[blockquote text=’It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.’ quote_author=’A League of Their Own’ text_color=” width=” background_color=” border_color=”]
The final piece of your social media strategy is planning content in advance. This is the road less traveled. But, developing relevant, interesting and optimized content is the foundation for a successful social media marketing strategy.
Laying the Foundation
To begin your content strategy, pull a few great minds into one room and define your key messages. Ā What are your key messages? Ā The bedrock of your brand. Ā Your differentiators. Ā Your business drivers. Ā Choose three to five key messages to stand as the pillars of your content. Ā Remember you are the answer to someone’s question, the fix to someone’s problem, the clarity to someone’s confusion. Ā Keep your focus on the end user – who is it that you hope is reading your content? Ā What do they need to know? Ā How can you help them?
Next pull together a great calendar. Ā One for your industry and another for world at large.
Now lay your key messages down on top of that calendar. Ā Can you see it coming together yet? Ā Now you have drivers for your content and a calendar to guide you through dates relevant to your audience, so what’s next?
Developing the Content
Next comes the big hairy audacious job of developing great content. Ā Ideas anyone? Ā This infographicĀ provides you a matrix of the types of content you could deliver: blogs, white papers, images, videos, press releases and more. Ā And this article from Copyblogger, the King of Content, gives you 49 unique ways to put your ideas into action. Ā Just remember to keep it focused on your end-user and how you can help them. Ā Educate. Ā Inform. Ā But stay interesting.
Planning Your Posts
There are great tools available, like Hootsuite and Sprout Social to name a few, which give you the opportunity to plan your posts in advance. Ā Now your relevant, interesting and optimized content is loaded and scheduled to fire at just the right time. Ā Now, you can spend the rest of your time being present and posting in real time.
