Constantly brainstorming new ideas is probably one of the toughest parts of running any sort of social media or marketing campaign.
You don’t want your followers to feel like your social feeds recycle the same kinds of posts all the time.
After all, your audience – that is, your potential or existing customers – are always hungry for new content and expect you to deliver new ideas on a regular basis.
As a business, this is a crucial part of your digital marketing strategy. Content needs to stay fresh in order to be effective, because stale marketing allows returning – and potential new – customers to become bored and disengaged.
Digital marketing must stay relevant and engaged with the audience to keep them coming back, keeping the brand at the top of their mind and building positive associations.
As a result, social media and brand managers need to have multiple creative ideas in their back pocket to keep a business’ digital marketing fresh.
Here are a few creative, out of the box, marketing ideas to keep your brand exciting and interesting:
• Create a series – A daily, weekly, or monthly series will give your brand a chance to interact with followers on a regular basis, without needing to come up with a whole new concept each time.
Social media management business Sprout Social has done this with their monthly Twitter session, #SproutChat, which is focused on helping businesses improve their social media skills.
• Pull back the curtain – ‘Authenticity’ has been the branding buzzword for a few years now, and social media is one of the best platforms for creating genuine trust and connection with your audience.
Show off the everyday goings-on within your business and feature your customers, if they give permission.
This content idea suits visual channels such as Instagram.
• Host an ‘Ask Me Anything’ – Anything- goes question-and-answer sessions may sound risky, but they are also a fun and creative opportunity to engage your followers, show off your sense of humour, and provide useful information at the same time.
• Hold a social media ‘takeover’ – Sometimes allowing new faces to take control of your social feed is a good idea, as the change grabs your audience’s attention.
It can help make your content more relatable, raise brand awareness, and reinvigorate your brand’s image.
The ‘takeover’ could be anyone from a local influencer to an employee. US-based retailer Entourage Clothing utilises the ‘takeover’ technique by having employees take turns showcasing their favourite new styles on the brand’s Instagram Stories.
• Share, re-Pin, retweet, and re-‘gram – Let your followers do the talking by displaying their content about your brand on your feed and tagging them.
This shows your followers that you are a part of their conversation about your brand, and also requires the least amount of time and effort on your part.
Shoe manufacturer Toms is just one of many fashion brands that frequently showcases customers wearing their products on their social media channels.
All about variety
These are just a few of many ways you can spice up your digital marketing by implementing out-of-the-box ideas.
However, as you try new content ideas, keep in mind that you don’t need to change your entire brand every few months.
Ensuring your social media content stays fresh is about adapting to the changes and trends around you to ensure your brand remains relevant to returning customers – and attracts new ones.
Meanwhile, keeping stable and consistent branding is how potential new customers will identify who you are and what you do.
Take Coca-Cola, for example; the company keeps their marketing fresh by introducing new flavours, container designs, and advertising campaigns, yet all of these changes are centred on the Coca-Cola brand.
It learnt its lesson from the 1980s New Coke debacle.
While the majority of Coke drinkers enjoyed the reformulated flavour, many more reacted extremely poorly to the decision to change a product that they knew and loved, which for decades had been marketed as ‘The real thing’.
New, creative, out-of-the-box marketing is essential to keeping your brand fresh and remembered among your audience.
But the guiding light in creating social media content is keeping your audience in mind. Try out some of these ideas, and see what they like best!
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