You have probably been in a situation where you look at your content calendar and run out of ideas to post. You try to find content for your blog posts, infographics, and videos, but nothing comes to mind. This is especially true when you want to create various unique and engaging content that will drive engagement on your social media posts. If that sounds like you, we have got you covered. We'll provide tips to brainstorm your next social media content ideas.

Why Social Media Content Brainstorming Is Necessary

There are several reasons why you need to brainstorm your social media content. These include:

Audience Engagement

If you are a brand that wants to turn your followers into customers, you need to create content that meets their needs. To create meaningful interactions with followers, you can try out different content formats, such as reels, memes, and shorts. You can also leverage trending content and use interactive elements such as polls. These features can help increase visibility and the chances of your content getting shared, thereby increasing impact and reach.

Improving Creativity and Collaboration

You can foster the creativity and collaboration culture by brainstorming your social media posts. By using this approach, team members can share their diverse perspectives and ideas, resulting in innovative solutions and cohesive teams.

A More Effective Content Calendar

A content calendar is a tool to maintain your online presence. Brainstorming is an excellent way of helping your team plan and schedule social media posts that align with your business goals, audience needs, and major marketing dates. Such an organized approach provides your brand with a wide range of content and maintains a regular schedule for better audience engagement.

Top Ways to Get Social Media Content Ideas

If you are finding it hard to get ideas for your next content, here are several ways:

Competitor Analysis

No matter your niche, there is a chance that you have competitors who are doing better than you. By looking at what your competitors are doing, you will be taking an already-proven idea and putting a spin on it. Therefore, start by creating a list of your competitors and then go through their social media posts. This will show you if they are making outstanding content that will take your brand to the next level.

However, you don't have to copy-paste their posts or create something similar. The idea here is to get ideas for your posts. For instance, if they use fantastic images in their posts, you can find something similar or more outstanding. Remember that when doing social media competitor analysis, you don't do that on a single platform. 

Instead, check their activity on different platforms. You can even repurpose content from one platform into a social media post for another platform. Remember that social media users aren't looking for the most unique content but a fresh perspective.

Leverage Seasonal Content

Another way to get ideas for your social media posts is to create content for holidays and special occasions. Check out the most popular holiday hashtags to create content around them. Seasonal content could also be related to weather changes or events like the Olympics. You need to use this social media content strategy for several reasons.

• Increases engagement. Creating posts related to a particular season or holiday makes it easier for your business to connect with your audience. Since your followers are already in a celebratory mood, they are more likely to engage with posts that reflect this.
• Increasing brand awareness. Seasonal content is a great way to help your business stand out since it offers a unique perspective on a particular holiday. As long as you are not creating the kind of content that everyone else is creating, you can create memorable and unique posts that will stop social media users from continuing to scroll. In addition to increasing brand awareness using content marketing, you can use seasonal content to add personality to your posts.
• Increase conversions. Seasonal posts can be a good option for promoting products or services related to the seasons. For instance, if you sell clothing, you can promote scarves and gloves during winter.

Use Your Swipe File

Swipe content refers to a collection of inspirational ideas. This could be in the form of catchy headlines to use as a model to emulate. It could also be a blog post you bookmarked in the past. When you have saved ideas in an organized format, you can later use them to brainstorm your content ideas. Remember that you naturally curate a swipe file over time to be a valuable resource for your content creation ideas.

A swipe file will speed up the content creation as it offers a wide range of effective and tested content structures. You can, therefore, use it to adapt and optimize your materials for a successful social media campaign. Whether you are using it to refine your campaign and enhance your landing pages, you can use swipe files to understand the proven tactics and increase innovation and efficiency in marketing.

There are several steps to find, organize, and use the content effectively in swipe files:

• Finding/curating. You want to ensure you find content that resonates with your brand to add to your swipe files in a digital platform such as Google Drive or a physical folder.
• Organizing swipe files. Depending on the content theme and type, you need to organize the content systematically. This will enable fast access to the curated swipe files, making the creative process more streamlined.
• Generating ideas from swipe files. You can now dig into your swipe files when brainstorming ideas for your social media posts.
• Adapt to your brand messaging and voice. Don't just use the swipe files as you found them. Instead, you want to ensure that they are aligned with the messaging and voice of your band.

Mind Mapping

A mind map is a diagram that organizes information in a hierarchy while showing the relationship between different pieces. The mind map often revolves around a single concept, usually drawn at the center of a blank page. Branches are then drawn from the central ideas or subtopics of the main topics. You can then keep branching out in the same way.

Some topics may not give you many content ideas, while others may have several. However, that should not hinder you. Keep branching out until the ideas get exhausted. For instance, if you have the main idea as “interview,” you can have subtopics on interview questions, salary negotiations, and test tasks.

Ask Your Audience

Remember that the only reason you are creating content is to meet the needs of your audience. You can also use content marketing to get new leads. Therefore, it makes sense to research the kind of content they need. Even if you don't have a physical shop where you meet prospective customers, you can still find them on social media. On top of asking them what they are interested in reading, you can use other measures such as:

• Reading the comment section of your posts.
• Checking online reviews.
• Going through Reddit threads and other relevant forums.
• Performing customer surveys.

Read the News

While you may be unable to keep up with all the industry news in your niche, there is no better time to do that than during a brainstorming session. If any news is affecting your audience or brand, note it down. For instance, if you are into social media marketing, and Facebook announces an algorithm update, you can create content on actions that brands can take to mitigate the effects of the change.

Review Any Trending Hashtags

As we noted the importance of reading news, trending hashtags can show you the popular content on social media. If any of that makes sense for your brand, you can go with it.  Remember to get creative and look for a unique way of using the hashtag. Ensure you understand the hashtag well and find it appropriate for your brand.

Use Keyword Research Tool

Keyword research tools such as Ahref and Semrush can show the content people seek in your niche. A specific keyword with a high search volume indicates that people are interested in that topic. You can also use the tool to audit the profiles of your competitors to find the keywords and terms they use in their captions, hashtags, and video descriptions. The keyword research tool will also show you the competitors going for the keywords, the kind of content they are creating, and the results they are finding.

Conclusion 

While you always have ideas, it can be hard to understand why your mind goes blank when developing social media content ideas. That is why a content marketing team needs to have a way of brainstorming their social media topics. If you are wondering where to start brainstorming social media content, the above tips can prove helpful. The good thing is that most of them are easy to use and effective. You can read our guide to creating a content strategy for TikTok marketing.