How do you feel when planning your social media posts?
When it is time to post out on social media do you feel relaxed and happy that you have great content ready to go. Or, do you feel that sinking feeling in your stomach and you instantly get a mental block and can’t even think of how to write a birthday message to your bestie, let alone come up with some creative writing to attract people to interact with you?
I am happy to say that I am now in the first category, although it wasn’t always that way. I have literally thousands of social media posts all pre-prepared that I can tap into at any time I need.
When I sit down with clients and talk to them about creating banks of posts, I invariably get asked how I think of so much content and how I can prepare so many posts in advance.
Many women I talk to feel they simply cannot think of so much content and feel overwhelmed at the thought of preparing just one month of posts in advance and struggle to get in the creative mood.
I used to be the same until I found a way that simplified the whole process for me and saved me hours (if not days) of struggling to come up with ideas of what to write.
And I am now going to share with you how to do it.
Create the social media posts
Firstly, I come up with a topic to cover and focus on for each month.
I then sit down and offload all my thoughts on each subject onto paper (or rather my laptop). I start off with headings, subheading and then bullet points. I then split this into 4 separate sections and flesh out the content, creating 4 blog posts (one for each week and all linking to each other). If you can write 2000 words on each subject matter, these can easily be split down into 4 x 500 word blogs.
Personally, I find blocking out one day each month and writing in this way keeps the creative juices flowing and by breaking one long subject down into 4 gives me enough content each month.
I then take each individual blog post and from this come up with numerous social media posts that can be used again and again.
From each blog post, I will usually extract:
- 2 top tips
- 2 quotes
- 1 bitesize video (approx. 2 minutes)
- 1 video tutorial or Facebook Live broadcast
- 1 key question to pose to readers to gain their interest
You can immediately see from the above that I now have 8 instant posts for social media each week by using the initial long blog post, breaking down ad creating the extra content types from it.
Have a read of my post on how to create content from one blog post as this will give you some more ideas. http://www.thesmallbusinesskit.com/blog/repurpose-blog-content/
Finally, for each main subject, I then create a freebie giveaway
Planning to use your social media posts
Using this system, I can easily create 33 posts for each month. I record all of these in a spreadsheet and make a note of when and where I post them so that I don’t duplicate the same post across 2 channels on the same day.
On day 1, I may post the blog post in my Facebook group and post a question on my Facebook page. I may also post a top tip in another group.
If you are really organised, you could plan a longer series each quarter.
If you are in the weight loss industry you might choose a 3-month series on the lines of:
- Getting in the right mindset to lose weight
- Choosing the right diet for you
- Losing the first stone
You can then create 12 individual blog posts from these main subjects, with a further 74 individual posts (are you still with me?).
Record all your posts into a spreadsheet which you then simply copy and paste from when you need to post out on your chosen social media channels. Over time you will create a huge bank of posts that can be used time and time again with your chosen audience.
If you use a social media scheduler, you can pre-plan your posts for the month ahead. All you have to then do is to make sure you check in each day to see what interaction you are getting, respond to comments and tweak if necessary.
Using this system, I now spend no more than half an hour on social media each day. It’s so liberating!!
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