Planning out your social media content in advance means organizing and scheduling all of the content you anticipate sharing across your active social networks.

WHY YOU SHOULD PLAN YOUR CONTENT IN ADVANCE:

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1. Work smarter, not harder. You are not only saving time, but you’re also giving yourself the opportunity to have a more well thought out, cohesive feed. Maintaining a social media calendar, you are able to plan ahead, avoid multitasking, and take note of all of your creative ideas to later execute fully.
2. Stay on top of your content, trends, and strategies. Posting consistently is vital in terms of maintaining your audience’s engagement and a strong social media presence. Planning ahead also allows you to be a bit more ambitious with your social strategies (i.e. campaigns, influencer marketing, partnerships/sponsorships, etc.) given the extra time in between planning and posting. Try out our scheduling suite with general calendar reminders and custom post reminders to help you stay on top of your content.
3. Alleviate stress later on. Avoid the stress of regular posting by planning ahead.  Not only will you feel more on top of your game, but you will also notice typos and common mistakes often made when posting on a whim. Test out our caption & tag pen where you can draft your captions and save them to your clipboard for later posting.
4. Work efficiently with teams. If you work with a social media team, planning your content ahead of time allows for more time for collaboration.  Maybe one person collects, another curates, another edits, and the other drafts copy; Having all of your ideas and planned content in one place helps you and your team work together more efficiently. Take advantage of UNUM’s collaborative spaces which allows seamless collaboration between individual users and team members.
5. Make higher quality content. A social media calendar helps you make the most of your resources and assets.  Allowing more time for the creation, curation, and design process results in higher quality content that contributes to your brand’s long term success.

BEFORE YOU PLAN YOUR CONTENT:

Before you start actually planning your content, it’s important to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Who is your target audience? Are you targeting a specific gender, age range, or location?  If you have an Instagram business or creator profile, you are able to view analytics like these.  If not, ask yourself, who am I trying to reach and how can I best do that?
2. What’s working? What isn’t? Which posts get the most engagement, likes, shares, impressions, etc.? Which posts are getting the least?  Understanding which posts of yours receive the most attention not only help you understand what your audience likes, but will also help you better understand the type(s) of content they want to see more of.
3. Which channels do you need to prioritize?  What channels are most popular amongst your audience?  Maybe you’re a fashion blogger whose audience primarily engages with visual content on Instagram? Or maybe you’re a writer who benefits from sharing short-form copy on Twitter coupled with longer form blog posts.  Whatever it is, identify who you are as an individual or brand and figure out which platforms you need to prioritize.
4. What type of content (photo, video, text, links, etc.) is needed for each platform? Once you know which platforms are at the top of your list, you then need to consider which types of content is needed/shared on each.

Once you have answered those questions, you are then ready to begin planning out your content.  Brainstorm and make a list of ideas to help ease your content creation process.  PRO TIP! Try using placeholder images to visualize your content calendar even if you haven't found the right piece yet! If you know you’re going to be traveling, perhaps you add a placeholder to your UNUM grid space in the meantime.

HOW TO PLAN YOUR CONTENT:

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• Create a Mood Board. Mood boards act as a visual guide to the overall mood, vibe, and theme you hope to achieve for your brand.
• Jot ideas down on paper. Take notes of ideas, angles, locations, etc. that you hope to create in the future.
• Build out a backlog of content & inspiration.  Add a bunch of content you either already have of your own or inspiration from others that you hope to recreate in your own way.  Having all of your content and inspiration in one place can help you better plan out content for future posts. UNUM Space is perfect for this!
• Create placeholders. Maybe you’re going on a trip and plan to post a few photos from your travels.  Use UNUM templates to create placeholder images that you can add to your grid space.  Some ideas for placeholders include: quote, landscape, selfie/portrait, travel pic, outfit of the day, sponsored post, and more!
• Set post reminders using UNUM’s Scheduling Suite. Our scheduling suite allows you to set generalized post reminders (day and times) as well as Custom Post reminders that send you a push notification when it’s time to upload your next scheduled post! For details on how to set reminders, click HERE.
• Create a spreadsheet.  On top of planning a visual social media calendar, it’s also helpful to have a spreadsheet with all of your platforms and text based ideas in one place.  We created a spreadsheet template to help you do just that. Duplicate/copy the template into your own Google drive and get to planning!