by Karen Petrauskas | Jun 17, 2022
- Struggling to keep up with your social media marketing?
- Not sure what to post on your social media channels?
- Losing productivity by spending too much time on social media?
How do you manage your social media effectively and efficiently?
A (well thought-out, strategically planned, eye-catching) social media content plan is your answer. In short, an awesome content plan.
Having a social media presence is a necessity in today’s digital world, even if you are just on one platform. Managing it well and learning to work with tools that can make you both productive and efficient in your business can make a whole world of difference to the outcome, not to mention your mental health!
Many small business owners don’t realise or understand the need to create a content plan, it’s often done on a day-to-day basis and is based on whatever the person is feeling that day. There’s no strategy or thought behind it, just what comes to mind when they remember they have to post. This can create chaos on your social channels, with no real meaning behind any of it.
We understand that everyone is busy, marketing is not always at the forefront of your mind, but when you get distracted or side-tracked into doing other things within your business, your social media marketing is often the task that gets pushed aside and often forgotten, creating an inconsistent pattern. Not only does this provide inconsistency for your audience but it doesn’t give you direction or help with long-term targeting or strategies for marketing, and in turn, sales.
The most basic tool for your social media planning, is getting to grips with a content plan.
A content plan will be your best friend for life!
Here at KJP Creative, we use a pen and paper for this at the beginning stage, and write everything down so we can see everything clearly and laid out in front of us – usually working to a month’s plan. Here’s our top 5 tips for creating an awesome content marketing plan:
#1 – Map out
Create a blank view of your calendar for the month ahead, and start to fill in the gaps… Tip: use a different colour for each type of content so you can see at a glance. The more you start to fill in, you’ll see gaps of where you need content, or where you’re putting too much of the same thing together etc. Learn to spread things out, or manage a campaign at a glance.
#2 – Get thinking & start writing
Write in certain things that you know you want to share that month, these could be things that tie in with overall goals, things that work towards wider targets. Next comes some of your own content, blog posts, or articles that you’ve written. Then think about telling people about what you do, detailing different aspects of your business.
#3 – Use curated content
You can then start to drop in articles that you’ve enjoyed reading, or content that would be beneficial to your readers – it doesn’t have to be all your own content, it’s good to get an all-round view on topics. There might also be people or accounts who you can reshare content from, make notes of dates that this might be applicable.
#4 – Utilise awareness days
How about some awareness days to get your audience talking? We wouldn’t advise jumping on every awareness day that happens, but choose ones that are relevant to your readers and get them thinking and talking about real issues they face and ones they can resonate with. These are great to keep up with trends, things that happening around you, world events etc.
#5 – Tap into emotions
The key to your content plan is to create content that is going to be engaging for your readers, and is going to tap into an emotion. Emotions are so important, and there are so many out there to trigger, but hitting a nerve can be the difference between someone stopping to take notice of you, to scrolling right past and not. Find the balance, find what works well with your audience. Do they enjoy a joke, or would they prefer a motivational post?
What’s next with the content plan?
Once you’ve got your content plan together, it’s about writing the content to go with the plan, creating the images/ graphics, and scheduling. Everyone works differently, so find a pattern that works for you. And find a scheduling tool that you can get on with. Some are easier than others, some have analytics, some integrate with other platforms, some are easy for a mobile device… the choice is really down to personal preference – the key is to actually find time to doing it!
Don’t have the time? Block out sections in your diary for each part of the plan:
- Content planning
- Research
- Writing
- Graphics
- Scheduling
If you’ve only got an hour one day and half hour the next, block these times out and stick to them. Make this a regular part of your to-do list. Once you get into the habit, it’ll become easier and quicker – promise!
However, if you’re still reading and wonder how you’d ever get time to create a proper strategic content plan, or it’s simply not your forte, or what you want to be focussed on right now, we can help! That’s what we love to do, and it’s our speciality. Just contact us, and we’ll be in touch to talk further.
But for those who are ready to see your social media take off to new heights – we challenge you to take content planning seriously and give it a go. And we’d love to hear back from you once you have!
In the meantime, why not checkout our FREE Awareness Days calendar to get you started…
by Karen Petrauskas | Sep 30, 2021
Struggling with WHAT to POST on your social channels?
How much time do you waste thinking about what to write and create, when you could be spending the time busy in your business or doing something you love?!
This is where planning and preparation comes in.
Planning out your content will really help get you on track with creating awesome eye-catching, inspiring and motivational posts that attract your audience 100% and get them interacting with you and your brand, turning them into loyal and repeat customers.
Do you use a content calendar?
👉🏻 First, get a blank monthly calendar where you have space to fill in (you can message us to get our copy if it helps)
👉🏻 Then use our awesome awareness days calendar (free here) and find the days that you know your audience will resonate. Put them in the calendar and start to think about how you write content around those days ensuring that it is relevant to your followers.
👉🏻 Do you use hashtag days? #MondayMotivation for example.. schedule in a few of these and write a note with each one to get your mind already thinking about what type of post it will be.
👉🏻 The next steps is to fill in intermittent blocks with content that relates to your own business. This could be taken from your blog, your services or the expertise you can share.
👉🏻 Next you want to curate content from other reputable and reliable sources which you know would be beneficial to your audience. What sites do you read? Pass on what you like and plan a few of these posts across the month
You’ll then realise that there’s not many spaces left in your content calendar! And it probably didn’t take you much time in the grand scheme of your week. The next step would be to write the posts and get them scheduled in – but this could always be done another day – plan some time in during the week to do this.
Ongoing social media plan
Each month, if you take time to plan and prepare, it takes away the pressure of finding content on a daily basis. You can mix and match the types of material you use, you can switch up the amount of awareness day that go in, and you can take inspiration from other things that are going on around you.
If you plan time to create your images, you may find that other things come to mind at the same time. When you don’t rush, there’s time to think things through and ensure that they’re completely on brand and following your values. When you rush, there’s more chance that you’ll use content just for the sake of it – that’s never a good plan and can easily result in your brand identity falling down.
What if you don’t enjoy content creation?
That’s ok – we all have the things that we love and the things that we’re good at – if we were all the same the world would be a very boring place! Sometimes you can be better off concentrating on what you’re best at, and finding someone else to do the bits in between. As a small business owner, you can’t do everything! Outsourcing or hiring at Virtual Assistant to fill these gaps can be an efficient way to move forward. Marketing is such an important part of your business and if you haven’t got the time to do a good job, it’s not going to the job it’s supposed to do.
Whatever your situation, social media planning is the best plan to creating a sustainable and growing channel. Plan ahead and get creative! Give it a go and let us know how you get on. And if you have any tips on finding WHAT to post across your social channels, drop a comment below.
Alternatively, if you’re still struggling to come up with content that is engaging and on-brand, or simply don’t have the time or resource to do it to a good standard, or even more – want to see bigger and better results than you’re currently getting – we’d love to chat with you. Hit the contact button and give us a bell and let’s see how we can work together.
by Karen Petrauskas | Nov 30, 2017
Keeping a blog up to date and keeping on top of it takes time and effort but is extremely valuable when it comes to your business.
Putting measures in place for your brand to become noticed and for your sales to increase, is a good step in growing and expanding your business. Everyone wants their business to expand and to be successful but not everyone manages to achieve this or has the knowledge in how to drive it forward to achieve results.
There are several reasons why it’s important to keep a blog for your business and to keep it updated regularly so let’s take a look at them …
- Increase brand awareness
- Be seen as a thought leader
- SEO
- Adds value to your business
Brand awareness
The more you write and the more you share your blog posts online, the more people are going to hear about your business. Your ultimate goal is to see your business grow and therefore you want people to hear about you and your brand.
When you write a blog post, you have an instant piece of information to share on social media, to share with your network and for people to hear about you.
Shout about it! Share it across all the platforms that your business uses, share it on you personal profiles, if you have employees, encourage them to share the company posts… The more it gets shared, the more your business will get seen.
Expertise and recognition
The more you write about topics that your business deals with and you share your knowledge about a certain topic, the more you will become and been seen by others, as an expert in your field, in your industry.
Write blog posts about topics that you know your audience will want to hear about and try to answer solutions to what they might be less knowledgeable about.
The best way to grow a business is to solve a problem. People want answers and they want them instantly. Research about what your ideal audience are trying to achieve or what they are looking for and write about it!
The further you go with keeping your blog updated and are able to provide solutions in order to help others, or to provide valuable tips and advice, the more you will be seen as a thought leader. This will result in more people visiting your site and in turn, if you’re marketing correctly, more sales.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is a very important step in a successful website and for your business to be found on Google or any another search engine, it needs to have good SEO. According to HubSpot, 80% of a websites traffic comes from a search query, so your SEO is extremely important and not to be overlooked.
You may have a great looking website and everyone looks fantastic within that, but what is the point of it if it doesn’t gain any traffic? If no one visits your website then you are putting a lot of effort in for no reason.
Writing a blog post or keeping your website updated on a regular basis shows the search engines that you are maintaining your site, that you are looking after it by updating it and that adding valuable information for people to search for and read.
Google scans through websites and will determine which websites will be shown at the top of searches. Simply filling a web page with lots of images does not give Google information to be able to use in their listings… Valuable and meaningful information will please Google. Obviously there is a lot more that goes into SEO that we can go into another time but having good structure and updated content within your website is a good start.
Adds value
Adding a blog to your website enables a researcher to see what you as a company can offer.
If there are two websites offering the same product or service but one showed knowledge and offers advice and the other website was a static one-page information sheet, you could probably make an assumption that the buyer would choose the first option.
Add value to your business, show your potential clients (and also your current clients) that you value your business and you are proving what you have to offer.
As we mentioned in the beginning, we understand that keeping a blog is time consuming and takes a lot of time to do properly and correctly. If a blog is started, it’s a good idea to keep it going rather than letting it fizzle out, to keep the above points valid.
Here at KJP Creative we offer content creation packages so you don’t have to worry about finding the time to write yourself. Get in touch if you’d like to find out more!
