If you live the life of a content creator, you quickly realize that no two days are
ever the same. However, if you want to be a successful one, there are a few tasks
you should do every day to become better at marketing and boost your engagement.
Ready? Let’s do this!
Hi my lovely people, it’s Natalia and welcome back to my channel where I share
super-actionable ideas on content creation for entrepreneurs and creatives! In today’s video,
I’ll share with you some of the daily tasks you can add to your checklist to become a
better-organized content creator, protect your brand image and improve your engagement rate.
You’ll learn why it’s important to have a checklist as a content creator,
what daily tasks you can do to improve your content game and I’ve thrown in
some bonus points at the very end of this video stick around for these too.
Alright, let’s get to it!
Why keep a daily checklist?
As in any job, there will be multiple recurring tasks that you’ll need to on a daily basis.
To make sure you never forget a thing, it's a good idea to create
a checklist of daily tasks and that’s no different for a content creator. Not only
Whether you’re a solopreneur working on your own profile, a social media manager who juggles a
few different clients and their platforms or manage content in any other capacity,
I honestly think you will definitely benefit from a checklist like that.
Of course, the way you deal with content is going to affect your daily tasks because of the range
of responsibilities. As an example, you could be writing a blog for your business or be employed to
do so in which case a part of your focus would be on finding appealing keywords and updating
the previous posts or you could be an ads manager and deal with setting up and measuring campaigns.
But because my channel revolves around content marketing on social media with an
emphasis on Instagram, I will focus on organic social media marketing in this video.
With all that being said, there will be quite a lot of overlap so it’s definitely worth a watch!
Let’s start by looking at the first task on our daily checklist as a content creator!
Task 1: Reply to comments & messages
If you want to differentiate yourself from others and actively work on building an engaged
community, make sure you reply to your comments and messages on a daily basis. It may seem like
a no-brainer to some of you but when I audit Instagram profiles or someone DMs me and asks how
they can get more engagement, so often I see tons and tons of unanswered comments under their posts.
And listen, I’ll be the first one to tell you it’s a lot of work and I started struggling with this a
while ago. The thing that matters here though is that people really really appreciate you doing it
and it actually encourages other people to comment on your posts as they see that you actually read
the comments and want to have those conversations. You need to remember that social media is,
in fact, social so this is, in my opinion, a must and that’s why I included it as number one on our
list. Normally, I’m really struggling to reply to every comment but having a daily reminder
to jump on for 10 minutes solely to reply to my followers, it’s helping me keep this habit going.
Apart from that, when I have some time (between exercises at the gym or when I’m on a bus)
I’m doing it because connection is an important part of my brand values. You also should be
thinking about these DMS and comments as a way of building engagement and trust,
and therefore nurturing important relationships and potentially bringing more sales in the future.
Sometimes you’ll find that a seemingly small conversation in your DMs can lead to an inquiry
email or a Zoom call. And while we’re still on the subject of comments, don’t be afraid of any
negative ones. I often see them left without a reply but unless they’re straight up rude or
offensive, that’s a huge no-no. Of course, with mild, snarky comments, depending on your brand
communication strategy, you can hit them back with an edgy reply or bombard them with kindness.
Otherwise, negative comments are a great opportunity to show people that you see
and acknowledge their perspectives and are willing to address any
issues that may be there. It proves that you care, listen and want to genuinely improve.
Task 2: Check all mentions and react to them
If you want to protect your online reputation, you need to know what’s being said about your
brand online. Although there are some media monitoring tools like my favorite Brand24,
they do come at a high price point and may not be necessary for a small brand.
But if you don’t want to spend extra money, there is a solution and you can do some things manually!
What I like to do is to set up a separate bookmark folder in my browser with all the different places
I can find potential mentions. First of all, I add all of the shortcuts to mentions boards
like the Twitter Mentions or the Mentions tab in the Facebook Business Suite - a.k.a.
Meta Business Suite after the refresh. Next, I bookmark links to any brand hashtags,
campaign hashtags, and any relevant hashtags. To give you an example, when I was working at a
cookery school, I had a set of brand hashtags but I also added things like #edinburghcookeryschool
even though it was not directly connected to the brand. It’s quite good to look at your mentions
and then check what hashtags are underneath. You may find that people come up with their
own hashtags that are actually being used by the wider audience and you might not have been aware
of them before. With this mention and tag check, I also like to go beyond to any relevant sites like
your Google Reviews, TripAdvisor, or even job portals like Glassdoor if you hire people. If
you have all of these links in one bookmarks folder, you can pick them up with one click
and quickly browse through them to see any positive remarks or catch the not-so-great
ones. This way you can act quickly and it’s only going to take a few minutes a day max.
Task 3: Get ready to post & activate your audience
If you have a post scheduled for the day or you will be posting it manually, it’s a great idea to
do a quick spell-check, see if there’s a location attached and if you’ve added any relevant tags
for brands or partners. Apart from this, there’s one thing that I’ve shared not too long ago that
you could do before the post goes live and that’s activating your audience. I have a full video for
both what you should do before you post and what to do after you have posted which I will leave for
you in the description box below. Both of these will definitely be a great watch after you’re
done with this one! What I love to do here apart from answering any comments and DMs is to actively
engage with my MVPs, my brand advocates, you know, the kind of people who always share my content,
like and comment on all of my posts, and I have really cool conversations with.
These are the people who, for any brand, are invaluable, and given that you already have
some rapport established with them, it’s really nice to give back and show your love and support
by checking out their stories, engaging in polls, and leaving meaningful comments.
When time permits (and I really try not to spend too much time just engaging on IG),
I try to actually connect with people outside of my tribe as well. I also have a few relevant
hashtags saved where people who may be interested in my content often hang out
and I engage with their stories or posts. This is my little contribution to the niche
I’m in and a huge part of building an engaged community. It’s a great way to connect with
one new person that day and you never know what impact they may have on your business or life.
Task 4: Check trends and competitors
Now, this I feel is a part of staying relevant and constantly looking to refresh your content. I make
it my point to check any social media news and updates on a daily, to look at what’s trending,
and to see what my competitors are doing. If you’ve been here a while, you’ll know how much
I dislike the word competition so I prefer to think of it as looking at other contributors
in my niche. It’s a great way to analyze what’s working for them and really serves their audience
which is going to be similar to yours. Apart from that, you can realize what’s missing in terms of
content in your general niche and how you can be the one to fill that gap. When you do this daily,
you’ll start to notice the general patterns, see what the audiences are gravitating towards and
understand their struggles since you’ll be able to see conversations in the comment sections.
Checking what’s currently trending on different platforms also means that
you’re staying relevant. Despite having some content planned and scheduled ahead of time,
you’ll be able to quickly insert yourself into a hot topic or jump on a trend that’s creating
a lot of buzz in your industry. Whether it’s a hot topic you can address in your Stories
or a really great trending audio for your next Reel, it’s a good habit to have to stay relevant.
Even if it doesn’t result in a funny RTM post or a viral Reel, at the very least you’ll know
what’s happening and in the ever-changing world of social media, that’s quite a good thing!
As a little bonus, I want to throw in some of the tasks you may not be doing daily,
but can be a fantastic addition to your checklist on a weekly or monthly basis!
If you’re serious about growth and finessing your strategies,
I’d highly recommend you track your stats across all social media platforms. You can do this on
a weekly or a monthly basis and it could be a part of your own personal social media audit.
By doing this, you’ll be able to see how well you’re progressing and identify what
kind of content resonates with your audience the most. From here, it’s so easy to think of
ways to capitalize on it and produce more of what works, thereby replicating your success.
Another thing I like to do, if not on a weekly, then a monthly basis,
is to update my content calendar. If you’ve seen my Notion content calendar video, you’ll know
how I like to have all the information added for each of my YouTube videos and all of my posts.
That’s how I’m always able to reference specific pieces of content, search for something quickly
or repurpose my content. If I’ve missed any links or information at the stage of creation
or publishing, I have this task in place that allows me to keep my content calendar in order.
Each month, you can have a brainstorming and planning session.
This way, you’ll be able to populate your content pillars with plenty of new, fresh ideas for posts
and it’s going to be easier to plan your content. Once you have all of your ideas there,
mapping out content for a month is a perfect way to stay organized. And I’m not talking about
sitting down and executing all that content in its entirety, captions and images and all. It’s
about knowing what you have in the pipeline in terms of formats and pillars and knowing
that you’ll be hitting all the important points your audience needs to hear about.
Plus, this makes batching content so much easier since you know exactly what needs to be done!
What tasks would you add to a content creator checklist? Are you going to try
any of these in your day-to-day? Let me know down below in the comment section!
If you’re looking to improve your content game,
I’m confident this video here is going to help you a ton. You’ll learn how to build a
strong marketing strategy yourself to find your tribe and attract the ideal clients.
And to really niche down and make sure you’re serving your audience with the right topics,
check out this video to figure out your content pillars and make creating content easier.
Subscribe to my channel for more actionable content creation tips
and hit that thumbs up button if you’ve enjoyed this video.
Have an awesome day and I can’t wait to see you... next time.