Do you have a social media workflow mapped out for your business? Many business owners shy away from doing, but having a workflow can help ease the overwhelm around social media and ease the burden on your to-do list.

It’s also relatively simple to create. Once you know your audience, you know what makes them tick and the type of content they need to see to help build on those know, like and trust factors in business. Because social media can be a great way to increase your follower count and your profits – but only if you have a clear plan in place.

So if you’re wondering how to create a simple social media workflow for yourself, keep reading to get some answers!

Outline your social media strategy

Start by deciding on the 1-2 platforms you’ll use to raise your visibility and promote your business on social media. You also need to know what you’re going to focus on promoting over this period to establish your main goals for the next 90 days. Why 90 days? Because it’s enough time to gain traction and visibility and see if what you’re doing is working. 

So, for example, you may decide to use Instagram as your main platform and will reshare content to your Facebook page. You’re going to focus on promoting your 1:1 package, and you’re looking to fill 2 spaces on that. You also have a secondary goal of adding 50 followers to your Instagram account.

Decide on the type of content you want to create

Once you know your focus and goals, you can decide on the type of content you want to create. You’ll want to cover both sides of this – the type of content and the topics. 

When it comes to the type of content you can create, start by knowing your main key piece of content. This is usually a podcast, video or blog post, as these are easier to repurpose and break down into smaller pieces of content. These could include – carousel posts, stories and reels, livestream, tip videos or posts, personal stories/experiences, memes, quotes, polls or surveys, infographics etc.

For content topics, think about what’s needed to cover your goals and the needs of your audience. Most service-based businesses will need a combination of awareness, consideration, and promotional pieces for promotional purposes and educational, entertainment, and informative pieces for the questions, problems, and desired solutions their audience is facing. 

These don’t have to be separate pieces of content either and can often be mixed. For example, an educational post with a carousel of images, a funny meme highlighting a problem your audience is having, and a consideration piece that also has a call to action for your mailing list or primary service.

Create a social media calendar

So many people overcomplicate this part of the process! Essentially, you’re just getting the basics down on paper – what you’re going to post and when. How this looks will largely depend on your goals, audience and the hashtags you’re using. 

For example, you may love the hashtag #throwbackthursday, so use Thursdays to write a post on your journey and experiences. You may also want to showcase what you’re working on, promote your mailing list, share the latest key piece of content you’ve created, and a quick tip or FAQ post every Tuesday. Start by scheduling these five posts in on their relevant calendar slots. You can then add your awareness, consideration, promotional, educational and informative pieces. 

So putting this all together, you might make Monday the day you talk about a theme for that week and add a carousel or story post on it. Tuesday would be your FAQ post for that topic, with Wednesday’s post showcasing a client testimonial or a case study. Thursday would be your personal journey/experience post, and Friday would be the day you promote your key content piece for the week (and this could have a call to action for your 1:1 service). Saturday could be a meme or quote about your client’s feelings on the topic/problem, and Sunday could be a poll giving options for next week’s theme and a behind the scenes look at what you’re working on or reading over the weekend.

Create your individual pieces of content

If you create one key piece of content every week and know what your individual pieces will be, it makes it a lot easier to create. You simply set aside a 1-2 hour slot once a week to create your main piece of content. 

Once you’ve edited it and it’s ready to go, you then use another 20-30 minutes to take the bits you need to create the smaller pieces. Examples include pulling out a quote, using a paragraph for your promo piece, and selecting a sentence or two for educational post prompts that you will expand on for your copy. 

Finally, spend another 10 minutes adding them all to your social media scheduler for the week ahead.

Creating a social media workflow doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t mean you’re committing to spending all of your time online. The biggest decision you need to make is that key piece of content each week – everything else can then be based on that. The beauty of this is you could create that main piece yourself but then outsource the subsequent pieces to your VA. They could then create the pieces and schedule everything for you. If this is something that you’d like to explore, do get in touch and let’s talk through the potential ways a VA can help you with your social media workflow.