Why are some people’s businesses booming, projects are growing and developing, while others have a complete lull and frustration on the horizon? It’s not enough to create beautiful posts with vivid Stories. In 2021, the Internet is saturated with content, and subscribers are becoming more demanding and picky. To stand out, attract your target audience, and keep people’s attention, you need to prescribe a content plan. Now we’ll tell you where to start!
Step 1: Set a Goal
It doesn’t matter if you’re developing a personal brand on your own, running a project on a freelance basis or working in a large team of a Digital agency, you need to set specific goals everywhere. For example, some people need a high-quality visual, others expect to sell through social networks, and still others need to work on their image story. If you do not define the goal on the shore, you cannot avoid conflicts with clients or your own disappointment. This is all the more important if you plan to run targeted ads. This is necessary to avoid draining budgets, of course.
Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience
If you’ve been active on social media for a few months now, but there’s no feedback from your audience, don’t rush to change the concept or drop projects. There’s a good chance your target audience just doesn’t see the content. To get to your people, you need to first understand who your subscriber is. How old he is, where he lives and what gender he is, how he spends his leisure time and where he rests, what his philosophy is, what he strives for. The more specific the portrait, the easier it will be to correctly prescribe in terms of headings, themes, visual concept and style of presentation, and later to set up advertising.
For audience research, it’s best to conduct independent surveys. There are many tools for this, here are 4 of them:
- Google Forms. An easy way to conduct a survey is to write the questions you’re interested in and post the form on social networks Facebook, Instagram, etc.
- Email newsletters. This form of interaction with customers should never be ignored – you can send out a questionnaire to a database of subscribers and get a lot of useful information.
- Forums. Read what users write on forums, blogs and feedback sites. Pay attention to your motives: why they are choosing a certain product, what questions they are asking and what they are looking for.
- Interviews with the company’s personnel responsible for contacting clients: sales managers, customer service employees. They know better what problems and questions people ask the company. The deeper you analyze the situation, the more believable will be the portrait of your target audience. This will allow you to offer people a solution to not contrived problems, but real problems, what they really need. If people see that the product improves their quality of life, they are willing to pay for it even in a crisis.
Step 3: Choose a Site and Type of Content
Let’s say your customer is a poker online platform. Where do you think is the best place to publish content? Most would say Instagram would be perfect. In fact, TikTok is fine. You don’t need to make silly videos of people dancing on camera. Gambling experts need to talk about different poker strategies, debunk myths, and give helpful advice. This is a good example of not rushing to choose venues. Sometimes the most obvious ones are the least effective. Here we advise you to test and choose at least 2 or 3 social networks at the start, and after a few months, weed out the unprofitable ones.
The type of content is the same story as with the sites. Without testing different types of publications, you won’t know what’s best.
Step 4: Do a Competitor Analysis
Why come up with some super complicated plan when you can analyze the marketplace and figure out what your audience expects from you. This approach is best for commercial projects. If it is, for example, an online store of children’s toys made of natural wood, it is unlikely that you need to create content aimed at teenagers. Your audience is mothers, and they want to see toys from all sides, read the composition, and make sure that toys have no plastic elements or sharp corners.
It’s a guess, but to definitely confirm the hypothesis, it’s better to find the same stores, study their photos, post captions, study the comments and if possible, make a test purchase.
Step 5: Create a Plan Structure for the First Month
There are many templates for a content plan online, but the most effective one will be the one you create yourself based on tests and experience. Some people think it’s important to write in detail all the headings and subheadings, topics, and publication styles, while others limit themselves to the date, time of posting, and a brief description.