pictures of or what to post in order to strengthen your audience’s engagement with your personal or company brand.
Thankfully, you don’t have to struggle alone in this! There are plenty of online resources to help you generate ideas for the next wave of content that will pique the interest of your followers. I’ve scoured the internet and found some great ones for you to check out. They may not result in a creative epiphany, but they’ll certainly give you some tools to work towards one.
Instagram Posting Ideas
From puzzles to challenges to hashtag hacks, Sprout Social has Instagram figured out. They also specialize in helping you to manage your social media platforms, marketing and career growth, if you’re into that sort of thing.
They suggest, for example, adding stickers to your visual material to catch people’s eyes and show your lighter side. They’ve got some great resources for strategic yet fun posting.
Customer Insight and Keyword Generator
“AnswerThePublic listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword. It’s a goldmine of consumer insight you can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products and services. The kind your customers really want.”
There you have it. Enter keywords surrounding any subject, and this magical machine shows you tons of suggestions related to questions, statements, facts and even prepositions and comparisons to your words. If this doesn’t help you brainstorm, I’m not sure what will!
BONUS: the suggestions come out in this neat-o, stylized graphic (without the red words and arrow).
Recycling Content for Marketing Effectiveness
When you make a piece of content, are you thinking of how you can reuse it for future posts? Neither am I...until now! This blog from Upland organizational software spells out a new (or at least new to me) approach to content creation, and how you can recycle what you’re making in order to push your marketing efforts even further.
I guess sometimes what you have right in front of you is exactly what you need!
Business and Brand Posts
Quick Sprout is all about helping you turn your followers into customers. Don’t post too much content! Don’t post too little content! There is a happy place when it comes to managing what you’re putting out there, and they’ve got some great ideas to keep the marketing juices flowing. For example, when your marketing team is out of steam, turn to your followers for their input. Ask them what they want to see, or sift through your DMs and comments for material that they’ve mentioned. After all, you are doing all of this thinking for them! 😘
“100 Post Ideas for 2021”
It’s okay to ask for help. And when you’re trying to grow a personal or company brand, you’re going to get much more done if you seek out some assistance. When it comes to online marketing, it’s easy to get stumped for content ideas. And this is when you turn to someone like Angie Gensler (marketer and entrepreneur) who has lovingly built a tidy list of content ideas that you can adopt for your own posts, primarily for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The next time you’re struggling with your content creation, go to any one or all of these sites for some great ideas. If they don’t work, maybe it’s just time for a snack. 🍎 Happy creating!
