I don’t know about you but sometimes social media can feel like a brick wall of what on earth shall I post about? I’ve recently been focussing on digital marketing, lots of courses attended and information gathering, and it’s really made me sharpen up on what I’m putting out into social media world, I've become a little more strategic about it. I knew I wanted to try out different ways of expressing who I am and my knowledge, plus create an interesting experience for people that follow me - it can all get a bit same-y eh? (I thought if I’m only posting a single type of content then not only will you get bored, so will I!). It’s much more than that, my goal was really to sell prints and my services but also be at least a little interesting.
One Instagram challenge I always like engaging in is Joanne Hawker’s #MarchMeetTheMaker and I wondered why that was. I realised it’s because it ticks all the elements of what I SHOULD be expressing to you! It educates you about who who I am, can offer entertainment by showing the types of things I do in reels and original, creative designs show off my personality a little, I can inspire you to try it for yourself or become a designer/business owner, or maybe you just like my designs, it doesn’t matter really does it? Plus at the end of the day I am trying to sell designs/services and it’s an avenue to do so (even if it’s only 20% of what I show.)
Anyway, long story short, I wanted to sharpen my brand strategy so I drilled down what I was trying to offer focussing on the attract, engage and delight theory but drilled down to EDUCATE | ENTERTAIN | INSPIRE | OFFER theme and here's the walk through - people get bored pretty quickly if all you do is sell, sell, sell. I know I do, so rotating my information will help provide interesting content but also give a selection of images. It honestly does help but takes time and energy. So if you are going to do this first of all you need to identify who you are trying to connect with (your buyer persona/niche/audience), if you don't you may be using the wrong tone to connect with them.
The thing to remember is that you are rotating what you're posting about, you're making it varied and (hopefully!) interesting. You have 4 pillars: educate | entertain | inspire | offer and you're going to rotate what happens within each one of those sections too.
First up educate:
Many prompts from one pillar can cross over with another e.g. I can entertain with my wrapping process via a reel and also inspire with an image. Educate is really you telling your followers about your business and you. What you do, what you believe in, who you are, what your values are (see this post about identifying your brand values here).
Next up is entertain:
Entertain prompts are to have fun with - think reels/gifs/designs, a little more lighthearted and fun, use some big beats and be creative with TikTok. These prompts will help make you focus.
Next up is inspire:
These prompts are really about your business journey. How it's going, the problems, the solutions, the good and bad decisions - your brand story. How you deal with things - your motivation and analysis.
Products/services are next This makes me laugh as it's probably the reason you are probably posting on instagram in the first place and what you probably really want to be posting about (please buy my stuff!).
This should only be 20% of what you are posting - despite wanting to shout very loudly "BUY THIS PLEASE'. Try to shake it up - think of prompts that aren't so necessarily BUY IT NOW, but are still directly have your call to action (CTA) of "BUY IT" and this is where and how. It's a hard nut to crack and do it right.
This is what I’m currently doing with all of the above - I create my 1-31 of days for the month, I pull up my social media calendar that’s relevant to MY business, I also use #Folksythemeoftheday promts (www.folksy.com) as they run every month, and check out other challenges that may fit with QuMoo Design brand. Particular favourites of mine are #the100dayproject and #everydaylifesnapshots - they just connect with me. I cross refer the 1-31 with my educate, entertain, inspire and offer and rotate it. It takes a bit of thought and it honestly isn't the hard once you get into it.
Feel free to use it for yourself if it helps and if you have any pointers/thoughts I’d love to hear them (especially if you can improve my process, I’m up for that!). The other thing I do use is brand templates I've created. If you would like me to help me with your digital marketing, brand templates and other graphics, I'd love it if you got in contact (qumoodesign@gmail.com).
-Queenie