In this 7-minute read:
- Fun content ideas for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram
- How to come up with content ideas
- How to advertise your content
Now that the election is (sort of) over, let’s make social media fun again! During elections and times of heavy political commentary social media tends to get overcome by individual debates and memes that make fun of the opposing party or candidates.
With things winding down on social media, politically-speaking anyway, it’s time to kick your Facebook and Instagram marketing back in gear with some fun new ideas.
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Fun content ideas to advertise on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram
We’re going to provide you with several fun ways to advertise your business now that Facebook and Instagram are no longer jammed with all-political content.
How to come up with content for your post
Before you can create an ad on Facebook, you need to have some winning content. This can come in the form of images, videos, gifs, memes, text-only posts (though some form of media usually performs a little better than just text), or a combination of a bunch of different things.
If you’re struggling to come up with ideas for your social media content, bring it back to your business’s primary objective. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself:
- What are my goals for this social media campaign? (Maybe you want to gain more followers, increase brand awareness, or actually gain some new leads for your products/services)
- Do you have new offerings that you can share or hot sellers that would grab attention?
- Does your business have any sweet deals going on right now?
- Do people in your locale know your business? Do they know what you do and who you are?
- Are you involved with any upcoming community events or charities?
Social media is a great place for sharing the answers to all of these questions. You can use different forms of media combined with ad copy to share more about your business and your offerings. This helps create brand awareness as you advertise these types of content, and you can gain leads by adding call-to-actions to your social posts.
Use these questions to start brainstorming ideas. Write down every idea that you think of and then work with your team to curate some awesome content around it.
Content ideas for your social posts
We’re not just going to leave you hanging with a bunch of questions. We’ll give you a good list of ideas that you can add to your brainstorming session, too.
Highlight your offerings
Sure, you could have come up with this one on your own, but it’s a great idea! People want to know what you have to offer and why they should come to your business. Show it off.
It’s not enough just to write a single post that says “we offer great deals on lawn services” with a stock photo. You need to find attention-grabbers that will pause the constant scrolling of someone’s social feed, if only for a moment.
Personalize your offerings with photos of your employees performing the services you offer or share a before and after video. Those are always trending.
If you have products, be sure to get professional quality photos of your products in action. A simple picture of your product on a white backdrop usually won’t cut it for a fun, new, attention-grabbing social post. Take a picture, or better yet, video, of someone using the product in a real-world application. This is where you can really let your company’s personality shine.
Go deeper:
- 3 ways to get (and use) professional-quality photos for your business
- Do-it-yourself photography guide for small business owners
Share hot new deals
People love to save money, and if you can grab their attention with a price that is better than your competitor’s (and still makes you money), then blast that out on your social channels. Decide if you want a video, image, or graphic of some sort to accompany the text of your post.
A great app for making fun animated graphics and images is Canva. They have tons of free templates to choose from and you can upload your own images to use too.
Have a contest or giveaway
The only thing better than a good deal is free stuff! A lot of people love to participate in Facebook and Instagram giveaways. This is a fun post for your followers, and it can help you gain new followers and more brand awareness for your business.
If you do this, try to do something that correlates well with your business. If your business is a salon, put together a basket with beauty products and a gift certificate for your services. As a lawn services company, you might give away a weed-whacker with a discount for your services.
Make sure your giveaway helps to bring in more business and creates awareness of what your company does.
A note of caution: Should you decide to run a contest, be sure you are following the social media channel’s guide for contests/giveaways and add the necessary terms and conditions, like the official rules of the contest and eligibility requirements. You must also acknowledge that the contest is not sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or associated with the social media platform.
Promote what you do
You don’t have to have a hot deal or giveaway to create a fun social post that will get people’s attention. You can simply promote what your business does in a fun, new way.
Choose a service or product that needs a little extra love (or make a plan to rotate through all of your offerings with your social campaign) and curate some content around that.
How does your product or service solve a customer’s problem? Create a story with a video or series of images that shows someone discovering the product and using it to solve their problem. You can take this seriously to show a realistic scenario or use comedic relief by overdoing it and making your video hilariously exaggerated.
Find what works best for your company’s personality and try something new to see how it works.
To keep it simple, take videos with your phone and try one of these video editing apps to make your masterpiece:
- Adobe Premier Clip
- WeVideo
- Magisto
How to advertise your winning content on Facebook
Advertising posts on Facebook is generally very simple and inexpensive. The quick and easy way to advertise your content on Facebook is to boost it. Here are some quick steps to get you started:
- Post your content on your business page.
- Click “Boost Post” in the bottom right corner of your post.
- Fill out the information that Facebook asks you for, including CTA button and website, audience, duration and budget, and your payment method.
- Click “Boost Post Now.”
After that, you may need to wait up to 24 hours for Facebook to review and approve your post. Once it’s approved, it will start showing up in the feed of the audience that you selected.
If you want to dive deeper than that, check out our guides:
Grow your online reputation with Facebook
Facebook is one avenue where you can really grow and manage your online reputation, especially if that’s where you are placing a lot of your marketing efforts. As you continue to get leads from Facebook, you may start to see customers leave reviews and recommendations for your business.
It’s important to make sure you are staying on top of these by reading and responding to them. In the ideal world, your reviews will all be positive, but it’s important to be Johnny-on-the-spot if you ever get a negative review and react quickly and professionally.
If you need help keeping track of your online reviews, Womply Reputation Management can be of service. It allows you to connect to several review platforms right from a simple dashboard and will send you email notifications anytime you get a new review. That way, you don’t have to check notifications across several different websites to keep track of your reviews.
You can even set up customizable auto-replies if you choose! Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!