Content Planning With A Social Media Strategist

Create a content plan with a social media strategist

Every.Single.Successful client I have has said the exact same thing to me, “I do not have time to spend on social media.” When your business is booming you simply do not have the time to post on social media and honestly, most of my clients are so busy growing a business that they do not actually have a strategy when it comes to marketing and social media. In fact, most simply post because they have been told it's important and that they need it but do not actually know what drives engagement, creates leads or generates sales. Posting random content and hoping for the best is just not an effective strategy and most definitely is not worth spending your time on. 

However, a well thought out, actionable social media marketing strategy can be just thing to catapult your business to the next level and the secret is that it does not need to consume all your time and energy! Do I have your attention now?

​Below are the steps I use when working with a client to plan their content:

1. Know your goals for the year, quarter, month or week? What do you want to achieve with your marketing strategy? Do you have a revenue goal? How many followers do you want? Are you launching a new product? Knowing what you want to achieve will keep your marketing strategy on track and focused on your end goal.
2. Plan your year at-a-glance. Using a calendar (electronic or paper) write down your goals, any planned product or service launches, and plan themes around any audience relevant holidays, events, conferences, speaking activities for the upcoming year. I start by doing this for the year or quarter. 
3. Think about what you want to do with your social media - inspire, educate, entertain, build a community, showcase a lifestyle, build a brand? What types of posts work best for your audience - photos, videos, stories, articles, etc - and what platform is your audience using? Check out your analytics, competitors and accounts that share your target market  and see what perform well - videos, quotes, pictures of your dog, etc. While doing this research write down any accounts that you love and/or would like to collaborate. See what hashtags they are using, note details of their Stories or photos, what are their captions like, long? Short? 
4. ​Now we dive deeper into your planning process and begin planning for the month. Refer to your yearly calendar, goals and themes and think about what you can share to achieve those goals. 

​           Here is a list of the different types of posts I pull from when brainstorming content:

24 Different Types Of Content For Social Media

Create a list like the one above when planning your content then determine what the posts will be: 

• Live Videos
• Pre-Recorded Videos    
• Text
• Photo
• Stories (Instagram & Facebook) 
• Articles/Blog Posts/Vlog Post
• Other people’s content

Now simply put this into your calendar, planner or even directly into a scheduler that can publish your posts.

Here is a simple look at what a weekly plan would look like for myself:

Sample Content Schedule

You can easily implement this process into your own content planning and creation. The trick is to not overthink it, keep it simple and focused on your overall goal. If your goal is to grow your Instagram following do not lose sight of that. Pick one goal for a quarter or month, depending on the goal, and then simply plan your content around actionable steps which make that goal achievable. 

Now that you have the road map to planning your content it's time to start creating it. So many of us focus on "what to post" and get caught up creating the perfect content plan that we fail to actually create the content.

​Time to start planning and creating!!

In over your head? If you are looking for some extra support with planning and creating your content or simply do not have the time to manage your social media book a free discovery call with Melanie. 

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