The two complaints I hear most often when it comes to social media are:
#1: I don’t know what to post
#2: I don’t have time to post everyday
That blinking cursor daunting you as you sit there and wonder, well, what in heavens name can I share today that’s worth sharing? It’s real!
You know that social media is an epic tool for marketing your business. If you’re not using it to consistently grow your brand, you’re being left in the dust. And we can’t let that happen, can we?
In this blog post I’m going to help to take the guess work out of social media posts and how to strategically plan one month of social media updates.
#1 Make sure you know your audience
Knowing what to share starts with really understanding your audience. Who are they and what can you share that will be of value to them?
Remember, your social media strategy is really not about you, it’s about the people you serve. Being able to recognize their pain points, what they’re struggling with, and then being able to provide something that will be of value to them is how you’re going to win.
You can find out a lot by looking at your Instagram and Facebook page insights and by analyzing your past posts. What kind of posts got the most engagement? What kind of tanked? This will help you to come up with ideas what to post with your customers in mind.
#2 Decide where and how often you want to post
Decide on a posting strategy that works for you and your business goals.
Because of the algorithm Facebook and Instagram use to decide what is shown on your followers feed, quality is more important than quantity. But still, being consistent counts.
I suggest posting 5 times a week on both Instagram and Facebook and then take the weekend off and enjoy being present.
If you’re active on Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat or any other social networks, add those to your mix of course.
This determines how many different pieces of content you’ll need to prepare for one month ahead.
#3 Decide what you want to share
Take some time and look at your calendar for the upcoming month. What events have you planned and how can you promote them? Any special holidays coming up?
Next think about your audience. What content would delight your audience and get them excited to engage with you? What will inspire them to take action?
Finally, what content do you already have and could repurpose? Do you have blog posts that you could rewrite for social media captions? Or insights that you shared before that you could rephrase? Make your life easier, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time!
If you’re a yoga teacher, it’s a great idea to have a theme for each month so you can focus your content around this topic. Possible ideas are explaining the chakras, or self-love, or finding balance. I’m sure you’ll come up with many more ideas yourself!
If you find writing captions difficult, I want you to ask yourself, “How would I tell my friend about this photo? What would help them understand why it matters?” Keeping your tone of voice consistent with the way you would speak if you were sipping coffee across from a friend helps your followers relate to you more.
#4 Put everything in your social media calendar
Create a google sheet and plan what you want to post where for every day. This is what it could look like:
You can (and should) share the same thing more than once and on more than one platform. Aren’t you happy I told you that? No one is reading ALL your stuff across every social media platform. And if they are, they’re a super-fan and likely won’t mind seeing the same thing twice.
Sharing and reusing content can save you a ton of time too. If you’re preparing a post for Instagram, automatically post it on Facebook or copy the text and use it for a Facebook post.
And there you go! One month of social media posts planned ahead!
I recommend planning your content on or before the first of each month. For each week, you can then create content, design images, manually share posts, and add them to your scheduling tools.
