Ever feel stuck in a content rut? Scrambling for fresh ideas to keep your social media feeds and website buzzing? You’re not alone. Small businesses wear many hats, and creating engaging content can feel like a constant uphill battle.
But what if there is a way to tap into a constant stream of fresh, authentic content that enhances your brand’s online visibility, builds trust, and skyrockets engagement?
Enter User-Generated Content (UGC). These contents are created by your biggest fans – your customers. They can transform how potential clients see your brand, making it more relatable and trustworthy.
The Benefits of User-Generated Content
Authenticity and Trust
Customers trust other customers. Showcasing real experiences from real people helps build a deeper trust than any content you could create yourself. When potential customers see others enjoying your product or service, it reinforces their decision to choose you.
Increase Engagement
Content from users tends to generate more likes, shares, and comments compared to standard branded posts. This higher engagement helps strengthen your social media presence and increases your brand’s exposure.
Boosts Brand Awareness
When customers rave about you online, it reaches their entire network, exposing your brand to new audiences you might not have reached otherwise.
Improved SEO
Search engines love fresh and relevant content. When users mention your brand and discuss your products, it not only increases content volume but also improves your search rankings through keywords and new content, which drives more traffic to your site.
Strategies to Encourage User-Generated Content
Run social Media Campaigns
Initiate campaigns that encourage users to share their experiences. Create a specific hashtag for a campaign or hold a contest where customers post pictures with your product. The key is to make participating fun and rewarding.
Make it easy for them to share their experiences with the world. The easier it is to share, the more UGC you’ll get.
Make the process simple
Encourage your customers to leave reviews by making the process simple and direct. Offer incentives like discounts or entry into a giveaway in exchange for honest reviews. Positive testimonials can then be featured on your site and social channels.
Partner with Micro-Influencers
Team up with smaller social media personalities who resonate with your target audience. These “micro-influencers” can create authentic content featuring your brand and encourage their followers to join the UGC fun.
Engagement Tactics
Show some love to your customers. Always respond to customers who post about your brand. A simple thank you, comment, or repost can go a long way in building relationships and encouraging more content creation from users.
Leveraging UGC in Marketing Campaigns
Ready to unleash the power of UGC? Here’s how to turn that customer-created content into marketing gold:
Customer Spotlight
Regularly feature customer reviews and testimonials on your website and social media. It can be a customer photo, a video testimonial, or a written review. You can even create a dedicated section called “Customer Stories” to showcase their love for your brand.
Showing off this content not only fills your feed with authentic posts but also makes your customers feel valued.
Turn Subscribers into Customers
Emails land directly in your audience’s inboxes, offering a more personal touch than ads. They’re also perfect for sharing targeted content, special offers, and updates that keep your brand top-of-mind.
The problem: keeping them engaged can be tricky. Here’s where UGC can help.
Showcase real people using and loving your products in your emails. This relatable content cuts through the noise and reminds subscribers why they joined your list in the first place. It boosts engagement, sparks buying interest, and reminds them you’re not just a brand but a community they can connect with.
UGC Ads that Convert
Today, people have gotten good at ignoring ads. But what if your ads look less like ads and more like real people enjoying your product? That’s the power of UGC!
People trust real experiences over staged commercials. Showcase genuine customer photos and videos in your ads to grab attention, build trust, and remind viewers why your brand is amazing. Just be sure to get permission before using any UGC!
Final Thoughts
User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful marketing tool that can transform your brand strategy. By encouraging and leveraging authentic content from your customers, you can build trust, boost engagement, and skyrocket your brand awareness.
Remember, UGC is a two-way street. Show your appreciation for your customers by responding to their content and featuring their stories. By embracing the power of UGC, you can turn your customers into brand advocates and unlock a whole new level of marketing success.
Picture this: you’re a busy business owner, wearing multiple hats daily. From managing your business duties to taking care of your family and handling household chores, your plate is already overflowing.
On top of all that, you need to create engaging content to fuel your business’s growth consistently. It feels like an uphill battle, doesn’t it?
But what if I told you there’s an easy way to navigate this content creation struggle?
Enter the content calendar.
With a well-planned content calendar, you can streamline your efforts, maintain consistency, and regain control over your valuable time.
In this blog, we’ll explore strategies to develop and maintain a stress-free content calendar that allows busy business owners to focus on what they do best.
Understanding Your Target Audience and Platform
Before diving into social media content creation, it is crucial to understand your target audience thoroughly.
Determine their demographics, interests, and preferences. By knowing your audience, you can tailor your content to resonate with them and deliver meaningful value.
Not all social media platforms are the same. Each has its unique features, characteristics, and user demographic. Choose the platforms that suit your target audience and business goals. Focusing your efforts on the right platforms ensures maximum reach and engagement.
Setting Up Your Social Media Content Calendar
Organize your social media content by defining categories and themes. This approach ensures a diverse and engaging content mix. For instance, you might have categories like industry news, educational content, behind-the-scenes glimpses, or user-generated content. Maintaining variety keeps your audience interested and invested.
Determining a realistic and manageable posting schedule is essential. Consider factors such as platform algorithms, audience behavior, and your available resources.
Consistency is key, so aim for a posting frequency you can sustain over time. Start with a manageable schedule and adjust as needed.
Content Creation and Outsourcing
Crafting captivating social media content is crucial for capturing your audience’s attention. Experiment with different content formats such as images, videos, stories, or live streams.
Incorporate compelling visuals, storytelling techniques, and calls to action to drive engagement and encourage interaction.
Curating relevant content from reputable sources can complement your original content and provide additional value to your audience. Repurpose your existing content in different formats or for other platforms to save time and effort. For example, transform a blog post into a visually appealing infographic or repurpose a video into short clips for Instagram.
If time is a significant constraint, consider outsourcing social media management tasks or delegating content creation to trusted team members or freelancers. Clear communication, detailed briefs, and consistent collaboration ensure a seamless content creation process.
Social Media Scheduling Tools and Automation
Leverage social media scheduling tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social to plan and schedule your social media content in advance. Automating the posting process saves time, gives you a steady flow of content, and ensures you consistently deliver value to your audience, even during busy periods.
Tracking Progress and Analytics
Track key metrics and analytics to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts. Platforms like Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, and Twitter Analytics provide valuable data on reach, engagement, audience demographics, and more.
Analyzing this information helps you understand what content resonates with your audience and informs your future content strategy. Regularly review your social media performance and make data-driven adjustments to optimize your content calendar.
Final thoughts
With a well-organized content calendar, you can maintain consistency, deliver engaging content, and build meaningful connections with your audience. Remember to curate, repurpose, and outsource content when needed to save time and enhance your content strategy.
A stress-free content calendar empowers you to focus on what you do best while building a strong online presence. Take charge of your content strategy and watch your business thrive
If you find yourself overwhelmed or in need of support with your content strategy, we’re here to help. Book a call with us today, and let us assist you in developing a stress-free content calendar that drives business growth.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/How-to-Develop-and-Maintain-a-Stress-Free-Content-Calendar-for-Busy-Business-Owners-1.png12602240Kathlyn Angeleshttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles2023-06-21 10:08:192023-06-21 12:57:40How to Develop and Maintain a Stress-Free Content Calendar for Busy Business Owners
One thing that has been coming up in our business a lot lately is this roadmap to digital marketing. Where do you start, when do you run ads, how do you create an online community? And a lot of times, we just want to jump into one component and hope it works. Digital marketing has grown so much over the past, just five years, just a year, six months. So it’s always changing, it’s always growing, which keeps us on our toes because they’re always adding in new things. When you think of your digital marketing, you always want to be thinking of your client or your patient’s journey.
What are they searching for, how are they going to find your content? How are they going to follow you, how are you going to build the know, like, trust factors? We created this roadmap. There’s a lot of moving pieces, and you can’t just focus on one thing.
Reflect
Let’s start up here by the very beginning, defining your company’s values. What is it that you are doing? What is important to your company? Really understanding those core values, because, in any business, you want to work with good people. You want patients that are going to love you, that are going to come back, that are going to refer their friends and family. So what are those core values that your company and your staff stand for?
If you already have this piece created, great, maybe just double-check it. Go back, look if you guys have grown or changed anything, and then moving into your goal. So what is your goal for digital marketing? Is it just brand awareness, making sure that you’re staying top of mind, that as people are searching for you on Google, that your social media is going to come up, or is it to increase leads, getting new people in the door? Is it to increase your online program, again, by getting people to sign up for your newsletter, what are those goals? And we always use the SMART goals here, so make sure that they are Specific, that they are Measurable, that they are Achievable, Realistic in Time. You don’t want to say, “I’m going to have a million followers in a week”, ’cause that’s not going to happen, but what’s that timeframe you’re going to give yourself? And then we’re going to move into a client avatar. What does this ideal patient or client look like for you? And this is really important. One of the best ways to do this, and this piece here takes a little bit of time, okay? This is kind of that step one.
Build and Create
With that client avatar, think of your favorite patients and clients that you have had. What did you love about them? Why did you love working with them? Did they… What was that relationship that you guys had? Maybe there are 10 of them. Take the common good from them and put them into this client avatar. What does that look like? Okay, so this is our step one of reflection, and then moving into step two, building and creating. So take the time to research topics online. Do a ton of Google researching and figure out… One thing I love about Google is you start typing in two things, it’s going to auto-populate different options. Okay, do those options resonate with your business? If that’s what you think that your clients or your patients would be looking for, start taking notes. Take the time to research what people are searching for. Then thinking of, you have all this content, what is your patient or your client looking for? Can you do some type of freebie? If it is, maybe you’re a pediatrician, and it’s about 10 healthy and fun snacks for kids under eight, and you can put together a freebie, a content upgrade that then you’ll be able to promote to collect those names and emails.
From that research, what can you put together as a freebie to be able to provide to your target market? Then you’ll want to look at how are you going to get that content out there, so you’ll want to look at either building something on your website, Mail Chimp, or even lead pages. This is going to help build your email list. And so writing a welcome series about this content upgrade and how excited you are to have this person a part of your online community, and what they can expect from you, and how often that they’re going to hear from you. Then looking at, based on those research you’ve done online, looking at what blog post can you write around those topics. The blog post takes some time, and if you are a natural writer, then you love, you love blogging because you have all these ideas coming to you, you don’t mind writing 500 words or 750 words or 1000 words, sometimes it’s a little hard to think of what is that blog post, what should it be about? And so when you have kind of this keyword, keyword phrases database that you can go back and look up after, that you could say, “Okay, this is what people are searching for. This is what people have asked me about in my practice this week, those are all great blog topics.” Okay, so we want to make sure we’re paying attention to those keywords that people are searching for in our industry, that’s going to give us the fuel to write those blog posts.
Educate
Now that we have our reflection piece done, we’re building and we’re creating all of our components to go together, now it’s time to start educating your audience. This piece right here is often overlooked because we think, “My story is not that important, people don’t want to hear about me”, and you’re true to a point, but this builds that know, like, trust factor. And that is what is going to bring people in the door. They want to know who you are, why you do what you do, who your team is, who are they going to see when they walk in or who are they going to be speaking with? So really being able to share your story, your personal story, your practice story, your company story, and also asking your team their story. And then with this content and with this content, you’re going to start to grow your network. This is where… Maybe you have a Facebook Likes campaign in to grow the likes on Facebook, you could be adding connections on LinkedIn, you can be sending out messages on Instagram and growing your network that way, followers on Twitter, whichever platform or platforms you’re working with, you want to grow your audience, so they’re able to see all of this great content that you’re going to be putting out.
All of this is education, and here as well, is really being able to put together that social media strategy to educate that audience. You don’t want to be sales, sales, sales, ’cause that’s going turn them off. But if you are promoting some type of a program, maybe this is an online program, then you want to talk about the benefits, you want to think about what are their pain points, what is… What are they going through? What would they be looking for? And that’s how you’re going to create that social media content. So it’s really about connecting with them and educating them and education can be a blog post, this can be videos, this can even be inspirational quotes. I love seeing inspirational quotes on my social media feeds because it motivates me and it’s still, “Oh yeah, I didn’t think of it that way”, or different ones resonate with me at different times of my life, and so that’s still educating. So putting together the social strategy within this educate piece is really important, because then once you have grown your network, you’re posting consistently on social media, you’re educating your audience, so you’re building again that know, like, trust factor, then you can start this promotion piece. And this is where sometimes people want to jump right into here to promote on Facebook ads or Google ads, but they haven’t done any of this yet, so they’re missing a big chunk of the picture.
Promote
Once you get to this piece of it, then it’s really important that you want to be able to promote this free content upgrade that’s going to grow your list, that’s going to grow your network, and put them in front of you. So promotion can be Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google ads. This on Facebook, you can be doing boosted posts, which is great because that reaches even more people from your social media strategy here. You can also then have a whole ad campaign, which is really important because, with Facebook and your website, you want to be able to track those conversions, and Facebook in the past month has made a lot of changes to the backend of the ad. So it’s really important to understand what you’re doing, or have a company like us that understands that you’re able to get ads approved, that you’re able to track the conversions, that you have the Facebook pixel in the right place, all of these things come in to play so you are able to reach the right people and really grow that network and turn the people that just downloaded this freebie into a paying client. That’s key. So, once you have this piece done, you get to this promotion, then you want to look for what are more opportunities.
Management
After they get the freebie, maybe you can do a retargeting ad to those people and have another content upgrade that would maybe be like step two or the next step up from what you’ve created, okay? Or it could be something that is completely different, but still within that target market, just another thing they may want and be looking for. And so then all this comes down to managing, and this is a big piece of it. This is the most time-consuming piece, and our clients, love to write content, they love to put the videos together, they love what the idea is, but it’s a lot to manage because each of these pieces has its own little moving parts within that core. And so this is really where you have that social media strategy, so you’re creating the content, you’re posting anywhere between three and seven times per week. You are running your ads to promote your freebie, and ads you may have maybe five to 11 different ads running with different variations that are going to go back to this freebie, okay. So you’ll have a different language, you may be trying out a video on one ad, a still image on one ad, maybe a video that you’ve put together in Canva. So this management piece is really where you are then able to look at the big picture and say, “Okay, this is what’s working, this is how many conversions that we’ve gotten this week, here’s our social media analytics. This is what ads are working, this is what we need to change.”
This management piece is a daily, a weekly, a monthly, a yearly thing, and so this hopefully gives you that big picture of what your digital marketing strategy should look like. And each business is different, so you may have different tools in here that other companies don’t and based on your business model. But this is really just the overflow of what it is you should be doing in order to really see those leads come through and see your digital marketing go from here to here because at the end of the day, you really want that ROI. And if you’re not doing all of these pieces the right way, you’re not going to see that and you’re going to be wasting your money. So it’s important to look at each component and see how can you improve or change things of what you are doing to be able to have your digital marketing work for you.
If you are looking for help putting a strategy in place or having help managing the strategy you have put in place, we would love to schedule a free 30-minute consultation with you to go over what you are doing, where you want to be, again, reflecting on those goals and putting a plan in place to see that ROI.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Roadmap-to-digital-marketing.png12602240Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2021-08-25 06:00:202021-08-23 14:32:17How to create a roadmap for your digital marketing strategy.
In our most recent podcast, we interview G. the Creative Director at B.Co Agency.
With over 11+ years in design and creative visuals, I have been able to study and learn the creative industry and the impact of having proper marketing tools. With my role as the Producer and Creative Director at B.Co Agency, it is my mission to continue to study, learn and produce for companies big and small to help their clients take action! My goal is to produce visual tools that can exponentially grow the company’s byways of video marketing.
Well, we have, as you all know, we talk about videos a lot and how important they are to your digital marketing strategy, especially after our wonderful year of 2020. I think people really realized how important they are and you have to have them. So we brought G on, we have some questions we’re gonna ask him today.
Tell us a little bit about you and your business –
My name is G, it’s short for Gagan. I have been in the creative industry for over… I wanna say 11 plus years now, and my background has been graphics and web design. But seeing how marketing was going and where my team was building, we started a video production company. And I’ve been in that industry for going on six years now. We just had our fifth year anniversary last month. So yeah, my company’s name is B.Co Creative Agency. And yeah, we do story-based advertising, we do a lot of commercial work, we do YouTube, Vimeo. We do videos for tech companies, we do videos for sports companies. We do… A huge range of our clients, but primarily focused on the tech world, on healthcare and startups and things of that nature. So yeah, that’s us.
Why is video so important to a client’s digital marketing strategy?
My personal philosophy and B.Co’s personal philosophy are always in four parts, in how I kind of break it down. And we’ve turned a lot of our clients away because they don’t have these four elements before they work with us. And those four elements are branding, website, content creation, and advertising. We kind of build that marketing house with our partners that we have, but those things are essential for the success of our clients. So branding, which… Branding and website are absolutely foundational, so if our clients do not have that, we actually partner with other marketing agencies such as yourself to handle that part of it. So without good branding and a good website, your content creation, which is where we play in the marketing world of video, that video cannot go as far without the proper foundational elements when it comes to marketing. So with that in mind, you’re doing yourself an injustice if you don’t have the proper content strategy. And the video is the most efficient and easiest to consume, the easiest to consume marketing tool out there to reach your clients.
Video is more important than having reading materials or photos, and it’s still the most effective way to market your audience to understand your messaging. And I believe it was Hootsuite who put out a stat from last year stating a survey that said about 70% of consumers would rather watch a video about your product. So to answer your question, if you’re trying to reach your audience in the most effective way then a video is absolutely, enormously important.
Yes, definitely. I liked how you start with the foundation because a lot of people jump in, they don’t have that strategy behind it, and they wanna create a video. With that one video, they want 50,000 views overnight, and it’s just not gonna happen. Unless you have a million dollars to spend on ads, and even then it may not happen.
How often should you update your videos on your website?
This is actually a really hard question to answer. Probably the right answer is, it depends, but I know people probably don’t like hearing that. Because it’s so specific to your industry and whatever campaigns you have out, you know what time of year you’ve been posting things, right? It depends also on what type of videos are on your website and where exactly. For example, an intro video about your company might last longer than say your fall collection of your clothing line would. There’s a time limit on it. I would say, as a blanket statement, you should update your videos on your site as often as you can or need to. I personally do not believe in evergreen content, even though some… Again, some videos might last longer than others.
The questions to that question I would ask are, are your clients changing, are your client’s interests changing, are your audiences consuming the same video over and over again and not seeing… Or you are seeing a drop in a wash rate or conversion? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then the answer is probably it’s time to update your video and your marketing agency or your marketing experts that you trust should have access to your analytics and they should be able to tell you when time is due for a new video.
Is it okay to record your own videos for social media use? Do you think there’s a difference between video quality on social media and website?
Generally speaking… I actually get this question asked a lot. Generally speaking, I believe not only is it okay, but sometimes even needed. Having you record video from your perspective gives you and your company character and personality, but I also believe your customers need to know that you are legitimate and your product or service is worth it, and that’s why you are a professional. So there has to be a mix of the two. The heart of this question usually stems from, do I need a video production company in the first place? Can I do it myself? And my answer to that is usually, “Yeah, try it.” If you need it to be cost-effective, then do it. Equipment is more and more affordable nowadays, but I would also say the majority of businesses or professionals who have come to us usually have tried to film themselves or have worked with less experienced video production companies. And currently, that’s where I’ll leave it at for that question there.
At what point or what types of videos should they really think about hiring a professional company like yourselves? When do you know it’s that time?
When you sent me these questions over, hiring a professional videographer is how you worded it, and I kinda wanted to… Part of it, as I believe I have probably answered this question above as well, but I wanna preface my answer by defining the difference between a professional videographer and a video production company or agency. And a videographer, by definition, is one person, and a videographer is someone who usually operates a camera. But what about an editor? What about a scriptwriter? A lot of people do these things all in one. There are a lot of one-man bands out there that wear a lot of these hats, which is great, and no knock against anyone who is hustling and grinding in that way, but generally those relationships are not long-lasting and because they are usually looking for the next gig or cannot stretch their capacity to make the types of videos or content that you might want out. What’s gonna happen when you have to operate two cameras? What’s gonna happen when you need a faster turnaround and this person has multiple projects asking the same thing?
Think about this. When you see credits to the next show or movie that you watch, granted a lot of businesses are not creating Hollywood blockbusters, but think about how many tasking experts are out there that need to complete this show or movie. There’s a reason why a commercial or show or movie have teams and teams of people. If you’re expecting a videographer to handle 0.01% of those tasks, you are sacrificing something somewhere.
Whether that be speed, cost, quality, or output, those one-man bands that are producing at a high level are very rare. So the difference in working with a video production company is that you are working with the video team. We are a production company. We hire for specific duties before we ever roll the camera, and they range from director level to editors or animation teams. And we’ve already taken the time to connect with the assets or resources to produce at a high level, or get your message across and connect with your audience. So to answer your question, so when to hire, it is when you have tried it yourself when you have worked with the one-man band, and the message is not coming across as needed or when you need your product or service to be thrown out in a wider net when you are ready to spend advertising dollars. These are just some of the whens you should hire those professionals, but the real answer is as soon as possible. Because most likely your competitors are doing video, 50% of your audience is online daily and 70% of America is online weekly. And those numbers are specifically during the pandemic. Video is becoming more and more of a need rather than a nice to have, due to the ease of access of info, and you want to get your message out there again quickly and in the most effective way.
I think you bring up a great point as far as that team because if anyone has tried to edit their own videos, oh my gosh, it’s painful and that alone is a lot. It’s just as you’re hiring a digital marketing team, it’s not just me at Social Speak. We have a whole team of people that have that special niche in what they do. And so video production is no different, and I think that that sometimes can get people… They can be a little scared to jump into it because as soon as they hear the video, they think of dollar signs. But when you break it down to those videos that they are producing, if it’s able to bring them in patients or clients or customers in their door, then it pays for themselves. I think that’s something that people really need to think of. With video being as big as it is, and it’s not going anywhere, and I think the pandemic really showed that it’s even more important because that’s how people are connecting. If you’ve been putting it off, the time is now to do it.
How do you think that these videos help streamline a company’s brand?
As you mentioned, we’ve talked about some of the elements already based on the stats that are out there. Again, 50% of your audience is online daily and 70% of America is online weekly. But to streamline, by definition, is to be the most effective and your consumers want an easy way to consume. Whichever company takes it easy or makes it easy, rather, or is more visually engaging or a company is effective in conveying their brand messaging is going to win. And to be quite honest, video can do all of that. To have videos in your strategy, I would say is streamlining your business [chuckle] and your brand itself. To have video is to streamline. To be more effective, to reach your audience, isn’t that what you want to do?
Yes. It really adds that, again, going back to that question, one of the foundations. You have your website, you have your social media. You start with your logo and your brand colors and all of that and then add the video into the mix, it really allows your brand to step outside the box and just live its fullest potential, adding in these different types of videos.
Right. Absolutely. Actually, this is one point I wanted to go back on. You mentioned dollar signs in the previous question.
My immediate thought process was also, what is the opportunity cost of not having video? Again, those competitors are out there doing it and going back to streamlining, those things go hand-in-hand. You wanna get, again, your message out and show the product or service that you have to the world. That is the most effective way and if you’re not doing that, then you’re missing out on something there.
How has the pandemic affected the filming process and is it something that businesses need to worry about?
This definitely is a topical question, obviously. The film industry has taken a hit because filming is such an art form that it thrives off collaboration. The fact that you have to gather and film, the pandemic has made filming obviously very difficult. And we were stuck in that same wave early last year as well. And I was lucky enough to have partners who had specific insight early on the pandemic which led us to think about how to counter that. We have certain protocols now that help us gather and film, but what inspired us to make these protocols were actually Apple. They were continuing their famous keynotes but converted to videos instead of having live audiences attend. People who know me personally, I’m a huge fan of Apple, so, of course, I watched their pandemic presentation, their latest, greatest releases. But what intrigued me was their end credits which also specified how they filmed their pandemic keynotes.
I looked at those and thought of those precautions that they took. To be quite honest, they’re not hard or difficult to execute. So our protocols essentially became the same as Apple’s. We took those and the ordinances that were made by our county in Santa Clara and our industry, and merged those with those of Apple’s. And out came B.Co’s protocols. So I guess my final advice would be, when you are looking to hire a video professional or a production team, to be safe is, ask for their safety protocols. The last thing you want is your marketing efforts to kinda lead to health problems [chuckle] which that obviously is not what you want there. So there are plenty of other high-stress situations specifically that comes to marketing, but COVID should definitely not be one of them.
As people are recording and doing their own videos, I know the iPhones are of great quality, we use Zoom a lot for our interviews. What types of tools or tips can you give people that are recording on their own?
This goes actually not even to people who are doing it themselves but even the camera operators or directors that are coming up, is focus less on the equipment that you have and focus more on the story that you’re trying to tell. Because, as you mentioned, literally every camera phone that’s out there has a great and amazing camera on it. So it’s hard to mess up on the camera, the lenses that you have at your disposal. The only thing, if it does come to equipment and it does come to what it looks like in front of the lens, is definitely focused more on the lighting aspect of it. If something is less lit, then it’s just harder and less appealing. You want something that is either dramatically lit or well lit. Generally, those, from what I have experienced, go further as far as likes go on your Instagram. I think there was another stat by Hootsuite that said people are more likely to like a clearer, more well-lit picture versus the opposite. So focus on the story and make sure you have good lighting and yeah, use your phone. Absolutely.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/How-important-is-video-marketing_-We-ask-the-experts.png7201280Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2021-03-09 14:21:152021-04-16 12:48:49How important is video marketing? We ask the experts
In this blog post we are going to be diving into some tips and recommendations that we follow for punctuation, mechanics, and general style guides for your digital content creation.
We’ve found over the years that there are a lot of different preferences for writing styles online, and though you want your voice to reflect your brand and speak to your target market, there are some things that we consistently see businesses doing online that they potentially shouldn’t be doing.
We are focusing on websites, blogs, and social media, rather than white papers, research articles, and other technical guides. However, many of the points discussed can be brought into this type of writing, as well.
Also, it is important to note that digital content does differ drastically from print, scholarly articles, and research. Additionally, this isn’t a complete guide, but top tips to step your writing up a notch.
Punctuation in Digital Content
Periods (.) – These mark the end of a sentence, but the reason I bring them up is the age-old question of one space or two after a period. For years the APA style guide was the only guide to recommend two spaces after a period to help with readability. However, in 2019, the guide was changed to one space. Long before this, our team recommended one space after a period in digital content for the pure reason that if you have two spaces and the screen-size changes, you may find that a space begins the following line of content. This will not occur with one space.
Periods or Commas and Quotation Marks – A common question we are asked is where should a period or comma go when quotes are involved. This is a little trickier because American and British writing rules and use of double (“ “) vs single (‘ ‘) quotation marks differ. We are in the US, so follow the American Quotation Marks rules. In general periods and commas go before closing quotation marks.
Single Quotation Marks – in the US, single quotation marks are used to quote someone within a quote of someone else.
Question Marks or Exclamation Points and Quotation Marks – If a question or exclamation applies to the quotation itself, place the question mark or exclamation point inside the quotation mark. If it applies to the whole sentence, place the punctuation marks outside.
Examples:
Can you believe the ending to “Inception”?
Vs
Last night I watched “Inception.”
Vs
I shouted to my dog, “Come here and get a treat!”
Semicolons (;) – in general, don’t use these unless you are 100% certain you know what you are doing. Semicolons join two independent clauses without a conjunction (eg and). They are more meaningful than commas but less so than a period. In general:
if you find yourself using semicolons, switch to periods instead
If you want to use a conjunction like and or but use a comma
If you are writing a list and the items within the list include commas or sentences, a semicolon is used to divide the items listed. In digital writing, bullet points tend to be easier to read.
Commas – commas indicate small breaks or soft pauses in sentences. They separate words, clauses, or ideas. Places to use commas include:
In a list of three or more phrases or words please be consistent with your use of the Oxford comma or Serial comma – the comma before the and of the last item in a list. Including it or not is fine, just be consistent.
If your sentence has an introductory phrase, such as “before running ads,” use a comma.
There are lots of times to use commas and a lot of times where commas should not be used. Again, Grammarly outlines these cases in a lot more detail!
Writing Mechanics for Digital Content
Abbreviations – Typically blogs and digital content tends to be more informal, so we are okay using abbreviations as long as the reader is familiar with what the abbreviation refers to. For acronyms, we do recommend writing the full name the first time it appears on a web page or blog post and including the abbreviation in parenthesis. If the acronym is not often used by your target market, however, it may be more advantageous to use the complete name consistently for SEO.
Spelling – The big thing here is to make sure you are using American English vs British English consistently and that you run your content through a spell-checker. Grammarly has a free chrome extension that works with your WordPress blog and email. This can help if you swap a homophone, for example.
Capitalizations – One of the most common grammar-discussions we have is when a specific word, not at the start of a sentence should be capitalized. Many clients have an urge to capitalize words to draw attention to them, but bolding or underlining the word would actually be more appropriate. Below are a few considerations:
Headers – keep consistent with headers. Are you going to capitalize every letter, every word, or nouns, verbs, adjectives, and proper nouns (conjunctions and prepositions such as of and the are uncapitalized)?
Names of Services or of Your Business – if it is a name of a service or process that you follow, this can and should be capitalized.
Style for Digital Content
Parallelism – Another one of my biggest pet-peeves is parallelism. Any time you have a list, please make sure each phrase has the same grammatical structure. If a list of two or more phrases uses a noun, make sure all are nouns. If there is a gerund (word ending in -ing), make sure all of them are gerunds. Grammarly has some great examples that show how you can adjust sentences so there is parallelism, here.
Tense – Big things to think about here are if you are speaking in a passive voice, first-person, active voice, etc. In digital content, specifically marketing collateral, an active, first-person voice can be the most impactful. Write from your first-hand experience using “I” rather than “He/She/They.” For active vs passive, consider the following examples:
Active: I wrote the book.
Passive: The book was written by me.
Both are correct, the active tense just has more of a punch!
General Sentence Structure – I asked a couple of my favorite copywriters for advice and pointers to put in this blog and both had additional comments on sentence structure.
Amy Colo, a copywriter who focuses on keyword research and SEO, made sure to mention how important it is to find a balance between a conversational tone and making sure each sentence includes only one thought or idea. Rather than using conjunctions or trying to fit everything into one sentence, which often creates run-on sentences like this one, it is advantageous for readability and comprehension to only convey a single thought or idea in each sentence.
Additionally, to increase readability even more, keep paragraphs short.
Having a paragraph that is only a sentence or two can be much more impactful than a longer paragraph that we are taught to write in school.
(How many of you read the two lines above this more closely than the run-on sentence before?)
Heather Bowen-Ray, another one of our go-to copywriters in health and wellness, made sure to emphasize two points:
Altering your sentence structure and sentence length can make your content more interesting to read.
Breaking grammar rules is okay! Rules are meant to be broken and if breaking a rule when it comes to grammar makes your headline or a service description more impactful – do it!
Heather focuses heavily with clients on creating style guides. If you don’t know where to start with copywriting and marketing, definitely reach out to her for help in creating a style guide.
I hope this post has been helpful and informative. If you find that you need help with your content writing for blogs, websites, newsletters, or social media, we would love to chat! Please reach out to us for a free 30 minute marketing consultation.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Punctuation-and-Grammar-for-Content.png14402560Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2021-02-10 07:30:352021-02-12 15:44:21Punctuation and Writing Styles - Best Practices for Digital Content
In today’s blog, we’ll be covering six tips to create your healthcare social media plan for 2021. Yes, 2021! We are entering the fourth quarter already of 2020, and it’s really important to be proactive when it comes to your social media strategy. Because the more that you plan, the easier it is.
Social media review
You’ve heard of us talking about this a little bit throughout the year. We always like to do a quarterly check-in and just see what’s working and what’s not working.
So if you haven’t done your review yet, take the time this fourth quarter to really look at each of your social media platforms, (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube), you need to look at their Analytics. Look at each quarter, look at the whole year, look to see what posts have gotten the most engagement, and also look at your Google Analytics to see where that social traffic is coming from.
Are you getting a lot of website traffic from Pinterest or Facebook? Are you getting a little website traffic from Instagram, but you’re getting a lot of engagement? So really looking at each platform, what is working, and what’s not working on each one. Why? It’s because each platform has its own purpose.
Like with Instagram, you may get a lot more engagement, but you’re not gonna get a lot of traffic to your website; whereas Facebook and Pinterest, maybe you get less engagement, but more traffic to your website, so looking at those and looking at them individually and seeing what’s working. So that was number one, doing your social media review.
Content
So after you do your review, make sure you write down what content works the best, and figure out new ways to implement new content for 2021.
So you have to think of what types of posts you’re putting up. Are you doing more personal posts of you and your staff, patient testimonials, and short little videos? Are you doing doctor interviews, patient interviews, educational videos where you are talking, maybe you have a weekly FAQ section?
What are the types of content that you have put out over 2020 and what’s work the best? And then make a list of the content that you want to do more of in 2021 and things you wanna try.
So maybe you’ve just been posting, repurposing content from outside sources, which is great. It’s always good to share articles from your industry, Facebook loves that. But maybe you want to have original content. Maybe you should start blogging in 2021 and have that content go out to social media and drive that traffic back to the website. Think of different types of content that you want to implement into your social media plan for 2021.
Set goals
I know sometimes it sounds so like, “Oh, it’s just social media, we don’t need to have goals.” But you do. You need to really look at how many followers and likes do you have right now, and what’s that number you wanna get to. Sometimes, it’s not always the quantity, it’s more quality.
So you may have 1500 likes, but your engagement with them is amazing. So you may say, “Okay, I’m not really worried about growing my likes on my Facebook page, but I wanna reach even more people.” And so looking at those goals, maybe you tapped into Facebook ads a little bit in 2020, but your goal is to really master Facebook ads where you can see that return on investment, “I wanna grow my email list by 200 people in 2021.”
Well, you’re gonna grow that email list by creating really successful Facebook ads, you’re not gonna grow that email list by just posting. So setting those goals and looking at how you can utilize Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and making sure, looking at the kind of, if you’re new to the Facebook ad world, okay, you may be tapped into it or you boosted a post, but you really didn’t get anything from it.
Let’s dive into that a little bit more. What post did you boost, did you create a specific audience? Sometimes we have clients that say, “Oh, I tried the ad thing, it didn’t work for me.” But they have a brick and mortar practice in one city, but their ad is going out to everyone. So if you have a brick and mortar practice, you wanna make sure that you’re only doing a 25-mile radius and you wanna utilize the tools that Facebook provides you to set that target audience, that’s really important to make sure your ad is going to the right people. So setting those goals for your social media is a really important step.
Make sure you’re reaching your target market
So there’s a couple of ways you can do this. Obviously, a lot by trial and error of what platforms you’re posting to and where that engagement is coming from. You can also do a survey. You should have a patient database or an email list, and you can ask them what social media platforms are they a part of, even if you have, like your sign-in sheet at the front desk, add a couple of columns.
Where are you most active on social media? And just have Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn or Twitter, and then ask them. If you have a good relationship with your patients, they already know, like, and trust you, and they want to help you be successful because they’re coming to you for a reason, and hopefully they’re so happy about the results that they have seen with you, that they wanna be able to share your posts and tell their friends and families.
So if you are connecting to them on social media, that’s a great way to create those posts to talk to that target audience. You could also go a step further if you already have a large client database. When you’re looking at those Facebook ads, you could upload a lookalike audience, so it will target people that have the same similarities as that list already.
If you’re putting all this time into Twitter and you’re putting up three or four tweets a day, and you’re following all these people, but you’re not getting any engagement, that may be a platform that you say, “You know what, this isn’t something that is going to work for us, we need to let Twitter go,” or “We’re only gonna post once per week, and we’re gonna focus our time on these platforms.” So just knowing where your audience is at.
If your audience is women and mothers, you need to be on Pinterest. You need to start creating those Pins, especially if you are an OB/GYN or an Endovascular Center that focuses on uterine fibroid embolization, you need to be on there because that’s where women are going.
Pinterest is a visual search engine, just like Google. The demographics on there are about equal, but women have a little bit higher presence on Pinterest, so if women are your target market, you gotta get on Pinterest and Instagram because that’s really where you’re going to reach them.
Look at your competitors
So you wanna see what are they doing. Facebook came out with page transparency about two years ago.
So if you go to a Facebook page on the right-hand side, it will say page transparency. That allows you to see what ads they have running and how they’ve been doing. You can kind of, in a way, spy on what they’re doing. This really gives you a good foundation of what’s working and what’s not working.
If you are an individual healthcare practice, like a Family Medicine Practice, you may wanna look at the larger hospitals of what they’re doing because that would help give you an idea of the content that they’re putting together, the ads they’re running, and then how you can tailor your own ads to reach your target audience.
So it’s really important that you’re always looking at those competitors, both in-state and out-of-state, nationwide, just so you can see, “Okay, well, we did a similar post, but they had a thousand likes and 15 shares and we didn’t have anything, why is that?” And so it allows you to see how things can be done as well. So that’s number five, looking at competitors.
Create your social media calendar
Once you have done all of these steps, you are now at the place, you have your notes, you’ve looked through everything, you have a good idea of what you wanna do, what you wanna implement, now it’s time to go back to that content calendar and create your social media content calendar for at least, at least the first quarter of 2021.
You are gonna create that, we will put a link to a social media content calendar that we use that you can make a copy of, and you’re going to in there put what networks you’re gonna work on, what resources you’re going to share from, what content ideas that you are going to implement, what videos you need to record, what goals you have? You wanna be able to run this many Facebook ads and put everything together.
So come January 1st, and hopefully, before that, you already have your social media posts written for January. You’ve already looked at what those national observance days are for the health and wellness industries so you know what topics you’re gonna talk about. You’ve already spoken to your doctors, your staff, your patients, and you have set up those times to interview them.
Using Zoom to do an interview call is awesome because you’re allowed to talk, they’re allowed to talk, and you can record that and then upload that directly into YouTube and use it as a social media post or as a blog post. So looking at what videos you want to implement and just having everything in that content calendar.
So come 2021, you are ready to hit the ground running and you are organized, so now, if you just do the first quarter of 2021, come February, you wanna start planning the second quarter, so you’re always about six weeks ahead.
And it’s important too because the industries are always changing, there are always new things coming up, and new news stories, so on your content calendar, you may have a place holder for an article or industry tip, and those are things that are gonna be more in the moment post. You may just schedule those a week in advance. But you wanna know your foundation, you’re gonna be able to know the National Observance days, again, the interviews, you can schedule those out, you can talk about, you put together the topics you wanna talk about, create those images in Canva, find that content that you wanna put with it. So you’re just making sure that you are ready for 2021.
Schedule a free consultation
If you need help putting this social media strategy together, we are here to help you. Head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com, and schedule a free consultation today and we can help walk you through what’s the best steps for your business to start and how we can implement a plan for you. So we are here to help you and we look forward to seeing your social media strategy.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Social-Media-Plan-2021-Blog.png12602240Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2020-09-30 12:22:212020-09-25 17:13:46Social Media Plan 2021
Today’s blog discusses the quick, easy, and simple processes that we use in order to repurpose the videos that you’re creating for social media. We’ve been discussing how important it is for your medical practice, your wellness center, to be doing videos as a way to stand out online and really create that personal relationship with your target audience and with those prospective patients. However, we then take the video and we recommend utilizing it in a lot of different ways.
One such way is by taking the transcript and turning it into a blog post. So this requires you to upload the video to YouTube, get the embed code, paste the embed code into a blog post, then create the description, put that into the blog post, and then grab the transcript of this after you upload it to a place like Scribie, for example, and put that into the blog post as well.
To simplify this process, we utilize Zapier.
What is Zapier?
Zapier is a communication tool between YouTube and your blog. And we use it for a lot of other systems and processes as well, where if you have something repetitive that you’re always doing over and over again.
There are hundreds of other platforms like it, can connect those two items that you’re just copying and pasting and make it, so it’s a really easy flow from one to the other.
How to use Zapier
So let’s jump in, and I will share my screen. So what we’re going to see first here is Zapier. I already have the dashboard set up.
Make a zap
Start by clicking, “Make a Zap.” Every video that we create, we wanna make sure that we’re sharing it to social media. So on our backend, every single video that gets uploaded to YouTube then also gets posted to our Basecamp work. But I do not have it set up where it also creates the video blog post.
So what we’re going do is YouTube, and you can always search for that as well. And I’m going to click, “A New Video to a Channel.” And then we can click, “Continue.” And so we already have our YouTube account hooked up here, but if we didn’t, then we would go through the process of linking it up.
Log in on your account
Now, for Zapier as well as any other time that you’re linking two different pieces of software online, I just recommend logging into those accounts beforehand, making sure you’re in the right account, and then going through the process of trying to sync that. One of the reasons why I do that is because you might be in your personal account rather than the company account, for example, and you don’t wanna link up your personal stuff with the company stuff. You might as well just make sure from the very beginning.
Get the channel ID
So here, we need to get the channel ID. You could also do, “Upload a Video to a Username.” However, sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what the username is, but the channel ID is very simple to find.
So I am going to just click this button right here. So I already clicked to upload a video, but the channel ID is just this next one after this channels here. Oops. We’ll click, “Continue.” And then I always recommend testing this trigger, so fingers crossed it worked. Awesome. So our last video that we did is, “Five Content Marketing Ideas for Healthcare Practices.” This was our blog post last week. And look at this, it pulls in the description, when it was published as well as the thumbnails. So that is really cool that it also does the thumbnails because we’re going to be using that for our featured image down the road here. Okay. So what we have is, when this happens, so when a new video is uploaded to the channel on YouTube, we do this.
And so here we want to do WordPress, and we want to create a post. Okay, we’ll click, “Continue,” and we want the WordPress that we already have connected. But, again, you’d wanna make sure you’re logged in here, and it will just prompt you through the steps, so making sure that you have access and you’re giving Zapier the access to that account.
Create a post
So what I wanna do is create a post. However, you could also do pages, media, forums, etcetera, products, pop-ups, whatever you have there. We wanna do a post for this part. The title is the title of the video. And you could also do… If you want to, you could put video in the title there or you could put “From the Wellness video channel” or something. I don’t know, whatever you want to put there. I’m just going to put the title just to keep it simple. The featured media. So here, we might have to play around with it just a little bit to make sure that we get that image there. And it looks as though… There we go. So instead of doing the featured media, what we wanna do is this custom one, and so this will actually pull in that featured image, the thumbnail image, that you had selected when you upload the YouTube video. So I believe I want to do the default URL. Let’s see.
Width and height
I’m going to do the high one, max res. Let’s do this one. Basically, what I was looking at here is the default width and everything, and so the max res is going to be the biggest option that we can do.
Content
So here we just click the description and it will automatically put that description in there. Now, you could add more content in here if you want. For example, you could have, “In this new video we discussed five content marketing ideas for healthcare practices.”
And then you could have the title, period. And then we’d want to have the description here. You know what? I’m going to make this at H3, so you can add some of that SEO stuff in here already, just as HTML. Okay. And so it says “uses WordPress text editor, supports HTML.” So here, I added that little header tag as well as the paragraphs there. Status, so we want the status to be a draft, you could have it be published immediately, but I always recommend just double-checking to make sure that all the settings are correct.
The excerpt
It’s up to you if you utilize excerpts on places on your site. I’m going to leave this blank. Most websites do have this just be a blank field and Google then would, if it needs an excerpt from something it’ll just grab the content. Post date, what we want to do here is the date, the publish date. Okay. Post format, typically, we wanna keep this just as standard, potentially your blog has different formats there, and then the post name we use the title. Okay.
Comment status
I’m going to do closed. Typically for wellness websites and healthcare websites, we do want that to be turned off. However, if you are an influencer or something like that, keep it turned on. We don’t want it sticky. And then we can also do some tags, so for the tags, I’m just going to do… Oops, I forgot the category. So you can have the category as well, I would recommend having something with video. Let’s see. There we go. Oops, it didn’t actually… Yeah. That would be fine. Let’s save. So I’m just going to keep this one tag, we have the category selected here, you could have a different category as well, video blogs or something like that would be good, or just use the base category that you have.
Preview
And again, this is just so that you have fewer items to fill in as you’re reviewing the blog post. So we’re going to do “Test and Continue.” And we created a post. So let’s go in here and check out our post, so that you can see what it looks like. Okay. And if you take a look here, we have this post right here, so we’re going to just click to preview, and as you can see, we have “In this new video about healthcare marketing, we discussed five content marketing ideas for healthcare practices.”
Embed the video
And then it says, b, the content from the description, and you know what we forgot to do? We forgot to embed the video. So this is why you always do the test. So let’s jump on back up here and we’re going to customize the post. And so let’s put in that embed code, and what we’re going to do is, this is the embed URL, and so then you just need to put that into the correct script. So I’ll make sure to post that script down here in just one moment.
Okay, so how the embed information works from YouTube, is there is a standard information that you can even just get when you are on YouTube and you click to embed something. Again, this is just setting it up one time and then it’ll continually do it correctly. But what we wanna do here is I pasted in that information, and I want to write in this SRC, quotations, I wanna put in the correct information there. So here I’m grabbing the embed URL, and I’m just pasting it in there, or clicking so that it goes in there. So let’s just double-check to make sure that this works correctly. And I’m going to re-test. Save, we’ll go back to the posts. I might have to delete that post just to make sure that it… Yeah. Have to delete that post. Trash. Okay. Re-test.
And so an easy way to get that embed code… Again, I’ll paste it down below, sometimes those quotation marks they’ll copy and paste incorrectly just from YouTube. Click “Share.” And so we grab this embedded code.
So you can do this on any video that pops up. It doesn’t have to be yours. Copy this information right here. And again, this SRC Embed right here, this URL is that embed URL that Zapier will be able to provide for you. So that’s how I recommend getting it, I’ll just copy this just so that I can put it in our YouTube description, and then you’ll be good to go.
Final thoughts
So this is really the process that we utilize as a way to make it easier to manage all that content that you’re creating. We’re telling you to create these videos, so what’s the easiest way that’s going to save time and save money to get those videos from YouTube and then into the blog post, because you want this content to live on your blog as a way to really get the most out of it. And make sure that you have that SEO benefit as well as the ability to share it more easily to your newsletter or to an email or something like that. To get people back to the website so that hopefully they’ll end up requesting a consultation.
So if this was confusing to follow at all, please don’t hesitate to reach out, put a comment down below, it was kind of one of our more technical topics. However, Zapier does do a fantastic job, really just making sure that the steps are pretty easy to implement. If it’s your first time going into Zapier and setting up an account, it might look a little confusing. Just click that “Make a Zap” button, search for what you wanna do and you’ll be able to set it up.
Of course, we’re more than happy to schedule a consultation as well. In this call, we’ll see if we’ll be able to be a good fit for your team in order to help you with all of your digital marketing efforts.
If you’ve liked this video, please subscribe, also please check out our podcast over on Podbean and iTunes, and don’t forget to head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Zapier-Blog-1.png12602240Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2020-08-26 12:49:082020-08-26 16:49:48Use Zapier to Create Blog Post from New Video on YouTube
Social media has become an integral part of many businesses’ marketing strategy. It helps you connect with your audience, increase awareness about your brand, and generate more business.
With so many social media platforms to manage and publish in, it’s important to have a plan and stay organized for what and when you’re going to share on each platform. Having a social media content calendar will make things a lot easier.
What is a social media content calendar?
A social media calendar is a document that is used to plan out and organize future content. It allows you to visualize how your marketing looks like in the coming weeks or months and tweak any scheduled posts as necessary.
Content calendars can come in several forms. It can be a spreadsheet, hand-written calendar or a software. The purpose of a social media calendar is to provide a framework for scheduling out when and which content will be published across different social media channels.
A content calendar do wonders for your business. Here are 5 reasons why you need a social media content calendar.
Save time
You need to post regularly for your business to benefit from social media. But we all know that managing multiple social media accounts can be challenging, not to mention time consuming.
The purpose of using a content calendar is to help you plan out content ahead of time and schedule posts across multiple channels at once. With an effective calendar, you can schedule content weeks or months ahead of time. You no longer have to worry about falling behind if you become too busy or if something comes up.
A content calendar will not only help alleviate some of the day-to-day stressors, but it can also help you reach your long-term business goals. Freeing up more time, you can now focus on more important aspects of the business.
Never forget important dates
Holidays and other important events offer excellent opportunities to create engaging content. With a hectic schedule, it can be easy for important dates to slip your mind. Missing important dates can represent a lost opportunity.
An organized calendar helps reduce the chaos of scrambling to post it on time. Taking note of future events, you’ll have enough time to create the best possible content for the occasion instead of just churning out content at the last minute.
Having a content calendar alleviates the fear of forgetting important dates. Plus, it ensures that your content is being published when your audience is active.
Plan and organize your social media marketing strategy
Providing your audience with relevant, informative, and entertaining content is the key to keep your audience engaged.
When posting on social media, you want it to be a mix of industry news, inspiring content, content from others, and your own content. Using a content calendar allows you to visualize your content strategy over time. You’ll have plenty of time to fill it with relevant topics that resonate with your audience.
Without effective planning, you may run the risk of posting a topic that you have already discussed a few weeks ago. A social media content calendar will help you keep things in check, so you can avoid such blunders.
Brainstorm ideas
Instead of making last-minute decisions about what types of content to publish, you’ll have the advantage of getting feedback from your team members.
Every piece of content start with ideas, and you’ll need a lot of them to fill your calendar. When you plan out your social media content in advance, teams from different departments can contribute ideas, make edits, and plan future content.
They can use their knowledge to fill the space with relevant content that is valuable to your audience. Hence, you can be sure that you’re putting out the best and most relevant content.
Turn chaos into harmony
Collaboration with team members often lead to fresh ideas and greater return on investment. However, it can also be tricky to pull off efficiently. It can be further complicated by remote work.
A social media content calendar is a great way to collaborate. It can serve as a communication tool for the whole team. This is where topics, ideas, contents, and dates are placed. It helps keep every member of the team on the same page and stay on track of publishing.
Having a central place for different teams across your organization to manage social media content allows for a much smoother implantation of your social media marketing agenda.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/5-Reasons-You-Need-a-Social-Media-Content-Calendar-1.png315560Kathlyn Angeleshttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles2020-06-10 10:20:512020-10-02 14:44:545 Reasons You Need a Social Media Content Calendar
Having a content calendar in place for your overall marketing strategy is key, having a plan will allow you to stay consistent and top of your content. In this video, we go over 4 different types of content calendars, the key here is to find one or pull components from each that you like and would work best for you and your team.
00:00 Amber Irwin: Hello. I am Amber Irwin and co-founder of Social Speak Network. I’m your host today on the Social Speak podcast. It is January of 2020, and we’re almost to the middle of the month already. So, you’re either in one of two positions. Number one, you have all your content planned out for the year, you are on track and have your content strategy put together. Woo-hoo. Number two, not there quite yet. This video and podcast are for the people that are number two that are still struggling to put together that content calendar. I want to talk about content calendars today, because it is the most important piece of your digital marketing strategy, and it is something… Usually, we have our clients do these content calendars beginning of December, planning out for the new year because once the holidays come, it’s just crazy. Time goes by so fast, and then it’s the new year, back to business, and it gets crazy.
01:07 AI: So having a content calendar is really about being able to have a really good overview of what your year looks like. What are the national observance days that you need to pay attention to? What are the seasons? So for medical practices, if you are a pediatrician, you need to pay attention to flu season, summertime, back to school. What are the other sicknesses that kids are dealing with? You may wanna be talking about just tips of handwashing and nutrition. So looking at what you are talking to your patients about. And that’s really the biggest thing is it’s changing that mindset from having these conversations in the office with your patients and taking that… Those conversations and turning them into content and implementing them into your content calendar.
02:04 AI: So, I always recommend having a sticky note, a pad of paper, your phone. Something where, you know, once that patient’s done taking a few minutes and either jotting down questions they had or giving it to a nurse to write down and then being able to take those questions and incorporate them into your content strategy. Because if this patient had that client like’s are, you’re gonna have more patients that have that question, and you wanna be able to be a resource for them. So, I’m gonna give you four different examples of content calendars. There’s no right or wrong way to a content calendar. It’s really what works for you and your team. So if you have a marketing team in-house that’s doing all of your social media, great. You guys are gonna figure out a plan together of what works, what works for them, what’s easy for… Maybe it’s the office manager, the practice manager that’s looking over everything, maybe it’s the head doctor. Whoever that person in charge is that wants to see the overview of everything, what format works for them?
03:13 AI: If you’re working with a marketing team, such as Social Speak, we have an intro call with you. We show you the different content calendars. And then, the last one I’m gonna show you today that we’re gonna talk about is the one that we put together. And we’ve taken bits and pieces from content calendars that we’ve used and the pieces that work for us. So, we have one with everything on there. So, the first two I’m gonna talk to you about are from CoSchedule and HubSpot. And these are more focused around your social media, which is great because a lot of your content that you’re doing for digital marketing is going to be social media, blog posts video marketing. So, these are a great way to just keep everything organized.
04:00 AI: So, I’m gonna go ahead and show you these two. So, this first one is from, let’s see, this one is… This one here is the one that is from CoSchedule, I believe. And this is outlined very nicely. It breaks it up by platform. So, obviously, you’re only gonna be putting the platforms on here that you’re using. So if you’re not using Twitter, you’re not going to have this Twitter section here. Google Plus doesn’t exist anymore, so you would have Instagram on here instead. Pinterest, we use a tool called Tailwind, and I’ll put a link below for that. But that’s really where all of our Pinterest scheduling goes, through Tailwind. So, I wouldn’t have Pinterest on here, but Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. So, here you’re gonna have the post copy, the image, so you know what image is going with what post. The hashtags, the destination URL. So is this going to a curated content unit, outside articles? Is this going to a blog, a YouTube video? And then, on this one, one thing I liked was that this actually measures… Each week, you could come back and look at how those posts did. So, how many likes were there? How many shares? How many comments? So, this one is a great way to just get started for social media.
05:42 AI: The other one, this one here, is one that is from HubSpot, I believe. And this one has your overview schedule, what account, the date and time, message link campaign. And then, this one is your monthly calendar. Now, I really like it when… Having this monthly calendar. And this is something that we implement into our content calendar because I like seeing that overview. So again, if it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month or Diabetes Awareness Month, I wanna make sure that I’m talking about that topic each week and in different ways. So maybe we do a video around Diabetes Awareness Month. We’re writing a blog on it. We are getting testimonials. So figuring out how that National Observance Day ties into your practice and your clients, and then how can you deliver that information?
06:47 AI: I tend to be very visual, and same with our social media marketing team, they’re very visual, so we really like when we have this color-coded key, because, as we look at this, we can say, “Okay this is going to a blog post, this is going to a video, this is going to a holiday campaign,” or whatever it may be. But this helps break it down so we can attach that color to that topic. So, overview, we say, “Okay, this week I’m gonna do… Create two videos on this topic.” So it helps us and our team stay organized. The one thing I really like about this content calendar is it has tabs for each platform. Now, if you’re using one of the awesome tools like Sprout Social, Buffer, or HootSuite, it’s easy to put your content in there and share it to all the platforms at one time, which makes it really simple. At the same time, we recommend not doing that.
07:49 AI: So if people are following you on Instagram and Facebook, they’re usually checking both of those every day, and you don’t want them to get on Instagram and see your post and then head over to Facebook and then that exact same post shows up at the same time in their newsfeed. There’s no value there. So why would they follow you on both platforms if there isn’t value? So I like this platform here where it breaks it into each network. So you can see, “Okay, this is what we’re doing for this network.” And even if you have a blog post that you are promoting, you can have that blog post, you can pull different sections from that blog for each platform, it can link back to the same blog, but maybe you have a different image for each post.
08:43 AI: The other thing that you can do is, we are all about reusing content, so what you write for your Facebook posts one week, you can use the following week, or the next week, for Instagram and LinkedIn. So it’s really about writing the social media posts for the month and then organizing them to the different platforms. With Twitter and Instagram, it’s really important that you have those hashtags that you are implementing into the content. With Facebook and LinkedIn, and even Pinterest, it’s not as important. But here you can see what day it’s going out, that you may have two or three posts going out per day on one network depending on how many likes and followers you have.
09:35 AI: So this is the link it’s going to. Now, the next two templates I’m gonna show you, you can actually… With Google Sheets, and I’m pretty sure with Excel as well… You can insert the image into a cell. So we actually put the image in here and then we create all of our images in Canva, and so we can then put the link there too. So, as you’re scheduling them, everything is in one spot, it’s easy to pull from. The head person that wants to look over this, they can see, “Okay, this is the message. That looks good. This is the link. This is what the campaign,” if it’s linking back to a certain campaign. “This is the image. Okay, let’s go with this.”
10:15 AI: So, the other one I want to share is this one. And… Oops. So, here… So this is the one from HootSuite, and I really like this template. Because, again, it… Outlines by the network, which is really important, because, again, that social copy should be different for each platform, especially depending on your audience. So sometimes our clients get a lot more engagement on Facebook than they do LinkedIn or Twitter. So on Facebook and maybe even Instagram, we wanna make sure that we are asking questions, doing posts that are engaging our audience, because that’s where we see the most interaction. So this one here kinda takes that monthly calendar and puts it right into kind of a weekly column.
11:21 AI: And so if you are doing five posts per week onto Facebook, this post is gonna be the new blog post, curated content, evergreen blog post, a live video. So, with Facebook, doing live videos, if that’s what works for your practice, maybe it’s a weekly FAQ with a doctor, maybe it is a weekly kind of a health tip and one of the nurses can just jump on and do that. So I think it’s a great idea to implement those live videos, and then your promotion if you are running a promotion. Now, these content types will change based on what topics you and your practice wanna be talking about, but when you move down to Instagram, you wanna make sure that you’re implementing stories, sharing content, creating those images because it is visual. So this content calendar is great. Now, this just has one sheet, and this is just for social media. So each week you would put the date here and then have your content on here. So, this is another great way to stay organized. You have noted here, image links, where you need to pull that image from, but this is a great way to stay organized for your social media.
12:44 AI: The last content calendar that I want to show you is our content calendar. So, we’ve taken a piece of, as I said, different content calendars that we’ve used, different needs that our clients have had, and what we’ve done is, the first tab is that full content calendar. So we have our color-coded key here, so we can see each month what this looks like. Now, what we may do is I may duplicate this, so this may be the January content calendar. So I may do one for January, February, March, April, May, or I may have this due January and then copy below here for February. So it’s all on one sheet, but sometimes you wanna go back and look, “Okay, what did we talk about in January?” So then when you’re coming up for the following year, you know, “Okay, this is what really worked. These are topics that we talked about what we need to implement again.” And then what we do is here…
13:48 AI: Here are our social media topics. So, this is the little notes I told you to keep track of. This is where you can say in here like, FAQ and then the questions that people had asked. So, you know, “Okay, this is what we need to be talking about. We need to create social media posts or blog posts or videos around this topic, and then also like a link.” So, if you are on, let’s say, WebMD’s newsletter, and they send out a really good newsletter with some great tips that you wanna implement into your social media strategy as curated content. You can put that topic, you can even put the title of the article and then the link so as you need content, you can come back to here and pull from there. And you can also add it to what we have is the content resources and this just builds that list for curated content.
14:45 AI: Sometimes, it’s easier just to go to Facebook and share from WebMD’s Facebook page or American Heart Association’s Facebook page to your Facebook page and the same thing with Facebook, but you also may wanna use their blogs as resources or other… They may have other tips and tools on their websites that you wanna share. So, just having one place where you come in, put the name of the source and the link, so when you are writing that social media content every week, it’s right here. And then, the next sheet would be the blog topic, so you could tie in the month, the blog title, the topic, the due date, when you published it and the link. So, you can pull from here, come back to your overview of the content calendar and be able to say, “Okay, on this week, this blog post is… ” And then, the title so you know.
15:47 AI: Now, one thing you do not see on our content calendar is the place to actually write your content. So, the way we do our social media is we have found that it is much easier to have a content calendar like this as an overview that you can refer to, look at. “Okay, what do we have coming up? What videos do we need to make? What blogs do we need to write? What social media posts are we gonna be talking about?” And then, what we do for our social media posts is we actually then create a Google Doc. So, our content calendar is in Google, and our weekly social media posts are in Google. I like it better because Google Docs works like a Word doc or like pages on Mac, but everyone that has access to that article or to that document can look at those posts. So if you have… This is just kind of a side note, but if you have a Mac and you don’t have Microsoft, then that Word document gets translated into a page and then vice-versa. So using Google Drive and Google Docs is just kind of a universal way. Anyone that has that link that you share it with can open it, can make edits, can see it. It also checks for grammar, spelling. And so, I like to put all of the social media posts into there.
17:16 AI: I think that makes it look very clean, you know what the content is, the hashtags. So on the content calendar, we are very clear on what day, what that needs to be, what hashtags we need to use, so then we can just transfer that to our Google Sheet, have the image on there, and then be able to put that into whether it’s Buffer or HootSuite. If you are… I will always recommend our clients scheduling all of their posts through Facebook rather than using a third-party app like Buffer or HootSuite or Sprout Social. Facebook likes when you use them. And then using those tools for LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. HootSuite does Instagram so that’s great. Tailwind, it does Pinterest and Instagram. So, it’s just important to figure out what works best for you.
18:15 AI: Sometimes we have a few clients where we just have an open document, and we put our post on there, but they like the format of a sheet better. Like an Excel sheet where they can see the post, they can see the link. It’s all right there. So again, it’s just really figuring out what works best for you and your team. And if you are working with an agency like us, like Social Speak, then being able to know, okay, what system does that agency have in place and is it easy for you to understand? So you know what posts are going out for your practice because you wanna know what’s going on and you wanna know how to make edits. And if you say, “Okay, let’s use this instead of that.” So just making sure that when you are creating this content calendar that you and your team are on the same page.
19:05 AI: So, I will add each of these as links below, so you can make sure you can see each of them and see which ones work best for you. And if you want help putting together the content strategy for your practice and really understanding how to implement that, let us know. We are here to help you. You can head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and do the free consultation. That’s a 30 minutes free consultation that we can walk you through this. We can answer questions for you. And if you are looking for more help from having an agency manage this for you, we would love to have that conversation as well. So, I hope that this helped and really got you on the track of being organized. Even if you do it quarterly, but quarters go by just as fast as weeks. By the end… By the snap of the fingers, it’s gonna be the end of quarter one.
19:46 AI: So, it’s important to have that year even if you just have the topics and your blogs, because the blogs turn into social media content. If you do one cornerstone blog of 3000 words, and you have maybe two videos in there and each blog has 10 images, there is social media content for a month. So, it’s really about maximizing your content and where it needs to go in organizing it. So, hopefully, this gave you some good insights on a content calendar and how it can work for your practice. And if you have any questions, please let us know. We are here to help. Have a great day.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Content-Calendar-FI.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2020-01-15 08:00:182020-01-15 15:54:30Creating Your Content Calendar for 2020
With all the tools out there it can be difficult to know which content marketing strategy tool you and your marketing team should be utilizing to make sure everybody is moving in the same direction.
In this blog we take a look at the most prominent content marketing calendar apps that are available for many different sized businesses. For small businesses, including those with just one marketing manager, you can get away with organizing your ideas in a Word document or a Google sheet.
However, once you have multiple people working towards that same goal of making sure your business is found and sharing the correct message in your marketing strategy, it is important to consider upgrading to a scheduling and management interface that allows everybody to clearly see where their piece of the pie fits in with the larger content strategy.
To keep you from signing up for each of these tools, I’ve taken a look at:
What type of organization it is best for
The main features
How you can implement it easily into your team
The price point.
Many of the applications discussed including Monday.com, HubSpot, CoSchedule, and MeetEdgar have a variety of price points. Again, in our experience, if it is just you, typically you can get away with organizing your ideas on a spreadsheet.
So, let’s dive into there popular content management platforms.
CoSchedule Technology for Digital Marketing Management
The first application that we are going to discuss is CoSchedule. CoSchedule creates One calendar that allows everybody to be on the same page, it allows everybody to communicate in one place.
Additionally, with the more advanced plans of CoSchedule, you can organize everything from event planning through to email marketing, social media, and blogging. CoSchedule is incredible tool for large teams and complex marketing organization. One of my favorite aspects of CoSchedule is the ability to create ongoing follow-up social media links to blog posts in one or two clicks.
CoSchedule for Solopreneurs
For solopreneurs, CoSchedule is a little More expensive than other options. Solo plans do start at $0 to $20 per month, with most individuals looking at the $40 per month option – typically a spreadsheet along with one of the less expensive tools will do the trick.
Where CoSchedule really shines is with in-house marketing teams looking to manage full-scale campaigns.
The professional plan starts at $400 per month, and allows workflows approval flows multiple calendars and comes with a dedicated account manager. From a project management standpoint, this plan reduces the need for multiple individuals providing guidance on any given combination of marketing strategies.
HubSpot for Content Marketing Management
Many of us are very familiar with HubSpot. HubSpot has a combination of three tools and complete inbound marketing management resources. HubSpot places the emphasis on collecting inbound leads from your social media and digital marketing content. Though there are numerous tools that you can use to create the same systems and processes, HubSpot’s value proposition is that everything is in one place.
HubSpot for Larger Teams
Our favorite plan within HubSpot, is again there professional plan. Though the Enterprise option has much more advanced settings such as predictive lead scoring, it is a much higher investment. With the professional plan at $800/month, you have access to SEO and content strategy, social media, calls to action and landing pages.
Additionally, there is a/b testing marketing automation, smart content, and the ability to add teams.
The workflows are easy to set up, and create very systematized automation within your marketing and strategy. This tool, HubSpot, is a great option for businesses that have a marketing team, and want to make sure that every aspect of their marketing is working together. Again, HubSpot places inbound leads at the forefront of all of their software.
Next up, is Monday.com.
Monday.com to Organize your Content
Monday allows you to customize your workflow and dealt out strategies to multiple different teams. Monday is a great project management tool, however we found it a little difficult to manage a Content strategy and editorial calendar. The use of Gandt charts seems like a great idea, but it made projects difficult to understand exactly what steps needed to be completed and if we were on track. Many of our processes tend to be one or two steps, so again it seemed like a little too much for social media management.
Monday for Project Management
With plans starting at $25 per month, and unlimited boards, Monday is a great opportunity to integrate into your workflow if you need to do more project management rather than content creation and syndication. Because there is no central calendar, it can be difficult at times to see how each of the boards really work together.
Another positive for Monday, is the time tracking capabilities, so each member of your team can have a clear understanding of the time spent on each task. This allows you to easily understand if some aspect of marketing is taking much longer than others.
Additionally, Monday.com could be used for larger marketing promotions, however, most businesses need a tool that also works for day-to-day management.
The next tool we will take a look at is Edgar.
Edgar for Content Marketing Organization
Edgar is a great option for businesses looking for a simple tool to manage their social media posting. Typically, we recommend you create a database of content. The content strategy video below, provides tips for places we recommend Gathering content ideas. Once you have all of the content, click go and Edgar will talk into action.
MeetEdgar for Small Business Social Media Management
We recommend small businesses and solopreneurs look at Edgar as an option for their social media management. One issue with this, is that it does not allow you to clearly see the complete marketing strategy picture.
Each aspect of your digital marketing content calendar and content strategy still exists in its own space. Meet Edgar is a great tool for teams to use that do not have very complex marketing promotions in place. If you are one person team it can be an excellent resource for you.
Because I mentioned meet Edgar, I also should mention that for social media management, we utilize at such as Tailwind, Later App, Buffer, and HootSuite. I won’t go into it because he’s here, because they are more for just social media management.
Our blog on Social Media Content Strategy shares additional information regarding how to use each of these tools and where they fit into your social media marketing management strategy.
Create Clear Goals for What you want to accomplish with a content marketing technology
Before settling on a tool and diving into figuring out the setup and on-boarding your team, make sure you are clear about the goals you hope to achieve through using the software. Remember, choosing a tool to help keep track of marketing campaigns and content creation still requires that you understand what topics you plan to discuss and having your team actually write the content.
We have other blogs and videos that cover how to identify key topics to include in your content marketing editorial calendar, as well as a structure to follow for creating your editorial calendar. We often recommend starting with a word doc or spreadsheet rather than immediately hoping into the software you choose. Again, this helps to make sure your team is all on the same page as you move forward with your inbound marketing strategy.
