Tell me if this sounds like you: You KNOW you “should” have a strong digital marketing plan and social media presence, where you create, post and engage consistently, but it keeps getting pushed to the back burner. I get it. Juggling all the responsibilities that come with running your business is a full-time job in itself.
Creating consistent content for your brand can be overwhelming, especially when you’re pressed for time, but it can be done with some planning and thoughtfulness. In this post, I’ll share my best practices to simplify the content creation process and help you maintain an authentic and professional social media presence, even when you’re short on time, skills or inspiration.
First off, I’m going to give you full permission to do less. So often I hear founders say they should be on Tiktok, post reels a few times a week, work with influencers or do giveaways – but here’s your permission slip to do what’s right for you and your business. After all, you’re the one who has to execute it. So, as we think about developing a digital marketing strategy, let’s make sure that it’s doable, week in and week out.
That said, there are two steps to ensuring your plan is doable:
- Prioritize the most important platform for your brand, and get really good at it before you expand to other platforms. How do you decide? Go where your target audience is! Where is your audience already spending time on social media? If you don’t know, follow your instinct. You can trust yourself here. Once you’re feeling solid on your core platform, you’re welcome to expand to others – but only when you have the desire and capacity.
Now, if you’re feeling the pressure to be on ALL the platforms, you can either ignore that pressure and continue to focus on one platform first, or you can put a placeholder up on the platforms that you’re not actively building. As an example, at Food Biz Wiz, we simply don’t prioritize being on X (formerly known as Twitter.) Our food founder audience doesn’t hang out there much, so we’ve given ourselves full permission to pause on that platform, but we let folks know where to find us instead by updating the banner and pinned post on the top – directing them to come hang with us on Instagram instead.
Additionally, if your data tells you that social media is not the place where you create and nurture business leads, then skip it. While this post is about social media in general, you can use this advice on any marketing channel – you get to choose where to spend your time after you determine where there is maximum ROI for your brand.
- Set a realistic content goal. Consistency is much more important than frequency for social media algorithms. This means that rather than post four days in a row, then take two weeks off, then come back and post every other day for two weeks and then pause for a month – you create a realistic content goal that you can execute most weeks.
Your doable goal might be posting 2 in-feed posts per week, 1 reel and 2 stories per week. Great! It might be posting in-feed 5 times per week, 3 stories per week and 3 reels per week. Great! There’s no right or wrong cadence; the key is to set a frequency and rhythm that works for you.
Once you have your audience, platform and doable frequency, it’s time to plan your content and calendar and batch it out.
Planning your content & calendar:
If you sit down to create social posts and your mind goes blank, you’ll benefit from having social media themes for your platforms. It’s easy and keeps you out of a creative rut. To brainstorm your four-five themes, ask yourself, “What does my target audience care about from my brand? What do they need to know about me to trust me, and become a superfan?” You’ll find that there are likely four-five themes that come up that you can use for inspiration for your content planning –themes like, “quality ingredients,” “aligned values,” “easy recipes,” “humor & entertainment,” “founder’s story” and “behind the scenes moments.”
Take your themes and brainstorm the types or topics of posts that align with your themes. For example, if you know your audience cares about quality ingredients, you might brainstorm posts around ingredient sourcing, why you chose the particular ingredients that you have, the functionality behind the ingredients, the flavor profiles of your products, the people who produce the ingredients that you source and more. I make a “note” on my phone for each theme, so I can add ideas to the list each time inspiration strikes (confession: inspiration often strikes when I’m walking my dog!)
Once you have your themes, you can create a monthly content template that blocks the themes throughout the month, ensuring that you have a thoughtful spread of content each week. Note holidays or other important dates and events that you might talk about on your channels and build it out from there. Reuse that content template month after month (no one will notice that you talk about your sustainable sourcing every second Tuesday of the month, promise!) and half of your work is already done.
Batch it out:
You batch your production runs, your shipping days and your deliveries, so why wouldn’t you batch your content creation? It simplifies the process, allows you to “get in the flow” and allows you to put a committed time on your calendar for creating multiple social media posts in one sitting. I recommend starting by batching your content one week at a time; even moving away from doing it every few days, or last minute because you’ve “just got to get something up!” is better than what you’re likely doing now. Once you’ve got the system down for batching out a week and you feel confident there, you can extend it to batch several weeks at a time.
How do you do it? You simply sit down (in the right headspace!), pull out your themes and the bullet pointed brainstormed list of topics, and map it out on your calendar. Write your captions, choose your graphics and schedule it into your content scheduler. Most social platforms have native schedulers that make it extremely easy to plan, draft and schedule your content in advance.
Last but not least, here’s a few additional tips to reduce your content creation overwhelm: repurpose and recycle content and leverage user-generated content.
Repurpose and recycle content:
Don’t let your hard work go to waste! Repurposing and recycling content is a smart move. Did a post work really well? Reuse the caption three months later with a new photo. Keep the image but try a different take on the caption and call to action. By repurposing your best-performing content (both on the same platform at a later date, or across different platforms or in email marketing once you decide to add more marketing channels), you not only save time but also cater to different audience preferences and maximize your reach.
Leverage user-generated content:
Why not let your customers do the talking for you? User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful tool to engage your audience and build trust with your followers while lightening your content creation load. Encourage your customers to share their experiences with your products on their own stories and feeds and then feature their content on your social media platforms. UGC adds authenticity to your brand (it shows that real people use you and love you!) and frees up time for you to focus on other important aspects of your business.
With a bit of planning, you can reduce the headaches and the feeling of being overwhelmed when it comes to your digital marketing. You’ve now got the tools to tackle your social media content creation challenges head-on, and they set the foundation for all of your digital marketing tools (website and email marketing come next, but you can layer that on!) By knowing your audience and understanding what is important to them and using that insight to develop a solid content strategy, you’re on your way to social media success. Remember to leverage time-saving strategies like batching and creating monthly content calendars, repurpose your content and embrace user-generated content to amplify your brand’s reach and trust. With these tips, you’ll create a doable plan of consistent and engaging content that reflects your brand’s values and resonates with your audience. You got this!
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Post topic(s): Business advice
