Be a Social Media Marketing Superhero!

Share your vision and mission

Create a Spark Post with your company vision or mission statement. Use an evocative image that captures the feeling of your vision and layer on some typography! Add your logo to the design and post to social!

Product spotlight

Create an animated post highlighting your best product or service feature with the highest customer value. What’s your highest customer value? Write down… what’s the one key problem or opportunity your product or service solves for someone. Then, use a picture or two of your product, and icons and text to call out the key solution. Use animated text to really highlight the value! Have more than one value? Duplicate your creation to create a few more and swap out the text and photos. Save these to post another day.

Highlight a team member

Take a picture of a team member and get a quote from them about why they love doing what they do. Add text animations for their name or quote! Don’t forget to tag your company or employees so they can share it too! Feeling inspired? Duplicate your project and highlight a few employees for a series of Instagram Stories.

Make a funny

Find your favorite meme, something happening in the news or pop culture, or start bantering with a co-worker about some possible jokes to lighten up your content for the day. What’s a funny scenario someone might need to use your product or service. How might you tie your product or service to a pop culture reference? Use some light hearted copy and visuals and don’t forget to click on Add (+) Sticker to pop in some animated stickers to your creation.

Day in the life

Show, don’t tell! Create a series of IG stories that tell a customer story. Include pictures or short video clips you can take on your phone of your “customer” using your product or service in context to their day. You can always use Spark’s stock photos too, or get a coworker to volunteer and act it out. Begin your IG story series with a “title post” that says “A Day in the Life with _____” and create an ending post with your logo and tagline. When you’re done, duplicate all your posts and use the Resize feature to size them for another social media platform like your Instagram feed. Or, resize them for Facebook and post it as a photo album on your feed there. Tweak them so they’re just right, and you’re ready to go!

Didja know… ?

Create a Post about a fun fact related to your company, product, service, or industry! Try out text animations and effects to make your message have visual impact. Have 5 minutes? Make a few of these and post one each week on the same day, like a themed #FunFactFriday. It’s an easy way to always have a content piece ready to go when you’re short on time.

Give ‘em what they want!

Look at all the posts you’ve created so far, including the successful ones before this playbook. Which had the most comments, or most views and likes? Why do you think they were engaging? Pick one of the most successful ones you made and duplicate this project to make new versions of it. For example, did your employee quote posts get a lot of engagement? It may signal that people really like seeing the face behind your product. Create more of these, and collect employee quotes about their favorite aspects of your product and service.

100+ Instagram Captions To Grow an Engaged Following

Ask your people

Start on the Spark Post mobile app. Choose a fun IG Story template or create one from scratch that has a fun background. Add a text box that prompts your followers to “Ask Anything: What do you want to know about ______” (You fill in the blank. It could be about what questions they have about your product, service, team, what types of content they like seeing on social from you, etc.) Share it to Instagram Stories, and add a poll or question sticker. Then, use Resize to create a matching post for your IG feed calling a mention to your Stories so followers know to check it out. Make one for Facebook too. Watch the insights flood in!

Let them inspire you

So what did your followers tell you or ask about in the last post? You’re sitting on content gold now! Generate a list of content ideas based on your audience insights and make your own calendar. For example: Did they have product questions? Highlight a team member answering them, or create a series of FAQ posts that you can post once a week. Tag the users who originally asked you for some serious warm fuzzies and audience loyalty. Now spread the wealth - are you pressed for time? Generate a bunch of templates with your new content ideas, but share them with your team members so they can help swap out photos, pop in your brand, or make edits.

Learn how to work with your team faster and more efficiently!

Whip your brand into shape

Marketing a brand on social media is a lot like working on your health and wellness—it takes consistency. We know and believe that small, daily actions can add up to a strong online presence and lightweight tools can help you tone your marketing content into lean and powerful branding. Check out these 10 quick videos on becoming a brand rockstar in Spark.

Strength Training for your Brand!

Find your people

Take a look at people, organizations, or other companies that are in the same industry or space as you. Search by hashtag on Instagram, or in Groups on Facebook. Start thinking about hashtags as a way to discover your community. Investigate your followers too… who are a few that seem to align with your brand values, aesthetic, or are doing something unique in their lives? Who are the ones interacting with your posts the most? Reach out and make a connection - give them a compliment, thank them, or ask them how they discovered you.

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Hashtags!

Tell them why they matter

Identify 3 templates that you love. What about their style resonates with you? Hit the Brandify feature to make these templates yours. Haven’t set up your brand yet? Well what are you waiting for! Do that, and then come back to Brandify the templates you like. Magical, isn’t it? Edit your newly minted templates to highlight the 3 customer values or promises your company believes in. Post all three of them today.

Hear them out!

Take 3 pictures of 3 key features or facets of your product or service and write a one sentence line about why each feature is amazing. Use a collage template in Spark to showcase all three features and copy lines in one graphic. Post this, and ask your followers what their favorite is… 1, 2 or 3? And why? Use the polls feature on IG stories, or prompt them to answer in the caption.

15 seconds of fame

So what did you get during the last post? Probably some great quotes and a testimonial or two. Find a quote template you like on Spark, and highlight some of your follower’s responses. Hit Brandify to give your posts your own look and feel. Be sure to tag your followers when you post to social. You can even make a title post that says something like “We asked, and you answered! We love our customers!” This is a great time to sprinkle in related product content between testimonials as well.

Showcase your people

Select 6 pieces of user-generated content from your community or customers (or beyond, like who you admire) and determine how you’ll highlight them - IG Stories? Facebook? A Reel? Make sure to tag and follow the users you’re reposting! Highlight why you’re posting their content and what you love about them. If they reply or repost that you mentioned them, repost that too! Try and do this at least once a month.

Day in the life

Show, don’t tell! Create a series of IG stories that tell a customer story. Include pictures or short video clips you can take on your phone of your “customer” using your product or service in context to their day. You can always use Spark’s stock photos too, or get a coworker to volunteer and act it out. Begin your IG story series with a “title post” that says “A Day in the Life with _____” and create an ending post with your logo and tagline. When you’re done, duplicate all your posts and use the Resize feature to size them for another social media platform like your Instagram feed. Or, resize them for Facebook and post it as a photo album on your feed there. Tweak them so they’re just right, and you’re ready to go!

Call them to action

Using Spark, create at least 3 call-to-action posts (CTAs), like:

“Tell us how [our brand] helped you out in a pinch recently!”

“It’s Wednesday — show us how you’re dealing with the mid-week slump.”

“What piece of startup wisdom do you keep coming back to? Share with us!”

Use animated text styles to really make your post stand out, and feel like you’re talking to your followers.

Tailor the content to the right network. For example, fun or visual questions might be an IG Story, while advice might be great for LinkedIn. Build in one post a week like this - it keeps the conversation between you and your followers going, and you’ll never run out of content ideas based on what they tell you… see more of what we mean in the next prompt!

Have a chat

Take a look at the comments you’ve gotten from this and last week’s posts. Interact with your users publicly in the same channels they posted, ask further questions, and have a conversation. Use this as an opportunity to provide answers, point them to other related posts, information, or your other social channels. Take note of what they’re asking or talking about and create a list of content post ideas that might address them. Also take note of which types of interactions got the most conversational engagement, and consider making that a recurring theme for your social content calendar.

Learn more on How to Optimize your Instagram Scheduling Strategy

An exclusive community

Create an exclusive community on the platform where you get the most engagement (note, this doesn’t need to be the one you have the most followers on!) and invite your top users. Consider using a private Slack, Close Friends on IG Stories, or closed Facebook group, depending on where you think your customers would be the most engaged. Create a second brand in Spark that has its own exclusive look and feel. Think of this group as your think tank. Create a post that asks them for feedback, like:

“What do you wish you could do in the product?”

“What’s one thing that frustrates you when you’re using our product or service?”

“What do you primarily use our product or service for?”

Give it that super special branding, and post it to your SuperGroup. Hold a virtual feedback group session at some point, and create an event flyer in Spark with your new brand too!

Multiple Brands for Any Look-and-Feel

Partner up

Identify another product, company, service, influencer, or thought leader that aligns really well with your brand. Reach out and ask about doing a social media marketing partnership!

• Co-brand your campaign to raise your overall message and widen your audience funnel

• Get partners or brands to donate prizes or goods for a social media giveaway

• Tap into your partners’ following to amplify your message. Ask them to retweet or repost your content, but make sure it’s relevant to their audience and you return the favor!

Social media makes for perfect, low-investment partnerships. It’s a lot easier to ask for a retweet than be part of a big complex marketing campaign, and it’s often a win-win for everyone.

Expand your universe

Find 5 pieces of content online (articles, other people’s images, quotes, etc.) that resonate with your brand or mission. Find a template that has a look-and-feel you like and Brandify it to make it yours. Or create a new brand to represent all of your thought leadership pieces. Lean on and duplicate this template as a recurring one you’ll post over the weeks. Incorporate the content you found online to this template, one piece of content per design, like a soundbite. Schedule them out as “evergreen” content over the coming weeks - pick a day to always post your thought leadership content. Don’t forget to give credit to where you found it, and tag your sources…not just for copyright, but also to expand your network! Post 1/5 today on your most engaged network.

Metrics inspire a series

Create a plan for how keep track of your social engagement over the next couple of weeks, either by using the social platform’s built-in analytics, or a tool like Buffer. Scan the comments that your audience is leaving on your posts… are there some trends around what they like or are wondering about? Choose one trend brainstorm ideas for one piece of long-form content. Long-form could mean a blog post, an article, a tweetstorm, Instagram Live, or IG Story series. Choose one idea to develop content for and begin writing, gathering photos, and quotes from secondary sources. Do your research, and then decide… what do you or your company believe in and what’s your key point of view? Your longform piece should have a clear goal of offering up your take on the trend to your audience.

P.S. Not seeing anything that inspires you? We love checking Pinterest’s <handy trends tool> to get ideas.

A mini campaign

Once your long-form content is done, use Spark to create the promotion for it. Mix images, text and graphics to make a series of social graphics that tease users about what’s coming soon. You can even create posts with quotes from the piece itself, and the date the content will launch. Use Resize to make versions of your post in the correct aspect ratio for the various platforms you’re creating for and maximize your efficiency.

Launch day

Publish your long form content, whether it’s a tweetstorm, blog post, Insta Story or series, article, etc. If you’re publishing to something like a blog or Medium, make sure to make and publish Posts on social networks to point them there. You can also use Spark to bring parts of your blog to life. Overlay a quote from your content over an image, and include your brand. That way if people pin or repost your image, you’ll get some brand awareness. Quote and title posts are also great to include on your social feed, along with the link, so that people can easily share them with others over social. Include a link in your bio! Keep track of comments as they come in and actively engage with your users in the comments today.

A guest appearance

Find another thought leader in your space (probably non-competitive), and invite them to do a “social takeover,” where for an specific time period they post to your social accounts (choose one). Create a set of Spark templates and share them with them so their work has brand consistency. Schedule them for a Spark Live with you after their takeover, like a 20 min interview where they share their views on your shared space or industry. You can base your interview questions on the comments your audience has left on your takeover posts the past few days, as well as prompt your viewers to surface questions during the Live.

Involve your audience

Promote the takeover event! Film yourself or your team announcing the takeover on your phone, and import it to Spark Post. Feature a photo or quote of the thought leader you’ve selected. Use Resize to make versions of the announcement for multiple social networks and post! Ask your followers to submit questions or topics for the invited thought leader or influencer through the comments.

Cross the two way street

It’s takeover day! Check out what your thought leader/influencer has created for the takeover. Save a couple of the best creations to post later, as evergreen content you can post in the weeks to come that can bring eyes back to this content once its passed. For the rest, finalize and post their creations as a series of posts, videos, stories, etc. over the next few days. As you observe how your audience is interacting with the content, collect audience quotes, insights, and more. Use this content to make more posts and don’t forget to tag your audience member! Finally, share your insights, engagement numbers, and posts with the thought leader/influencer you’ve been working with. Ask them if they’d be willing to repost on their own social account and tag your account in it. (We bet they will!)

Be an efficiency rockstar

Choose 3 articles that others have written about your industry… these could be about current trends or changes, perspectives, facts, etc. Choose 3 quotes from each that you especially like. You should have about 9 content bites. Use a bold template to mock up all of them, Brandify them, and post each week on the same day. If you have a headshot of the person handy, pop in their photo and use the Remove Background.

Or take 3 or more related bites from these articles and make an infographic - its a great way to relay information around a theme in a visual eye-catching way. You can also split these factoids up into individual posts.

Don’t forget to cite the source in your design and tag them if they have a social media account! This is a great way to build your network, widen your qualified funnel, and build relationships for future takeovers or partnerships.

The face(s) behind the lens

Take a short video clip on your phone of a team member and have them talk about their expertise. Add text animations for their name or quote! Tag your company or employees so they can share it too! Feeling inspired? Highlight a few employees for a series of Instagram Stories. For each story, prompt your audience to submit questions for your employee through the question feature on IG Stories: “What do you want to learn from ______?” Use these responses to create a list of future long or short form content ideas.

Be topical

Spend 5 min everyday catching up on the news, latest pop culture, and latest industry developments or conversations. Find a thread that relates your industry or company to what’s happening out there. For example, perhaps you are a university office and currently there is a boom in houseplant purchases due to people spending more time indoors because of a health crisis. You could do a series of posts about the best plants for dorm rooms. Or, say you’re a marketer in a small agency. Think about what you learned about a certain industry after working on a client project and do a series of posts on how that industry is changing. By responding and reacting to what’s happening in the greater world, you show your audience that you are part of their lifestyle. Switch it up, and film yourself speaking about these topics on IG Stories, along with making posts to highlight the content. People see higher engagement on their social when they interact with a real person.