I’m Back!

Hey Marathoners! It’s been a while. In case you didn’t know, on October 27, 2021, I welcomed my son Luca William Chakalos into the world (two and a half weeks early… I think he gets his impatience from me). He has flipped our world upside down in the best possible way, which meant I had to take a step back from this podcast for a bit, but now I’m back! I’m excited to continue serving you tons of marketing goodness with the Marketing Your Local Business Online podcast!

Today’s episode is all about planning social media content. Content planning can be daunting, but I am going to provide you with some strategies to help you minimize the time you spend on social media while maximizing your content – including how to plan an entire month of social media content at once. 

Your time is your most valuable and non-renewable resource, so you want to make sure you aren’t wasting too much time scrolling through social media each day for your business. If you’re constantly posting content on the fly, you are wasting valuable time each month. When you’re in a creative mood and planning more than one post at a time, you actually will save a ton of time.

How to Plan a Month of Social Media Content

Planning a month of social media content is totally possible! I do it for my clients each month and I want to give you my exact process to do it! 

Step 1: Set Priorities for the Month

Think about what you want to share about this month.  Are you getting  new products? Do you have a goal to sell a certain number of products? Is your goal to book out for a certain service? Are you hosting any events? Are there important holidays coming up where you want to hit a certain revenue number?  

Step 2: Outline Your Posting Topics on Your Content Calendar

Give yourself a big picture overview of when you’re going to talk about the things that help you reach your goals for the month. Your content calendar can be in many formats, but I recommend using a digital content calendar (I love and recommend  Airtable) to outline when you are going to share about the things you decided on in Step 1. Remember, you will want to share about a certain topic more than once so it sticks with your audience!

Step 3: Identify Where and How You Will Share About Each Topic

Determine which platforms your post will be shared on and how you will share that post. Will it be a photo, live video, Reel, infographic, etc.? For example, if you’re having a sale for Valentine’s Day and want to highlight a few products, you may do a carousel post on Instagram and decide to do a live video on Facebook.

Step 4: Draft Content

This is the meaty part! Now it’s time to write those posts. I’ve found it helpful to divide this part into 2  time blocks if I start writing and start to find myself hitting a wall where it’s taking a long time to write. Airtable has a great feature where you can have a section on each topic card to write your post for each platform. 

Step 5: Schedule Your Content

Now that you’ve created your content for the month, you can get it scheduled. I recommend an online scheduling tool like Sprout Social or Later to help with this step. These tools have great analytics and time saving integrations. Sprout Social has a  Google MyBusiness integration that can be super nifty for local businesses.  If you’re looking for a free tool and your business is on Facebook and Instagram, then Creator Studio is a good option as well. 

Step 6: Add Times to Your Calendar for Following Up & Showing Up

There will be certain things that you can’t schedule like live videos or showing up on Stories. Refer back to your content calendar for these things. You’ll also want to designate time to check your social media notifications. Add them to your calendar so you’re not always opening social media and getting lost in the scroll.

Step 7: Evaluate Content Performance

At the end of each month, you’ll want to take a look at your analytics to determine what did well! Identify  your 5 top-performing posts and try to figure out why they were so successful– was it the time it was posted? The type of content? The photo? Do the same kind of analysis with your 3 worst performing posts. Use these insights to inform how you approach social media content the next month.

 

By following these steps, you’ll be able to take care of an entire month’s worth of social media planned at once, so you have more time to focus on your business. 

If you have any questions about today’s episode or topics you’d like covered in the future, I’d love to hear from you! Shoot me an email at sydney@marathonmarketingbranding.com or DM me  on Instagram. Until next time, keep running your race!