Tips for Planning Your Content Ahead of Time

Planning social media content before you begin creating that content is an important first step – one that's absolutely necessary to stick to your strategy, as well as to avoid scrambling at the last minute.

Any organization, from the smallest to the mega-large, plans its actions ahead of time, and the same applies to social media marketing. To maintain consistency, as well as a track record needed to climb the ladder of social media success, come up with a plan and then stick to it.

Step 1: Research Content Ideas

Starting with a list of ideas for content is a great way to flesh out a group of topics before getting into the nitty-gritty of copywriting and post design. Here are some areas you can look into when coming up with a list of ideas:

Event-Specific Content

Research events, holidays, and celebrations that you want to write posts about. You can start by looking at special days in the next month and pick the ones that are relevant to your brand and followers.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content encourages engagement and helps grow your audience on social media. Collect valuable, positive feedback from your customers and create content around that to share with other followers on social media.

Niche-Specific Content

Depending on your niche, you can create and choose from three to four categories that your social media content will cover. If you're a food blogger, for example, you might segment your content into:

• Recipes
• Product reviews
• Restaurant reviews
• Food memes/Humor

There is no shortage of content ideas for social media. Just decide what you want to publish and then get started.

Step 2: Decide How Often You Want to Post on Social Media

Do you publish every day? Or on specific days? While the number of posts per week matters, what matters even more is maintaining consistency.

Decide how often you want to post on Instagram or any other social platform where you are active.

At the same time, keep in mind the best times to post on social media so you're sure to get maximum engagement.

Step 3: Plan Your Content for the Week and Month

Not every day is your best day; small business owners and social media marketers have a lot to juggle at work. To reduce stress and maintain quality, try to plan and write content for the entire week and month. We suggest also setting a time limit so that you can get back to the other parts of running your business. You can also have a look at our new When to Post feature, which will show you the days and times most of your followers are online.

Step 4: Schedule Social Media Posts

When you're finished writing content (per your content calendar), schedule your posts. You can use Facebook Business Manager, Tweet Deck, or any other third-party social media scheduler you like.

By scheduling and automating content publishing, you can post at your regular time without a miss, even when you’re occupied with other work.

Bonus Tips

• Ideas often come when you least expect them – and if you don’t capture them immediately, you might forget them. Write your ideas down in Notion, a Google Doc, or even a note on your phone.
• Preparing video content requires more time. So, be sure to write down what you want to cover and rehearse a few times before recording the final video.
• Don't forget to add hashtags to your posts. For maximum success, use a combination of relevant, trending, and niche hashtags.

Your time is valuable, and you know the importance of spending it wisely. By planning and scheduling content for social media in advance, you can achieve better results with minimal input ... and not waste time in the process.

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