Social media strategy

First, a friendly PSA: social media is here to serve you, not the other way around. You don’t owe it content, and you don’t owe an unknown group of “followers” something new just because they asked for it, your life story, or time that you would be better off spending elsewhere. Social media is a tool that was created to serve you, and that’s how we’re going to treat it today.

OK, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way… social media is a complex and ever-changing environment. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of social media platforms out there, and sometimes it feels as though a “hot new platform” appears every day.

It would be easy to find this overwhelming, but it’s important not to ignore or give up on social media, because – love it or hate it – these platforms are where the majority of people hang out and interact online these days.

Depending on the platform you use, and how you choose to use it, social media can be a powerful tool. For example, it can help you:

  • Establish and communicate your personal brand

  • Create a profile for you, or for your body of work

  • Find like-minded people for friendships and support

  • Discover creative colleagues and opportunities for collaborations

  • Be seen by potential clients or employers

  • Find a place to “practice in public” as you hone new skills

  • Develop relationships and sponsorship opportunities with brands

  • Position you as a thought-leader in your field

  • Promote a cause you’re passionate about

  • Launch and promote your business

  • Sell that thing you make

The key is to find the place or places online where you can find “your people,” and that best help you achieve your goals, whatever those might be. So, for example, the social media platforms where you decide to be active will differ, depending on whether your goals are creative, commercial, professional or social.

Follow the instructions below to first choose a social media platform on which you want to focus, and secondly, plan your content for the coming months.

Choose one social media platform

For the purposes of this activity, I want you to choose just one social media platform on which to focus. It’s ok if you have more, and it’s ok for you to want more. But to do social media well can take a lot of time and effort. So in this activity, we’re going to focus all that time and effort on the platform best suited to you. At a later date, if you choose to, you can repeat this process for other platforms as well.

  • 1. Where does your audience engage with the kind of content you create?

    This is a different question to just, “Where do they go?” You want to find the platform(s) that your audience members are most likely to use to engage with and possibly buy from people like you.

    For example, maybe the members of your audience are active on Facebook, but when you look closer, you realise that they only really use it to stay in touch with family and friends, and don’t engage with brands. There’s not a lot of use for you hanging out on Facebook and hoping they’ll engage with you if that’s the case.

    Use the work you did on your Audience Persona (Lesson 2) and your social listening to choose the most popular platform where your audience members engage.

  • 2. What platform best suits the sorts of content you want to create?

    Every social media platform is subtly (or not so subtly) different, and while most of the platforms these days support a range of content formats, the audiences on those platforms tend to have preferences (and/or the algorithms that those platforms use prioritise certain types of content).

    For example, images and video are popular on Instagram, Facebook is good for surveys and other interactive content, Twitter promotes conversation and timely (chronological) information, TikTok is well suited to mini video-tutorials, Pinterest is a good place for infographics and visual recipes or how-to guides, LinkedIn supports longer-form content, and on it goes.

  • 3. What is the platform that you enjoy the most?

    Think about where you most prefer to hang out, and which platform feeds your creative, personal and business soul, rather than sucks from it. This matters quite a lot, because if you don’t enjoy the platform you’re on, you’ll struggle to keep returning, and your social media strategy will lack sustainability.

    The platform you enjoy for your creative work or business might be quite different to one you enjoy to stay in touch with loved-ones. It’s perfectly acceptable to focus your creative work / business / brand in a different place to your personal life. (And, arguably, it’s quite important that you keep those personal comments, photographs and links out of your branded profile - unless they are 100% in line with your audience, your mood words and your brand values!

Create a social media planner

The instructions below will help you create a monthly planner for all your social media posts, using the ideas you listed in the previous activity. Doing this takes away the “what to post” anxiety, saves you time, and ensures you’re posting an interesting and diverse range of on-brand content.

The first set of instructions takes you through how to develop your ideas and plan them out. The second set of instructions helps you make use of the Canva template I’ve made for you.

  • 1. Choose your frequency

    Decide on the frequency with which you intend to post.

    It’s important to think strategically about this: there’s no point planning and promising to post three times a day if you are short on time or energy (or both).

    What suits your personal schedule and energy as well as your business goals?

    This is different for every person and business, and the results will likewise be different for everyone, so it’s hard to make recommendations. But if you were to press me, I’d suggest that posting (meaningfully, strategically and on-brand) at least twice a week will help you maintain momentum o the platform.

    Do remember that if you are following a strategy like the one we’re creating now, you will be able to prepare a lot of your content ahead of time, and won’t need to go through that “I don’t know what to post” angst - so the time and mental energy required to post should be lower than usual.

  • 2. List your ideas

    Treat every one of the “ideas” you listed on pages 25 to 29 as a single social media post idea.

    (If any particular idea needs to be broken up into multiple posts, or could be shared multiple ways, all the better - that’s even more content for you).

    List them all but take note of what colour they are (this is important).

  • 3. Create a planner

    Now go to the planner at this link on Canva to create a schedule for posting your content. (Be sure to make your own copy first! Scroll to the bottom for instructions).

    In the planner:

    * Write each content idea into the planner at the frequency you set in Step 1, deleting the placeholder text from all the other days

    * Colour-code each post to match the colour of your content themes/ideas in your workbook

    * Now, look at the planner: are there heavy blocks of just one colour? Do any colours dominate the calendar, or are any under-represented? See if you can move things around so that there’s a nice, gentle, rain-bow mix of all the colours as the weeks and months unfold.

    This will ensure your content is likewise varied and interesting (but still on-brand)

How to edit your planner

To update your planner on Canva, follow the instructions below. (I’ve also made you a little video to walk you through it).

1. Duplicate the file. This is super important. Click “File” then “Make a Copy” and save it to your own files. If you forget to do this, somebody else will probably write all over your calendar entries, and you’ll lose all your work.

2. Copy and paste your content ideas into the placeholder text in the squares

3. Copy and paste the appropriate colour coding onto the relevant square

4. Delete any placeholder text from days you don’t intend to post

5. Note that the planner page allows for a month: if you want to, add days of the month into the little squares, and change the heading of your planner

6. I’ve given you three editable pages here. To make more, simply hit the duplicate button (it’s a little + inside two squares) at the top of the design