Kristen Stephen, Nederland.  Chaucee is a local digital strategist and web designer passionate about working with small businesses. On January 17th, at Hub Ned, she shared her expertise in how to plan out and streamline a social media content strategy.

In our fast-paced, constantly connected world, running a business requires the smart use of social media. As business owners, we all recognize the importance of maintaining a consistent presence on these platforms, but as you may be running the show all by yourself (as many of us do) you might often find yourself thinking “Oh man, what the heck do I post today?!”
Chaucee did a great job of offering us a solution to this common pain point. If you were unable to attend the session, here’s a quick breakdown of the highlights.

Four Keys for Planning and Streamlining Your Digital Content

These four points below will help you to plan out and create content that is engaging and relevant to your target audience.

Defining Your Brand Pillars

Your brand pillars are the purpose, passion and personality behind your business. One marketing tip we’re hearing more of, as social media takes center stage, is that “People don’t connect with companies, they connect with other people.”

Taking the time to dive into the following questions will not only help you to keep your message consistent with your brand, but it will also help you figure out how to best connect with your audience.

Why did you start your business/what is your mission?

Who is your ideal client/customer/audience and what pain points are you helping to solve for them?

What are the interests of those clients/customers? What do they do for fun?

What are five words you’d like people to associate with your business?

What is the solution you are offering and why should your customers/clients trust you?

What makes you stand out from your competitors?

Defining Your Tone of Voice

Consistency is key here. In order to establish trust with your audience, it is necessary to develop a consistent tone of voice to use across all of your business’ marketing materials.

Your brand voice should set you apart from the rest, express who you are and build trust with your customers.

How do you want to be perceived? If a customer/client were to describe your business, what would they say?

What are three words you’d like associated with your brand voice? (For example, as a bodyworker, I’d like to be perceived as passionate about my work, so “passionate” is one of my words).

Break those three words down and define them further (To further break down “passionate,” because my practice is focused on calming my client’s nervous systems, in order to release held tension, I’d like to be seen as knowledgeable about the brain/nervous system/body connection).

Take that breakdown further and come up with a list of things to do and not do (For example, with my word “passionate” I could demonstrate my experience/knowledge and show confidence in my work. One thing to not do, would be to show uncertainty).

Writing Your Strategy

This is where you put it all together. Take all of that hard work you just put in, defining your brand pillars and your brand voice, and use the following questions to develop your strategy.

Which social media platforms would you like to use? Where are your ideal clients?

What are your goals for using social media?

What would your ideal client like to see from you and what would they like to get out of it?

What type of content would you like to post and where?

How often would you like to post? Remember, don’t over stretch yourself and make sure you can keep it consistent.

When is your ideal client consuming content on social media (days/times)?

Establishing Your Content Creation Process + Tools to Use

Here’s where you break down how this will all happen.

Who will create your content? Will you use a photographer or stock photos? Will you hire a graphic designer or copywriter?

Have you considered using automated tools? Chaucee suggested Buffer/Tweetdeck/Hootsuite/Grum as great scheduling tools.

Other notable tips are as follows:

Take some time once per month and schedule an hour to brainstorm post ideas.

Use a content calendar to schedule in your images and captions.

Begin each week (either Monday morning or Sunday night) reviewing your scheduled posts, making any adjustments and scheduling new posts, to allow you to focus on running your business, the remainder of the week.
Incorporate your brand guidelines into your content plan (colors, fonts, types of images etc).

As a small business owner, in the process of expanding my practice, I have been so grateful to the Nederland Downtown Development Authority (NDDA) for sponsoring these educational workshops, through a small business development grant they received from Boulder County. I am also very grateful to Hub Ned for always providing a beautiful and comfortable venue (and super delicious food) for these events.

And of course, thank you to Chaucee Stillman for helping to simplify and streamline a process that previously created quite a bit of stress for me. I know my fellow local business owners feel the same! Chaucee can be reached at hi@chaucee.com.

Kristen Stephen is a bodyworker, practicing integrative manual therapy, at Alpine Botanicals, in Nederland, Colorado. Her mission is to help people live lives with less pain and more joy. Kristen can be reached at kristen@sourcecenterwellness.com.

(Originally published in the January 31, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)