Many marketers know they need to put out a variety of post on social media, but that can take a good bit of time.
I see many of those people who log into their social accounts each day and then start looking for something they can share. They may search for links to great articles, look on YouTube for a video or try to find ideas for an image on Instagram. Once they find something, then they go and make it.
This means they may take an hour or more just to get a post for the day. Since most marketers don’t have an endless amount of time to spend on social media each day, their time is wasted looking for or making a post for each platform.
Therefore, they are missing out on the MOST important part of social media…Being social!
Engaging with your target audience is so important, yet that is what usually gets put off when you don’t plan ahead. By having your post ready for each platform, you can then log in each day and talk to people without the worry or stress of finding and making your own post.
In this video I talk about planning your post ahead, not just a day or 2 ahead, but a month at a time ahead. This means you are not only gathering your ideas for post, but having images already made, your short videos made, your links to relevant post gathered and anything else you may need.
If you are someone who tends to only make a few post at a time, I suggest you do not allow yourself to post at all on social media until you have an entire month ready and then go in and schedule it all at once. This takes away the instant gratification of posting each day on the spur of the moment. But, once you do get all your post scheduled a month ahead on each platform, you will be able to feel a sense of accomplishment and relief. You can then log in each day and enjoy talking to your customers, rather than just searching for things to post.
Put off the instant gratification for a much better feeling of relief and accomplishment.
If you are struggling to get your companies social media on track, contact me to set up a consultation appointment today.
Video Transcript -
Are you planning out your social media in bulk? If not why? It's the easiest way to do things, here's a few tips for you.
Hey guys, I'm Sheryl Loch with Ginger Roots Media and as some of you probably know I handle a lot of social media accounts. I do consulting for them and help people understand how to get things lined up to get their social media flowing. One of the big things is planning ahead.
You've all heard about content calendars. Everybody talks about it, well once you get a Content calendar it doesn't mean you're going to fill in every space with exact titles, exact post, exact everything. Maybe you just want to go easy with your social media and get started that way, because when it comes to blog posts that can be a little harder to do.
But as far as social media planning in bulk...
I've got a client and what we did is, we have decided for each platform, what type of posts we are going to put out, on each type, on each day of the week. So Mondays we're going to have one type of post, Tuesdays another, Wednesdays another, Thursday... some of them are more general.
But what we did is instead of her fighting day to day to go in and try to find something to post or make an image or create a little video or whatever. We sat down and we made X amount of videos. Then we gathered everything we need and we made X amount of images.
She's been gathering links to articles that are relevant to her niche. So then last night I set and I scheduled Facebook videos, Facebook images. She's putting in the links to the articles and writing things.
Now when we do this we have everything planned out for a month or two. We do have the option of going in and changing it up, so if she finds something extremely relevant for that day, she can go in and put that in no biggie. We're not going to, we can either have an extra post that day or you just change the scheduled date. But everything is made and scheduled, so this leaves her time to do one of the most important things on social media and that's engage!
Because engagement is where a lot of people struggle. They spend an hour each day going in to look, to find relevant posts that they can share. To make an image, to make the videos and that takes away from their engagement time. Well without engagement you're not going to get anywhere.
So take today, tomorrow, this weekend, decide what kind of posts you're going to make for your content on different social media platforms. Then sit down, don't worry about posting.
Take a day, two days, possibly a week depending on how fast you move, how many platforms you are trying to fill and what you can find. But sit down and do this all at once.
Don't say oh I'm going to make three images today and I'll make three images... no! Sit down make 30 images for Instagram. Go out gather every piece you need then open your image editor and make all of them at once.
Same with video. Get every piece you need, if you are doing like the inspirational videos or the fun videos where it's not you talking about relevant today things.
Vloggers you have a little different thing going.
But get every piece you need gathered. Take the time to do it before you ever start making them. Gather everything you need. Make it! Make 30 little videos.
Go through your Twitter streams, your Nuzzle, your Facebook post, grab links put them on word doc save it! You need a minimum of say 30. Then once you get all your pieces gathered go in and make it!
Sit down make all the images at once!
All the videos at once!
You may want to gather all of your links at once!
Links are easy, you can always grab those during the day when you see something cool keep that doc open. Then once you have everything made, you go in and you start scheduling so this stuff is going out. You don't have to worry about it. The post for each platform is written, the image, the video, the link added, everything is scheduled!
So now all you have to do for the next 30 days is find another day to keep making them, because 30 days goes by quick!
And this allows you, when you log in to say Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, you don't have to start stressing over making this crap. It's already made! It's already scheduled! Hell it could've went out while you were doing something else, then when you get to that social platform, all you need to do is go in and answer the comments on your posts, talk to people on other pages, or other accounts.
It leaves you time for engagement, then in a couple weeks, no longer than that, you need to go in and go through this exact same process.
Does it take you a day, two days, three days possibly a week to get it done?
It might but then you are free to do everything else. So this, trying to do everything right then and there is bullshit! You're never going to get ahead. You're never going to be able to keep up. You're wasting time!
So instead of wasting that time each day, get it in your head you're going to do it. You're going to make it and then get it all scheduled.
So that's my my tip of the day for social media!
Don't live day to day! Plan ahead! Once you get in this routine it will go so much smoother.
You'll enjoy social media again. You'll get to engage, you're going to grow your following just because of your engagement and your ability to enjoy it.
So leave us a comment with your tip on how you plan out your social media content calendar!
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