If your internship involves drafting social media content, you may already be running out of ideas on how to keep things interesting for the summer. It is easy to get in the habit of posting similar content day after day. But never fear ¾ here are 10 ideas for keeping your social media accounts interesting and engaging all summer long!
- Use GIFs and images
Posting content with engaging GIFs or images is pretty much guaranteed to not only make your social media look more appealing, but increase engagement. Twitter makes using GIFs super easy by having tons of options available.
- Take advantage of Twitter polls
Twitter polls are a great way to engage with your Twitter followers! Not only are they fun, they are also a great way to get feedback from followers or allow followers to have input on a future decision for your company.
- Try out Facebook Live
Facebook Live is fairly new, so for those of you who don’t know, it allows users to live broadcast video to their friends. This is a super cool way to spice up your Facebook feed! If you have an event coming up, Facebook Live is a great way to share the event with Facebook friends who couldn’t be there in person, and the broadcast remains on your Facebook profile after the live broadcast, allowing friends to watch the video later.
- Relate content to holidays
By relating social media posts or campaigns to an upcoming holiday, posts can gain a lot of attention. Try relating content to summer holidays like Father’s Day or Independence Day! Look up lists of national holidays too, like National Best Friends Day happening on June 8.
- Use re-occurring hashtags as a campaign like #TBT
Consistency is key for this one. Posting on the same day every week will give followers something to look forward to, making these posts popular week to week. It is important not to overkill this idea though. Posting a daily hashtag (#WBW, #TBT, #FBF), everyday will get annoying very quickly.
- Run giveaways/contests
People love free stuff, and even if your funds are low, you can always find inexpensive giveaways at the local dollar or discount store. By having people follow, retweet and tag friends for giveaways, you can gain many followers quickly.
- Tag other accounts
This is one of the easiest ways to spice up your social media, yet many people forget or overlook it! Tagging other accounts will often get those accounts to repost/retweet your content allowing their followers to see your content.
- Create infographics
Who doesn’t like a nice infographic? Infographics (using pictures to show data) are a great way to push content that could otherwise come across as boring. Making statistics into infographics makes followers want to actually look at the information (and they will be able to easily understand it!)
- Offer behind-the-scenes information/pictures
Behind-the-scenes content offers a new perspective to followers, but more importantly, it can draw new fans that feel they are part of a special group getting exclusive updates and information.
- Don’t preschedule all content
It is very easy to get in the habit of prescheduling all social media content ¾ DON’T! Allow yourself time to think of things on the spot, get inspired by what is happening on a given day, or post something silly that your followers can laugh at too.
Natalie Butko is a sophomore majoring in Journalism-Strategic Communication. Follow her on Twitter @chatty__natty.