Your Social Media System

By now, most entrepreneurs know the power of social media. They’ve heard how important it can be to grow their business.

They know why they should do it, and yet many struggle to implement what they crave: a consistent social media presence that reflects their brand and their voice.

The big question is why?

Where is the disconnect between knowing you need social media and actually making it happen for your business?  Surely, business owners who have struggled to build a business they love can master this one thing.

After working with a variety of business owners, I’ve come to think the solution is a social media system that takes the guesswork out of the equation.  A system that helps break down what you need to post into key steps that you can complete in one sitting or spread out during the month.

Here’s my simple social media 3 step system:

Step 1: Start with categories

There’s so much you can share on social media, where do you even start? Deciding what kinds of posts you want to contribute is the first challenge and an easy place to start.

Many entrepreneurs struggle with the sheer number of posts they need to write for the entire month (or even the entire week!).  But, if you break it down into categories, you can focus on filling one category at a time, so instead of 30-45 posts you are only writing 7-8 posts.  This allows you to not only tackle the larger job in smaller portions but to also focus what you’re writing on one topic so you can keep your ideas cohesive.

Action step: Determine what four to five categories will cover the major high points of your business, brand, and services throughout the month.  Some ideas include blog posts (current or historical), newsletter, opt-in content, media (yours or outside), inspirational and marketing.

Step 2: Mine for content

Not every tweet or post has to be original.  The content you are promoting contains the best resource for your social media posts. Headlines or section headings often make great posts with a little tweaking.  One catchy sentence can be used in a variety of different ways and on a variety of different media channels.

Action step: Look at a recent blog post and find one sentence that could be made into a tweet. Then, challenge yourself to find 5 different ways you could use that one sentence.  Think Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and both visual or word mediums.

Step 3: Leverage the calendar

With your categories in hand and your content mined, it’s time to put together your schedule.  Start with one category and fill in the frequency you have decided upon.  Then rinse and repeat until you fill the month to your liking.  Again, breaking it down can make an overwhelming task seem more manageable.  Deciding where you are going to put 2 posts in category A per week is definitely easier than how you’re going to schedule 40 posts for the month.

Action step: Determine a frequency for each category you’ve selected and build your schedule for next month.

This is exactly the process I go through with my clients to schedule their core social media for the month in just 3 hours.  And the beauty of this process is that once you have it streamlined, it is very easily passed to a team member!  So you get the benefits of a consistent social media presence that showcases your brand and your voice in just a few hours a month.