Effortless social media content planning
Are you ready to transform the way you plan your social media content? In this blog post I’m sharing tips, tricks and tools that have helped make content planning much simpler over my 13+ years as a social media manager. Trust me, planning your social media content can be as enjoyable as scrolling through your Instagram feed!
Understanding content pillars
Let's kick things off with content pillars.They are basically broad topics or themes that help you create content that your audience enjoys and will find useful and also sell your product or services. By categorising your content under these pillars, you ensure variety and relevance, which can really give your social media presence a consistent and professional feel.
For example, one of my monthly management clients is a meat wholesaler and their content each month revolves around product promotion, nutrition facts about the product, behind the scenes posts and recipe ideas. This helps so much when planning content as I don’t have to start from scratch when planning content each month.
Finding content inspiration
Sometimes, the toughest part is figuring out what to post. When you’re struggling and need some fresh ideas, these tools will help you out!
Answer the Public is a website where you can input a few keywords related to your industry and it shows you all the questions people are asking about your product/service.
For example you might be a Pilates studio owner, so you can put the keyword pilates in and Answer the Public will show you questions like ‘is pilates safe during pregnancy, can pilates help you lose weight’ etc. You get three free searches a day before you have to sign up to their paid version but you shouldn’t need more than three searches at a time.
Good ol’ Google. You can do a similar thing with Google and just type in a few keywords. Then, scroll down a bit and you’ll see other questions that people are asking relating to the topic you just searched. This can really help you understand what your key audience may be wondering about your topic. You also might get some inspiration from the questions that help you brainstorm other post ideas.
Ask your audience what they want to see. You can use polls or question boxes on Instagram stories to get an idea of what content would be helpful for your audience or what aspects of your business they might be curious about.
Analyse past posts. Look back at your best-performing posts. What worked well? Can you recreate them?
Having a good scheduling tool can also make your life a bit easier when it comes to the content planning process. Over the years I’ve tried lots of different scheduling tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social and Later but my favourite by far is Metricool.
It's simple, sleek, and does more than just scheduling. You can also dive into your analytics (keep an eye out for a blog post on this coming soon!), keep an eye on the competition, and fine-tune your strategy based on real data. I also love how it shows the optimal time for posting for Instagram and Facebook so you can schedule your content for when your audience will be online and ready to engage.
Now, here’s the REAL game-changer
My Google Sheets content calendar template (find it on the Verve shop here).
The first time I sent this template to a new monthly management client she said ‘I LOVE this system. You’ve clearly worked with overwhelmed comms managers before!’.
While there are a ton of content planning templates out there, I’ve found a lot of them to look really pretty but they are just too complicated to use. This template is super simple and will bring order, simplicity and fun to your planning process each month.
Why you'll love this template
Intuitive design: user-friendly dropdowns make categorising content a piece of cake.
Customisable: tailor it to your business's unique needs. It's flexible like that.
Collaborative: share with your team and plan together seamlessly.
Gone are the days of scrambling for post ideas or wondering what to share next. With this template, you have a clear roadmap for your social media content. It's time to take the guesswork out of your strategy and focus on what really matters – growing your brand and engaging with your community.
So, are you ready to step up your social media game and say goodbye to haphazard posting?
Purchase the Ultimate Content Calendar template: https://www.vervesocialmedia.com/shop/p/theultimatecontentcalendartemplate
I can’t wait for you to experience the transformation in your content planning routine!
