‘Content Plan? What Content Plan? 

As a small business owner its exhausting keeping up with the constant demands of Social Media posts on top of actually running your business. 

Can you imagine being in the situation where you have a clear plan of what to post for the next 12months in your business –  with content planned so you can relax and spend more time talking to your family and doing things you enjoy. 

Are you struggling to imagine that it’s even possible?  

Then keep reading.

I’m going to talk through my preferred framework to create a content plan. Follow these five steps and you can easily, with a little bit of work, create a plan that will see you right through the any busy periods.

1. Foundations

Don’t miss this step. It’s the biggest one and the easiest one for small businesses to miss. You have to be really clear about two things:

• know your business 

• know your audience 

Spend time thinking about what it is that makes you special as a business and what it is that your audience wants from you. Understanding how these two can come together is key.

2. Goals  

 What are your goals? 

Why are you on social media? 

There’s no point being on social media if you’re just posting for the sake of posting. There needs to be some kind of strategy and reason for what you post including a structured content plan.  If you’re not convinced then do check out my recent blog “7 Reasons why you need a Social Media Strategy”

In terms of goals, what I mean is:

• are you looking to get ‘brand awareness’? 
• Are you quite new to social media? 
• Do you need to spend time getting people to know you and understanding who you 
• What is the personality of the brand, the products and the services you have or
• are you further along in that you need to find people who are willing to leave social media and go to your website, your e-commerce site to buy from you?

You need to understand those goals because that determines what type of content and how you’re going to post.  Once you know the goals it’s time to come up with ideas that tie in with that goal.

3.Ideas

There’s no point sitting down, or at least you’d like to avoid those times, when you’re sitting down just staring at the screen what shall I post today?  Oh my goodness I haven’t done anything. I need to just put something up!

Really you should be strategic and think about what your content is and that means taking the time. Step away from your desk, get a pen and paper and think about what it is. What ideas do you have? Write them all down. Don’t discount anything –  no idea is silly at this point.  Write down anything that could be useful and that could serve your audience. What your product and what your business does.

Then do some research.  – There are lots of ways to do research

• It could be on the social media platforms themselves. 
• You could use Google. 
• A third-party tools or 
• Ask your current audience.

 

4.Social Media Know-how 

Of course, you do need to understand social media platforms. Each of them has their own little nuance 

• do you use hashtags
• do you not use hashtags?
• should you be joining in Twitter hours?
• On LinkedIn are you taking advantage of the stories options they have now? 

You may need to bring in some expert advice here (do check out some of my other blogs) but there’s no reason you can’t play around have some fun experimenting and seeing what your audience prefer. 

Don’t forget to check the insights (or metrics) to see which posts have seen the most engagement and keep a note of what works well – and what doesn’t.

 

5.Planning

 

 Lastly, it’s about planning.  As I said right at the beginning the ideal is to have a plan that we can stick to so that we’re not in that situation where we sit down and wonder and panic about what we’re going to post. 

The way to do this is to start off key content messages. 

Are they relevant to a particular time of year? Think about what your products or services are. Are there peaks and troughs in your business that you know about and therefore particular key bits of information should be planned around that?

Once you have an idea of what you’re doing in your business you can decide how that works into an annual plan, then focus or each quarter in more details and finally month by month etc.  

The last thing to say here is that it doesn’t mean that everything’s scheduled. There’s nothing beats on the spot engagement. You can leave space if that’s how you like to work but at least have a plan and know what you’re talking about in that week.

 

To summarise the five steps are:

• Be clear about your foundations 
• Set goals
• Brainstorm ideas about what content your audience wants
• Take time to learn specifics about your chosen social media platform(s).
• Create a plan

 

 

 if you’ve liked what you’ve seen then you click here to join my FREE Facebook Group  or sign up to my weekly newsletter on the right hand side menu. 

if you’d like to book a free 15-minute consultation with me to see how I can help you please use this link   We can work on your content and strategy or perhaps you’d like some help on that social media know-how – its amazing what we can cover in 1hr.