Today’s Booze: Getting Started With Planning Your Content Strategy

One of the most important things you have to consider when thinking about what content you’re going to put up your social media is a strategy. To develop a great social media strategy, you first need to know who your target audience is. When you are thinking about your strategy there is a big chance you have already pinpointed your target audience and where they like to hang out. That’s why you chose a specific social platform to operate on. Keep reading to learn more about what content to post, when, and what is the best way to make a strategy for your social media.

What is your goal?

Now that you have selected the social media platforms that you are going to operate on it is important to choose a social media goal for your business. According to Buffer, there are 9 main goals you can apply to your social media strategy.

1. Increase brand awareness

2. Drive traffic to your website

3. Generate new leads

4. Grow revenue (by increasing signups or sales)

5. Boost brand engagement

6. Build a community around your business

7. Provide social customer service

8. Increase mentions in the press

9. Listen to conversations about your brand

But here’s the interesting thing: when you are planning on operating on multiple social platforms, you can choose different goals per each platform. You might use Twitter to listen to and join conversations on your brand but use Instagram to drive traffic to your website. You can definitely use this to your business’s advantage to create a well-rounded social media strategy.

So, what about the actual social media content?

Your content will always have to be two things regardless of which goal you have chosen – engaging with your target audience and in line with the brand identity. When we look at brands that are on Instagram, we can easily spot with which goal they are posting on their social feed.

On the Kyliecosmetics Instagram feed, you will spot posts on their latest products and people using their products. It is clear to see that this business wants to grow its revenue by promoting its products.

Uber Eats has chosen a very different direction, however. Their main goal is to boost its brand engagement and approachability. They mainly have content that is relatable, friendly, and funny (like the meme above).

If your business sells clothing and stocks up very regularly, your customers might have trouble keeping track of what new products have arrived on your website. You could then keep your followers up to date on the latest dresses you have in store. Or you might be a business that sells clothing but doesn’t really change your collection that much. This could mean that you would probably post more on brand aesthetics.

Best time to post?

Okay, so we now know what to post, but when are you going to post exactly? There are a couple of specific moments during the week that are bound to get you the most likes, shares, and follows.

According to the American marketing association, the best possible time to post is quite specific. Wednesdays are by far the most effective days to post to reach the maximum amount of engagement on your account. On Twitter, it is recommended to be an early bird and post somewhere around 9 am. However, for most other platforms 11 am is the best time to post. Generally, weekdays are probably going to get you the most amount of engagement.

Best stay clear of posting during weekends, however! Data shows that Saturdays and especially Sundays are not going to do much for your social media account. These days by far have the least amount of engagement.

But this also is dependent on what type of business you are and what your goal is. You could be selling a product that prevents insomnia, and your target audience would be scrolling their Instagram during the night. It is then something you will have to consider when planning out your posting schedule.

Planning your content

You now have all the building blocks to actually start planning your social content. To make it easy for yourself you can make this plan visual and start working ahead with all your posts! You can choose to do this by drawing up an Excel document and make a detailed schedule. This is a simple and affordable solution for starting companies. When you are looking to upgrade on planning your posts you might want to consider using a social media planning tool.

An advantage of using a planning tool could be to visualize your feed in a draft, be more aware of statistics, and schedule posts ahead of time. This way you can see exactly which posts are doing well and adapt to this information. It’s also great that these tools allow you to schedule your content and that these will automatically publish your post on the time you desire. Great programs you can use for this purpose are Hootsuite, Later, Monday and Loomly.

How do you craft your social media content strategy? Are the steps that you follow effective for your business? Let us know in the comments below.

Cheers!