Here's how to work smarter not harder when it comes to your social media strategy
Do you ever get stuck on what to post on social media? Do you feel stressed at the mere thought of doing it?
Yep, me too. Well, let's overcome this mini hurdle together so we can go from:
to:
The other day a client asked,
“Nat, how many times do I need to post on social media? I’m worried I don’t have enough ideas to share. Can you help me?”
This is such a brilliant question so I’ll share this strategy with you because it's the one I teach my 1:1 clients and works really well, especially when you're just starting your online business and you're doing everything on your own.
This formula will:
Save you time
Allow you to focus on other (more creative) tasks
Help you to post consistently
Ensure you never run out of ideas to share
Sound good? OK, here’s how to create multiple social media posts from a single blog post you work smarter not harder on social media.
First, what’s the big deal about social media anyway?
Full disclosure, I love people and I love being social but I don’t love social media. Having said that, I appreciate that it can help to increase brand awareness and connect with potential customers.
According to research, 90% of small business owners believe that social media is important.
You can read the full article here.
So, now that we’ve established that social media is a great tool to use in our businesses let’s look at how we can get rid of the stress we feel as small business owners to post new and valuable content on platforms like, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube on a regular basis.
You don’t need to show up on social media every day.
Instead, you want to:
Create 1 piece of Heart content
Pull out some highlight reels
Choose visuals
Schedule & Post
And do this as frequently as you like.
1. So, What’s Heart Content?
I thought you’d never ask.
Heart content is the content you create on a regular basis, such as blog posts, videos, podcast episodes, or a mix of all three.
It’s the one piece of content that your audience comes to expect from you because it’s predictable and consistent, like a steady heartbeat.
In my industry, people call this piece of content, 'pillar', 'hero' or 'core'. If you hear any of these just know that they're the same as heart content.
OK, after you create your content, in this case, let’s say it’s a blog post, you’ll want to pull out the highlight reels.
2. What Are Highlight Reels?
Highlight reels are the sentences, phrases, bullet points, quotes and insights that jump out at you from your post.
Aim to pull at between 5-10 highlights from a single post - the more the better.
Naturally, the length of your post will determine how many highlights you can pull from the post but this is the time to stay in the creative zone.
Think of:
Great lines that could work as quotes
Think of any anecdotes or stories that creatively explain the key points
Pull out any data that can form a post
Ways to repurpose your written content and create something different, like a video, audio clip, an evergreen lead magnet
The objective is to extend the lifeline of your Heart Content as much as possible.
Most people create a blog post and share a link to it once or twice on social media and that's it.
However this Heart and Highlights strategy encourages you to think of creative ways to share, re-share, repurpose and recycle the same post as many times as possible.
This is how you save time and keep you social media posts dynamic and fun.
Fun Fact, before we jump into the next step -
There's a principle in marketing called the Rule of 7, which states that a customer needs to hear a brand's message 7 times before they're likely to take action and buy.
What does this mean for creative entrepreneurs like you and me? It means repetition is necessary and important.
3. Now, it's time to bring your content to life with visuals
Think of creative ways to add personality and pizzazz to your content. It's time to select one or more of the following to bring your content to life:
Videos
Infographics
Hyperlinks
Images
Gifs & Memes
Choose visuals for the heart content and the highlight reels. Because social media is such a visual medium you'll find that visuals can create a great segway into talking about your heart content in the captions.
4. It's time to Schedule & Post
OK, you've reached the final step. You've done the hard work and now you just need to schedule when your blog post (you're heart content) will go live on your website and when your highlight reels will go out across social media.
In order to make consistency possible, it's a good idea to plan and schedule your highlight reels in advance and automate them. This means you set a day and time to post on your favourite social media platform and it will post automatically.
There are tons of tools and systems on the market to make organising and scheduling your posts easy and effective. Let's look at a few now -
Tools To Make Scheduling And Organising Your Posts Easier
Here are some of the scheduling and organisational tools I use or recommend to clients to make creating, organising and scheduling your Heart and Highlight Content a breeze:
I realise the last 3 aren’t technically scheduling or organisational tools but I use them to keep my content in order.
Here’s how I use Google In My Business
I brainstorm and roughly plan out the ideas in Asana. I work out the structure, hyperlinks, and research what I will include.
Then I write the blog post and pull out the highlights in a Google Doc
Then I create a folder in Google Drive for visuals - everything from images, gifs and memes
Then add my heart content, highlights reels, videos, and emails into my content calendar created in Google Sheets.
I schedule my social media posts for FB, Twitter and Pinterest in the scheduling tool Later
I save my LinkedIn and IG posts and Stories in Google Keep Notes because I like to post live on these platforms, so I just copy and paste.
And finally, I house everything in Google Drive so I can access it from anywhere at any time.
And there you have it, How To Create Multiple Social Media Posts From One Piece of Content.
Also check out this post, Stuck On Creating Content? 5 Ideas To Help You Get Unstuck, if you'd like some ideas on how get those creative juices flowing even more.
Now, I’d love to hear from you -
Did you like this post? Was it helpful?
Drop me a line in the comments and let me know. Extra marks, if you share your own approach to sharing content on social media. I’d love to hear it!
Love Nat x