Crush Your Social

When I talk about content strategy, how confused are you? Today we're going to talk about what content is and why you need a strategy to be successful at it.

I wish I could remember how I figured out what content needed to be. I remember that transition though. I remember going from this is garbage. No one is ever going to know who I am because this has nothing to do with my business. This has nothing to do with what I can do. I don't remember where that transition was, but at some point I figured out that the people that were in my audience did not care that I had a pretty picture of a daisy. Maybe I had something interesting in the caption, but they scrolled right past it. I went back to my marketing roots, I think it was, where I looked at a marketing strategy and what you need to have to sell something.

It's not about you. I started thinking, "Oh, okay. That's what it is. Content needs to be content marketing, but as social media. Content marketing is giving people information that doesn't sell to them, but lets them know you can sell to them."

When I realized that I had to go back to my marketing roots in order to make content, that was when I figured out, "Oh, it's the who and the what and why of your content." The who is, who is most likely to be interested in what you have to say. Who is most likely to be interested in what you're selling. The what is, what do you want from your content? What do you want it to do for you? Do you want it to build your authority? Do you want to reach people that you haven't reached before? The other what is, what do you want your audience to do when they see your content? Do you want them to like it, comment? Do you want them to go back to your profile as a service provider? Profile visits and website taps are my number one and number two metrics that I use. Then I had to figure out, "All right, so it's the who, the what, and then the why. Why am I here on social media?" It goes back to a social media goal. What do I want to get from this? Why am I here? Why am I on social at all? It's to build a community for most people. They want to build a community around their business. You got to figure out what those things are. Then I realized that what I do is different because content strategy should be bigger than just the content, the piece of content on the page. If you do it right, it creates your marketing, all of your marketing. Your social media content can create all of your marketing because it has to be branded with colors that stand out that should be on all the touch points. It has to have a message that is consistent across more than just your social media. I learned that the hard way because I had to rebrand three times to figure that out. What is the brand that my ideal people will be attracted to? What do they want? I had to learn that hard lesson that my content is not about me in any way. Every single post has to have a purpose. What am I going to give them? A goal, what do I want to get from it?

That's the beginning of where I started to learn social media strategy has two strategies. They have a content strategy and they have an engagement strategy. They do cross over, but the content strategy is where it starts. That starts with figuring out who you're what and you're why. Then you can define it.

When you're creating a content strategy, you figure out your who and your what and your why and then you figure, "Okay, I now need to know what I'm going to talk about." Those are called content pillars. They're overarching topics about a few different things. People define them differently. For me, they are about the problems that I solve. They are about the big promise that I give.

The strategy that you create around those topics, especially on Instagram, is very specific. The kind of content you put in your post content is content that is educational, informational,

maybe entertaining a little bit. I like the 80-20 rule there. I like to educate and entertain or educate more than entertaining. In fact, I don't do entertaining at all.

Then you have your stories content because when you create a content strategy, you have two kinds of content you create. You create content for your stories. You create content for your post. The content for your post is largely to reach people who don't know who you are, potential listeners, potential viewers who might be interested in your message and the content that you create.

Your stories,

on the other hand, is meant to nurture your current audience and to sell. Your sales content will do the very best in your stories once you've built an audience.

When you're creating a social media content strategy, you have to figure out what your content pillars are, which are the overarching topics. Then you figure out what the topics are under that. Then you figure out what angle do you want to take. For instance, if I'm talking about engagement. I know engagement is a pillar. A topic under engagement might be how to engage before posting. An angle on that same topic could be three things you're doing wrong if you're not doing these things before you post. Every single post has a goal and every single post has a purpose. Then you look at your formats.

If you're creating any topic, you need to be able to repurpose it several different ways. One post that I talked about, three mistakes you might be making before you post, could be an infographic, which would probably reach more people. Right now, infographics are big. I could make it into a reel where I'm talking about it. It would make a human connection at the same time that I'm actually giving some valuable information. You could do a carousel post, which is a post with several still images that slide. You can make a story out of it. You could do a simple picture and put the story in the caption, which isn't always as effective unless you have a headline. When you're creating a content strategy, you create your content pillars, find your content topics, figure out what angle you want to take, and then you figure out what your hook is. The hook is probably the most important part of any piece of content you'll ever make. You want to spend about 80% of your time figuring out the hook. Once you have your angle, you need to figure out the words you need to know that will attract the right people.

The content strategy is the who, the what, and the why. Then the content plan is the how. This is still all part of the who, the what, and the why. Because you have to have the content framework, you have to have all of these pieces that I just talked about before you create the content calendar, before you create each individual post, before you use design skills to design those posts, before you create the caption, before you research the hashtags, before you create the signature, and before you schedule it out and or find trending music. The how is the actual details of how to implement all of those things, which come from the strategy, which is what kind of content am I going to create? What are my topics? What's my angle? What's my branding look like? How is it going to stand out? You have to get that foundation set first before you can implement it. I think the problem with most social media managers these days is that there's a lot of people who know design skills, they know how to operate the systems, the platforms, but they're just getting content from their clients and they're just posting it. There's no strategy behind it. There's no what, the why. Maybe they know who they're talking to, but there's really no hooks. There's no what's in it for them. What's in it for them isn't at surface level. It goes all the way back to the business. That's why the content strategy is a lot more complicated than what people think it is because it reflects the content. Piece of content you make reflects your content goals. Those reflect your social media goals. Those reflect your marketing goals, which also should reflect your business goals. Your single piece of content, the goal is to get someone to maybe buy if your business goal is to buy. All of those steps have to come through to get that single piece of content to get someone on your website.

That starts with strategy. I want you to grab a spreadsheet so that you can track how your content is working. I want you to choose something you want your post to do and then something you want your people to do and then track them. If you write out what goal you want from your content, so if your content goal is to build your authority, that would be your goal of your piece of content. A way to measure that would be how many people save your content or how many people go to your profile because of that piece of content. You could pick one or the other or track both of them if you want to.

Then you want to measure your hook. You want to see which hooks got people to actually engage with your content to stop and like it or to stop and read it. If you have a really good hook, you will also probably end up getting more reach. That's another metric and it could be a goal of your post. We all want reach with every post. Your hook is one way you can increase how many views you get or how much reach you get because it gives context to the piece of content. When people see context, they're more likely to tap on it because they know what it is. Hook is another piece that's important that usually doesn't show up in the strategy part, but I think it's pertinent here. You got the foundation to track your content. Track it for the next 10 posts and then let me know how it goes. Send me a DM. So let's get out there and crush it.