Where to Get Creative Inspiration for Your Social Media Content

In recent years, a strong social media presence with plenty of engaging multimedia content has become a must-have for small businesses. And when you have a small business to market and new video content to create, the last thing you want is to struggle to develop new and creative ideas. Yet the social media platforms’ algorithms don’t care if you have a creativity block. If you fall behind in your ability to consistently create new content, your accounts will suffer.

So how can you move forward if you find yourself in a creative rut, strapped for time, or struggling to think of new ideas for videos to make? Well, that’s what this article is for.

Here, we’ll give you our guide to finding inspiration for new ideas. After reading this post, you’ll be armed with tools, actions, and resources that you can turn to next time you struggle to find video ideas. 

Sources of Inspiration For Your Videos

Choosing to use the power of social media to market your business is great, but it can also lead to some frustration when you realize you don’t have any creative ideas for what kind of content to create. Thankfully, there are plenty of places you can go to that will assist you in kickstarting your creativity and give you ideas for what kind of videos you can make. 

Inspiration can come from all sorts of places, from those specifically designed to help spark your creative process to those that just happen to be able to give you ideas even if they aren’t necessarily intended to do so. Below, we’ve put together a list of all places we recommend looking to when you need inspiration. 

1. Check Out the Competition

The first thing we recommend doing to get inspiration for videos to create is to check out what your competition is doing. Whether that’s the competing college in your town or the other dive bar on your street, we highly recommend going to your competitors’ profiles to see what content they’re making. Of course, you shouldn’t copy their videos entirely, but they might give you some ideas about what types of videos might work (or not work!) for you. 

When looking at your competitors’ video content, think about the following:

• Which of their videos perform the best? (Most views, likes, comments, and shares)
• Which videos perform the worst? 
• Which of these videos could I see my brand making?
• What do I not like about these videos?

2. Use Trends and Challenges

The internet is changing every day, with constant new trends, memes, and challenges to keep up with. And while this can get a bit overwhelming, it’s also an amazing source of inspiration. 

Keeping up with what’s trending online can help you develop new video ideas, but it will also make sure that you’re staying a part of the cultural conversation, helping your brand remain relevant. So next time you’re short on video ideas, do some searching around to see what hashtags, memes, and challenges are trending. You can hop on whatever the next ice bucket challenge or mannequin challenge is while they’re still fresh and interesting.

To stay up to date, we recommend checking out:

• Twitter’s trending hashtags  – Twitter’s trending hashtags are hashtags that have gone viral. Whether it’s something big that’s recently happened in pop culture, or something that went viral “just because,” checking in to Twitter’s trending hashtags page every time you’re looking for a new video idea may spark just the inspiration you need!
• YouTube’s Explore page – YouTube’s “Explore” page allows you the opportunity to search destination pages for popular categories, features YouTube creators on the rise, and trending videos. Trending shows you what’s happening on YouTube and in the world, and is a great way to see what other content creators are sharing. What’s great about the YouTube Explore page is that you can visit videos by category, which will make it easier to find the video inspiration that best represents and matches your company.
• TikTok’s For You page – TikTok’s “For You” page suggests new content to based on the kind of items you may have viewed and liked in the past. The wonderful thing about “For You,” is that is a customized collection of videos that TikTok has curated to meet your interests. This means, that along with garnering inspiration from TikTok videos, the platform picks videos it knows you’re waiting to see. This is a quick and easy fix when looking for inspiration!
• The front page of Reddit – The front page of Reddit is what you’ll see if you aren’t logged in as a user. This page features posts with the highest voted posts appearing at the top of the community in which they were posted. Looking at the front page of Reddit is a great way to see what kind of content users like, and using that information when creating your videos.

3. Ready-Made Templates

We know how challenging it can be to constantly develop new ideas for videos. After all, we’re humans, not machines. That’s why our mission is to make it easy for you to consistently push out new and engaging videos. We have a library of over 5,000 templates made by expert video creators that you can browse, choose, customize, and post on your social media. 

You can search through Promo’s templates in different ways: by the occasion you want to celebrate, the social media platform you want to post on, the industry you’re working in, etc. Just pick your ready-made template, customize it with your messaging and branding, and you’ve got a fresh video in no time. 

Use this template

4. Promo’s Social Media Calendar

Another amazing source of inspiration is Promo’s monthly content calendar. Each month, our team of creative professionals creates and curates templates for every single day of that month. Ranging from important occasions like Black History Month to silly celebrations like National Pizza Day, no matter your business type, the content calendar will help you never run out of ideas for content or video templates. Sync the social media calendar to your personal calendar, and get content inspiration for every day of the year. The best part? All you need to do is add your brand details and logo, and the videos are ready to share on your platforms! 

5. Follow Inspiring Brands

If you want to make it easier for yourself to come up with video ideas, follow other brands that inspire you on social media. These can be businesses in your field or other completely unrelated brands that you think are doing a great job at video marketing. That way, your feed is a constant, go-to source of inspiration that is always being updated with new content. 

Some inspiring brands to follow on social media include:

• Letterfolk – A family-owned company selling letter boards, Letterfolk has an impressive 359K followers on Instagram due in no small part to their consistent video content, including holiday greetings, tips, and tricks for using their products, product drop videos, and video sale announcements.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Letterfolk (@letterfolk)

• ASOS – Being a retail website that sells over 850 brands and ships to 196 countries, you know that they’re selling to many different customers worldwide. To attract different customers, you have to make sure everyone feels included in your social media ads. Asos excels at inclusivity by creating content that features diverse shapes, sizes, and ages. And by making use of popular online video formats such as tutorials and TikTok-style commentary, ASOS meets their audience where they already are, offering them video types that have proven to engage younger Instagram users. 
• Boohoo – Boohoo, a British online fashion retailer aimed at 16-30-year-olds, manages to attract their target audiences through their strong social media presence. Boohoo excels at creating short online videos announcing sales, giveaways, and collaborations, ensuring that their audience never misses an opportunity to take advantage of a promotion. Using the same visual layout in every one of their giveaway videos creates a consistent, recognizable brand identity and saves themselves time on video creation. 

 

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A post shared by boohoo (@boohoo)

• Starbucks – While the name Starbucks may as well sell itself, the coffee house chain has a strong social media presence. They show just how much their customers enjoy their brand by using user-generated videos on their social media pages. By regularly featuring user-generated content, Starbucks engages with its audience, creates a personal connection, and saves money on content creation costs. 

• Airbnb – Airbnb creates visually stunning videos showing off their properties, enticing their audience to use their service with the power of video. Airbnb has started a “visual game” with their audiences, surprising them with new destinations and visually stunning videos. When it comes to the video content Airbnb posts on their social media, audiences know what to expect and anticipate it. 

 

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A post shared by Airbnb (@airbnb)

6. Ask Your Audience

It might seem silly to ask the people you are creating content for to help you develop new video ideas, but it’s actually a win-win for everybody. Think about it. Not only will you get help in coming up with new videos to create, but your audience will see that you care about their opinions, helping to create a stronger connection to your brand. Plus, they’ll receive the content they want to see from you, which will make them happy. 

You have to make a post asking your followers what kind of videos they want to see next. Instagram stories are particularly great because you can use their “questions” or “poll” features to make it easy for your audience to respond directly to your story. 

Try asking your followers things like:

• Which type of video do you prefer? Tutorials or customer profiles?
• Which product of ours would you like to see a demo video next?
• We’re making a video showing off our newest collections! Which do you want to see first?

7. Everyday Life

Remember that you don’t only have to look for marketing videos to get inspired for your own marketing videos. You can find content marketing inspiration from the most unlikely sources like music, the natural world, conversations with children, magazines, art museums, etc. Maybe the blooming flowers outside will inspire you to create a video in honor of the first day of spring, or a conversation with a stranger in a coffee shop will make you want to make a video sharing their story with your audience. Whatever it may be, the potential for inspiration is everywhere.

So if you’re on the hunt for video inspiration, give yourself permission to look at and listen to a diversity of things. Check out a new book from the library. Read the latest issue of your favorite magazine. Listen to a podcast. Go on a local tour. Take a walk and get curious about the things you pass. Keep a notebook or your phone on you to jot down any ideas sparked as you do. Inspiration is everywhere.

The Importance of Consistently Creating Content 

So why is it so important to discover how to get inspired for new videos all the time, anyway? Well, chances are you’ve heard the popular dictum: in content marketing, consistency is key. 

Experts often insist that success in social media marketing hinges on your ability to constantly push out new content. As McKinsey & Company put it, “the 3 Cs of customer satisfaction” are “consistency, consistency, and consistency.” But let’s dig into this a little further to understand why this matters so much.

Sure, it intuitively makes sense that your audience is following you because they want to see your content, and the more of it you post, the happier they’ll be. But it actually goes much further than that. While SEO and social media algorithms are always changing, at least one thing remains: consistent content gets rewarded. 

According to a Hubspot study, brands that publish content 4 times a week get 3.5 times more traffic than brands that publish content just once a week. And sites that publish to their blog consistently have over 4 times more indexed pages than sites that don’t regularly publish, which increases your chances of being displayed at the top of search results. 

In addition to the above, there are even more benefits to consistency, including:

• Creating trust and authority
• Improving brand recognition
• Getting in front of more people

The takeaway here is clear: to do well in content marketing, you need to post consistently.

How to Optimize Your Brainstorming Process

Speaking of optimizing your creative process, here are our best tips for kickstarting your creativity and improving your approach to brainstorming to keep your social media accounts consistently full of fresh content.

Be Open to All Ideas

In the pursuit of wanting to have good ideas, we can often censor ourselves, shooting down new ideas we have because we think they’re dumb or not interesting enough. But judging new ideas as they come to you is a sure-fire way to block your creativity by creating a space that is not safe for original thinking.

So, instead, when you’re brainstorming, don’t rule out any ideas at first. Put every idea you have down onto paper, even if they seem silly or boring. This way, you’ll encourage your creative channels to flow rather than blocking them before you even get started. Later on, you can cut any ideas that don’t seem fitting. But you’ll be surprised how much easier it is to come up with new video ideas when you’re not judging yourself as you go.

An exercise we recommend for judgment-free brainstorming is something called “swimming.” Here, you set a timer for a certain duration, such as 3 minutes. Then, as long as the time is running, you have to write. Don’t lift your pen up from the paper until the time is up. It doesn’t matter what you write; just don’t stop writing. This is a great way to break through creative blocks and stop filtering yourself. 

Keep a List

Inspiration is a fickle thing, refusing to come to us when we want it and showing up at the most inopportune times, like showering or half-asleep. So to help you keep track of all of the random ideas that come to you throughout your day-to-day life, we recommend keeping a list and adding to it every time you have a rush of inspiration. Next time you’re having a brainstorming session and feeling blocked, you can refer back to the note on your phone (or wherever you keep your list), where you have lots of ideas at the ready.

Walk Away

Like a finger trap, the more you battle your creativity, the more stuck you can become. Sitting down to brainstorm and failing to develop good ideas can be incredibly frustrating. But frustration and anger aren’t exactly emotions conducive to open, safe creativity. 

Sometimes, one of the best things you can do for your creative process is simply to take a break. Giving yourself a few hours to reset is sometimes the perfect solution for refreshing your mind and making room for creativity. Whether you go on a walk or a drive or simply sit and daydream, clearing your mind can sometimes help you achieve that inspiration that eluded you earlier.

But Wait, There’s More

We know it can be intimidating thinking about how much content you need to create to maximize your brand’s success on social media. But the good news is that inspiration is easier to find than you may have realized. From optimizing your brainstorming process to checking out the sources of inspiration listed above, you’ll never have to feel stuck again. 

And if this article has been helpful for you, we have great news to share: Promo’s blog is full of posts just like this one made to help small business owners and marketers like you. We’re always publishing new video ideas you can use: whether it’s videos for the coming month, videos for specific platforms, or videos for certain departments of a business, we’ve got your back with a constant stream of inspiration that you can count on.