20 Results-Driven Social Media Content Ideas

🤔 Do you use social media for business?

👍 Are you looking for social media content ideas that are already proven to drive results?

👇 In this article, I’ll share 20 social media content ideas + 20 examples of the ideas in action.

How do you break through the social media noise?

As a business on social media, you are competing for your audience’s attention against cute animals, videos about food, updates from friends and family, hilarious memes…the list goes on!

So, how do you break through the noise?

1. Truly understand what your ideal customers are interested in.

2. Start creating content that feeds those interests in a fun, informative and inspiring way.

CONTENT IDEA #1  Nostalgic Content

People love to be reminded about stuff they liked or things that made them feel good when they were younger. Social media content that taps into this works.

Here’s a great example from one of our clients. We developed this post to tap into the target market’s interest (cars) as well as their age. This was the ‘cool car’ everyone wanted when they were younger, which prompted them to engage.

CONTENT IDEA #2 Provoke Emotion

Humans are made up of emotions. What happens when you trigger those emotions with social media content? It makes people share, comment and react.

If you don’t shed a tear and share the posts below once you’ve watched them then I’ve lost faith in you as a human…get the tissues ready.

CONTENT IDEA #3 Share An Interesting Opinion

Humans are opinionated little buggers. If someone sees something on social media that they highly agree or disagree with, they are likely to comment, share and react to it, helping to boost it’s performance.

LinkedIn is an especially good place to share an interesting opinion, take a look at the example below.

CONTENT IDEA #4 How-to’s

People love learning, so, show them how to do something on social media. Are you a fitness instructor? Create a video which shows mums how to lose stubborn belly fat. Are you a plumber? Show your audience how to fix a minor leak.

Here’s some examples for you.

CONTENT IDEA #5 Fun, Interactive Content

A lot of people go on social media to be entertained, so, entertain them in a fun, interactive way. Enlight (a photo editing App) do such a good job of this. They upload images and ask their social media audience to edit the image with their App and post them in the comments (see example below).

Chris Kubby also does a great job with his ‘caption this’ Tweets.

CONTENT IDEA #6 Interesting Product Videos

Do you sell products? If you do, why not upload cool product videos which show off interesting features of your products?

Most of the top performing product videos out there follow a similar style to the video below. Interesting visuals, funky music and captions which share cool stuff about the product.

CONTENT IDEA #7 User Generated Content

Posting content created by your audience not only saves you time, it also helps drive more audience engagement. If you own a bike shop and your audience shares photos of their bikes, why not create a collage of your favourites, post it on social media and tag them?

The On The Tools team use a ton of user generated content and it works really well.

CONTENT IDEA #8 Comedy

Laughing makes your audience feel good. You could share a funny analogy or story to do with your industry. If you’re not that funny then get the funniest person in your team to get involved and help you come up with ideas.

Alex Hooking’s post on LinkedIn did make me chuckle. We’ve also had a go at comedy ourselves and got quite a good response (see video below).

CONTENT IDEA #9 Fun Collaborations

Collaborating with others in your industry is a great way to create something fun that your audience will love on social media.

After Lloyd and I, there’s no better double act doing it right on social media than Andrew & Pete. They’re probably the most fun people I’ve ever met and it comes across in their social media content.

Their ‘A Marketer’s 12 Days of Christmas’ video is brilliant!

CONTENT IDEA #10 Educational Content

What makes you unique is your knowledge and as we’ve already mentioned, people like learning. Combine these two elements and start educating your audience. Give away your most valuable knowledge for free.

This is what will make you shine on social media. Roberto Blake is a great example of someone who’s killing it with educational content.

CONTENT IDEA #11 Promote Your Local Area

Where is your business based? Wherever it is, be proud of it. You know why? Because potential customers in your local area are proud of it too and that means you have something in common.

Visit Thanet do an awesome job of sharing the delights of where I’m from and I always share their content.

CONTENT IDEA #12 Unboxing Videos

If you sell products, getting an influencer/ micro influencer to unbox a selection of your products on camera is a great way to gain exposure.

Your audience are way more likely to value other people’s opinions of your products than your own (you’re slightly bias).

I love Phoebe Soremekun‘s content (even though I don’t like makeup) and she does a great variety of unboxing videos.

CONTENT IDEA #13 Interactive Live Videos

Live videos are the new shiny thing on social media and so many people are using them badly.

If you’re going to go live on social media, try and think of some fun, engaging ideas. Steven Bartlett from Social Chain shares some awesome tips in the video below.

CONTENT IDEA #14 Show Off Your Wins

Gaining trust and credibility from your audience is very, very important. Therefore, you need to show your audience the good stuff you do to build up these credibility blocks.

I recently saw a great example of this in action from Vikki Taylor. She doesn’t do it often, but when she does she does it in a very humble, authentic way.

CONTENT IDEA #15 Tell Your Story

Your potential customers love stories. They also want to get to know you and make sure you’re the right fit for them before they decide to become a customer.

Therefore, you need to ‘tell your story’ and share your team’s personality on social media. Show your audience what is going on behind the scenes, introduce them to your team and let them get to know you.

We use this type of content a lot, check out the example below from a recent video shoot we did with a client.

CONTENT IDEA #16 Live Interviews

Interviewing other industry experts is a great way to provide value to your audience. Doing it live makes it even more exciting for viewers.

Lucy Hall and the Social Day team did a great job of this in the run up to Social Day. They interviewed all the speakers prior to their event to give a taster for what delegates can expect if they attend.

CONTENT IDEA #17 Create a Vlog

As I’ve previously mentioned, storytelling is very important on social media. Creating a daily, weekly or even monthly vlog is a great way to tell your brand’s story.

The On The Tools Vlog is so good! Entertaining, well put together and on point.

CONTENT IDEA #18 Voting Polls

Creating polls (especially on Facebook) which prompt your audience to vote with a reaction is a great way to grow your Facebook audience and drive engagement. This Facebook growth strategy tutorial shows you how to do it.

When creating polls, make sure you focus the poll on a topic that your ideal customers have a strong opinion on. See an example from one of our clients below.

CONTENT IDEA #19 Quotes

Inspiring content helps give your social media audience that little nudge of positivity when they’ve hit a hump day. It also helps position you as an industry expert.

Quotes are a great way to inspire your audience (especially on Instagram) and there’s no one doing it better than Chris Kubby.

Kubby’s visuals and the messages he puts across are completely on point.

CONTENT IDEA #20 Funny MEMES

Memes are another great way to make your audience laugh!

Surprisingly, Gucci make great use of memes on their Twitter feed.

Over To You

If you read this and take no action it’s been a waste of time. So…try some of these content ideas out!