Posted by Creating content and being consistent across all social media platforms is no easy-brainer. It takes time and effort to build engagement through social media with your target audience.
This gets more hectic when you need to stay updated with current trends and create social media posts on a regular basis. According to a survey most marketers take at least 1 to 6 hours of time to create quality content.
With so much time invested, it is very important to develop a solid content planning strategy for better output. Having said that, this guide will help you out with how you can save time planning and creating content for social media without any hassle. But let’s get started with the basics first.
What is content planning?
Content planning is basically a fine blend of processes and workflows through which an organization gets to determine the types of content they need to design and implement. It comprises all marketing assets and data collection processes along with SEO research, engagement tracking, blogging, and white paper writing.
With the increase in content marketing budget, a company gets to align the content levels and scale. Having a well-crafted content plan helps the organization overcome everyday challenges with content marketing.
How to create content for social media?
Social media has become a major broadcaster for marketing goods. And in the past few years, the formula has touched the sky! Social media platforms do not just connect people anymore but connect brands with their target audience.
It lets the brands interact with the audience and create a loyal customer base. Thus, creating good content is the ultimate way to attract people. But how?
Ways to design content for social media
- Showcase positive news — Consumers of all measures prefer positive news and statistics. So, in order to attract more light to your brand, try to share the statistics that portray your brand in a good way. Sharing them on social media will increase the brand’s popularity and gain consumers’ trust.
- Share user-generated content – User-generated contents come with two major facts: it grows audience engagement and creates finer brand awareness. Such contents include user reviews, (case studies) images, videos, testimonials, etc. The audience feels much more connected to the brand through this.
- Put emphasis on customer reviews — According to reports, most customers prefer to write online reviews after purchasing a product. Why not highlight what the customers are saying about the brand? Bringing positive reviews to the limelight through posts would attract a new audience and make them browse through the brand.
- Utilize social media influencer marketing — According to digitalmarketinginstitue influencer marketing stats, 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations. And It is a known fact that a huge number of people follow what the influencers flash on their content. Therefore, leveraging them would be one of the most efficient ways to gain an authentic and engaging base. Loyal fans tend to automatically choose the brands the influencers use.
- Use controversial topics for promotion — People are attracted to controversial topics and when a brand uses it as their content in a fine manner, the audience loves the company even more. But brands must be careful while choosing the topic and think about how they can benefit from it.
- Post tutorial videos and images — Post how the customers can use the brand and create trends. It is a great strategy to gain followers who will not only value the brand but their suggestions also. The “how to” videos must be presented in a fine manner, so the common audience can relate to them and follow through.
Benefits of planning & creating social content
1. Enhances quality of content
With content planning, a brand gets to keep a constant watch on how well it is doing on social media platforms. Thus, a company can easily improve content quality as well as plan strategic moves to enhance target audience reach.
2. Saves time in the long run
Everyone is looking for ways to save time while being productive. Be it the audience or the brands, all do the same thing. Content planning offers that benefit. A brand gets to post on time, interact with the audience, and even earn more time to focus on other aspects of the business.
3. Creates a direction
With content planning, a brand gets to tailor every part of its content. It will ultimately help with marketing and business goals. No matter if it is just a post or a month-long campaign, in order to make it work, you need to plan a strategy for your social media content. Ultimately, you will learn in which direction the content is to flow.
4. Brands can assess and improve
Day-to-day activity on the content you post helps the brand assess its image among the audience. With planned content, a company gets to see what attracts the most audience or which post is bringing more engagement. It acts as a framework to let you witness the successes and failures and ultimately allows you to improve them.
5. Helps to stay organized
Planning the content in advance allows a company to stay organized. You will not lose the ideas in a haystack. Even the teams that prepare the content for social media, such as the graphic designers, marketing team, and content writers, get enough opportunities to express their skills.
Top 11 ways to save time & create social media content
1. Identify & set goals
Social media can easily distract you from your goal. Thus, it is important to keep your focus steady on the goal and not get swayed by anything and everything you see on social media platforms. Keeping up with the plans and strategies will save both your time and energy.
2. Plan the contents in advance
Planning the types of posts in advance can save a lot of time for the teams who work for the content. And the planning is not only for the content but also includes the time you take to post, the selection of platform for sharing, and how often you are to share content on social media.
3. Use content curation
Content curation is one of the best strategies to save time and resources on creation. It also allows the brand to build beneficial relationships with influencers and target audiences. Curating the content will create a variety for the posts and ultimately save lots of time for the company.
There are many social media management tools that can help you with content curation but Crowdfireapp serves the best.
Crowdfire app article curation can search down to thousands of sources across the web to find information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest.
On top of this, it’s the only social media management tool that provides Image recommendations to curate shareable images for Instagram.
4. Create visuals
Yes! Creating visuals and catchy graphics will make the content more attractive. People love the relevant and aesthetic presentation of the posts they see on social media.
Therefore, creating attractive visuals while keeping in mind the preference of the audience saves lots of time you may spend on content creation.
There are tools that can help you create visually appealing graphics like Photoshop that have tons of advanced features like removing objects easily.
5. Add hashtags
Hashtags play a vital role in gaining an audience on social media. Attaching relevant hashtags is a must as it increases the reach of the content. It not only saves time but also reaches multiple sets of the audience that may like your content.
6. Schedule posts
Scheduling the time of posts is of utter importance. You need to check when your target audience tends to be online and interact with you the most. Posting the content accordingly will save you time and increase your reach efficiently.
7. Repurposing old posts
Repurposing old posts is yet another way to save your time. With repurposing, you do not have to create entirely new content, and you get to use it as a measure of engaging your audience. You have to make it relevant so people can relate to it and like the content at the same time.
8. Use tools for content automation
Creating high-quality content takes time, that’s why it is important to automate your content creation process. There are many unique content generator tools that can help you out in creating content for all your social media handles. These tools are AI-driven which means they can create compelling content resonating with your brand voice.
9. Use a social media calendar
Plan out the posts for days, weeks, and months ahead with the help of a social media content calendar.
With Crowdfireapp you can easily view and analyze your social media post activity, schedule your upcoming posts, and measure your performance for better results. It will save an immense amount of time and maintain consistency across all social media platforms.
Moreover, following a fixed schedule is one of the most significant ways to save time while planning social media content.
10. Batch tasks
Try to devote a particular time to operating social media tasks. This way, you will not get distracted and stay organized with the contents. Scheduling the time in advance helps with saving a lot of time and keeping the social media handles consistent.
11. Measure results
Measuring the outcomes of your content saves you the time you may waste on creating other less-effective content. Look for what impacts the audience the most and try to stick with that. It will help you assess your social media engagement and audience reaction.