For a fair while now I have been wanting to carve out some time to pull all my social media ideas, scribbled across multiple notepads, sticky notes, napkins, and devices into one place and actually create a sustainable plan on how to be more consistent and focused in my social media.
So I finally sat down, got my planning head on and planned out my plan to make a plan.
Every Sunday evening I sit down and write a basic plan (is this even a real word anymore?) of what I need to work on each day, some essential goals etc. I usually write this in my notepad, however to try and refresh my system I decided to switch it up and make myself a prettied-up printout and a social media calendar. That’s when I fell down my first rabbit hole...
I spoke to a number of different entrepreneurs from various fields, with a particular focus on authors and creatives, mostly to see what their processes were and how they interacted with different platforms.
After mixing all of their feedback in the dusty cauldron that is my brain, I set to work.
I figured that my best first step would be a good brain dump sheet, with “buckets” to collate the different content ideas and possibilities.
Some simple prompts and connection ideas to help get the creative juices flowing. What I really wanted to include here was a short section to review what worked well in the previous week and what didn’t.
This was my second rabbit hole, looking for the best analytic tool! I will eventually do a follow-up post about this because there are so many amazing options, but for me, I didn’t want to pay megabucks so I’m trying Hootsuite and Laters and will report back soon.
In the end, I created 4 sheets (but I have a few more in the pipeline.)
Weekly planner
Prompt list
Social media planner
Annual overview
The way I plan on attacking it is to mark down some annual holidays on the annual overview/calendar. There are some great holidays that you can have a lot of fun with I just have a nose on CalendarLabs. There’s plenty of room for all your release dates, school holidays, and such.
Once I have my dates in place it’s time I will attempt to fire up my brain and fill the Prompt lists with lots of different ideas.
From here every week I will sit down on a Sunday evening and plan out my work week on the weekly planner. I'll then cross-reference my annual overview and prompt list to decide what I’m going to post where, and on what days.
The social media sheet has a row of little circles so you can mark what social media channels you want to post on those days.
I definitely do not claim to be a social media expert, but when I started talking to people and posting it came clear that so many other people were struggling with juggling this so hopefully my doodle filled approach will help some else! Let me know in the comments if you know any tips to add! I read that each platform has it's sweet spot for how many different types of posts it likes from you in a week (so lives, carousels, reels etc) but I haven't researched this further yet.
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