The best way to be consistent on social media? Have a plan. Here’s a little metaphor … If you’re going on a roadtrip with a group of friends, of course you’re going to have a map with your direct route from your starting place to your final destination. With this map, you know how many miles you’ll drive, how long it will take, and the most efficient itinerary. But, chances are you’ll likely want to veer a bit off course to visit a national park, stop for brunch, or hit up the outlet malls. For each detour, you and your friends will simply edit the plan to account for those few extra hours and miles on the car. After an afternoon of fun, you’ll be back on the road and en route as planned.
The same concept is true for social media. Designing a long-term (2-4 weeks out) plan lays the groundwork for a successful —and enjoyable— social media experience. Having a social media plan gets everyone on the same page, ensures your posts are uniform, intentional, and on-brand, and allows for flexibility if time-sensitive content comes up last minute.
Planning your content ahead of time will save you time, energy, and so much unnecessary stress. When you post in the moment every day (even multiple times per day), it’s easy to miss a typo, click ‘post’ without review from a second set of eyes, or to share content that may be fun and topical today, but isn’t cohesive in working towards your ultimate campaign goal. Planning ahead in a social media management app or calendar allows you to mark important dates (sales, holidays, events, etc.), work backwards from deadlines, and develop arcs, stories, and nuance in your content creation.
Planning ahead is especially important for small teams where employees are wearing many hats and efficiency is essential. It also saves the day when your social media manager is sick, last minute meetings pop up on the calendar, or you’re transitioning the job to a new hire. In short, planning ahead—though it takes work—will grant you more freedom and flexibility in your day-to-day.
Batch creating is when you create all your captions and content at the same time (i.e. you’re not scrambling to come up with a post in the moment). Batch creating is helpful because it facilitates a state of flow—when you are fully engaged in your work without distractions or multi-tasking. Working in flow is not only more enjoyable, it also makes you more productive and your work more cohesive.
Later.com offers a great layout of batch creating, dissecting the process into 8 steps.
8 Steps for Batch Creating Content
Identify content pillars. These are topics or themes that your brand embodies.
Analyze posts. Go over your social media analytics to understand what kind of content, timing, CTA, and captions do well.
Brainstorm new content ideas. Now connect your pillars to your marketing campaign. How can you connect the two? That’s your content! Struggling too brainstorm? Subscribe to our Content Calendar Club and we'll think of the ideas for you.
Write captions for the month. Compose engaging copy for each post. Remember to make them easy to read with hooks, line breaks, and calls to action. This is also a good time to determine appropriate hashtags to accompany each post.
Source photos. If you’re using images from your brand photoshoot, great! You own that material. But if you’re hoping to share user-generated content or photos/graphics by other creators, always ask for permission and remember to tag the creator in your post and caption.
Film video content. You probably know by now that video content tends to perform better on most of the social media algorithms. For that reason, it’s important to dedicate time to storyboard, film, and edit your video content. Video can be more time consuming, but batch creating enables you to shoot many videos at once, saving you time in setting up/breaking down film equipment, employing additional talent, etc. Pro tip—Always film more than you need. Getting extra B-roll can be helpful in the editing process and in creating additional content in the future.
Design graphics. There’s SO much content on social media, it’s become important to include title slides that tell you what the video or post is about. We love to make ours on Canva so that all our cover slides are cohesive with our Media À La Carte brand aesthetic.
Schedule content calendar. Using a social media management program like Planoly or Later can help you lay out and actually schedule your content to post at a later date and time. Plus, it can all be done from your laptop or desktop computer so you’re not navigating everything on your tiny phone screen.
Planning with strategy
You know how when you go to the grocery store without a shopping list and come out with a million things except what you really needed for tonight’s recipe? That’s what it’s like to run a social media account without strategy and planning behind it. You need to start with your goal—maybe it revolves around a new product launch, a big holiday sale, or a cool partnership with a sister company. Set a deadline and work backwards to create benchmarks that build enthusiasm, increase your audience, or tease a new offering. Then work through the above eight steps to flush out your content for the weeks ahead—all with that end goal in mind.
We’re all on Instagram and it’s easy to tell when a brand is ‘posting just to post.’ It makes us just scroll (at best) or unfollow (at worst). Instead, we believe in posting with strategy. Not everything needs a direct call to action: Click here! Don’t wait! Buy now! But everything does need to provide some kind of value to your followers whether that’s information, opportunity, or artistry. When you’re creating your content plan, always keep in mind how you like to interact and engage with social media accounts. Putting the customer at the center of your planning strategy will keep your content meaningful and relevant to your followers.
Plan Your Content with Strategy by Using the Content Calendar Club
Feeling lost when it comes to creating a content strategy that helps your business grow and sell on Instagram? Media À La Carte offers our exclusive Content Calendar Club, the perfect solution for if you’re struggling to figure this all out on your own. Whether you’re a service or product-based business, the Content Calendar Club delivers a done-for-you content strategy with prompts for reels, carousels, captions, and stories to help you GROW your audience and CONVERT them to customers. With two weeks of content concepts delivered straight to your inbox every other week and access to our exclusive Club on Facebook to ask the MALC team your most burning questions, you’ll never feel lost on social media again.
The Content Calendar Club is ideal for
Small business owners who know the value of social media marketing but can’t seem to execute it on their own
Entrepreneurs who aren’t ready to invest in social media management but want access to high level strategy.
Service based business owners.
Product based business owners.
Small business owners looking to do it themselves with a little help.
Social media managers who need to get their time back.
For just $47 per month, you’ll get
The Product: A PDF Content Calendar
A PDF calendar with a content concept for every day of the week! Including ideas for Reels, carousels, static photos, graphics, and videos complete with caption and story prompts. Delivered in 2 week batches every other Monday and customized for product OR service based businesses. It even includes repurposing directions for 5 platforms: TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
The Support: A Private Facebook Group
Facebook group with support from Amandina and the entire MALC team. Get your most burning questions answered by the professionals. Instead of getting a generic answer on google, you'll get powerful, individualized support from a team with over 20 years collective experience.
The Extras: Resources and Discounts
Unlimited access to our shop full of eBooks, Guides, and Templates valued at over $500. Totally included. Exclusive access to book 1:1 services with Amandina or Hollyn at 10% off.
With the Content Calendar Club, you’re ready to set yourself up for social media consistency and success. Join the Club here.
I came across a blog article about brand strategy companies, and the information was incredibly useful. I was able to gain a deeper understanding of how to properly build a brand strategy for my business, attract the attention of the target audience and stand out from the competition. The examples from the article inspired me to implement new approaches in promotion. The advice on positioning and creating an emotional connection with customers was especially useful.