Content Planning for Brands & Businesses
1. Determine the social media platforms you want to market yourself on.
Are you on platforms that work for your business? Identify where your audience is and how you want to connect with them. A few things to keep in mind when you decide where you want to focus your marketing efforts:
Your Resources
Your Audience
2. Choose goals for your social media marketing.
This is also a part of your business marketing plan. If you’re a little unsure of your brand at the moment, check out my Branding Checklist. Otherwise, you can start by building on top of your current business goals.
What are you marketing to people?
→products online?
→a location for people to visit?
→the growth of a digital community?
→starting conversations?
→ticket sales?
Write down a few things you want to accomplish through your social media marketing. Make these trackable goals by defining what success would look like to you. For example, if your goal is bring more traffic to your website, add how many visitors you’d like to see on a monthly, quarterly, and/or yearly basis. By tracking your progress, you can continue to adjust your strategy for the best possible results.
Your Resources
Your Audience
3. Start creating your content.
There are tons of ideas out there (and maybe you’re already doing some of them you’ve seen) to help brands plan daily and monthly content for the social media. Sometimes all you need is a few prompts to get started.
What are you marketing to people?
→products online?
→a location for people to visit?
→the growth of a digital community?
→starting conversations?
→ticket sales?
Write down a few things you want to accomplish through your social media marketing. Make these trackable goals by defining what success would look like to you. For example, if your goal is bring more traffic to your website, add how many visitors you’d like to see on a monthly, quarterly, and/or yearly basis. By tracking your progress, you can continue to adjust your strategy for the best possible results.
Social Media Prompts
This is the calendar that’s part of my 5 Day Content Planning Workbook and it has six weeks of post prompts to help kick start your planning. There are a ton of prompts already out there too (if you do a quick search online for social media calendars) to get ideas flowing. A few ways to start brainstorming your content are to align your posts directly with your goals. Depending on your business, you’ll want to find a balance between sharing what you offer and connecting with your audience.
Selling a product
→ share a photo of your product
→ share reviews
→ share the way your product makes your customers’ lives easier
→ share behind-the-scenes of what goes into creating that product
→ share related products
selling a service
→ share the process to sign up or get started
→ share testimonials from people that have used your service
→ share what you love aout providing that service
→ share how your product helps your clients
Batch Content Planning For Social Media
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Create 6 Weeks of Content in 5 Days
This 5 Day Workbook Challenge focuses on five aspects to focus your marketing on: People, Business, Brand, Engagement, and You. Each day includes a page of notes reviewing the topic and a page for you to brainstorm and plan your content. The six week post idea calendar is built to correspond with the topics you’ll go through each day.
6 Week Calendar of Post Prompts
+ 5 Pages of Post Prep Notes
+ 5 Pages of Brainstorming
4. Start posting and scheduling your content.
For my own business page feed, personally, I’m a Save Draft type of person. For my social media management clients, I schedule and draft posts ahead of time according to the plan I’ve made for them. My personal page is usually on the fly (and that’s part of the fun).
There are plenty of tools out there to help you publish to social media and it comes down to what works for you. A few of my favorite publishing platforms that I’ve used for myself and clients:
→ Facebook Creator Studio – I cannot say enough about how handy this is. If you haven’t checked it out, you need to.
→ Tailwind – great for scheduling Pinterest content. They have a few tools for publishing on different platforms but I use them for their Pinterest tools.
→ Later – manages most social media platforms and has plans available for what you require. I love their visual planner and the way you can organize your media to be easily scheduled.
→ Buffer – they also have a range of plans to work for your business and I find theirs work really well with social media growth.
I also use a calendar for myself and each of my clients to keep track of long terms posting plans. You can download the Google Slides version for $5 here: 2021 Marketing Planning Calendar Template.
5. Track your progress and adjust your social media strategy as you go.
This is why we created trackable goals! A properly executed social media plan takes up time and effort. If what you’re doing isn’t working, don’t keep wasting your time. The more you get the hang of your social media, the more you’ll get back from it.
Make a habit of writing down the results of your campaigns once their complete as well as reviewing your social media insights on a monthly basis. There are tools you can use, free and paid, to help you track these. However, there’s something to be said for a simple spreadsheet to get yourself started.
Over time, you’ll be able to figure out:
→ what days and times are best to post
→ the types of posts that do well – his includes figuring out what types of posts help you reach your goals, such as what kinds of posts get you the most clicks, shares, or messages
→ which platforms help you engage with your audience
→ hashtags that help you reach the right people
→ the kind of content that resonates with your audience
From there, you can refine your social media approach:
→ start testing different types of photos and captions paired together
→ get creative with your posts to push your brand to a new level
→ plan out regularly effective social media campaigns
→ give even more valuable content to your audience
→ set higher and more in-depth goals
Adapting to the current market
→ Throwback Thursdays – if you weren’t on board before, now is a great time to start. It’s a great way to recycle old content without having to stress about photos, graphics, and captions.
→ Team or Staff Photos – business closures happened for a reason but it means you and your staff have a better chance at keeping themselves and everyone else healthy and safe. Share your team members and feature them in their own post.
→ Transparent Planning for the Future – take your behind-the-scenes planning public (within reason, of course). Talk about events you’re dreaming up, products you’re getting excited for, and collaborations in the works.
→ Community – chances are you know someone personally or know of someone in your community that has an essential business and has remained open. Share their businesses! Even if you don’t know them, sharing what’s going on within your community is a great way to keep your account positive and active.
→ Embrace DIY Info – is there something you offered in-store (as a product or service) that someone might be able to do at home to maintain? From home workouts to how to file down your gel nails, there’s probably something you can help your clients and customers do from home.
→ Give In-Depth Insights to Your Products and/or Services – this could’ve been something you were doing before but might not have had time to do in detail. With extra time on your hands, you can go above and beyond to share creative information about what you offer.
If you still find yourself at a loss of things to post, you can still use this time to plan for your future marketing. Take product photos, prep graphics, and update your website!Create a Social Media Marketing Plan for Your Business
- April 6, 2020
- 10 Minute Read
- Marketing Resources
