Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast, I'm Esther.
And I'm Melanie.
And today we're talking about your social media plan. New Year new plan?
I think so. I mean, we can't forget what we've learnt from the social media plan that we did last year, of course. And today we're only going to be focussing on purely the social media aspect. There's lots of things you can add to a working marketing plan that includes traditional media as well, and doing interviews, going on the radio, going on TV, but really focussing on with it. But we can just focus today on the social media plan purely because it's a lot easier for people to arrange. Normally you need a third party to help you with everything else. So have you changed your social media plan for this year, Esther?
We have augmented our plan for this year. So we're sticking with what has worked, which is always a good way to start. And we are adding in new things or additional things, not so much new as in you know, we're not adding in virtual reality yet, but we're adding in different aspects and doing more. I'm not doing more videos, but we are doing more videos is a bit of that. And there will be more videos for IPA group, let's put it that way.
I'm still not with you in it right.
Not yet, but maybe by the end of the year. We'll see. But and then using those videos to do nuggets and store sound bites and more stories and then. Yeah. Turning those into podcasts or blogs or, you know, things like that. So repurposing content will be a lot of what we were doing this year. You, Melanie?
I don't have the same amount of stuff to help me do the same amount of content, I'm afraid. So I will be limited. I can obviously repurpose. But as and when I get busy, there's only so much I can repurpose in the time that I have.
Yeah, the good thing about the plan, though, if you know, if you have the plan in place and you have your systems in place, then even when you're busy, stuff will go out and people will keep hearing from your business. You know, and we're talking about our businesses, as in Stump social media training and IPA group, but in a way that we can relate to your business, be that, you know, whatever it is that you're selling or promoting. So. What we do will also work for you.
Well, the content we generate isn't necessarily for our needs and requirements, we have to create content that will meet our audiences needs and requirements.
One hundred percent
And you can also you can cheat if you've got the money, you can go to the likes of 10X and others that creates that. Take your content, your original content sites, a blog, and they can transfer into all sorts of different things automatically. And so you have to go in and edit them a little afterwards.
Yeah,
but you know.
Their accents, like ours, like ours, well, with mine, bloopers, there's bloopers everywhere in my when my audio content gets turned into text, things that, you know, companies need to work on is regional accents.
You know, for my social media plan, I would it's when we've discussed this offline several times, haven't we? I would use a social media planner, you know, which is a book that I actually get from, believe it or not, mysocialmediaplanner.co.uk
.co.uk.
Yes. And so what I do is I write in there and I guess it helps me picture, you know, I can take what's in my head, put it down, draw me out sometimes just leave like little bullet points of prompts. And then I go from the handwritten formats and deliver and produce the content and then share it out using normally online platforms.
Yeah. And this is what we, again Melanie was saying we talked about this offline that even though we work in digital and we work online a lot, most of our planning is offline because there's so much going on online that we get distracted. So I would always reach for pen and paper, whether it's the planner that I have as well, or if it's not available, I just use a notebook, something that's there, you know, because ideas come to you in the most random places and at the most random times. You could be listening to this podcast and go, oh yeah, that reminds me, I must talk about this and things that you should think about your upcoming special days. So if you have something right at the time of this recording, Valentine's Day is coming up, then St. Patrick's Day, Easter, you know, there's lots of things. Can your business promote itself and promote your articles, your items, your, you know, your services around those days and focus on having an event around one of those big days? You know, think about what is coming up in the year, obviously, like we're still in the middle of lockdown in the middle of covid on certain days and things like that. But we can still plan. I mean, St. Patrick's Day will happen whether there's a parade or not. You know, that day will exist. The, say Independence Day will happen, whether there are fireworks or not. You know, think of what people will be looking for as well. People are looking forward to those days there. You know, Valentine's Day. Have you got articles that you can sell for people who are in love? Or maybe there's the anti-Valentine's Day.
There's an anti-Valentine's Day.
Yes, Singles Day. There is. Yeah, there is. Yeah. Why not. Why not.
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the other thing to take into account is if you are planning ahead and be mindful of what's happening locally and internationally at the time as well. If you've got stuff scheduled that's all happy and bouncy and joyful when you know your local city has just experienced a devastating blow, then don't put it out, OK? It's just nice.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's why, you know, online planners and online schedulers are good so they can just drag it into another day or another week or another, you know, drag it away from the disaster day and put it into somewhere else and keep an eye on trending hashtags on Twitter. Keep an eye on what's happening on Facebook and all the other social media platforms. There's so much that you could talk about any day of the week. But if you don't plan it, it might never happen. You know, you might never do it.
And in my mind, it's not just putting out content for the sake of it. That's the three S's, in my opinion. This the serve people first, share other people's related content and then don't forget to sell.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it should be in that order. I think it should be serve, share and sell.
Yeah, definitely. And there's a lot of talk over whether it should be 20-80, 70-30, you know, how much of your promotion should be self promotion and selling and how much should be, you know, like Melanie says, helping and serving others. But I like, you know, definitely I advocate a lot of sharing other people's stuff as well, because then people will remember you for that as well. OK, so you're not taking away from yourself, you're not taking away clients from yourself to somebody else.
Hmm. And also being your strategy has to include what you're trying to do. People buy from you at different times. And I love the way Facebook do it in their ads. They've got awareness, consideration and conversion. And, you know, that's pretty much the way you should do all of your promotions. So, you know, the hope is, is that every single month you get new people following you, new people, you know, starting to follow your stories or your profiles. And so generating awareness. This is who I am. This is what I do. Then consideration. Did you know that I do this, this and this and I'm available these days and then finally, the final conversion aspect is, you know, I'm running a workshop. I'm doing a special talk. You know, this is your opportunity to coming by an early bird tickets or something like that. And so you're speaking to them each time, but you're hopefully taking them along the journey of awareness, consideration and conversions. It's very cleverly done.
Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that we've learnt from 2020 and covid and everything else is don't plan too far in advance because things happen. World events.
I do think you have to plan a little ahead, I think.
Oh, yeah.
And if you even if you gave your like months or seasons, let's say, of topics that you want to discuss, you can always tweak them near at the time. But if you're taking some of the thoughts efforts out so you're not having to do all at once, I think that helps. And I think people get overwhelmed with how much content they have to actually put out. You don't have to put out stuff daily. You don't have to create blogs that go out weekly. You don't have to. You can if you'd like. But it needs to be good quality content stuff that remains evergreen for a good length of time. Don't just check out stuff that's rubbish and irrelevant straight away. You know, even if you just put out one block a month, you're probably going to be doing better than your competitor if you're picking that up on your website.
Yeah, definitely really good points there, and with that, we will leave it and we'll see you next week for more Monday Morning Marketing.
Thanks so much for listening.
Bye