How to Create a Content Plan for ALL Your Social Media Needs!

Struggling to create good, consistent content to share for your business? Did you know you can actually schedule out your social media content ahead of time? I mean, even weeks ahead!  Sound like a fairytale?  Let’s talk about how to make it a reality.

Step 1: Brainstorm Ideas

YouTube videos, Blog posts, Instagram posts and stories, newsletter ideas… you name it! By keeping track of my ideas and having them all in one place that’s easy to access, I’m much less likely to get stuck on what to share with my followers. Looking for a free tool to keep all of your ideas organized? I use Trello!

Step 2: Create Themes Calendar

Take a look at your calendar and what’s to come for the month. Maybe you’re launching a new video next week or it’s National Ice Cream Day soon, or your kids are going back to school. Use these events to create a theme for each week. To go a step further and make my content even more consistent, I plan my themes around my Content Pillars, basically my four areas of expertise. Interested in hearing what they are? Check out the video!

Step 3: Research Content

When I’m coming up with new ideas, I ask myself questions like: Have I done this before?  If so, how did it perform? vWhat did audience retention look like?  When did people leave that particular video? How can I make it better? I also like to look at similar videos on YouTube to get inspiration for a new approach or a new title or thumbnail. Again, it can be tough to keep track of everything, so I use Trello to organize my research as well!

Step 4: Content Calendar

It’s time to put your themes on the calendar! This is an easy way to see all of your upcoming content at a glance and make sure everything goes live when it’s supposed to. I use Google Calendar to lay out all of my content each month.

Step 5: Create Content

Once it’s all planned, now it’s time to actually create the content! Block out time in your calendar and shoot a month’s worth of YouTube videos in one day. Maybe it’s pictures you need to take or photos you need to edit. No matter what the type of content, batching the work makes it much easier and then it’s DONE! Ready to go when you need it.

Step 6: Write Content

Batch the written part of whatever you’re sharing too! Blog content, Instagram captions, summaries of your videos, write everything ahead of time. Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this “have everything done ahead of time” thing!

Step 7: Create Graphics Template

What are the things that you’re constantly creating as far as graphics? Pinterest images? YouTube thumbnails? Images for your Instagram stories? Don’t waste time reinventing the wheel every time you need a new one! Create a couple different templates for each platform and reuse them. Not only will it save you lots of time, but also results in consistent content.

Step 8: Scheduling

Here’s where I was going with that “have everything done ahead of time” thing… If your content is created and ready to go before it actually needs to be posted, you can schedule it! That’s right, schedule it and walk away, knowing that everything will go live exactly when you want it to , without you actually having to click POST! YouTube, Facebook and Squarespace all have this capability and it’s FREE! I also use a couple of paid tools for this: Planoly for Instagram and Tailwind for Pinterest.

Tip: If you’re interested in learning more about Pinterest marketing and how to use Tailwind, check out Vanessa Kynes on YouTube!  She’s a Pinterest Strategist I’ve been working with for years and she has TONS of helpful content.

Does it sound a little more possible now that you could planning and scheduling out your social media content?  Excited to get started?  Check out my video How to Plan Your Day [and Actually Get More Done!] where I share my favorite productivity tips and show you how I get it all done in just four business days every week!