The 4 Stages of Creating Engaging Social Media Content

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST “An hour of planning can save 10 hours of doing.” — Dale CarnegieOne of the key aspects of social media is consistency. You need to show up every day.You need variety in your posts to keep your followers engaged.The assets you use with your social posts are just as important as the content itself.You need to be present on your social channels! You can’t just post and ignore.The better you can get to know your audience, the better you can create content that will interest them.The more you post content that provokes engagement, the more people you’ll reach.THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE… The more you engage your audience and the more targeted you get at connecting with your audience with the right type of content, the greater reach you will have. Better reach will encourage the social platforms to deliver more of your content to your audience.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS An update about how changes in Facebook’s algorithms will affect how your content app – 01:55Recommendations and words of warning regarding how to handle the content you publish – 04:30The 4-stage process for identifying content needs – 06:31The reason it’s important you understand who your target audience are – 07:06Where to look for ideas to create posts around – 08:50How social media really works – 12:39How to create assets—what you’ll use to put posts on social media – 13:30Tips for scheduling your posts – 15:59 LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE MeetEdgarWordSwagCanvaBufferTranscript below Hello, and a really warm welcome to episode four of the Social Media Marketing Made Simple podcast. And I'm your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so glad you decided to download the podcast and give it a listen.As you know, this is a brand new venture for me and it's only episode #4 of the podcast. I sat down and thought about what is it I'm going to talk about on this podcast, what am I going to teach you, and what valuable information can I give you that's going to help you market your businesses better generally and on social media.I thought back to all the questions that I get asked all the time when I'm speaking to marketers and entrepreneurs like yourself. And one of the thing that I constantly get asked about and that people struggle with is how do we come up with content to put out on social media day after day, week after week. You know what? I'm not going to lie to you. This isn't the easiest task that we have.Coming up with creative and interesting content can be difficult and even more so when you think about the recent changes that have been taking place with the algorithms. Basically, the rules in which things like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram decide what content they're going to show to what people. An update about how changes in Facebook’s algorithms will affect how your content app If you saw my Facebook Live a few weeks back, it's on my Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook page, you would've seen that I did live talking about the recent changes in Facebook.Basically, the short version is that Facebook are going to be giving more priority to content that engages people and provokes a conversation. If your content that you're putting out there is not getting much engagement and people aren't commenting or sharing, then the chances are less and less people are going to see your content. It's more important than ever that we think about how we can create engaging and interesting content for our social media platforms.Today, I have decided to do a podcast on how we go about creating content. I'm going to take you through my step-by-step guide to coming up with and planning my content for social media. Don't worry, I know if you're anything like me, you are probably listening to this podcast while driving, doing school run, getting ready in the morning and therefore, you probably don't have a pen and paper to hand. No problem, I have put together a handy step-by-step plan, which you can download. Head back to the podcast page on the website teresaheathwareing.com and you will find that guide that you can download.Let's dive straight in and get started. I saw a great quote the other day that sums up this whole exercise in one. "An hour of planning can save ten hours of doing," and this couldn't be more right than when it comes to creating content for social media. Who sat for hours trying to come up with something for social media or days have gone by and you've suddenly thought, "Oh, gosh, I haven't posted for days." I'm sure there's an awful lot of us out there. This is why we spend the effort to plan and schedule our content.Unfortunately, one of the key things on social media is consistency, and about showing up every single day. I totally get it. Coming up with something every single day to post on social media is hard. But by putting together a plan, it's going to save you time and it's going to ensure that you've got variety on your page because no one wants to see a dull social media page putting out the same content day in, day out. Recommendations and words of warning regarding how to handle the content you publish So, I use my four-step process in order to plan and schedule social media content. But before we get into that, there's just a couple of kind of things that I want you to think about, consider, maybe call them words of warning. When you're scheduling content and coming up with a plan for content, you want to make sure that you do have a mix of scheduled and natural content.Now, if you are scheduling content and you're not doing the natural stuff, it's unlikely to be as interesting as one that has a mix of both. What I mean is a scheduled post might be, "Here's a blog post that I did or here is a USP or a testimonial," or something like that. A natural post might be, "Look, here's me at an event me, or here's the latest thing come off the production line." Those are the natural posts and they do tend to be more interesting because they seem more real.Also, scheduling and planning content doesn't mean, "That's it. I can post it. I'm never going to social media again." It's all about being present, making sure that you are there on those social media platforms. The scheduling and the content planning is purely to help you manage your time. However, you can't just post and ignore. You've got make sure you're there as well.And also, don't over-repeat. Make sure you're not putting the same content over and over and over again. Now, I know that there are several platforms like that, platforms like Meet Edgar. I'll put a link to this in my show notes, that will recycle your content for you. You basically put it a load of content and it will post out and when it gets to the end, it shuffles it and sends it back out again.You know what? This can be really helpful. However, you have got to have an awful lot of content and able to do that so that it doesn't look like you're throwing it the same thing over and over again. Then also be ready to stop and change at kind of any point. If something happens in the news or something might not be appropriate anymore or it's out of date, then obviously, again, you can't just schedule stuff and think, "That's it. I don't need to worry about it anymore." The 4-stage process for identifying content needs Okay, onto the four-stage process. These four stages are stage one, understand your audience. Stage two, brainstorm your content. Stage three, create your assets, and stage four, schedule your posts. If you don't understand any of these stages, no problem. I'm going to talk you through them. The reason it’s important you understand who your target audience are Let's get started. Stage one, know your audience. Now, I have to apologise. If anybody has ever seen me talk or listen to other content or seen Facebook lives, you will know that I go on about this an awful lot, and it's because I can't stress how important it is that you know who you're talking to, because you can have the best content in the world but if it's talking to the wrong audience, then you're never going to engage the people that you want.Someone once said it's like putting a billboard in a desert and I couldn't agree more. You really have to get to understand who is it that your target audience are, who are you trying to speak to and I don't just want to know are they male or female, how old are they, where do they live. I want you to think about all the details. I want you to even go to the effort of finding a photo that you think depicts the person that you're trying to target. I want you to think of a name. I want you to think, do they have children? What kind of job do they have? What type of house might they live in? What clothes do they wear? Where do they go food shopping? What motivates them? What do they do on a weekend? What cars do they drive? What are their aspirations and dreams?I want you to try and get down really deep and understand who is it that you're talking to because the better you can get to know them, the better you can create content that's going to interest them. And I really want you to take