Need a reliable way to make sure you’re creating content your audience really wants?
Knowing what content to create and when to post it is half the battle of becoming a social media influencer.
You may have tons of ideas to work with, but how can you be sure your audience really wants them?
In this article, we share tips on how to crowdsource content ideas directly from your audience on social media.
1. Search on social media
The easiest way to find content ideas is to search social media himself.
Search for topics related to your niche and read the comment sections of your competitors.
You can even use a social media listening tool. This type of tool aggregates posts from multiple platforms that mention a specific keyword into one dashboard.
Social Appearance, Agorapulse and Iconosquadrat all have fantastic social media listening features.
Whether you’re doing social media research yourself or using a listening tool, what you’re looking for are questions your audience is asking or problems they’re complaining about.
There’s also a chance you won’t answer all of your competitors’ questions, which is what you’re looking for when browsing your competitors’ comment sections.
These are things you can provide a solution to in your own content.
2. Read your DM and comment section
You should also be aware of the questions your audience is asking you directly.
Pay attention to your direct messages (DM) and comments section. Your listeners may have additional questions or advice about something.
They can even make requests or suggestions for additional content.
This is popular TikTok thanks to a feature that allows creators to respond to comments with videos.
Here is an example @sunwelfashion_kate.
This creator posted a video promoting a blueberry print wallet and green cap.
When a user expressed that they wanted a grape so they could get their wallet in purple, the creator quickly responded with a video showing off their vintage wallet.
3. Ask your audience directly in a video
If you’re still not sure if the ideas you’ve chosen are of interest to your audience, try asking them directly what they want to see.
Make a short video and post it wherever you are, including TikTok. Instagram reelsYouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels.
Replay videos you’ve recently published and share analytics about them with your audience.
Share the ideas you have as well as the videos you are working on.
Then end the video by asking your audience what they want to see from you and any ideas they might be interested in.
4. Use Instagram stories
Instagram Stories There are many 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 find out what your followers think or ask for their opinion.
With a poll sticker, you can ask a question and then have your audience choose between two or four options.
With the Questions sticker, you can ask your audience a question and ask them to use the sticker to answer it.
You can even create new stories with their responses to ask what the rest of your audience thinks about the idea.
5. Use Twitter (X)
Twitter (X) has a poll feature that you can use to ask your audience a question and have them choose between several different options.
If you create a request for Instagram Stories, you can also create it on Twitter if you have a presence on that platform.
You can also create polls on Twitter competitors Bluesky and Threads.
6. Publish a community post on YouTube
Community posts are an underutilized feature YouTubebut they appear in the Home ribbon within the app.
You can use a community post to create a simple poll to ask your followers about videos they’d like to see from you.
This is a particularly useful method if most of your short-form videos are short clips taken from YouTube videos you’ve published.
Plus, YouTube lets you post image-based polls in the app, so you can show previews of your video ideas to give viewers better examples of exactly what they’re voting on.
7. Use Facebook polls
Facebook offers several different ways for you to create queries within the program.
You can create polls in posts, stories, reels, groups, and even Messenger chats.
If your audience is on Facebook, determine which types of posts are getting you the highest number of engagements. These are the types of posts you should create surveys for.
Even if you create a request for a reel or story, you should still create a request for your Facebook group because not everyone in your group necessarily follows your Facebook page.
8. Add a poll or survey to your website
Let’s say you primarily post content on the TikTok platform, which has less interactive features than Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.
You can collect feedback from your audience in your comment section, but you can collect more specific information by asking them to fill out a poll or survey on your website.
Of course, you can always ask them to fill out a survey on another social media app, but that requires them to have accounts for those apps.
On your website, they can simply fill out your request and submit it.
Alternatively, you can ask them to enter their email address to submit their answer. This is a good way to build your email list.
Don’t worry is a great tool to use to add polls and surveys to your website. Used by Ikea, Airbnb, Ford, Asos and UNICEF.
In addition to a simple survey that asks your audience to select one of many options, you can create satisfaction surveys to gauge your audience’s satisfaction with your overall content.
If you don’t have an entire website to host your survey, Woorise will even create landing pages for you.
9. Host a contest
A contest is a great way to encourage your audience to leave feedback. You can ask them to fill out a simple text box to submit their writing.
Ask them to share their thoughts on what content they want to receive from you, or ask them to share their personal struggles in your niche.
In return, they get an opportunity to earn free products from you.
SweepWidget is a fantastic tool to use for this purpose.
It allows you to host social media giveaways on your website, though there are also options for embedding landing pages.
Along with entry methods that include interacting with your social media content and profiles in various ways (like a specific Instagram post, for example), you can add a form to your giveaway item that contains questions your follower is asked to answer in order to submit an entry.
10. Create a private community
It’s a membership you offer that they pay to access your private community audience.
You can organize it yourself, but most social media creators build private communities PatreonYouTube, Twitch, Discord and similar platforms.
Patreon in particular allows you to create different types of posts, including video, image, and text-based posts.
Members of your Patreon page can comment 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. In a subtle way, it would mean asking them about the problems they are facing in your niche.
You can also add polls to Patreon posts if you want to ask their opinion on a few different ideas.
11. Go to Reddit or other forums
You may struggle to build a presence on Reddit and similar forums, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t social media platforms.
They are still a way for your target audience to come together and discuss topics related to your niche.
Regularly check subreddits and forums related to your niche in search of content ideas.
As with the first tip we offered, look for questions your audience is asking and their complaints.
You can even post your own questions to gather feedback on ideas, such as asking a subreddit for your niche what their biggest problem was.
How to organize your thoughts
Note down every idea you see. You can use plain old pen and paper, a document in Google Docs or Microsoft Word, a note-taking app like Notion, a project management app like Trello, or even a mind mapping app like Xmind, Milanote, or Coggle.
Record the number of times you see your audience talking about a specific idea. To make things easier, you can give each idea a degree of interest (high, medium or low).
When your research is complete, organize your ideas by level of interest.
Then, pick a few and brainstorm specific social media content ideas for them.
However, it is up to you to deal with them from here. You can start with your audience’s favorite ideas, your personal favorites, or even ideas that you feel you can reasonably handle without going over budget.
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