The Simple Trick I Use To Post Consistent Content on Social Media
You find yourself sitting and staring at your social media accounts — Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and wonder:
What should I post today?
Your latest Instagram photo is 9.75 days old.
It’s been 8 months since you’ve posted to your Facebook business page.
Insta-stories and reels are a mystery so I’m going to ignore them for now.
You haven’t Tweeted in so long you’ve forgotten your password.
And LinkedIn? You haven’t posted there since you created your profile.
Social media is overwhelming! Who has time for this?
If you’re looking at each social media platform as separate, unique online spaces to share unique content then heck, it IS overwhelming!
You have a business to run. And if you’re looking at each social media platform as a place to create and share all this unique content, you could create another full-time job for yourself!
Real talk about my business:
I don’t have a virtual assistant (VA) or a social media manager
I always post real-time. There’s something about scheduling it in advance that doesn’t feel right to me, so I don’t do it. I batch write captions in advance or I write in the moment.
My email subscribers hear from me at least once a week; usually on Sunday mornings
I post at least a few times a week (sometimes a few times a day) and love the real conversations on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn (sometimes Twitter)
Content creation and your social media strategy can be ridiculously simple. And you can be consistent.
And when it’s simple, it will feel good! And isn’t feeling good the whole dang point of this business thing?
Here are the simple strategies I use to show up consistently on social media:
1 | Create fresh content.
For me, it’s blogging. Choose your favorite way to create. If you ask me if blogging is making a comeback, this is what I’ll say. If you’re just starting out, aim for every other week to start and then ramp up to weekly and even daily if you’re inspired. Keep a running list of all the things you’re excited to talk about, what people are asking about, and create new content each week or try batching your content with my intuitive process.
2 | Share the content of whatever you publish weekly ALL. WEEK. LONG.
This is the key and it saves me hours of staring at my screen pondering what to post and has helped me easily share on social media regularly.
I used to go a week or more without posting because I didn’t know what to say. This simple strategy has me talking more about my work, is growing my audience, and is giving EVERY article I write a boat-load of mileage.
Think of the one piece of content you create each week as your anchor.
And then…
On publishing day — share the link to the article/podcast/video to your:
Newsletter
Each social media channel
Then, daily for the next week, or spread it over two or more weeks, share a snippet, a lesson, a quote, or a question based on that original anchor content
While you might feel like you’re talking about the same thing constantly, this is essential to getting your message out.
And you’ll be sharing the same core message with slightly different words, and the core theme all week long. Because if we put a piece of content out into the world, share it once, and think people will flock to consume it, this isn’t likely.
Think about each post as starting a new conversation on a similar topic.
I can pretty much guarantee that no one’s going to get mad at you for posting too much or talking about the same thing all week long.
Creating a conversation around a single topic all week long focuses our social media efforts gets our message out there, and makes the most of every piece of content we create.
And if you’re ready to start sharing more than your weekly content anchor, look back to older posts and reshare those. Start new conversations around the responses you’ve received.
How much time is this content thing going to take me, Jacq?
As far as the time investment goes, you can do all this, including content creation time in 2 hours a week or less (more or less depending on what you’re creating.)
And you can create new content and share it in a way that feels fresh all week long.
This topic comes up regularly on our Unfussy Writing Community calls. And every time, business owners react with a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s easy! I can totally do that!”
If you liked this and want more simple and on-demand feedback like this, check out the Unfussy Writing Community.
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