When you’re a business owner, trying to brainstorm fresh, new, engaging ideas for your social media campaigns can feel like an impossible task. While some companies may seem to come up with winning social campaigns out of thin air, the truth of the matter is that they likely spent weeks or even months perfecting the campaign before it went live.
If you and your team are struggling to break out of a social media rut, try checking out these four places to find some inspiration.
Newsletters
One of the most important things you can do as a business person is to keep up-to-date on the latest trends in your industry – as well as trends within the marketing industry. But instead of wasting time trying to find relevant information on Google searches, you should find relevant newsletters to sign up for instead. Newsletters can be a great way to keep on top of industry trends, changes to social media platforms, emerging social trends, and more.
You’re most likely already signed up for some newsletters that are specific to your industry, but you might not have any idea where to turn for social media updates. Some of our favorite ones include:
- Social Media Examiner
Focuses on ways to best use social media in order to connect with customers, generate awareness, drive traffic, and increase sales. Their newsletters are full of information, including expert reviews and industry research.
- Social Fresh
Places a strong focus on how social media is going to be changing in the near and distant future with trend predictions and inspiration for coming up with your own new social campaigns. Their newsletters provide info on resources you can take advantage of, including podcasts, research, courses, and conferences.
- MarketingProfs
Focuses more on educating business owners and social marketers alike with tools and training via articles, online seminars, and open discussion forums. Their content also helps you find gaps in your strategies, and provide you with tactics to overcome them.
Social Listening Tools
All business owners should be doing their best to keep up with social listening in order to cater their content to meet customer expectations. These days, there are many social listening apps and websites that you can take advantage of to discover new interests and trending hashtags from consumers, while also monitoring your brand sentiment. And you don’t have to be a big corporation to be able to use social listening tools. Many of these tools are extremely affordable and easy to use.
Webinars
It’s 2021, so that means we all have to be pretty familiar with online meetings and webinars these days. And while many offices may be returning to work, the webinar isn’t going anywhere. Thanks to the convenience of being able to dial in no matter where you are, any business owner can benefit from the myriad social media marketing webinars available each and every week.
But don’t just stop at attending webinars – consider hosting one yourself. A webinar can be a great way for you to discuss your business, how it has changed, and changes you may be considering in the near future. If you can get a decent sized audience of your customers to attend, you are getting an extremely valuable opportunity to pick their brains to see how they feel about where your company is going. This can be very helpful in sparking new ideas for social campaigns.
Your Sales Team
When it comes to your business, your sales team are usually the ones who end up as the first point of contact for your customers. This means that they may hear complaints or praises about your products, processes, campaigns, and more. Pick your sales team’s brain about what they’re hearing from customers, or things that they themselves would like to see. Maybe your audience is craving a sale on a particular item, or they aren’t well-informed about a new product offering. Use these ideas to build new social campaigns that answer questions or solve problems for your customers – which also helps to boost brand sentiment and loyalty.
Inspiration can come from even the most unexpected of places, so never discount an idea for being too off-the-wall or different than what you usually do. And if you’re still not sure what to do to take your social media marketing to the next level, we are here to help. At Gulf Coast Web, we have over 25 years of experience in managing all types of digital design and marketing campaigns – even for companies outside of our immediate area. Our staff consists of highly-trained digital design advertising professionals who are both passionate about their jobs and excel at what they do. Contact us today to book a consultation with our team. We look forward to outlining exactly how we can help you grow your business with our digital media agency services.