Planning your social media content couldn’t get any easier than this.
Do you struggle with planning your social media content in advance?
Without any sort of prior planning, your content marketing efforts can fall flat, pushing you farther away from your objectives.
You absolutely do not want to botch things up last minute.
Having a solid plan and strategy in place ahead of time when it comes to your social media content can not only help you maintain consistency but also provide you flexibility when it comes to time-sensitive last minute changes that aren’t so last minute.
It also allows you to make sure that your content is aligned with your company’s goals for the month, besides letting other team members weigh in with their two cents.
If you think that creating a content plan for your social media is too much work and the very idea freaks you out, we’re here to make it simple for you.
7 steps to creating a kickass social media content plan
1. Know your content pillars
Content pillars or content buckets are a set of three to five broad themes that you will be consistently posting about on all social media platforms. They are the foundation on which your content marketing strategy will stand, helping you ensure no part of your target audience is ignored.
All of your post topics will be subsets of these 3-5 themes and fall under them. For example, if you’re a fitness blogger, your content pillars could be nutrition, exercise, mental health, etc.
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2. Plan the number of posts
Do you want to post every day or every alternate day? Decide how many posts you’ll be putting out in a month. But remember to keep it consistent. You cannot bombard your audience with two posts every day for a week and then disappear.
Planning the number of posts will help you feed your audience with your content in a steady manner, keeping them engaged and wanting more.
3. Make a schedule
Having a schedule will prevent you from getting trapped in the web of perfectionism, forcing you to stick to the plan and be consistent.
Decide the dates and the times you’ll be posting on. We recommend looking at your insights to get a better idea of when most of your audience is active and posting 15 minutes before that to make sure maximum people will come across your post.
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4. Write down the content for each post
Here’s where the real grunt work begins. Pick your topics, do some research, and start writing the content for every single post, including captions. Don’t leave anything for later.
If you find yourself stuck at picking topics, here’s a handy list of tools you can use: 10 content ideas tools you need on days you’re hit with a creative block.
Make sure you edit the content and repurpose it for different platforms because you don’t want to waste your time creating a separate piece of content altogether for different platforms.
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5. Select relevant hashtags
Hashtags, when used the right way, can dramatically boost your reach and engagement. So don’t leave the work of picking them out for later.
Pick the best hashtags for your niche either manually or using AI hashtag picking tools, whichever works for you, and create three sets that you can alternate between for all of your posts. Make sure each set of hashtags consists of at least 30!
6. Organize all of it in an excel sheet
Creating and maintaining a content calendar is by no means easy, but it helps you keep track of all the little facets of your posts in an organized manner.
Mention all the details for each post, properly categorizing them to make it as easy as possible for you to simply copy and paste when you’re actually posting them online. When done properly, this will save you tons of time and effort.
Here’s a glimpse at how we do it:
PS. If you’re using Trello or something similar, you can refer to this guide for planning and managing your content.
7. Start posting!
Yes, now you can let your posts see the light of day by putting them out in the world for your target audience to see.
You can post them manually or use scheduling tools like Facebook’s Business Suite, Hootsuite, Later, Planoly, Canva, etc, if the manual method is too much of a hassle for you. Whatever helps you make the job easier.
Finally, you can sit back and watch as the engagement starts rolling in.
But wait, your social media content plan shouldn’t end there!
Your work doesn’t really end here. You have to measure the performance of your content to determine whether your strategy is working or not. Get one of these six tools you can use to track key metrics and insights.
Need help nailing your social media content and marketing plan? Reach out to us here.
