Can I reduce time on planning and creating posts on social media? There’s no denying that creating content takes time. You must consider what to post, design a graphic, write a caption, select hashtags, post the content, and engage with your audience in the comments—and then do it all again, and again, and again.
How To Reduce Time On Planning And Creating Posts On Social Media?
While the challenges of creating social media content may appear daunting, consistently showing up has significant benefits for your business. You can do the following by consistently posting valuable content:
- Expand your audience
- Boost brand awareness
- Increase your industry’s authority.
- Increase participation
If you want to achieve any of the benefits listed above, you should devise a long-term strategy for saving time planning and creating social media content. The key to accomplishing this is to plan ahead of time and to create content in batches.
Reduce Time On Planning And Creating Posts: A Warning About Multitasking
Let us take a moment to discuss something we all do: multitasking. Multitasking often feels productive because you are doing “everything,” but it is one of the least productive things you can do.
Only about 2% of the population is capable of multitasking, according to estimates. It actually takes 50% longer to complete a task when you switch from one to the other. (Brain Rules, John Medina)
“Only 2% of the population is actually capable of multitasking.”
So, what are the 98 percent of us who can’t multitask supposed to do? When it comes to social media content creation, the answer is to set up a system and work in batches. The process outlined below can be repeated each month to save time planning and creating social media content.
Reduce Time On Planning And Creating Posts: Process of Content Planning
Set aside time each month to plan out your social media content for the following month. You can look at your content from a higher level and be more strategic about your content plan if you outline the content topics you want to cover for the entire month. Spend 1-2 hours each month planning your content for the following month.
Plan on devoting 1-2 hours per month to content planning.
Include the following in your content strategy:
- The number of posts: How frequently do you post (or intend to post) each week? Remember that quality and consistency are more important than quantity. Maintain a consistent schedule and frequency over time.
- Goals: What are your monthly business objectives? How can your content help you achieve those objectives?
- Any significant dates: Are you launching a new product or service, or hosting an event? Put those first in your plan so you can fill in the supporting content around them later.
- Social media holidays you want to “celebrate”: Do you want to “celebrate” any relevant social media holidays on your social platforms? This list provides a good overview of these types of holidays, but you can always look into those that are specific to your industry.
With this content roadmap, you can enter the month knowing exactly what content needs to be created each week (more on that later).
Reduce Time On Planning And Creating Posts: What Kinds of Social Media Content Should You Produce?
Knowing what to post on social media is one of the most difficult challenges. It is critical to share a variety of content types when creating social media content. Your content should either inform, entertain, or sell.
The following are some examples of businesses that balance content that educates, entertains, and sells.
Bulletproof (@bulletproof)
Bulletproof’s content strikes an excellent balance of entertainment, education, and sales. They highlight their products, share recipes, answer frequently asked questions, and create funny, relatable GIFs.
Bulletproof‘s Instagram profileShopify (@shopify)
The Instagram of Shopify shares customers’ inspiring personal stories, encourages conversation and engagement by asking questions, and shares video content with “how” and “why” motivating life hacks.
Flodesk (@flodesk)
Flodsesk promotes new features, shares email marketing tips and best practices, and encourages audience participation by asking “this or that” and “would you rather?” questions.
Another benefit of planning your content for the entire month is that you can more effectively distribute and plan the types of content you will share. Instead of scrambling for something to post and potentially posting too many sales-focused posts or too many funny memes, planning ahead of time allows you to be more intentional and strategic with what you post. That ensures you’re hitting all the right notes when it comes to getting to know, like, and trust your audience, serving them, and ultimately converting them.
Assume you want to publish four posts per week. Each week, you could share two educational posts, one sales-focused post, and one entertaining post to balance your content types. As you plan your content for the month, you can begin to plug in your content ideas in accordance with the cadence and flow.
Bonus tip:
This part of the procedure does not have to be high-tech. Simply use a monthly calendar (you can print one at Print-a-Calendar.com if you don’t already have one) and some sticky notes, as well as a pen, to jot down your content topics. This process allows you to rearrange items as needed in order to better balance and distribute your content. Alternatively, you can plan digitally using a Google calendar or software such as Asana, Trello, or Cickup. Choose the tool that is most convenient for you so that you will be more likely to use it.
When planning content, keep in mind that it does not have to be overly complicated. Anything can be considered content if it is valuable to your target audience. Share your expertise, take your audience behind the scenes, meet your team, share customer testimonials or reviews, and respond to frequently asked questions. Know that your audience craves your insight—they told you so when they chose to follow you.