Create a Purpose-Driven Content Plan

If your social media content doesn’t serve a purpose directly related to your goals, you’re wasting valuable time and resources.

Gone are the days when you had to be on social media in order to validate your organization.

In this post, you’ll learn 5 social media planning steps to ensure your content is purpose-driven.  Not only that, but you’ll also be able to visualize the big picture of your content, diversify content and media types, plan ahead, and guarantee fresh and engaging content. 

Step 1: Choose Your Platforms 

First things first, decide which social media platforms you’re going to use. You don’t need to be on all of them! In fact, it’s better to have one or two successful and relevant social media platforms than to have a mediocre presence on half a dozen of them.

Answer these two questions to help you select social media platforms to commit to:

How much time and resources do you really have to manage social media? Some platforms require more work for content creation (like YouTube) or monitoring (like Twitter) than the others.  

Which platforms are your audience members hanging out? Do this audience persona exercise to help figure this out.

Step 2: Create Content Buckets 

How many times have you stared at your screen, wracking your brain for content ideas? 

That’s the problem content buckets solve. These are content topics that will not only diversify your posts but provide you with countless content ideas, and ultimately tell a vibrant story of your brand.

Reflect on which of these content buckets will help you reach your broader digital marketing goals. Here are common social media content buckets.

• Entertain: Have some fun, share light-hearted posts and media that likely relate to a trending topic—like memes and gifs.

• Inform: Educate on your issue or industry, share news articles, infographics, or facts and statistics.

• Inspire: Show your impact, share client stories, or motivational quotes. 

• Interact: Engage with your followers and readers, share conversation starters, ask questions, or hold contests, quizzes, polls, and surveys.

• Introduce: Show your brand’s human side—tell your origin story and feature your staff, board, volunteers, or partners. 

• Update: Share your brand’s news, share upcoming events and activities, what’s going on behind the scenes, or media coverage.

Step 3: Diversify Media

There are so many more media types than images. When you’re plotting out your social media plan, diversify the types of media you use to keep your pages fresh and engaging. 

Here are a few types of media to keep in mind.

• Downloadable Materials

• Live Video 

• Simple Animation 

• Images 

• Infographics

• Text Only

• Text Overlay (text over an image)

• Gifs

• Memes 

• Blog Post/Article

• Webpages

The kinds of media you use will perform differently depending on the platform. For example, links to articles work well on Facebook but obviously are not very easy to share on Instagram. 

So which media should you use for each platform? 

Start with researching the latest trends. Then experiment. Keep track of the reach and engagement over a month, and by the end, you’ll have a good idea of which media types perform well on the platform you use.

Step 4: Make a Platform Plan

Here's where a little bit of strategy comes in. Repurposing the same message and media across all platforms isn’t going to cut it. Having a basic platform plan ensures that your messaging and media will have an optimal impact. 

As a start, do some research on the current best practices for each platform. As with any plan, be flexible. This is why tracking social media success is so important. If your plan is not working, shift your strategy. 

Here are the basic elements that you should define in a platform plan.

• Platform  

• Purpose 

• Tone  

• Cadence  

• Content 

• Media

• Engagement 

• Ad Budget 

Here's an example of a platform plan.

Platform: Instagram 

Purpose: Inform and update donors

Tone: Hopeful, inspirational, and at times urgent 

Cadence: 3x week in feed, stories daily

Content: Inform, inspire, interact, and update

Media: Images, simple infographics, text overlay, and video 

Engagement: Respond to comments, engage with like-minded accounts, prompt engagement with polls, questions, and swipe meter.  

Ad Budget: $50/month

Step 5: Create a Social Media Calendar

Now for the fun part. A social media calendar is where all your content planning comes together. This is sometimes called a content calendar or an editorial calendar. 

Go ahead and download the social media calendar so you can visualize this step of the process.

A social media calendar is a scheduled plan of social media content. It gives you a birds-eye view of your content to ensure it's quality, consistent, diversified, and purposeful.

There are many ways to structure a social media calendar, some are very complex, and some are relatively simple. Consider using a cloud-based site or tool like Airtable or Google Sheets to create and maintain your calendar. They're easier to both use and share. 

I recommend content planning in two stages.

In stage one, plugin content and media types based on the platform plan. You can plan months and even a year's worth of content in advance. This step ensures your content is diverse before you build it out.

In stage two, develop the actual copy and media (or media descriptions). I do this in two to four-week batches.

When your social media content is final, you can go ahead and schedule them. Nearly all social media platforms have scheduling features. Read this online tools post for a few social media management sites you can use to schedule content on several platforms in one place. 

Are you ready to start planing? If you’re running a purpose-driven organization, then all of your communications and marketing should reflect that. Your loyal followers will expect it. 

Do you use a social media calendar? How far in advance do you plan your content? Let us know in the comments.