As a small business owner, I understand that time is of the essence and managing your social media presence can be a bit overwhelming. Especially when you don’t have a system for it.
That's why I wanted to share with you my simple and effective 6-step strategy to help you with your social media planning process.
In this blog, I will guide you through each step and provide you with my top recommendations for websites and tools that can help you with your social media content creation.
1. Create a Content Bank
Imagine this as your creative sanctuary, a space where your ideas flow freely. Before your content planning day, set up a folder or document where you store all content ideas that come to you. This way, when you sit down for your actual planning day, you're not starting from scratch. I have a dedicated table in my Notion where I jot down content ideas, headlines, or image inspiration. This page is never empty and I know that whenever I want to create a piece of content I can go there and see all of my stored ideas.
Content Bank Tools:
Notion (If you don't know what Notion is, read this blog post)
Desktop Folders
Google of Word Docs
Microsoft OneNote
2. Get Inspired
Explore different sources to spark your creativity and ignite fresh ideas. My favourite sources of inspiration are:
Pinterest
Browsing newsletters in my email inbox
Social media
Now the day has come, you have some ideas stored and your calendar is free for the day. It’s time to create and plan. The next step is to tidy up you ideas and create a list of finalised post titles.
3. Finalise content ideas
Sit down and pick out your favourite ideas or ones you are most excited to create and share. This is the time where you also set the parameters on how often you will be posting this month. Maybe it is twice a week or maybe you really want to get visible and post 4-5 times a week. My favourite tools to help me finalise my post titles or to generate keywords are:
Content Idea Generators:
Portents Content Idea Generator
Easy Peasy AI
ChatGpt
Now you have you list of title names, and how many pieces of content you plan to post this month, my next step is to put it into a….
4. Content Calendar
This way you can separate out your ideas into calendar entries, visualise your plan and also allows you to make sure your content has a cohesive and engaging flow. This can be a draft, that you review at the end, or your final plan.
Content Calendar Tools:
Notion (Save time creating and download my Content Calendar Template Here)
Asana
Google Calendar
What I like about using a content calendar first, is that it gives you a place to draft the captions and content. Instead of having everything on the same document. You create an entry for each individual post, making sure everything is tidy. This also allows you togo back and see every post you have posted.
5. Batch into Similar Tasks
To maintain your creative flow. Start off by writing your captions for all of the posts in one session before transitioning into the graphic creation.When you are creating the content, my favourite tools to use are:
Graphic Design Tools:
Canva
Figma
Photoshop
Affinity designer
For Stock Photo Libraries:
Unsplash
Pexels
Pixabay
Now you have all of the hard work done. You have created the captions and you have designed the visuals, it should all be in the content calendar you drafted out earlier. Now is the time to schedule it all.
6. Utilise Tools
It’s time to put your content on autopilot. You can schedule your posts in advance with these tools.
I recommend these Tools for Scheduling:
Hootsuite
Buffer
Later
Now the hard work is all done. You have now created, planned and scheduled an entire months worth of social media content in one day!
I believe every piece of content should have its place.
I'm a digital organiser and I create management systems for small business owners.
If you need help organising your content. Reach out i’d love to chat. When you work with me, I audit your current system and figure out how we can improve it. I can tailor-design you a data management system, that holds all your business info. No more hunting for emails, handouts, or client details. I create an all-encompassing dashboard, that will become your daily business bible.
So If you're in need of a database makeover, let's talk!