Planning Social Media Content: 6 Questions for Your Foundation

In planning social media content, you build on the same solid foundation as in every other kind of communication:

1. Who are you talking to?
2. What is your message?
3. What is your goal?

It doesn’t matter whether you’re planning web content, social media outreach, a book, or a conversation.

Disha Kathuria, writing about planning social media posts at YourStory.com, takes these three questions and divides them in some useful ways, to make your a social media plan a good fit for your business.

Three of the questions are the ones I listed above: audience, message, goal.

She adds several more in the same vein, that help clarify your social media content planning:

1. What is your product?
2. Is this the right platform?
3. Are your posts compelling?

Here are the questions:

Know Your Product

As a solopreneur, you know your product inside and out. But sometimes we can be so close to a thing that we have a hard time seeing it. Get some perspective. Understand why what you do is valuable to your clients. Get the nuances of your value.

Maybe call some of your clients on the phone for feedback. It could be educational as well as an aid to social media content planning.

Pick the Right Platform

Knowing which social media platform to use comes down to where your people hang out — and why. For example, for someone who sells high-end sports equipment, the target audience may be on LinkedIn, but that is a work channel for them, and they may not respond to sports content there.

Kathuria says, “Finding the right network for your content is like choosing the right neighborhood for your kids to grow up in. Once you find this, you can develop your content accordingly.”

Make Posts Engaging and Sharable

Make sure that your social media posts will appeal to your readers, and as much as possible, make them shareable to friends.

The posts should advance their goals, inspire, entertain. For some businesses, humor is a good ice-breaker. Keep track of your content’s success and learn.

Planning Social Media Content: Asking the Right Questions

No matter what you’re planning, it’s important to get down to the foundation of why you’re doing this (whatever it is), who you’re doing it for, and how you’ll know if you’ve succeeded or not.

With answers to those questions in place, you’ll not only have a goal to shoot for. You’ll also be in a position to tweak your results to improve them down the road.