In ‘Ideas for fresh Social Media Updates, Part 1’, we discussed the fact that coming up with ever new ideas for social media updates is not an easy task and offered a few ideas for updates. Here, as promised, are a few more ideas to make your updates fresh and interesting.
Light Entertainment
Social media users do not want to see ads and sales talk all the time, so offering followers a little light entertainment is not only acceptable on most networks (LinkedIn is an exception to this), it will go down a real treat and typically generates an increase in engagement.
Funny Images, light-hearted Content and Jokes
Social Media audiences tend to respond well to humorous, off-beat updates. This kind of update could, for example, consist of:
- Funny pictures of staff members
- Industry-related cartoons
- Funny animal pictures
- Jokes (tasteful, please)
- Short funny stories
If a funny story is too long to use as an update as such, give a brief summary and link to the full story. Humour should, by the way, never be forced. Simply look out for and use opportunities likely to give your followers a giggle as and when they arise.
Mistakes and Outtakes
Did you accidentally delete or lock yourself out of your Website? Did you spot a rather embarrassing typing error in something you just published? Show your audience that you are still human and make them laugh by sharing occasional slip-ups (obviously without giving them the impression that your company is run by lunatics). Typos in particular are easily shared via screen shots of the ‘offending’ error.
Emergency Rescue
Humour can also be used to diffuse potentially harmful situations. A prime example of this was the American Red Cross’ response to a rogue tweet (2011) that could have had serious repercussions for the service. The service used humour to acknowledge the gaffe by one of its social media experts and subsequently managed to avert a PR disaster quite nicely.
Timing
Naturally, it is vital to time funny content right and avoid making potentially damaging errors by appearing to make fun out of serious events. Jokes that could be seen as offensive or insensitive typically spread like wildfire and are extremely difficult to recover from.
