Know not only 'what' to post by 'why' you are posting it
’I just don’t know what to post.’ If you’ve thought or said this then believe me when I say you are not alone. Almost all of my clients have said this at some stage. And it’s usually lead to one of two things: posting something completely random or simply posting nothing at all. Neither of these options make for a good social media strategy. If we take it back to the why, your why, then you will have posts a plenty and you’ll know not only ‘what’ to post but ‘why’ you are posting it!
The idea here is to consider your business why and then apply that to your content. When you do this you will create content that your customer actually wants and needs rather than content that is at best a good guess or at worst, random. As with anything worth doing, there is a bit of thinking and work to do at the beginning. It will pay off in the long run and you’ll be able to kick that feeling of social overwhelm to the door!
To get started, there are 4 elements that you need to define and match up, and if you do it systematically you will have created a content calendar that is fit for purpose.
Customer Personas
The Customer Journey
Features and Benefits
Content Type
Customer Personas
Customer personas are semi-fictional descriptions of the key traits of segments of your target audience. Although it includes things like location and demographics it should also include their patterns of behaviour, goals, and motivations.
The Customer Journey
There are 6 stages of the customer journey - Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Delivery, Loyalty, Advocacy. For simplicity and the purposes of this exercise we can pair these up and focus on 3 rather than 6 - ie Awareness/Consideration, Decision/Delivery, Loyalty/Advocacy. Customers at differing stages of the journey have differing needs ie someone that has not heard of you will want different content than someone who has already made the decision to purchase.
Features and Benefits
What are the features of your offering and how does it benefit/add value for your customer? What pain point does your service or product offering address for your customers and how? Consider that ceratin features/benefits will resonate more with customers depending on what stage of the customer journey they are at.
Content Type
Examples of content types are: Blog, Video, List, FAQ, Recipe, Recommendations, Quote, Review, Quiz, Statistic, Staff Picks, How to Guide, Case Study, Showcase, Meme or GIF, Guest Post etc. Select content types that fit with your offering. To keep things on track and consistently on-brand establish templates for each content type so it’s an easy plug and play to create each post graphic.
This still may be a bit overwhelming to tackle on your own. Korio can help you make sense of all of this for your business. We will work with you to define your elements and establish a routine that systematically populates a content calendar.