Creating Content Pillars

Why should you have a Social Media strategy?

As a busy business owner, time is of the essence! For lots of us, we put our social media presence on the back burner. With a growing to do list, right there at that moment in time, it can be so unimportant and quite frankly the last thing on your mind. I get it, I really do. As a busy Mum of 2 managing my own 2 businesses, and several of my clients’ social media platforms, the social media struggle is real believe me!

But why…

Well, for starters, social media is predominantly free. Free advertising, free connections, free networking, free inspiration, but as well as that, your potential new clients & customers are sitting there waiting to be found!

How to plan

You don’t need to make it rocket science, it really can be as simple or complex as you like. Depending on how you work best, you can devise a full strategy and plan for the month ahead, or simply brainstorm ideas for the upcoming week. I actually go against the grain with many social media planners, as although I like to be organised, I am also very intuitive and go with what I feel needs posting at the present moment, so being fluid in my ideas is key for me. When I get inspiration, I have a few ways in which I jot down my ideas, such as the ‘notes’ on my phone, a notepad by my bed (for when I can’t sleep and things come to me!) and a google sheet that I can access on my phone/tablet too. Once you have a list of things to talk about, either in a blog or as social media posts, then we can break it down into categories.

The 4 pillar approach

As a consumer, we’ve all walked into a shop and instinctively wanted to talk back out again, right? I remember shopping for a new sofa, and I walked into a well known high street store and within seconds, I had 4 male staff swarming round me like leeches. Clearly they saw me as a walking, talking ‘commission’ for their pay packet and it really showed! Needless to say, I didn’t get my sofa from there!!

People don’t like to be sold at. So simply uploading pictures of things you have for sale, reasons why you’re amazing, (you are by the way), testimonials etc isn’t enough to engage your audience and turn them into customers.

By using these 4 content pillars to plan your posts, you are not only offering variety in people’s newsfeeds, but you are showing that you really know your stuff too!

Break your content down into these 4 categories:

Educate: this is used to give tips, little nuggets of knowledge from your expertise which helps to build trust. On Instagram, it’s good to prompt them to ‘save’ the post to refer back to if they find it helpful, this also really boosts your algorithms!

Inspire: using inspirational quotes are always good for engagement, but as well as this you can share snippets from your brand story.

Promote: advertise an aspect of your business. Vary this from time to time with things like client testimonials or promote a specific offer you have running.

Engage: post something fun! Ask your followers a question. The object of these posts will be to get them to not only just like a post but to interact with it too. For a boost, why not hold a giveaway and encourage sharing the post too.

Now schedule!

Pick and mix your posts throughout the week. It’s a good idea to note down in your calendar the important dates, bank holidays, mothers’ day, etc but also some fun social media days that are relevant to your industry. For example, I created a specific post to go alongside ‘Social Media Day’ and ‘National Writing Day’ and make sure to use those relevant hashtags too.

Most of all, try and make it fun. Get inspired, creative & have a play around. Quality is always preferential over quantity, so if you only get chance to plan a couple of posts a week then that’s brilliant!

Need more support with your Social Media?

We can help plan, create, schedule and post on your Social Media. Contact us to arrange a FREE consultation call to discuss how we can best support you.