Sharing quality content across your social channels is the primary way to engage and connect with your audience. To create a content strategy that actually works, consistency is key. Streamline your content process with an editorial calendar, which gives you a place to organize ideas and schedule months of quality posts ahead of time (so you have more time to create content, instead of just managing it).

Yearly Strategy
Start with the big picture, deciding on a primary topic to focus on each month. The topic you choose will shape your social media posts for the month and give you a starting point as you create your content, from writing blog posts, staff profiles or client newsletters, to creating new videos for your website.

 Awareness events (events dedicated to raising awareness about important issues, like Cancer Prevention Month) may play a role in your content strategy, so identify any causes you are passionate about supporting and include them in your yearly plan.

Monthly Strategy
Once your yearly plan is in place, you can decide how often to post on social media and what type of content to share. If you’re already active on social, free tools like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics can help you understand how your current posts are performing so you can continue to provide value to your audience.

Once you know what kind of content your audience is interested in, it’s time to create and source content. The end goal of social media is to drive content back to your site, which is why we recommend blogging. Content drives traffic to your site, increases sales, and promotes loyalty, so many of your social media posts will come directly from your blog.

As you fill up your editorial calendar for the month, include links to blog posts, staff profiles, case studies, or interesting news articles. If you’re releasing a new product, hosting an event, or have an important company announcement to share, be sure to slot a few promotional posts.

Highlight your business culture or community involvement, and don’t forget to think about sharing the human side of your business. Employee birthdays, team building activities, annual conferences, and even office pets all make for great social content and help your followers get to know the people behind the business. Once you’ve filled up your editorial calendar, use an app like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule your posts in advance.

Content creation can be quite time-consuming if you don’t know where to start. By implementing a plan in advance, your content strategy will be much more consistent and you’ll never be scrambling for great content to share.

Interested in developing a content strategy for your business? We can help—contact us today to get started.