10+ Social Media Ideas that Startups Must Follow in 2021

Social media is a weapon of mass marketing. Brands like Nike, GoPro, Starbucks, have been dominating the social media space and encashing on the social media addiction of humans. Leading marketing aficionados agree that social media is a powerful tool that every brand must utilize to rule the digital world. But all these super successful bands have such unique social media feeds. How do you come up with such amazing social media ideas?

If the same question has been bugging you, we have got it covered for you.

In this write-up, we have mentioned some simple yet interesting social media ideas to keep your brand’s feed fresh.

1. Channelize the Power Of Micro-Influencers

Reaching out to industry influencers is an effective way to promote your products among a target audience. However, most influencers with a blue tick charge a hefty amount for a single Instagram post or tweet. Startups don’t have such an amount reserved for their marketing campaign. This is where micro-influencers can come to their rescue.

These are people who have a following between 10k and 100k. However, their following is much more loyal. Their conversion rate is much higher as they have a greater engagement with their following. These micro-influencers connect with their fans on a much more personal level.

Out of so many social media ideas, another great one is to get the micro-influencers to use your products and promote them in front of their fans. You can always share their posts using your product on your page to give a fresh look to your brand page and fill it with real-life people using your product.

2. Personalize the Feed With Selfies or Videos

While most brands like to keep their social media pages like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter professional, it is a great way to add a personal touch to personally connect with your fans on a personal level. In addition to having product images or ad copies and other things, you can add your pictures of videos.

Don’t go all out and put your personal life on display on your business social media page. One in every 10-15 posts is fine for social media. Even if you are creating videos, make sure your videos don’t go overboard. They should be well-balanced with your business profile yet give a breath of fresh air to your business’s social media presence.

3. Generate Curiosity With BTS Video Stories

With 92% of the marketers rooting for videos in their marketing strategy, it is important to have some kind of video on your page. BTS videos or Behind The Scene videos are a great way to keep your followers engaged and curious about your next campaign.

Whether you are shooting for an upcoming advertisement, planning for your next video, packing products, work-in-progress, or simply a BTS of people working in your office, such videos always generate curiosity. Give them a sneak peek into the creative process, the set-up, and the people to make them come back for more updates.

4. Regram, Retweet, And Share What Inspires You

Your brand’s social media page might become too overwhelmed with your product images and video. Give your audience some breathing space by posting content created by others once in a while. It would not just be something different for the followers but lessen your efforts too.

All you need to do is find some good quotes and share them on your page. Anything that inspires you, news about your industry, meaningful post, or anything else can be reshared on your social media. Not just that, you can also find people who have tagged you on social media and share their posts on your feed.

You don’t have to be all in-depth with each of your posts. It can be anything light, entertaining, or interactive.

Don’t shy away from regramming (reprogramming), retweeting, repinning, or resharing other’s content. And make sure you have given due credit to the original creator. By taking the “re” spin — it breaks the flow of your posts and gives you some time to create something more creative.

Also, it’s a great way to show your followers that you are a part of a conversation, and tagging you would get them featured on your page.

5. Make Use Of Reels & Short Stories

We all know that video content will reign in the coming years. And social media platforms are not shying away from encashing on this user behavior. Instagram and Facebook have come up with a short video concept in the form of reels and short stories respectively.

The human attention span needs a little excitement. People are no longer interested in spending minutes on a single video. Such short video content can be great for catching their attention.

You can use these reels or short stories to showcase more about your product or services. These can also be used for showing the testimonials of your clients. There are several filters, stickers, audios, and other things. There are different challenges as well on social media. You can always use the trending ones in a creative way to gain popularity for your brand.

6. Co-Marketing Goes a Long Way

A great way to amp up your business’s social media profile is by teaming up with another popular brand. There are different brands around you that are also looking to add versatility to their social media page. Co-marketing saves your efforts and helps you reach out to a newer audience base.

For example, a fitness brand can collaborate with a fashion designer to launch its own line of fitness wear. This way, you can have your name promoted on their social media and vice versa.

You can always team up with another brand that targets the same niche. This way, you’ll be able to reach out to their audience with synced efforts.

7. Tag-A-Friend Always Enhances Visibility

People love sharing pictures with their friends and tagging them on awesome posts. An amazing post idea is to get more engagement with ‘tag-a-friend’ posts. These posts could be all about some habits of people, memes, quotes, incidents, places, gifting options, or anything based on the industry you are in.

All you need to do is ask people to ‘tag-a-friend’ who comes to their mind first on seeing the post.

Such posts get conversations started in the comments and can boost your social media engagement. They gain much more visibility and your brand easily reaches out to more people that might become loyal followers really quick. Create posts that compel to be shared and ensure

8. Get Your Followers to Generate Content

Zomato, a leading food delivery app in India, recently announced a campaign. It asked its followers to create video ads for the brand and the best ad would win Rs 25 lakhs. This initiative got the brand a huge increase in following and gave it a whole new feed to showcase the followers. People loved the videos it kept sharing from the creators and it gave the feed a fresh look.

As a startup, you need not announce such a big-scale campaign. You can simply give away some freebies, a monthly membership, or similar things to your followers to create content. Encourage your followers to generate content for you and showcase that on your feed. This would not just create a new look for your feed but also help build trust that people are actually using your product.

9. Data-Rich Posts Get Maximum Shares

Have you recently conducted a survey or research? Do you have some numbers that can help others in the industry? Go ahead and create some interesting infographics or simple pictures with some interesting findings. These are sure to get a lot of shares among the industry peeps.

There are many tools in the market like Canva that can help you go innovative with the post. Make sure to use your brand colors to personalize the picture. Take inspiration from Hubspot’s Instagram page. They’ve brilliantly used their brand colors in creating info-rich pictures. Industry peeps love sharing them and get a lot of engagement online.

You can even have important numbers from your blogs or similar stuff and convert them into pictures to share on your social media pages.

10. Previews and Teasers are Great for Curiosity

Before launching any product, creating excitement for the same is imperative. This can be a great way to break the monotony of your social media feed and ignite excitement. Whatever new you are planning to announce, share a glimpse of it on your social media. It could be a simple BTS video, launch teaser, event preparation, or anything.

With the new feature of short videos like Reels, Short Videos, and Fleet, it is easier to create a video on the spot and share it with your followers. Create a buzz with it. Create FOMO or countdown for any new event, sale, launch, etc., to get maximum presence. Posts like launching soon, stay tuned, half pictures, etc., also look great when used smartly on social media to generate curiosity.

11. Maintain Consistency Around Brand Image

While it is great to experiment with your social media feed, a little bit of consistency would be great to create a lasting impression. Whether you use the brand colors, logos, fonts, images, or anything else, make sure that it has some element to reflect your brand.

Your brand voice needs to be consistent. There are many followers that might recognize your brand through visual means only – by the way your posts look, your style, etc. Make sure to retain such visual elements to ensure these followers can tell your brand out.

Other Social Media Strategies for Startups

While those are some awesome social media ideas for your feed, there are other social media strategies that can help strengthen your brand image. Be it Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other platform, here are some simple and cool social media strategies for startups.

Just the mention of the word ‘FREE’ grasps instant attention. And as a startup, you need not offer something extravagant in such giveaways. You can keep it small, even a discount coupon, trial membership, demo, or something similar. Announce it on social media and get more tags, mentions, and likes through such giveaways.

Video content is going to grow exponentially in 2021 and live videos will be a large part of it. The Covid times have made live videos even more popular. Almost every industry is pivoting its way of interacting with its customers and live videos are one of the most effective means. You can also make your followers participate in your events or simply have sessions with them talking about your brand answering their questions, etc.

• AMAs Are Great For Engagement

A new trend that set out on social media was about AMA or Ask Me Anything. Whether we take Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media, many brands and celebrities are hosting such sessions to increase their engagement. This way you can engage with them and answer their questions about your brand.

• Takeovers Are Effortlessly Raging

Another thing that many of the social media pages are doing currently is takeovers. That is, you give your social media page to be handled by someone else. They bring a fresh perspective to your brand and give it a new look to your feed. This takeover could be for a day or a week. And the best part is, you have to put in zero effort. The person taking over would handle your social media feed for the time period.

• Ask For Followers’ Opinions With Polls

People love it when their opinions are valued. Get polls before starting with a new product. You can have polls for different things and get to know their interests, likes, dislikes, and much more. This would help you get a closer insight into what’s going on in your followers’ mind about your brand,

• Organize Highlights For Professional Look

Another cool way to make your social media brand page look even more professional is to organize the entire page. Don’t make it look cluttered and unkept. A quick way to do the same is by organizing the highlights that are present on your profile.

• Ephemeral Content Never Dies

As ironic as it is, ephemeral content has been increasing in popularity since Snapchat came up with the idea. And this concept of short-lived, disappearing content is going to be here for a long time. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, all have the concept of disappearing content. Make use of this amazing social media idea to infuse the fear of missing out in your audience.

On an Ending Note

Social media is a double-edged sword. It can help build massive loyalty for your brand in a short time. But at the same time, a small error in messaging can instantly hurt their sentiments, leading to PR nightmares.

Follow the 80:20 rule on social media to keep churning out new content without putting too much on the shoulders of the content creators. It is important that your brand’s feed remains versatile yet consistent to offer new content but remind them that it’s your brand in the end.

Make sure that you are regular with posting. Plan ahead and have a social media calendar in place. Make sure your feed never dies and is consistently offering some content to keep your brand alive in their memory.