Planning your social content. Hints and tips

Sahail Ashraf posted on 11 August 2021

How do you plan your social media content? Try the following blueprint to get the most out of the process.

Planning your social media content isn’t difficult, but it does require work. In this post we are going to look at some ideas and tips that should help you get the most out of the process.

Goals

It is impossible to have a solid planning process without working out some goals first of all. This is absolutely vital, and will determine your success in the long term.

To get your content marketing strategy on track, you need to have a clear understanding of your marketing goals. If you are specific about your marketing goals, you can better tailor your social media content toward meeting those goals. Once you have your goals all lined up and clear, you should then be able to ensure that your actions serve those goals and reduce inefficiencies.

Audit

Once you know where you are headed thanks to creating goals, you can then focus on actually looking at previous content to see what works and what does not work.

This is an important part of the process because it allows you to fine tune what you do going forward, and therefore give yourself more opportunities for success.

During the audit, you should consider your content goals directly. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then determine how many new followers you gained from each post you made on each platform. You now have an idea what types of content attract new followers for your brand.

The calendar

Some companies still refuse to use a content calendar, and they are usually the companies that are not achieving success. A content calendar ensures that your work is consistent, and that it forms part of a larger, informed process.

With a calendar, you can take a long-term view of your social media content. With this tool, you can visualise your ideas and organise them in a way that can make implementing the strategy easier.

Many people within your organisation contribute to the formulation of your corporate strategy. Collaboration on social media posts is easier with a content calendar.

The other hard work

So there you are, with a social media calendar and some goals that will help you meet your business strategy objectives. This is great stuff. But the hard work does not end there. In fact, as part of the planning process you will always have to implement it effectively.

It is imperative for you to have a social media strategy that extends beyond your social media channels. Developing a successful social media strategy is not just about publishing and planning content. To spread your content effectively, you need to find active ways to distribute it.

We have spent a long time at Locowise discussing how to make posts more sharabale and interactive but if we were to distill the advice down into a couple of key points they would be:

Ask questions of people who see your social content and encourage them to supply answers. This is engagement, and wrapped up in the best quality posts, it can be a way to supercharge your content.
If anyone shares your content, you must respond to this. This shows that you are encouraging sharing and you value that response. Sharing is social proof, which is very powerful in marketing.

Measure

The final part of your plan is all about measuring your results.

Measuring the results of your social media content campaign is the last step in creating an effective strategy. Developing a long-term strategy will depend on proper tracking. Measuring and tweaking your plan over time will help you improve. You should review your content every month to determine what’s working. Look at how each piece of content performed and its variables. Analyse whether the content met the goals you set.

As you can see, planning social media content is not just necessarily about planning on it’s own. You need to think about goals, and the long-term view, including how you implement and measure.

If you are a social media manager then you need to grab a Locowise account. It’s full of metrics and data, all wrapped up in a gorgeous UI. The end result is better social media marketing. Try it for 21 days, absolutely free.