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There is an easier way to plan out your creative content. The content that has you stuck and wanting to stop posting to social media.
Whether you love social media or hate it, you know that having your business presence on it is super important. How do you build your social media content in a way that doesn’t have you feeling burnt out and exhausted?
WHY PLANNING YOUR CREATIVE CONTENT MAKES LIFE EASIER
I used to have this idea that I couldn’t create content unless I was in the creative zone. That meant having no plan and just winging it as I went. There are some weeks that I still fall into that trap. Those are the weeks that I struggle with the most and have zero ability to show up authentically anywhere.
Having a plan means that you are putting your creative self to work. You aren’t blocking the creative juices from flowing, you are giving them a pathway to follow to help you plan and strategize for your business.
When you have a plan in place when it comes to your creative content, it means that you can work more efficiently and not feel like you are jumping around from topic to topic with little direction.
In this blog post, we are going to talk about content pillars, themes, and other ways that you can plan your content to get the most out of your social media platforms and blog.
USING CONTENT PILLARS TO PLAN YOUR CREATIVE CONTENT
First, let’s talk about what I consider to be creative content.
Blogging
Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook
Pinterest (Because remember, Pinterest is a search engine and NOT a social media platform)
Email newsletters
The best thing is that when you are creating your content using content pillars and well, any of the ways to plan your content, you can REUSE it!! I want you to remember though that when you are reusing your content, use different graphics and images. This is a great way to make each platform that you are sharing to feel different and unique.
So what are content pillars? In easy terms, content pillars are the foundational pieces of what your business talks about. These are your main focus topics that you help people with.
My content pillars for Creative Purpose are…
Planning and Organization
Creativity and Inspiration
Building a Strategy
Content creation
Marketing
My content pillars for Empoword Blogging are…
Storytelling
Healing & Transformation
Acceptance & Self-love
Blogging
Motivation & Inspiration
These are the foundational pieces of the things that I talk about in both of my businesses. These give me a framework of all the things that I should be talking about with my ideal audience. Under each content pillar, there will be multiple things that I can speak about.
How do you figure out your content pillars?
Within your niche, answer these questions to help you start narrowing it down.
What can you talk about?
What are you an expert in?
What questions can you answer for your ideal audience?
What do others ask you for help with?
Start brainstorming and write down what comes to your head. You may notice that things can be grouped together. For example, blogging and social media for me all fall under the creative content pillar.
You will want to choose between 3 to 5 content pillars. You don’t want any more than five content pillars because if you do, it means that you aren’t narrowed down enough and are trying to reach too many people.
Once you have these content pillars for your business figured out, they are going to help you create your creative content. You now have a framework for what you need to and want to talk about on all of your platforms.
Within these pillars, you are going to want to educate, inspire, entertain, connect, and sell.
USING THEMES TO PLAN YOUR CREATIVE CONTENT
Let’s make planning your content super simple by using themes. This is a great way to break down all of your content.
First, start by mapping out your blogging content. Pick a monthly theme that you want to talk about. Let’s focus on the month of May.
Things to consider when choosing a monthly theme for your content…
What are you promoting?
Do you have any upcoming programs or products?
What are your current opt-ins?
You can create your monthly theme for the overlying umbrella that covers what you are promoting for that month. So for example, if you have a program that is teaching someone how to blog. Your overlying theme for the month could be blogging.
Once you have your monthly theme, you can take that and break it even smaller into weekly themes. This means that all the content for that week will fall under a small theme that fits within the bigger monthly theme.
Sticking with the blogging theme for the month, you can do themes like niche, planning, organizing, or SEO as your weekly themes. It will then be within these weekly themes that you create your daily creative content.
You can even break it down into daily themes if that is easier for you. That means that you will just repeat the themes over and over again every week with new content. For this example, I will use Jody and our strategy session.
She wanted to make planning out her social media easy. She has a busy life and so she didn’t want to feel like she always had to be creating new content. She chose to do the daily themes and for her, they look like this…
Monday
IG: Sell
FB: Quote
Tuesday
IG: Video
FB: Tips/Tricks
Wednesday
IG: Quote
FB: Video
Thursday
IG: Tips/Tricks
FB: Sell
Friday
IG: Freebie
FB: Poll
Saturday (every other Saturday rotated)
IG: Small Wins
FB: Small Business Saturday
Sunday
IG: Poll
FB: Freebie
With this layout, all she has to do is fill in the dates on the calendar so she knows what content she wants to share. She even made it easier on herself and for the quotes and the tips & tricks days, she has 3 to 4 graphics that she rotates between so she doesn’t always need to create new graphics.
USING REPURPOSING TO PLAN YOUR CREATIVE CONTENT
I am sure that you already have a TON of content out in the world right now. You may be sitting at your computer struggling with what to post to your blog or your social media but your content has already been created.
Repurposing your content to help you plan is a great way to map out content that you want to share.
Do you have a blog post that went over really well?
Do you have a social media post that went over really well?
You can turn that blog post into multiple content pieces for different platforms.
You can turn that social media post into a blog post and other content pieces for different platforms.
More than likely, you have content from 6 to 12 months ago that your followers would love to see again. Change it up and create new graphics but bring the information back. Repurposing is a great way to build on content that you have already shared once.
Whether you decide to use content pillars, themes, or a combination of both to plan out your creative content, you will be one step ahead when you actually take the time to plan. Once you get in the habit of creating a strategy and mapping out all of your content, every month will get easier and easier.
If you are looking to book a strategy call with me, I still have a couple of spaces left for the month of April. I would love to help you plan out any of the creative content that you are stuck on.
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