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How to Create Content for Social Media Quickly

creating social media content

When it comes to creating content for your social media, there are several issues that arise. First, what content should I create? Next, how can I make content fast? Finally, how can I ensure my content is high quality? Well, in this article we will cover all three of these questions and get you back to working on your business rather than in your business.

Generating Ideas for Content

Step 1 in creating social media content is idea generation. Here are three simple things you can do to get an endless supply of content ideas.

1. Listen to Your Audience

First, ask your audience. If you’ve already got fans, then there are people who already know what they like and want. So ask them what that is and provide it to them. This can be complex, such as in the form of surveys, or it can be as simple as posting a story on Instagram asking “What do you want more of?”.

2. Brain Dump

Now, let’s say you’re just getting started on social media and your follower count is less than ideal. Don’t worry… brainstorm. Sit down with your business partner, employees, family members, or even friends and simply spitball ideas. You’d be surprised how many ideas you can come up with if you take the time to just focus on idea generation.

Brainstorming

3. Content Calendars

Okay, so you don’t have any followers (or they’re not responding to your question) and your brainstorm is looking more like a drought. There’s still a really simple path out there… Social Media Calendars.

Go to Pinterest and search for “social media calendar” and you’ll find hundreds, if not thousands, of calendars giving you ideas on what to post every day. This should help maneuver any dry spell of ideas and lack of audience you might have.

Move Fast and Break Things

Now that you have your content ideas, next is creating the content.

1. Give Yourself a Shorter Deadline

deadline

The first thing you should do is give yourself a shorter deadline. According to Parkinson’s Law, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” So often we give ourselves too much time to complete a task and we end up spending an unnecessary amount of time to complete it.

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Parkinson’s Law

So instead, shorten your deadlines on content creation so as to eliminate wasted time. If you’re spending 3 hours a week, try to shorten that to 45 minutes.

2. Create Pillar Content — and Micro-Content

Another tactic you can use for creating more content quickly is creating pillar content. Pillar content is any long-form content (e.g., blogs, podcasts, videos) longer than 10 minutes (for blogs: 10-min. read time). This content will give you a foundation on which to stand.

Once you’ve created this content, you will be able to break it apart into smaller pieces of content (a.k.a. micro-content). This can be done in several ways.

For blogs, you can capture headlines and quotes for Twitter posts. You can also take these quotes and place them on brand or stock photos and post them on Instagram and Facebook.

When it comes to Podcasts, you can capture key moments in the audio file and add them to a photo or audio visualizer. These can be shared on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, even TikTok. You can also have the entire podcast transcribed into a blog article, where all of the above tactics can be used, again.

Now, when it comes to videos your opportunities explode! First, you can do all of the things that can be done for podcasts and blogs. However, now you have the opportunity for small video clips, screenshots with quotes, screenshots or clips turned into memes, and more!

3. Have a System

The ideas for breaking apart your pillar content into micro-content are endless. However, with endless opportunities comes endless decisions that need to be made. So, it becomes extremely important to set up a system.

Don’t just create pillar content and think you’ll figure out the rest later. Create a game plan or system for breaking apart your pillar content into micro-content. Know what software you’ll be using, what filetypes you’re working with, and what order you’ll break your content apart in.

This will save you hours, days, and weeks of your time if you go into this with a strategy.

Creating Quality Content

You’ve generated ideas and you’re ready to make content, but how can you maintain quality with speed?

1. Set Goals and a Strategy

Before worrying about creating the most beautiful and elegant content, you need to have goals and a strategy in place. If you’re running a local diner and are not competing against some high-end, fancy restaurant do you really need professionally done photos?

Determine the goal of your content and what the purpose for it is. Not every post needs to sell a product or service, but every post should be telling a story about your business in some way. Whether you’re educating your audience on the industry as a whole or entertaining them to bringing awareness to your brand, tell a story.

Be sure your strategy includes this detail as stories make ideas sticky and give virality to content. Don’t over-promise in your photos and underdeliver in your service. Set realistic goals and work towards achieving them, but don’t limit your speed due to high expectations.

2. Define Your Audience & Customer Journey

Next, you’ll want to define your audience and your customer journey. Your posts should be leading somewhere. It can be to a landing page, a lead magnet, another post, or a sales page, it doesn’t matter. Just have a purpose behind your content. You don’t need an “ask” in every post, but don’t hide your call-to-actions either.

Learn as much as you can about your audience and be sure your content will fit with their personalities as well as where they are in their customer journey. You don’t want to constantly post about your brand and never level up your audience from leads to clients.

3. Build a Style Guide

Color palette

The final thing you’ll need to help create quality content with speed is a Brand Style Guide (if interested, I can write an article on how to do this yourself or hire someone to do it for you). To keep it simple for now, your style guide will define your brand colors, fonts, type of imagery used (e.g., cartoons, photos, etc.), company voice (e.g., playful or serious, etc.), and other details (e.g., slogans, etc.).

This can be placed in a folder on your computer for quick access and—if your systems are set up—allow you to make content fast!

The Power of Canva

One excellent tool for creating content as well as storing your brand styles is Canva. The free version comes with 250,000+ free templates, free photos and graphics, the ability to add team members, and more. The Pro version, however, adds the ability to save and apply brand colors, logos, and fonts. This can make even a novice look like a professional graphic designer (or one that just graduated from college, at least).

Moving Forward

Now that you have a plan to create quality social media content fast, what’s next? I’m glad you asked. Here is a  I’ve been working on to help small business owners and entrepreneurs expand their reach and build brand awareness. 🤩 Click the link to download now and let me know what you think. If this article or the resource helps you or your business, feel free to leave me a review.

Also, if you have any questions about Social Media Marketing or Content Marketingshoot me an email. I’d love to help! ❤

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