Do you need a surefire way to ensure you're creating content your audience actually wants?
Knowing what kind of content to create and when to post it is half the battle of being a social media influencer.
You might have a lot of ideas to work with, but how can you be sure your audience actually wants them?
In this post, we share tips on how to crowdsource content ideas directly from your audience on social media.
1. Search social media
The easiest way to find content ideas is to search social media itself.
Search topics related to your niche, and read through your competitors' comment sections.
You can even use a social media listening tool. This kind of tool compiles posts that mention a specific keyword from multiple platforms into one dashboard.
Vista Social, Agorapulse and Iconosquare all have fantastic social media listening features.
Whether you search on social media yourself or use a listening tool, what you're looking for are questions your audience asks or problems they complain about.
There's also a chance your competitors aren't answering all of their questions, which is what you're looking for when you browse your competitors' comment sections.
These are things you can provide solutions for in your own content.
2. Read your DMs and comment section
You should also be aware of questions your audience asks you directly.
Keep an eye on your direct messages (DMs) as well as your comment section. Your audience may ask follow-up questions or your advice about something.
They may even make requests or suggestions for additional content.
This is popular on TikTok thanks to a feature that allows creators to reply to comments with videos.
Here's an example from @sunwelfashion_kate.
This creator posted a video that advertised a wallet styled in blueberry print and a blueberry clasp.
When a user stated they wanted a grape one so they could have the wallet in purple, the creator was quick to reply with a video that showcased their grape wallet.
3. Ask your audience directly in a video
If you're still not sure if the ideas you picked out are of any interest to your audience, try asking them what they'd like to see directly.
Film a short-form video, and post it wherever you have a presence, including TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels.
Recap videos you've posted recently, and share analytics about them with your audience.
Share ideas you have as well as any videos you're already working on.
Then, finish off the video by asking your audience what they'd like to see from you and if any of the ideas you have interest them.
4. Use Instagram stories
Instagram Stories have a lot of features you can use to ask your audience simple questions.
With stickers, you can add an interactive poll or Q&A element to your stories to get your audience's opinions about something or ask them for ideas.
With the poll sticker, you can ask a question, then have your audience choose between two and four options.
With the questions sticker, you can ask your audience a question and have them use the sticker to give their answers.
You can even create new stories with their answers so you can ask the rest of your audience what they think about the idea.
5. Use Twitter (X)
Twitter (X) has a poll feature you can use to ask your audience a question and have them choose between a few different options.
If you create a poll for Instagram Stories, you might as well create it on Twitter if you have a presence on that platform.
You can create polls on Twitter's competitors Bluesky and Threads as well.
6. Publish a community post on YouTube
Community posts are an underutilized feature on YouTube, but they appear in the Home feed within the app.
You can use a community post to create a simple poll to ask your audience about videos they'd like to see from you.
This is an especially useful method to use if most of your short-form videos are short clips taken from YouTube videos you've published, anyway.
Plus, YouTube allows you to post image-based polls on the app, so you can show previews of your video ideas to give your audience better examples of what exactly they're voting for.
7. Use Facebook polls
Facebook offers a few different ways for you to create polls within the app.
You can create polls in posts, stories, reels, groups and even Messenger chats.
If your audience is on Facebook, determine which post types earn you the highest level of engagements. These are the post types you should create polls for.
Even if you create a poll for a reel or story, you should still create one for your Facebook group since not everyone in your group will necessarily follow your Facebook page.
8. Add a poll or survey to your website
Let's say you primarily post content on TikTok, a platform that has fewer interactive features than Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
You can gather audience feedback in your comment section, but you can also gather more definitive data by asking them to fill out a poll or survey on your website.
Sure, you can always ask them to fill out a poll on another social media app, but that would require them to have accounts for those apps.
On your website, they can simply fill out your poll, and submit it.
Alternatively, you can require them to enter their email addresses in order to submit their responses. This is a good way to build your email list.
Woorise is a fantastic tool to use to add polls and surveys to your website. It's used by Ikea, Airbnb, Ford, Asos and UNICEF.
Along with a simple poll that asks your audience to choose one option out of many, you can create satisfaction surveys to gauge your audience's satisfaction with your content overall.
Woorise will even host landing pages for you if you don't have an entire website to embed your survey onto.
9. Host a contest
A contest is a fantastic way to incentivize your audience to provide feedback. You can require them to fill out a simple textbox in order to submit their entries.
Have them share opinions about what kind of content they'd like to receive from you, or ask them to share personal struggles they've had in your niche.
They receive an opportunity to win a free product from you in return.
SweepWidget is a fantastic tool to use for this purpose.
It allows you to host social media giveaways on your website, though it does have options for hosting landing pages as well.
Along with entry methods that include interacting with your social media content and profiles in various ways (such as liking a specific Instagram post), you can add a form to the giveaway element that includes questions your follower is required to answer in order to submit their entry.
10. Create a private community
A private community is a membership you offer to your audience that they pay to access.
You can host it yourself, but most social media creators build private communities on Patreon, YouTube, Twitch, Discord and similar platforms.
Patreon, in particular, allows you to create a variety of different post types, including video, image and text-based posts.
Members of your Patreon page can leave comments on posts. This nifty little feature gives you a way to ask the most engaged members of your audience for content ideas.
You can do this directly or subtly. Subtly would mean to ask them about problems they're facing in your niche.
You can also add polls to Patreon posts if you'd prefer to ask for their opinion about a few different ideas.
11. Hop on Reddit or other forums
You may find it difficult to build a presence on Reddit and similar forums, but that doesn't mean they're not social media platforms.
They're still a way for your target audience to get together and discuss topics related to your niche.
Browse subreddits and forums related to your niche regularly in search of content ideas.
Like in the first tip we offered, look for questions your audience asks and complaints they make.
You can even post your own questions to collect feedback about ideas, such as asking a subreddit for your niche what their biggest challenge has been.
How to organize your ideas
Jot down each idea you see. You can use plain old pen and paper, a document in Google Docs or Microsoft Word, a notetaking app like Notion, a project management app like Trello, or even a mindmap app like Xmind, Milanote or Coggle.
Make note of the number of times you see your audience talk about a specific idea as well. You can give each idea an interest grade (high, medium or low) to make things easier.
When your research is complete, organize your ideas by level of interest.
Then, pick a few, and come up with specific social media content ideas for them.
However you tackle them from here is up to you. You can start with your audience's favorite ideas, your personal favorite ideas or even the ideas you feel you can reasonably tackle without going over budget.
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