In a Rut? Try These 7 Social Media Campaign Ideas

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Everybody’s on social media, which makes it the perfect medium to promote your growing biz. But what happens if you’re completely out of cool ideas for your social media? 

You need to keep followers on the edge of their seats to get engagement, but your well of content has run dry.

First of all, don’t worry: Everybody’s been in a social media rut. But it’s important to push your team to do bigger and greater things if you want to move the needle with social media. 

Need a little inspiration for your next social media brainstorming sesh? Check out these seven social media campaign ideas to revamp your social presence and get more results.

Social Media Campaign Idea #1: Create Video Content

We know what you’re thinking: “Video is a lot of work!” 

But in all honesty, video content can be less work than writing blogs or scheduling Instagram posts. And when you factor in the results you get from video content, it’s a no-brainer: 

  • 54% of users want to see more video content from the brands they love. 
  • Video is users’ favorite type of content on social media. 
  • Video marketing brings in 66% more qualified leads per year.

You don’t need to spend hours filming content or paying out the wazoo for a pricey setup. As long as the content is good, your target audience won’t care about high-definition audio. 

Follow these quick tips to make video content that your users will love (without burdening your marketing team):

  • Host interviews: Interviews are great because the interviewee does most of the hard work for you. Interview someone who’s well-known in your industry and let them do all of the talking. As an added bonus, your interviewees will spread the word about the interview, which can help you get even more traction on social media. 
  • Ask an influencer to film videos for you: If you’re running a scrappy digital marketing team without a lot of resources, but you want to put out a weekly YouTube video, partner with an influencer. With a long-term influencer partnership, you can ask them to host a weekly video for you as a brand ambassador. They can even handle the editing, posting, and comments!
  • Do a live video: With a little advance planning and promotion, you can host a livestream that connects your social media followers at one time. Do a Q&A, ask viewers to vote, invite guests, and even host a giveaway to build more hype. 
  • Peek behind the scenes: Let your followers see behind the curtain with behind-the-scenes social media videos. Interview employees, show how you make a new product, or take a funny video of your team while they ship orders.
  • Chop up a longer video: Do you have a 30-minute video already on-hand? Instead of resharing a super long video that no one is going to watch, chop it into 2-minute shorts. Social media users prefer shorter videos anyway, and if you add subtitles to them with a tool like Zubtitle, you’ll get even more engagement. 

Social Media Campaign Idea #2: Host a Contest or Giveaway

Social media campaign ideas: happy woman holding a cardboard cutout of an Instagram post

Everybody loves free stuff! Contests and giveaways are a great way to get more eyeballs on your social media accounts. 

Consider hosting a contest via: 

  • Partnering with a complementary, non-competing brand to give away goodie baskets
  • Photo contests on Instagram to source user-generated content (this is users’ favorite way to enter social media contests, too)
  • Caption contests where you provide a funny photo and pick your favorite user-submitted caption

Contests and giveaways are fun, but they shouldn’t be your only social media marketing strategy. In fact, you shouldn’t do more than five giveaways a year. If you host giveaways all the time, it can cheapen your brand and build a more superficial following of unengaged users.

You also need to follow the FTC’s sweepstakes rules, which apply to online contests and giveaways.

Social Media Campaign Idea #3: Poll Your Followers

Polls and surveys are the antidote to sluggish engagement metrics on social media. Ask your audience to share their opinion with you in the form of: 

  • Reacting with a “love” or “laugh” emoji on Facebook
  • Adding a poll to your Instagram Story
  • Voting on Twitter

So many social media platforms have a poll feature, so be sure to use it! This is a great way to not only engage with your followers, but to sneakily learn more about your target audience’s preferences. It’s going to save you a fortune in market research costs!

Social Media Campaign Idea #4: Partner With Influencers

Social media campaign ideas: influencer recording a tutorial

Guess what? You don’t have to create all of your social media content by yourself. With a handful of trusty influencers at your side, you can create better content, grow your audience, and save a lot of time. 

If you’ve never worked with an influencer before, don’t sweat it. You can get a lot of social media traction by partnering up with them on: 

The right influencer can handle content creation, posting, and even managing comments. Obviously, you need to find the right influencer for the job, so go with a platform like Markerly to pick someone legit. 

Social Media Campaign Idea #5: Make Your Own Branded Hashtag

You have to get into branded hashtag challenges if you haven’t tried them before. Companies have been doing branded hashtags for years, but TikTok spiced things up by adding competition into the mix. 

You don’t have to pay TikTok a lot of money to do a hashtag challenge, either. Create your own! #ShareACoke, #OreoHorrorStories, and #exprESSIEyourself are perfect examples of social media hashtags that lit social media on fire and increased brand awareness.

Just make sure you share the hashtags on different social media channels to get more multi-channel traction for your biz: 

  • TikTok
  • Snapchat
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn (for B2B) 

Social Media Campaign Idea #6: Make Your Followers the Star of the Show

Influencer taking a selfie

We’ll let you in on a little secret: 47% of the world’s best content marketing teams rely on user-generated content (UGC) to promote their brand. Your followers want to see real stories they can relate to, so why not make your own customers the star of the show? 

Find your top followers on social media or your most active loyalty program customers. Ask them to share a video testimonial, before and after photos, or a video of themselves using your product as powerful social proof. 

Although influencer UGC is powerful, sometimes your followers want to see everyday people using your products, so when in doubt, make your customers the focus of your social media content. 

Social Media Campaign Idea #7: Hop on Trends

Is trend-hopping the most original thing in the world? Done right, it can be! 

See what’s trending on Google Trends or TikTok today. Is there any way you can incorporate the hottest topics, news stories, or challenges into your branded content? 

If so, work fast. Trends come and go quickly, so make sure you take advantage of this trend within the next 72 hours before it turns stale. Otherwise, your brand will seem out of touch, which is never a good look!

Jazz Up Your Socials

Your followers are glued to their social media all day. But let’s be honest: It’s tough keeping your audience interested. They expect awesome posts, but when you’re out of content ideas, that doesn’t always happen. Fortunately, these 7 social media marketing campaign ideas will take your social media off of life support and make your biz the envy of your industry. 

Need a little help? Markerly connects brands like yours to experienced social media influencers. We help you find the perfect influencer for your campaign, set up tracking and metrics, and even launch multi-channel campaigns for you. See how social media management is a breeze when Markerly does the heavy lifting for you.

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