Social media has the advantage of being one of the rare marketing channels that is free to use. You can reach virtually any audience and you can do it using no more than just your time. But that also means that everyone else is using it and it’s incredibly hard to get your message heard. People think that being loud, bright and bold are ways to grab attention. But actually what you really need is a solid plan of attack. You need to be smart.
One of the worst things you can do is sit there and think that you need to do something on social media and then come up with an idea on the spot. Even working a few days in advance is a pretty ad hoc approach.
What you need to do instead is plan three months in advance, and be strategic in your approach. Don’t write posts just for social media. Think about your larger marketing plan and utilise your content well.
There are three content types that you need to have. These are Hero, Hub and Hygiene.
Hero
This is your juicy piece of content that offers significant value to your customers. It could be a podcast, webinar, book or lead magnet, amongst many other things. It’s packed full of fantastic information, insight, top tips or humour, drawing your clients to it, making them want to read more. You only need one piece of hero content. It’s better to have one piece that is well thought through and produced, rather than lots of little things that have been thrown together using just your gut instinct.
Once you have this amazing piece of content, then you can talk about it over and over, and in lots of different ways, giving you what appears to be fantastic social media content. But actually all you’re doing is continually sharing the one thing that is of most interest to your audience.
To find out more about how to create hero content, read my blog from earlier this year.
Hub
Your hub content is the bulk of what you need to talk about. It will be your everyday content that:
- Covers all elements of the marketing funnel
- Utilises a range of media
- Is interesting and value driven
- Is inspirational
- Encourages engagement
The best thing to do here is to take a step back and list all of the things that you can already talk about. You need to list all of the things in your marketing plan, if you have one. Can you share:
- Your newsletter, or get people to sign up to it?
- Your blogs – by text or video?
- Some explainer videos?
- Mini guides that offer top tips?
- Your PR
- Case studies or testimonials?
Do you have anything else that you can share? Writing and sharing blogs, videos or case studies is far more valuable than just posting regular general titbits about your business on social media.
Hub content is also where you share other people’s news as well. Read an amazing article that’s totally relevant? Add that in. Are you in awe of the words of your favourite influencer? Add that in too. At least a third of your content should be from other people. It makes it easier for you and it looks far more social to your audience.
Hygiene
The last third is that all important hygiene. This is where you need to get those SEO keywords in, and you need to just share the basics about what you do. While your lead magnet, videos, blogs and case studies might all say wonderful things about you, don’t forget that every now and then you just need to share your sales pitch. People need to know the basics about you if they’re going to buy.
Planning
When you’ve got all of your assets together and you know what you could post, then I’d recommend putting it into a three month plan. The frequency of posting should depend on how much content you’ve got. If you haven’t got that much at present, then posting twice a week is more than sufficient. If you’ve got a lot, maybe post four times a week. But don’t post every day. You’ll be overdoing it and your clients will miss a lot of what you say anyway.
Make sure you have a hygiene post added in around every 6 weeks, a hero piece at least twice a month, and then the rest is your hub content.
Then finally make sure you have a good even mix of content that you’ve created yourself, content that you’re repurposing from stuff you’ve done before, and content that is reposted from other people. That will give you a rich and interesting social media feed.
The next thing is to make sure it converts. See our previous blog for details about that.
How’s Your Social Media?
If your social media could do with a bit of an uplift, chat to the team at Lindsay Woodward Marketing. With our ‘strategy first’ mindset, we won’t just ensure you have a lot of posts, but we’ll ensure they work for you as part of your business. After all, that’s what matters. Want to know more about how we could help? Get in touch today.
