Social Media Examiner
Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Looking for ways to keep your social media content calendar full? Wondering how to find fresh content ideas?
In this article, you’ll discover how to find content inspiration for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more.
You can easily find top content for your niche on your For You page. But when you want to get more focused results or expand your recommendations, use the ideas below to find social media post ideas.
To find content from creators in your niche (or your clients’ niches), use TikTok’s built-in search tool. The results page automatically highlights top-liked videos so you can quickly zero in on the best content.
Then tap through to explore the other tabs. The Users tab is a great place to find new creators to follow. The Hashtags tab is filled with even more inspiration and you can add any of them to your favorites.
For more ideas, go back to the Top tab and scroll down to the Others Searched For panel. You’ll see tons of search queries that you can use to guide your next short-form video or you can tap them to explore further.
Want to find what’s popular beyond your niche and across TikTok? Browse trends in the TikTok Creative Center. Use the drop-down menu to select the type of trend you want to explore—from hashtags and songs to creators and videos.
The Hashtags tab highlights the top trending hashtags across TikTok, including the number of posts and views. You can use the line graphs and trending symbols to see which are fizzling out and which are on the rise so you can hop on them before it’s too late.
For added inspiration, you can also click to explore any of the creators associated with the trend. If you’d rather niche down and explore trends in a specific space, open the Industry drop-down menu to select an option.
Want to add some new creators to your feed? Open the Creators panel and narrow your search. Although you can’t search by topic, you can filter creators by region and audience size. You can click to view some of their best content before adding them to your feed.
The TikTok Creative Center also features top TikTok videos, songs, and even products to inspire your content. With this data, you can get new ideas and create TikTok videos that are more likely to perform well now.
From trending audio to Reels templates, Instagram has plenty of options to help you find what’s popular now. Here are five ways to get social media content ideas for your Instagram account.
Similar to Facebook, Instagram has an option to build a list of favorite accounts whose content is automatically placed closer to the top of the feed. But unlike Facebook, Instagram also lets you view your favorite accounts in a dedicated feed.
To create a list of favorites, identify and follow an account you find inspirational. Then tap the Following button and select Add to Favorites. Head back to your home feed and tap the Instagram icon in the upper-left corner. From the drop-down menu, select Favorites so you can focus your energy on the most inspiring accounts.
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To add new content to your Instagram feed, find relevant hashtags to follow. Use the in-app search to look up topics and then go to the Tags tab. Note that the most popular hashtags (i.e., those with millions of posts) can include a lot of spammy content.
Instead, consider following one of the hashtags that’s a bit less popular but still relevant to your organization. You can tap to preview any hashtag’s content and make sure it’s useful to your team.
Looking for creative inspiration for your next reel? In addition to checking the Explore tab, take a look at the top Add Yours prompts. To find them, tap to create a new reel and select Add Yours from the menu.
Here, you can see a couple of dozen popular prompts, along with the total number of reels using the prompt. Tap to join any of the conversations or simply use the prompts to inspire your next reel.
Swiping through Reels templates can also give you inspiration for your next short-form video. Did a great reel catch your eye in the feed? Tap to open the Reels menu and select Use as Template. If you aren’t ready to start creating immediately, save the reel so you can access the template later.
You can also get new ideas from browsing templates. To access Reels templates, open the Reels feed in the Instagram app and tap the camera icon. Swipe left to open the templates library, and then scroll through to find a template that speaks to you. Tap Use Template to get started with any of them.
Prefer to get inspiration from trending audio instead? To access Instagram’s audio library, tap to create a new reel and select Audio from the menu. Then scroll through the library and tap to listen to any track.
Instagram automatically displays the number of times each track has been used, making it easy to find popular music. Note that if you have a business Instagram account, you won’t get access to commercial audio but you can still use the library to find great royalty-free music for your reels.
Finding trending content on LinkedIn can be a little trickier than it is on other social media platforms. But with tools like hashtags and news, you can follow and join conversations that are important for your industry.
Log into LinkedIn on desktop and you’ll see a LinkedIn News panel pinned to the right of your feed. The news feed automatically displays the number of readers, which makes it easy to see how popular any topic is.
When you click through to view a topic, you’ll see a summary from a LinkedIn editor. But if you scroll further, you can see popular posts on the topic. That means you can see how LinkedIn creators are framing the news, which can help you decide how to talk about it. You can also follow creators directly from this feed.
Note that LinkedIn also has a Trending Content portal for company pages. Theoretically, you can apply professional filters to the news feed and find topics that are relevant to your social media followers. But in recent months, this tool has lost a lot of functionality so I recommend manually reviewing the main LinkedIn news feed instead.
If you want to expand the list of people or pages you follow on LinkedIn, use the platform’s Hashtag tool. Use LinkedIn’s search bar to look up any hashtag and click the Follow button to start seeing some of the most popular content on the topic in your feed. Once you follow a hashtag, you can also open the hashtag feed at any time to see what’s trending.
Want to find popular creators who are talking about the topic? Search for it without the hashtag. In the search results, you’ll see an option to view People Who Talk About #Hashtag. From there, you can find and follow creators.
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Note that company pages also have hashtag feeds but the options are a little more limited. You can follow up to three hashtag topics from your company page. Then you can read and engage with the content from your company page’s hashtag feed.
Looking for ideas for reels or want to see what other pages in your niche are doing? Here’s how to get content inspiration for Facebook pages.
Since its initial rollout, Business Suite has experimented with several different recommendation formats. The current format (as of March 2023) is the most useful by far, as it appears to be customized based on the social media accounts your page follows on Facebook and the content your page publishes.
To access this tool, open Business Suite, navigate to the All Tools menu, and select Business Feed. Then open the Similar to You tab to see content ideas from businesses that Meta has identified as similar to your Facebook page. Pay attention to the captions, creative formats, and messaging the pages use to get ideas for your own content.
If your Facebook page is a local business, you can also use the Near You tab to get ideas based on what’s popular in your local area. Note that the Popular tab in the Business Suite business feed may also yield some inspiration but the content isn’t customized per page.
Want to create better reels and get more traction with the Facebook Reels placement? Facebook’s Inspiration Hub is your destination for Reels trends. If your page has switched to the New Pages Experience, access the Inspiration Hub from your professional dashboard.
Here, Facebook automatically displays suggested reels and trending audio. While this content is helpful for inspiration, many of these songs won’t be available to your account if you run a business page. Instead, scroll down to view the popular hashtags and topics and get ideas for framing your reels.
If your page still uses the Classic Pages Experience, you can access similar information in Creator Studio. Open the Tools drop-down menu and select Inspiration. You’ll see recommended creators, videos, and reels based on your account’s activity.
You don’t necessarily have to rely on Facebook to surface great content for you. Once you find Facebook pages that inspire you, follow them from your business page. Add them to your Favorites list so they appear higher in your feed. You can also opt to get notifications about their best posts to ensure you never miss anything important.
Can’t decide what kind of content to make for your YouTube channel? Use the ideas below to streamline your brainstorming process for YouTube.
The easiest way to find trending topics on YouTube is to check Explore. Go to the Trending tab to see what’s popular today.
Most of the content in this feed is long-form video. But YouTube now includes some popular shorts on the Trending tab. Make sure to scroll through to view the full list.
Since YouTube doubles as a search engine, it’s great for finding specific content. Use the search bar to look up a topic and then use YouTube’s filters to narrow the results.
For example, many broad topics show popular content that’s older at the top of the search results. With YouTube filters, you can focus on videos that were published only in the last month or week.
In many cases, your YouTube channel data can give you ideas for new content. First, open YouTube Studio and navigate to the Analytics panel. Go to the Audience tab. If your audience is large enough, you’ll be able to see channels and content your audience watches. Use this data to identify new topics for framing your videos.
Then go to the Research tab and start searching for topics that are relevant to your audience or your channel. YouTube Studio shows you search terms, popular videos, and related topics—all of which you can use to get new ideas for content. You can save any of these topics by tapping the bookmark icon in the upper right.
As you save topics, you’ll start to see recommendations appear on the Research tab. For example, you can see recent videos and search queries related to the topics you saved. YouTube Studio also identifies content gaps that are incredibly helpful for finding new topics to add to your content calendar.
Twitter’s Explore page makes it easy to find out what’s happening now. But if you’re looking for curated results, follow the steps below to get inspiration.
If you’re wasting too much time scrolling through your For You feed, set up Twitter lists to help you zero in on the best content. Select Lists from the Twitter menu and click to create a new one. Note that Twitter lists are public by default unless you opt to make them private.
Then build your list by adding inspiring accounts in your space. You can continue to add to your list anytime directly from the feed. Tap the three dots in the upper-right corner of the tweet and select Add/Remove From Lists. Then check and engage with your lists regularly.
With TweetDeck, you can create custom dashboards that include all of the Twitter content inspiration you need. Start by creating a new deck and then use the columns to add your best lists.
You aren’t limited to your own lists. You can add other accounts’ lists to TweetDeck or discover new lists to follow directly from the dashboard. Use TweetDeck’s search columns to add hashtag feeds or other advanced searches to your dashboard.
It isn’t always easy to maintain a creative mindset while producing content efficiently. With the ideas above, you can make social media trends and inspiration a regular part of your routine so you always have great ideas—and time to bring them to life as social media posts.
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