Content Planning Series: Part One
This month, I am pleased to bring you a series that’s been long in the works.
For the last 4 years, I have been employed as a full-time social media strategist. Along the way, I have picked up invaluable tips through real-world experience, as well as hours and hours of professional development. Working in social media means that you are constantly having to adapt and change strategies and implement new tactics. But one thing I can say that never changes is the commitment to telling our brand story and building an online community through social media.
In this four-part series, I will introduce you to key points every entrepreneur, small business owner, and emerging content creator should keep in mind when planning content and creating a holistic social media strategy.
Q1: Where to begin?
For folks that are looking for the VERY basics…
Sign up for business accounts on Facebook-owned properties (Facebook and Instagram) so you can have access to valuable insights/analytics and be able to sell products. If you’re on YouTube, make sure you have a channel established.
Make sure your username is consistent across all platforms, if possible. It will help SEO when potential clients, customers, or brands are searching for you online. I would also recommend avoiding underscores, periods and random numbers that aren’t relevant to your brand.
Make sure your “About” sections are filled with relevant keywords that will help search engines funnel these folks to your social media accounts.
Upload brand photos or logos to any places where a photo is required or encouraged (i.e., your Instagram profile photo, Facebook cover photo, YouTube cover photo, etc.)
Be sure to have a website, blog, or email list that you can drive people to outside of social media platforms in case your account(s) get suspended or hacked. Link this destination in every single bio you have online.
For folks that are seasoned…
Write a statement that defines your purpose of being on social media and who your ideal follower/client/customer is. After writing this statement, identify your content pillars. If you’re a content creator and a brand approached you to find out what sorts of topics you cover for a potential collaboration, you’d need to be able to answer that question. If a potential client wanted to understand the services offered by a business, they should be able to browse through your posts and identify a clear theme in the topics you regularly post about on social media. As a business owner, you’ll wear out your audience quickly if all you do is post about products and promotions. Your content pillars will help you keep a regular flow of content going out on social media and help people who follow you understand what to expect.
Example:
Julian is a content creator. His content pillars are: affordable fashion, wellness, reading, and social justice advocacy. Mia is a business owner, who designs custom jewelry. Her content pillars are: products, customer features and reviews, and small business ownership. Amira is a service provider whose niche is interior decorating. Her content pillars are: interior decor, sustainability, lifestyle, client work and testimonials.
Do a social media audit of your channels and content. This will give you a deeper insight into which channels (if you have more than one) are showing signs of opportunity for growth and insight into what types of content (content, medium, etc.) are receiving the most engagement from your audience. Check out this template from Sprout Social (our preferred CMS at my job).
Using the insights from your social media audit and the insights available to you through the social media platforms, come up with a plan of how much content and what types of content you can realistically create each week, month or quarter. Make sure to focus a significant amount of your energy on content that is going onto platforms and in mediums that will see the best return on investment (ROI) for you.
Once you have these insights and a plan on which platform(s) you’re going to focus on, you need to set goals, using a strategic plan. Write down that you intend to amass 1,000 subscribers on YouTube within 12 months or that you plan to generate $2,000 in sales through Instagram within 4 months.
After writing your strategic plan, you’ll want to outline the tactics you’re going to use to get there.
Example:
Mia has identified that within each of her content pillars there are opportunities for various types of content. For products, she can make short how-to videos about how to style her pieces with different outfits or how to care for her products. She can also make videos or take behind-the-scenes photos about her design or manufacturing process. For customer features and reviews, she can seed user-generated content (UGC) by asking customers in product packaging, or on her owned channels, to tag her in posts. She can also turn customer reviews from her website into text graphics using a service like Canva. For small business advice, she can talk about her wins and struggles on her Instagram or Facebook Stories, sharing what the day-in-the-life is like for a custom jewelry maker, or she can host a fellow business owner for a coffee chat on Instagram Live.
Once you have taken these steps to define and identify who your audience is, which channels and what types of content you will put your energy into, you can use your strategic plan to guide you on what you’ll work on from month to month or quarter to quarter. One of the best things you can do for yourself is batch content as often as humanly possible. Batching content will allow you to keep a regular flow of content going out and it will help you stay ahead instead of making things up as you go along. But more about batching and planning in the next part of this series…