Tell me if this sounds familiar.
You’re trying to think of something to post to Instagram, or want to update your blog and…crickets.
Nothing is coming to you. You’ve spent the entire week serving your clients and haven’t had a chance to think about your own business.
We’ve all been there.
But here’s a secret. You don’t have to post in real time. In fact, we rarely do. We schedule out as much as we can, because posting in real time is stressful. Today, I’ll show you the things we’ve done to create a content library for those days when we can’t think of anything to post.
Create a list of blog topics
At the end of last year, I spent a few hours one day creating a content calendar. I started by thinking of post topics related to the things we write about (branding, web design, WordPress, social media and business). Any idea that I had, I wrote down, which gave me a lot of ideas. Then, Mark and I narrowed it down to the best ideas and I started scheduling those ideas out each week. This method gave us a post idea for every week until May. Instead of having to come up with a topic each week, we can now look at our list.
Think about your business and the type of content you create now, then start jotting down ideas. Before you know it, you’ll have weeks worth of posts!
Recycle Old Content
You don’t always have to come up with new content. A lot of people probably haven’t seen that post from a year ago that is still relevant today, or won’t notice that the picture you posted on Instagram was taken 3 months ago. A lot of the things we post to social media aren’t new, but are still relevant to our audience.
- Go through your old blog posts and see if you can share something from a year ago that’s relevant today.
- Go through the images on your phone and find a memory of a fun time or a fun project you worked on.
- Recycle your old pins by placing them onto new Pinterest boards.
Add this content to your library will give you a selection of things, both old and new, to post about.
Post the same thing on multiple platforms, multiple times
Social media moves really fast, meaning that a lot of times, your audience isn’t seeing what you post. Posting the same content a few times on multiple networks can help you get the word out. Whenever we write a new blog post, we will schedule it out on our social media platforms a few times, so our followers have a better chance of seeing it. Then it gets added to our library, where we might post about it again 3 or 6 months down the road (see above). If the content is relevant and helpful to your audience, they won’t care when it was written.
Don’t feel pressured if you miss a day
Social media is supposed to be a fun way to connect with people. Don’t beat yourself up if you miss posting one day, or even a week! To be honest, most people probably won’t even notice. (Remember, social media moves fast!) If you have a lapse in posting, just pick up where you left off.
