How to Easily Plan Every Social Post
5 STEPS TO CREATING A SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT CALENDAR
Managing social media can be daunting, especially when using it for marketing. It can be tough to stick to a routine and continuously write and publish quality content for social media or blogging. When it starts to feel tedious… quality and quantity of content decrease. Whether you only use social media for personal use or for a brand or business, here are some tips we use to incorporate social media into our regular routine – simplifying the creating process and limiting stress!
First and foremost, collect inspiration. Follow content that reflects your brand. The Instagram explore pages are great resources for content related to specific categories from beauty, to animals, to recipes. You can also follow specific hashtags for an even more exact reference. Utilizing other Instagram pages not only keeps ideas flowing but also shows you what is trending. Familiarizing yourself with what your brand is and what people expect of it saves time when thinking of captions and blogs.
Take notes! Make note of ideas that spark for blogs, captions and photos. At Rogue, we keep lists of brainstormed ideas so that we have a never-ending supply of creative thoughts, concepts and quotes to use when needed! We constantly alter these lists as we see new inspiration or as clients’ needs change.
Photo shoot time… plan a photo shoot at least a few times a year to build your photo database. Try to plan for upcoming events, holidays, and campaigns so that you can be prepared ahead of time for that random National Holiday. Also, make it a habit to take photos throughout your daily work or life routine. Collect new pictures when you meet with clients, even when you aren’t necessarily meeting for photography. This way, your photo collection builds over time. You don’t have to find or create from scratch new content each time you post.
Prepare content in advance. Take this simple example: you write two blog posts. You wouldn’t post them both on the same day. You would save the second post for the next day or week, right? If you start building your content and schedule it a week in advance, it will save a ton of time in the long run!
Which leads us to scheduling: find a posting schedule that is comfortable for you. Seven days a week can be a lot for anyone to manage alone. Build up your schedule as your content database grows; don’t overextend yourself, and find the right rhythm for you and your followers. Just try to be as consistent as possible… if your readers expect a blog post from you once a month, then keep it up!
Social media can be a lot simpler when you don’t make a major production out of it every single day. If you stick to your custom schedule and build your content over time, you can slowly transition into a routine where you are consistently publishing quality social and blog posts… and it won’t even feel like work.