Five tips to re-energise your social media feed

Running a social media campaign isn’t the hard part – the real challenge is coming up with new and creative ideas that will keep audiences engaged.

Followers are inundated with content and with attention spans getting shorter and competition getting tougher, there is a constant need to keep social media feeds fresh and exciting. Here are five ways to spruce up your feed.

Host regular giveaways 
Everyone loves free stuff. Giveaways are great because they permit you to reach your target audience quickly, while also allowing you to test the effectiveness of different platforms and methods. Taking the time to develop a strategy for giving away freebies can pay off tremendously in the long run, as it will enable you to interact with fans, generate more leads, start online conversations and most importantly, increase brand awareness. Such initiatives are incredibly easy to run.

One of the recent examples is the ‘loop giveaway’, where a freebie is offered once a person follows 8-10 new accounts.

Leverage the power of bite-sized videos
Video is king when it comes to getting more exposure for brands online. Video content has exponentially more views, shares and engagement than static content and with reducing attention spans, bite-sized clips are the order of the day. Brands can show customers their personality, frame their narratives and even promote products in ways that are both informative and entertaining, to ultimately build an emotional connection with viewers.

In fact, short form videos are preferred by Instagram, Facebook and TikTok and are fast becoming the norm.

Influencer takeovers
A social media takeover is when you enlist an influencer to help market your brand, product or service by giving them total access to your brand’s social accounts. Basically, you hand over all the reins to that individual, enabling them to post whatever they like, usually for 24 hours. This is an excellent way to use social marketing to engage your audience and help grow your business.

The overall value of influencer marketing is that it allows you to piggyback on an influencers’ reach and access their follower base, while getting them to curate original content for your account. It’s a fun way to allow your existing followers to see a new perspective, while accessing a whole new demographic.

BTS access 
People are always interested in what they don’t have access to – in most cases they are very curious to see the people behind their beloved brands, the support staff of their favourite influencer and everything that goes on behind the scenes and is “hidden” from view. Giving followers access to the personal side of your business or brand goes a long way in building emotional connections and “humanising” the feed. People feel more connected to brands that share authentic moments and let them access the non-filtered side.

Do tutorials and demos
These days you can find a tutorial for pretty much any topic online – from how to cook restaurant quality dishes to how to fix the engine in your car. If you have a question, there is a tutorial or demo video available to help you. People love watching such videos because they’re easier to follow than reading text. The good news is that these videos can be very easy to make. You can turn your existing content into a tutorial by speaking to the camera and adding some visuals or stickers.

While many brands prefer to have polished and professional videos, one simply has to go on TikTok to see that many of the most popular videos there are shot and edited on personal phones.

Zaib Shadani is a PR consultant and digital marketing strategist at Shadani Consulting