How to Generate Content Ideas from Social Media
In my last blog post I mentioned that social media is a great source for content ideas. I am regularly inspired by what I see on social media and as I didn’t go into much detail about how I generate content ideas, I thought I’d write a separate blog post.
We’re spoilt for choice when it comes to options for social media and each works slightly differently - here’s a guide as to how you can use each to find content ideas:
The main feed and explore pages are always a great tool, helping you discover new content from accounts that you don’t follow but that Instagram’s algorithm thinks you might like. From here you can look at the topics discussed, the hashtags used by others, and the style of graphics used to convey the information.
Instagram has a search function so you can search for keywords and popular hashtags and see the top trending post ideas for these categories so you can see what is trending and get inspiration.
Instagram Reels are becoming more and more popular with the use of short video clips and audio. This is great for trends - you can check out your competition plus other popular videos to help inspire your own content.
Pinterest is known as the visual search engine and it’s also a great directory for blog posts. You can search for a topic and then within the feed it will show you related searches all of which will inspire you to create your own content.
I’m in a few facebook groups/pages where my target audience are and it’s also a fantastic free way to get ideas for content. Look at what people are discussing, the questions they are asking and the things they need help with and then you can use this to generate content ideas to write about.
The main feed can give you some ideas, there are the popular posts on the sidebar, you can search by hashtags and you can join groups. You also have the option of running polls on your own posts and asking questions - great for talking to your audience.
Tiktok
One of the newer social media platforms, Tiktok’s “for you” page is a great place to look for new content ideas. You can also search for hashtags and it will show you popular searches within your search as well - all very useful for finding new content ideas.
YouTube
Type your keyword into the Youtube search bar and see what the top searches are to help inspire your next blog post. Youtube’s algorithm is also good at helping you to find other related content which you can also use to create your own version of.
Check out your twitter feed to see what everyone is talking about, search the hashtags or the trending topics for further inspiration for your next post.
Do you have any other suggestions of how you can use social media to generate content ideas?
