Do you feel that you’re constantly finding new, innovative ways to promote your products or services on social media? Does social media content creation take up too much of your time? It can be difficult to produce content when you don’t have a strategy in place. Feeling as if content creation becomes more of a 'wing it' or 'I'll post something when something comes up' situation. Processes like these make content creation more inefficient, time-consuming and ineffective, which is why creating content takes up more time than you planned.
Within this article, I’ll share some time-saving tips I use to cut my content development time in half. So go and grab your notebook and pens because we're going to plan our social media content strategies.
Define Your Social Media Content Strategy Goals
First things first, before creating content, we need a social media content strategy. Whether it’s a six-month, three-month or yearly content strategy, we need to put one in place before we start generating social media content. For this strategy, I want you to think, what are your main goals for business growth? Do you want to increase sales, increase newsletter sign-ups, increase website visits or increase brand awareness? Whatever your goals are, jot them down as we’ll come back to those throughout strategy development.
Using Less Promotional Content By Using Call To Actions
The content you create needs to align with these goals however, the aim is not to be too spammy in your social media content. I always recommend a good rule of thumb is that if you feel your content is too promotional, add your promotion into the call to action at the end of your copy.
Here’s an example of a call to action you can write at the end of your caption to support your post: "Send me a message for more information about how to use my products." This call to action is simple, gets straight to the point and tells the reader what action to take after reading your post! It avoids making your content too spammy with using promotion after promotion.
Social Media Content Strategy: Time Saving Tips
Now that you’ve mapped your goals, you’ll want to start writing ideas based on those goals. A smart hack in reducing your content time is to use those ideas as a base for developing content ideas every month.
For example, if you’re posting fifteen posts per month and your goal is to increase engagement, your monthly content strategy may look like this:
3 x Educational content
2 x One liner fact
1 x One liner statistic
1 x Tutorial on ‘how to...’
2 x Promotion (product launch)
1 x Reels/video: a day in the life
And so on…
Once you've mapped out your monthly strategy, you’ll start to have a clear idea of what those content ideas should be. When planning your monthly list of content ideas, it needs to be strategic and in line with the actions you want your audience to take. Once you've created a road map of your ideas, your content creation will start flowing, processes will become easier and content creation will become more efficient.
Batch Develop Your Social Media Content
Save yourself time by planning and creating all your social media content at once for the month. Set aside time each month to go all-in and develop all the social media content required for the next calendar month. When I create content, I usually plan content the month before. I do this so I know that I've created all content needed for the next calendar month. This is so there’s no stress for potential content gaps!
Start Using a Social Media Content Scheduling Tool
Once you've developed your social media content, it's time to bulk-schedule your content into a social media scheduling tool. A few of my fond favourites are: Later and Sprout Social.
If you're new to social media or you're a small business, there are lots of free social media scheduling tools you can choose from! Most of these tools have premium options, but the free visions are perfect for those who are just starting with social media content creation.
Later (My personal favourite) - One social set (includes Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest) 30 scheduled posts per social profile
Facebook Business Suite/Creator Studio - Facebook and Instagram only with Unlimited posting.
Buffer - 3 social channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel.
Socialoomph - unlimited posting.
Final thoughts
I hope this has helped you to develop a successful content strategy for your business, let me know in the comments. If you’re finding it hard to find the time to come up with a strategy and creative content ideas to ensure your audience continues to engage with your content, I’ve got it covered. I offer growth strategies, innovative content creation and design services to help your business grow in awareness and revenue. Discover more about what I offer by booking a complimentary discovery call.