Author: bungalowwriter

6 easy steps to social content planning

bungalowwriter

Are you struggling to keep up with your social media marketing? Do you find yourself posting content on the fly, without a clear plan or strategy? Creating a content calendar could be a game-changer for your social media marketing.

Organizing your content in advance ensures a consistent and effective social media presence that aligns with brand messaging. Planning ahead also gives you time to think through all the tasks involved, such as graphics, videos, photography and web content, making delegation easier. All of that means you and your team can spend more time creating high-quality content that resonates with your audiences. 

1: Start with strategy

Aligning social media activities with your marketing plan ensures that they contribute to your business goals, driving results that matter. Having a cohesive strategy across all channels, from social to media relations to web, also reinforces key messaging for your brand. Review your marketing goals and identify which ones can benefit from social media strategies.  

2: Segment audiences

Ideally, you will already have outlined target markets in a marketing plan. Keeping in mind your audience’s demographics, interests and behaviors, you can determine how these characteristics align with various social platforms:

  • Facebook is primarily used to connect with friends and family. It also attracts multiple generations; nearly 50% of all Facebook users are aged 25 to 34, while 25% are 45 and older.
  • LinkedIn is popular for networking and job seeking. In terms of demographics, 60% of all global users are 25 to 34, while 21.7% are 18 to 24. 
  • Known for its visual content, Instagram is the most popular network in the United States for users aged 12 to 34. 
  • X (Twitter) is popular for real-time news and updates. In the United States, 38% of people aged 12-34 use X, compared to 28% who are 35-54 and 15% who are 55-plus.

3: Brainstorm content ideas

Because different people have different content preferences, having various options ensures that you cater to all of your audiences. You can also keep your feed engaging and fresh by incorporating a mix of content types, such as blog posts, images, videos and user-generated content.

4: Organize

Organize your content ideas into a calendar and color-code each post by social platform. Project management software like Asana allows you to connect posts to other assignments such as photo, video and storytelling. With PM software, you can also assign individual social tasks to various team members and drag and drop posts to different dates as your needs change. 

5: Plan ahead

Quarterly planning provides a big-picture view of your social media, making it easier to align with other strategies such as blog posts and events. 

As you map out a schedule, be sure to consult lists of holidays, events and observances from sources such as Hootsuite and HubSpot. You can repurpose evergreen content and create original content around relevant topics by leveraging daily, weekly and monthly events. 

During early COVID-19 shutdown days, I asked my coworkers to send photos of their children studying alongside them while they were working. We then created a series on our organization’s social accounts for Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day, tagging all employees pictured and the sponsoring organization. The employees’ reposts and sponsor engagement helped to boost our reach and impressions.

6: Regularly review

Finally, regularly review your results to ensure you are hitting targets like engagement, reach and audience growth. Celebrate your successes and adjust your strategies as needed to maximize the impact of your social media marketing efforts and achieve your business goals.

Featured image above: Photo by Anna Nekrashevich for Pexels

Writing with Smart Brevity: When less really is more 

bungalowwriter
woman writing on paper

Whenever I hear the phrase “more with less,” I remember a colleague years ago in a meeting grumbling, “You can never do more with less. You can only do less with less.” 

While that is the case with budgets and FTEs, it’s also true that fewer words can have a bigger impact. That’s where Smart Brevity can help. 

Why it matters

In an era of information overload, it’s more important than ever to communicate in a concise and impactful way. Smart Brevity, created by the founders of news outlet Axios, is the ability to convey complex ideas in a simple and straightforward manner, using language that is both easy to understand and persuasive.

Ways that Smart Brevity can help

  • Increased attention and comprehension: When you use clear and concise language, your audience is more likely to pay attention to what you’re saying and understand your message.
  • Improved communication and collaboration: Because it distills text to key points, Smart Brevity can help break down barriers and foster better communication and collaboration between team members, clients and other stakeholders.
  • Enhanced credibility and influence: When you can articulate your ideas clearly and persuasively, your organization appears more knowledgeable and trustworthy.
  • Increased productivity and efficiency: Most writers agree that it’s harder to write shorter than longer. But eventually, you’ll develop a cadence and need less time to write each article. Shorter word counts also translate into less time conducting interviews and research.
  • Stronger impact and memorability: When you can convey your message in a concise and memorable way, it’s more likely to stick with your audience and have a lasting impact.

How Smart Brevity increased one team’s impact

In my capacity as a content director recently, I was charged with greatly increasing productivity and impact in a short time period among the members of a creative team. After team members read the Smart Brevity book and took a training course with Axios, I tasked them with immediately deploying its principles in content development. The result: increased efficiency, better audience engagement and enhanced brand recognition.

Here’s how we did it:

  • Eliminating unnecessary details: Smart Brevity helped us identify and remove irrelevant information, ensuring our stories focused on the core message and resonated with the audience.
  • Highlighting key moments: By concentrating on critical turning points and emotional peaks, we crafted narratives that were more engaging and memorable.
  • Structuring the story: Smart Brevity’s emphasis on clear structure helped our team organize our stories effectively, leading the audience on a journey with a satisfying conclusion.
  • Using active voice: By replacing passive voice with active voice, our stories became more dynamic and engaging, capturing the audience’s attention.
  • Employing concise language: We replaced jargon and complex sentences with clear, concise language that everyone could understand, regardless of their background.
  • Writing with vivid imagery: Smart Brevity encouraged us to incorporate vivid imagery and sensory details, making our stories more immersive and bringing them to life for audiences.

By boosting efficiency in writing, our team’s storytelling went from good to great, leading to supercharged productivity and impact. I encourage anyone who wants to improve the results of their storytelling to explore Smart Brevity and discover its transformative powers.