So you’ve decided to start your content creator business, you choose your platform, purchase your equipment and you’re ready to go! There’s just one little problem….what should you post?
Before you just start shooting random pictures of your cat hoping that will grow your following, you need to have a bit of a strategy in place. This strategy is like your flight path to success, the better you plan and prepare for things like turbulence, the easier it will be to weather the storm and continue your journey to success.
What Is A Social Media Content Strategy?
Essentially, your social media content strategy is a detailed plan of action for you to follow to achieve your goals on social media and in your creator business. This will generally include the focused goals, the type of content to create, where you plan to post your content, and the metrics you will keep track of to measure your success.
Of course, this will look like a content matrix, picking a niche, and setting a posting schedule. But there are 5 things every successful creator really focuses on in their social media content strategy that no one really talks about and I am sharing that with you today.
The Secret To A Powerful Social Media Content Strategy?
When creating your social media content strategy, the easiest thing to do is work backward. I know this may sound weird, but when you know exactly what your end goal is, it’s easier to reverse engineer how to reach that goal and layout your plan.
Step 1: Choose your goals
Without a goal to focus on, you don’t really have a purpose for a strategy. You can easily map out how many videos to post a week, or who your target audience is, but you’ll post blindly and have no real way to know if you are on the right track because you haven’t set a goal.
One of the things I share when working with creators is to set a PACT. This is a goal setting system that forces you to focus on the output instead of just the outcome, which will help you stay on track without getting discouraged as easily.
PACT stands for:
- Purposeful
- Actionable
- Consistent
- Trackable
Although it can be tempting to just focus on high-level metrics such as follower count or the number of views and likes your posts get, you want to make sure you go deeper into trackable metrics with value such as engagement rate, conversion rate, and CTR.
For example, having a goal of “increase my YouTube channel’s CTR to 6% this month” is way more powerful, and far more trackable than “get 1,000 views per video.”
To give a clearer reason why, CTR stands for click-through rate and is calculated by taking the total number of impressions, people who were presented your video, by the total number of clicks you received. So naturally, if you increase your CTR you will increase your views.
CTR is also a very common metric that is used for other platforms such as blogs, emails, and affiliate marketing.
Step 2: Research the competition
Once you have your goal set, it is important to research your competitors to see what is working and what is missing so you can fill in the missing gap in your niche and set your authority with your target audience.
Using the goal from above of increasing your YouTube channels CTR, your research may look like studying thumbnails and titles of high ranking videos in your niche to see what they all have in common and what you can do to stand out more.
Also, ensure to research your own analytics to see what videos have a CTR of over 6% and compare that with your competitors’ videos to see how you can continue to hit your goal.
Step 3: Understand Your Audience
Without our audience, we wouldn’t have a social media presence, we would just have an Instagram feed of really nice photos. So it’s important to really understand your audience so you can continue to create content that attracts new followers, creates high engagement, and aligns with your overall brand.
It’s safe to say if you are a Vegan Food Vlogger and you are focusing on increasing your CTR, creating a video of you testing new turkey jerky probably isn’t the way to go. Your audience is not interested in this topic, therefore will not click on your video which results in a lower CTR.
You will also most likely lose your audience’s trust and have a high unsubscribe rate, which will stop you from reaching your goals faster.
A good way to really understand your audience’s interest needs and wants is to hang out where they hang out at. And no, I’m not talking about stalking them at a local coffee shop. But if you know that a majority of your viewers are in a niche Facebook group, join that group and see what types of questions are being asked, what topics are constantly brought up, and research how you can turn those conversations into content.
Making content they want to see will help you reach your goal of an increased CTR.
Step 4: Create consistently
The big reason I love the PACT goal setting system is the focus on consistency. It can be tempting to overthink our content before we publish because we focus on perfection. But, done is better than perfect.
The reality is, no matter how ‘perfect’ we try to make our content, there will always be something you could have done better. So instead of obsessing over it, complete it, publish it, and then track the data around it to make it better next time.
Believe it or not, your audience likes to see your growth. Proof ?
So when making your social media content strategy, make sure to stick to the number of posts per week, usually, 1-3 is perfect for growth and allows you to study your metrics that matter and make proper adjustments for your next piece of content so it continues to get better and your audience will appreciate your growth.
Step 5: Track The Metrics
As a reminder, your social media content strategy is a flight path to your destination of success. This flight path is not set in stone and you should prepare for adjustments. This can include older topics you have posted taking off, which means you would create follow-up content on the relevant topic to increase your momentum.
Or maybe you planned an entire series of content on a specific topic but your audience did not respond well to it, so you should prepare to scrap the rest of the post and create something else.
This can all be decided in your analytics by looking at metrics such as your engagement rate, impressions, followers gained or lost, and your retention rate.
Logging into your analytics once a day to track your metrics is always best practice and will allow you to stay up to date on what’s working and what opportunities to focus on.
Conclusion
Your social media content strategy is never a set it and forget it type of plan. This should always be a work in progress to continuously improve, grow, and adjust. But to recap, you will want to layout your basics which include:
- Defining your niche
- Creating a posting schedule
- Define your content pillars
Then apply the 5 steps mentioned above:
- Start with your goals using the PACT goal setting system
- Research your competitors
- Understand your audience
- Create consistently
- Track your metrics
Then follow a lather, rinse, repeat format to continue your journey to success.
Let us know in the comments your social media goal for this month!