It’s no secret that social media is a big beast; the trends are forever changing, and there’s always a new platform on the horizon – sometimes it’s hard to know where to start!
When it comes to content planning and creation, it’s important to follow a structure to stay consistent, figure out your direction and set yourself some goals. Check out the steps below, to help you get started.
1. Know your audience 👥
The first step, and the foundation for creating good social media content is understanding who your audience is. You can have the most visually stunning imagery, or the funniest videos (in your opinion) – but if it doesn’t speak to your audience, it’ll flop… So, first things first, understand who you’re talking to and brainstorm what it is that specific audience is interested in.
2. Create a calendar 🗓️
Using your platform of choice (Microsoft Excel works fine – you don’t have to spend a fortune), create a monthly calendar that shows an overview of all the content you have planned for the month ahead. This will help with visualising where you have gaps and will create a communal place for the team to put their ideas and review content before it goes live.
3. Set Goals 📈
Set yourself some SMART goals and refer to them when planning your content. For example:
- Increase followers by X.
- Increase engagement by X.
- Post X times per week.
- Get X sign-ups for the monthly newsletter.
Tip: Check back in with your goals and analyse the insights from the posts you create; be prepared to change it up if it’s not working.
4. Build content pillars 💡
A content pillar is a key theme or topic that determines your content. Building out a combination of several pillars helps to ensure you’re posting a variety of content while working towards your company/brand goals. It also gives you some structure to work with when planning your content. Content pillar examples could be: News/insights, our product/offering, education, company culture, or customers.
Tip: Make sure your content pillars line up with your goals.
5. Get posting! 📲
Now you can get posting! A lot of social media comes down to trial and error; we can make assumptions and educated guesses about what our audiences will engage with – but we won’t know for sure until we try. So be bold and brave and give it a go!
Tip: Don’t forget to measure the success of your posts and take your learnings to inform your decisions for upcoming content.