When you’re posting on your social media, planning blogs and newsletters, or anything else that requires content – how do you plan for it?
• Do you sit down and plan out the week, the month, the quarter all at once?
• Do you know what you want to talk about before you even get started?
• Do you schedule them all at once, or just post as you go?
Or, are you like the majority of people and you fly by the seat of your pants and wing it. I’ll post when I feel like it/when I remember, and wait for the influx of enquiries?
Spoiler alert – if you aren’t putting yourself out there, the influx of enquiries is unlikely to come.
You’ll probably find, most are the last one. Or they just don’t post at all, then wonder why no one is getting in touch.
So what do I do for my clients?
For those that I can, I aim to post for the month ahead, just before the end of the previous month. First, I find out what they WANT to talk about this month, then put it together for them. You can do this for your own content. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. Whatever works for you, but I prefer monthly where possible.
- Sit down, about 3/4 way through February, and decide what you want to talk about in March. Do you want to share content from your website, maybe a recent blog? Tell them about something exciting in your business? New products or services? Do you want to scream “BUY MY STUFF!!!??”
- Work out how many posts you want to do over the month, and break that down into the weeks ahead.
- Did you decide on your focus? Brand awareness, enquiries and leads, appointments, bookings? Have this in mind when you move to the next step.
- Work those topics into posts, making sure you have any relevant links to articles and products etc, hashtags or contact details you might need to include.
- Get writing! Get the words (copy) ready first, and then you can plan what images (creative) you want to use for each post. I love Canva, but there’s heaps of options out there for creating effective images to go with each post.
- Once you’ve done that, you can get scheduling! I currently use all free scheduling tools. For Facebook and Instagram, I use Business Suite. For my LinkedIn Business page I currently use Hootsuite and for Pinterest I have just signed up for Tailwind. Until now I always just posted as I went with Pinterest, but I’m keen to show everyone how Pinterest can be used more in their business, so scheduling is a must! More about my preferred programs and platforms later in the month.
- Put it all together, schedule, and you’re done for the next month (or however long you’ve just gotten yourself ahead – some people even do 3 months ahead!)
The theory of it all is really quite simple. It’s the dedication to actually commit to it that can be hard. That’s where people like mói come in 
those people that can put it all together for you, and you just save time and reap the benefits! If that sounds better than the steps above – flick me an email, and let’s chat. But otherwise, you have no excuse – get planning and scheduling and make your life a helluva lot easier.
Nikki
