Planning & Creating Exceptional Social Content

Planning and creating exceptional (or even mediocre) social content is one of the toughest jobs when running a business. There are numerous reasons why. Our clients often cite lack of time, lack of creativity and too many unknown factors. There is something truly rewarding about planning and creating amazing social content though; that’s why there are so many social media creators out there.

We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to improve their planning and creating processes. If you’ve struggled with creating or planning (or both) content for your social platforms, keep reading for a heap of advice to get you going strong.

In this guide we will cover:

·???????How to plan social media content

·???????Identifying your audience

·???????Understanding goals

·???????Recognising your strengths

·???????Planning ahead

·???????How to create social media content

·???????Useful physical tools

·???????Useful editing tools

How Do You Plan Social Media Content?

There are two parts to this answer. Before you plan out your day-to-day content, you need to know what platforms to post on and who your audience are, therefore, what will they respond to.

Marketing, and the theories behind it, have been around for longer than you think. Although social media is a relatively new way of marketing, some of the basic principles still hold true. On the other hand, some practices are outdated.

To keep it simple, aim to sell your product/service 10% of the time. Use the other 90% of your social media content to indirectly help your customers solve their problems and grow your brand awareness.

Identify Your Audience

Every good social media plan starts with the audience. Who are your customers? Knowing their demographics and motivations will help you decide if the social platforms you’re currently using, are the right ones for your business.

For example, if you sell fashion products to 18-40 year olds, Instagram is probably the best place for your brand.

If you offer business consulting services, you’re most likely going to thrive on LinkedIn.

Understand Your Goals

Social media is not a separate branch of your business, it all works in tandem. Your social media goals should be related to your business goals. If your main business goals are to grow sales of a particular product, then you will want to plan your social media content to help achieve that goal.

Recognise Your Current Strengths

Before planning your future content, look back at what has and hasn’t worked already. You might have a pretty significant following on Facebook, and that is where your ideal audience spend their time. If this is the case, switching to TikTok and starting from scratch may not be the best idea.

On the other hand, looking back at your Instagram analytics shows that your audience tend to respond well to short educational videos, then continuing with that, but also branching out to other social platforms where short videos do well, may be a great idea.

An audit or analysis of previous social content will help narrow down your planning process.

So, now you know your audience, where they spend their social time, and what you want to achieve with your content. You also know what has and hasn’t been popular in the past, and spent some time evaluating whether continuing with that kind of content is going to help you meet your business goals.

Now you want to start planning your actual content.

Plan Ahead For The Best Content

Planning ahead is very important with social media because it takes time to create exceptional content. Although social media is a rapidly changing landscape, really good content does need effort to be put in and having time on your side is a bonus.

Use a calendar to plan out what content will be going on what platform, on which days, at what time. You will also want to plan how you will get the content, if there is a deadline, and who is involved.

To start, make use of any tools you can. From specific social planning tools, such as Monday, to sticky notes on a whiteboard. This will help you can visualise your content calendar.

For example, you want to create a “meet the team” post, with high quality images of your team, on your company LinkedIn page.

You need to think about:

·???????How many people are in the team?

·???????Do you have the right equipment to get high-quality photos, and if not, how will you get them? Will that require hiring a photographer, in which case, will you need permission to book and pay for one?

·???????When is everyone going to be available for having their photos taken, and where is the best place to do it? Is it easier to get everyone in on the day or take photos at different times?

·???????Will the photos require processing, how long will that take?

All of the above factors need to be taken into account with your planning. They will be different depending on the size of your business and the resources available to you.

Who do you think would find the above task easier?

A café owner with a decent smartphone camera and four members of staff who all work in the café together.

Or

A social media executive in an IT business where 35 of the 40 staff work from home and the only camera they have access to, is broken.

This planning all takes place before the photos are even taken. At the very least, the social media executive won’t want to plan a “meet our team” social post for in three days if they don’t have a working camera.

There will be times when you have to post something unexpectedly, such as a photo for a birthday or a response to an event. But most of the time you can at least anticipate these occasions by planning ahead.

Add important dates to your calendar so you are reminded when they are coming up. Key dates in your industry such as conferences or celebrations can be added in advance. Religious and state holidays are easy to look up ahead of time. Even if your plan is rough, it is better than nothing. This planning means that when something does crop up unexpectedly, like a hilarious TikTok trend that would suit your brand perfectly, you have the time to film, edit and post it.

Understanding who your audience are, your strengths and business goals are key to planning brilliant social media content. Planning ahead is equally as important. Let’s delve deep into what content you can post in our next section.

How to Create Fantastic Social Media Content

Content ideas don’t just come from calendars. Social content can come from your team and stakeholders as well. If there is a charity your business supports, what dates are important to them, is it something you would share on social media? If it is, plan that in.

Not all content will be relevant for your social platforms, that depends on your business. Some businesses will share news of a colleague retiring or running a marathon, and some won’t.

Key dates might fill up your calendar quickly, or it might still look very empty. Not to worry, there are plenty of other ideas you can plan into your social media content calendar.

·???????Tips and advice

·???????Testimonials and reviews

·???????Blogs and news

·???????Behind the scenes

·???????Awards and achievements

·???????Case studies

·???????Professional or work social events

·???????Products

If you’re stuck on ideas, use these four words to kickstart some inspiration:

Social media content should be:

1.?????Relatable

2.?????Funny

3.?????Educational

4.?????Reflecting brand values

It doesn’t have to be all of these at once, these points just help you keep on track.

Useful Tools For Creating Content

Once you are happy with the kinds of content you want to post about, you will need to start creating it.

A large part of creating social content is getting the raw content – photos or footage, to turn into social posts.

Capturing raw content can be done using a smartphone or basic digital camera and they can be good enough. If you want to elevate that content however, consider bringing some additional tools in.

?

Gimbal

Gimbals are a camera stabiliser that uses complex motion detecting sensors to keep a camera steady from unintentional movement. There are small ones for just holding smartphones and absolutely huge ones that film studios use.

A gimbal is great when you’re filming anything where you are also moving, even if it’s just the wind shaking your hands. The motorised components keep everything so steady looking that you can’t tell if the person behind the camera is walking or gliding.

Tripod

Make your filming look more professional with a tripod. A simple tripod with adjustable height can be used in a variety of places including on a desk or outside. This stand removes the need for selfie-style camera angles which can look amateur and unprofessional.

Lighting

Backdrops, large hotlights, umbrellas with reflective material in - these are all fantastic lighting tools to help make amazing photos. When that isn’t available though, how can you mimic that? Good lighting is an important part of photography and filming, but you don’t need an expensive set-up to elevate your content.

Making use of the natural light available is the cheapest way but you can get LED lights on stands at a good price too. There are several lighting techniques that a professional photographer uses. A basic one is to make sure there is light coming from three areas towards your subject.

You are aiming to reduce shadows so instead of three lights, use a reflector (such as an umbrella with reflective material in, or a plain white background). With a reflector on one side of your subject, use a light with a diffuser (or a large sunlit window) on the other side. Then use a warm light at the front where you are taking the photo. Digital Camera World has a very helpful infographic demonstrating how lighting works and with what kit.

?

Cameras

Smartphones have excellent cameras in them, but most people don’t learn all the different tricks their camera can do. Get to know your camera by reading the manual or watching videos from the manufacturers. That way you can really make the most out of it.

A digital camera has also got plenty of features that can improve how photos and film look. With a DSLR camera for example, you can switch lenses depending on what you are taking footage of. This broadens the scope of opportunities for content. Digital cameras can seem daunting but learning how to use them effectively comes from reading the manual and practice so they can be a worthwhile investment.

Both options are completely fine for creating social content, you may find it easier to narrow down which option is best for you based on the type of content you want to create.

A smartphone will be ideal for creating lots of short-form videos, such as TikToks and Reels, in the office environment.

A digital camera is a great option for a window company taking before and after photos of homes they have installed new windows and doors in.

?

Audio

If your social content will involve interviews or voiceovers to accompany the footage, you may consider investing in a microphone. The microphones on our smartphones and cameras are good, but the audio experience can be elevated.

There are budget microphones available that can attach to cameras or phones for when you are recording sound at the same time as images. There are also great microphone options for recording audio after the filming. Many how-to-videos on YouTube are set up this way. The footage is recorded, and then a separate audio track is recorded in a quieter environment.

?

Stock Content

Stock content refers to images, audio and film that have been created by other people but is available for use by others. This is often a paid subscription such as Shutterstock, however there are free options too.

On websites such as Pexels and Unsplash, photographers and filmmakers upload their content and only ask for credit to be given if it’s used. You can also donate money to them as a thank-you for sharing their work.

These websites are extremely helpful if you cannot create the content you need for social posts, such as images of mountains or a video of the inside of a car engine.

?

?

Editing Social Content

Now you have your footage, images and recordings, however you don’t want to post that up on your social platforms just yet. Taking your content through further editing processes will enrich it.

There are hundreds of editing apps and programmes available; some free and some expensive. Equally, some are easy to teach yourself and others require hours of training to perfect.

Two popular options are Canva and Adobe. Both require paid subscriptions, but Canva also has a free service.

Through Canva you can create graphics and videos using your own content or their stock content. It is straightforward to learn how to use and comes with thousands of free templates to help inspire your content.

Adobe offers a wide variety of applications for creating animations, editing photos and even making whole magazines. These are more complex programmes to learn but they produce exceptional results and come with thorough tutorials and expert help.

?

During editing you can amend your content to align more with your brand. Adding text in your brand’s font or placing a logo will make your posts more recognisable as belonging to your brand.

You can use editing apps to add music, cut film, remove backgrounds of images and adjust the lighting on photos.

Some charities will also provide free social media templates you can download and then edit to add your own messages or photos to.

Many of these editing applications are available on computers and smartphones. It means you can create templates on your laptop, and then access them from your phone when you want to add photos or post them.

Two popular apps for editing short-form videos are InShOt and CapCut. Both of which can be downloaded on Android and Apple phones.

Finishing Touches

Last but not least, here are some tips for polishing and refining your social content before it gets posted.

·???????Learn the algorithms for each social media platform. Knowing how they work and keeping on top of changes will make your brand look more professional. For example, knowing that hashtags aren’t needed on Facebook posts and links can’t be added into captions on Instagram should be reflected in the posts you add to those platforms.

·???????Research hashtags that are mostly likely to help the right audience see your content. See what hashtags your competition are using and keep up to date with how many the algorithm prefers. ?

·???????Have a second person proof read and check all your posts before they are published. It’s easy to miss a mistake when you’ve been working on something for a while.

·???????Add locations to your posts where the apps let you

·???????Keep to a consistent posting schedule

·???????Consider how accessible your content is. To make content more inclusive and accessible you could:

o??Add alt-text to your images so screen readers can read it

o??Use #CamelCase for your hashtags so screen readers can read it

o??Include/use gender neutral pronouns

o??Use contrasting colours to help people with visual impairments

There is a lot of work that into planning and creating exceptional social content. Knowing what is appropriate and how to make it, is not always straightforward and there can be several barriers to your creativity.

Equally, there are so many opportunities, platforms, and creative tools available now, that there are endless ways you can reach your audience through social media.

This guide is intended to give you insight into how experienced social media creators plan and create their content. Where possible we have tried to give budget friendly alternatives to the equipment and programmes they might use. Let me know if you use any of this tips to improve your social content!