Social media content planning (or really most all planning) is great…until it isn’t! I’m almost certain if you searched Pinterest for quotes about “best laid plans,” you’d come up with quite a few hits for when things just don’t quite work out. Now, sometimes these are factors beyond our control, while other times, there are a few favors you can do yourself in advance to ensure your social media plans go, well, mostly as planned.
Check out three of the common social media saboteurs I encounter with businesses, plus how you can avoid them:
Unrealistic Expectations
One of my favorite things is planning social media content because of the strategic creativity involved. What could go here, maybe this there. But, all of the planning in the world isn’t going to actually make it happen, or magically make more resources appear to make it happen. This happens so often to businesses of all sizes, which is why I strongly advocate for erring on the side of reality. Not only is a creative, well-meaning, elaborate social media plan going to eat up your time, but if you’ve penciled “drone footage” into tomorrow’s Facebook post space, but don’t have a drone (or know a business off the top of your head that you can work with), then you’ve just set yourself up for stress and failure.
Success tip: Add in one out-of-the-box/new challenge post per week or month, depending on your time. This still keeps reality in mind, but allows you to try out something new in a way that is sustainable and realistic.
Working Harder (Not Smarter)
This one is a little bit like meal prepping versus not meal prepping. Let’s say you make a huge Sunday dinner, complete with roast beef, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and buttery bread. You put a LOT of work into that meal, and thinking it will just serve you that one day (unless you’re feeding a potluck scenario) is silly, right? You’re bound to have leftovers, and I bet you’re going to get a little creative to find different ways to use them throughout the upcoming week, rather than making five more elaborate meals. Maybe roast beef sliders or a roast beef/potato casserole. The same can be said for your social media post planning. One photo, for example, can go a long way, and be “served up” or presented differently on different social media platforms so that you aren’t taking 10 photos. You just need to be strategic and creative. (There are instances you might want 10 photos, for example, for complex campaigns, rollout teasers, or prep for future content.)
Success tip: Challenge yourself to take one photo and brainstorm three different scenarios it could be used for social media.
Disorganization
Have you ever gone to make dinner, and you spent more time looking for that special ingredient you need, and you just knew it was somewhere in your kitchen. It’s frustrating, searching for it eats up time and likely burns you out for doing anything, and dinner ends up being cereal out of the box again. The same is true for not having an organized system for historical or upcoming graphic and video files, and even relevant blog or press mention website links. Whether it’s in a tool like Canva, your preferred storage system, or at least in an organized place on your mobile device, save yourself time in the long run by periodically uploading files to a secure storage system and labeling the file with a helpful name. (Think “2019 Headshots” vs. “cool photos of me.”)
Bonus: When you have new photos, or do a periodic smartphone purge, make a note then in a logging file of which photos could be used in other places in the future.
Success tip: Make a list of all of the places you currently store files.
The best laid plans are bound to have some hiccups, but at least save yourself from some of the ones you can anticipate happening. Plus, you might be surprised how after a while, you don’t even need to think about these three common obstacles–good best practices just seamlessly become part of your process!
