(energetic music)
- [Megan] What exactly is a content strategy
for social media?
A content strategy is the ongoing process
of translating your business goals into a plan
that uses content as a primary means of achieving them.
A content strategy guides the creation, delivery
and the governance of all the content
your business puts out.
Creating a content strategy is very similar
to creating a social media strategy.
The framework is much the same.
I highly recommend you open up a Google document
and start filling it in as you go.
This'll be your content strategy,
and you'll quickly have a lot of information filled in
at the end of this movie.
The first step, as always, is to get clear on your goals.
I recommend using the SMART Framework.
This is going to make sure that your goals are specific,
measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.
And an example of a content strategy goal
using the SMART Framework is to increase blog views
by 50% by the end of Q4 2021.
And you'll achieve this by working closely
with your editorial team
and publishing a new blog post five times per week.
Now your SMART goal could be as simple as making sure
that you're posting once a day on Facebook.
So it can be as complex or as simple as you want.
And if this is feeling a bit overwhelming,
I recommend starting very simple.
Perhaps you want a piece of content
to be shared a certain number of times.
That makes a great goal.
Next, we're going to define our audience.
We need to know who we're speaking to.
This is going to help you use the right tone,
publish the content on the right networks
and even use the right images.
So if you have a customer persona, work off that.
If you don't or you need some guidance,
there is a customer persona worksheet in the files.
Basically, you're going to start detailing
who your customer is, what their interests are,
traits and demographics.
Next, and this is a really important step not to miss,
is to audit your existing content.
If you've already been publishing for a while
and you have content on these social platforms,
know that important information
is able to be discerned from them.
So take a look at your Twitter Insights
or your Facebook Business Suite,
and you can specifically see what content does well.
You can see, oh, videos always outperform images.
So take a look at your existing content
and how it's performing on your social media channels.
Next, creating content themes is a great way
to help you stay organized and even a little bit creative
when you're creating content.
An example is Meatless Mondays.
So this is a phenomenon where people
share their vegetable-based recipes
on, you guessed it, Mondays.
So you'll know, say you're a chef, that on Mondays,
you'll always share your Meatless Monday recipe.
That makes it pretty streamlined and pretty easy to know
what you're going to be posting on a Monday.
Other examples would be perhaps you do industry tips,
maybe you do behind the scenes, maybe you do jokes.
It doesn't matter.
Just make sure that your content topics
are ones that your audience wants to see
and that they're consistent.
Map out your hashtags.
So doing this research before you start posting
is going to save you a lot of time.
Now do know that hashtags work on both Facebook and Twitter,
but you're especially going to use them on Twitter.
So in your strategy, you are going to have a section
where you start researching and compiling
all the best hashtags for you to use.
If you're not sure where to take a look,
head to Twitter Trends to discover the trending hashtags.
You can also research your competitors
to see which hashtags they're using.
Don't forget to create the shareable document
with all the hashtag information
that you can easily copy and paste into your content.
Now we talk a lot about content.
Here is where you actually get to create it.
So this is where you create the story,
your narrative and your content mix,
and the more planning and practice, really, you do,
the easier this will get.
Some tips for creating content
is I like to create my content in a document.
Other people don't mind putting it directly
into a social media scheduler like Hootsuite
or even a project planner like Trello.
So find your own process and system.
Don't be afraid to outsource using a service,
like Fiverr or Upwork, if content creation isn't your thing
or you don't have enough time.
There are tons of freelancers out there
that are phenomenal content creators.
You could hire someone just to create
all your Facebook content
and actually post it on a weekly basis.
Be creative and try live video.
If sitting down and writing a whole big,
1500-word Facebook post isn't your thing,
maybe video is.
And with the photo editing tools like Canva,
you can create something really special.
Now you'll need to determine the tools
that you'll want to use.
You heard me talk about Fiverr, Upwork, Hootsuite.
So what tools will you be using?
Do you really require a robust social media scheduler tool
with a ton of analytic dashboards,
or does a simple Google spreadsheet
do exactly what you need?
There is no right or wrong here, and if you're not sure,
I recommend erring on the side of simple.
Start with a Google spreadsheet,
and if you start needing something a bit more sophisticated,
then move in that direction.
And as always, evaluate and adjust.
As with any plan, you'll need to revisit it
to see how it's going.
Your content will tell a story, so you'll be able to see
how many people have engaged with it
and you'll be able to see trends and opportunities.
The most important thing is actually getting started.
Once you start creating the content,
going through the process, iterating and adjusting,
you'll start to develop a really powerful content strategy.
As with anything, your content strategy
is a living document.
It's going to adjust over time, and that just means
that it's going to get better and better.
(energetic music)