060: How to Get Consistent on Socials (No Dancing & Lip Syncing Required)
Episode #060: How to Get Consistent on Socials (No Dancing & Lip Syncing Required)
How many of you have sat down to finally get some social media content sorted and then just sat there, stared at the screen and gone: "The hell am I gonna say?" In this episode, I'm sharing my go-to formula for getting unstuck with social media content, as well as batching a month in advance. I'm also going to give you my top 10 talking points to get those creative juices flowing!
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Show Notes: Links & resources mentioned in this episode:
Check out Later for scheduling your social media content in advance!
Transcript
Meredith: [00:00:00] All righty. So how many of you have sat down to finally get some social media content sorted and then you just sat there and stood at the screen and gone? "The hell am I gonna say?"
Like, I know a lot of us wanna actually feel like we're saying something of substance on social media. I personally can't stand stuff for the sake of stuff. Talking for the sake of just posting something. Just for the sake of making noise. Right? And I'm sure most of us don't actually want to jump on the whatever Reel trend's going around where it's dance to this or clap to this audio or point at this audio and then post stuff that's relevant to your business.
Like they're really, they're kind of really good get started ones, but I'm sure a lot of us just feel super dopey doing them. And you kind of feel like you're shoehorning this trend back into your business when it really doesn't feel like you.
I wanted to give you my top 10 kind of thought starters, talking points, ideas for actually saying something that [00:01:00] matters and getting those of creative juices flowing when it comes to social media.
So the idea is, is that you can actually make a batch of content. , Do it in advance, get it all done and dusted. Schedule up for the month so it kind of drip feeds out across the course of like a four week period. You don't have to be stuck to your screen. You don't have to be doing some weird dance in a reel.
You don't have to be figuring out some link syncing, timing thing to sign else's audio. You're saying something that matters. You're doing it in advance, you're creating a batch, you're scheduling it, and you're getting on with your freaking life because I'm sure most of us running a business, being in charge of an organization.
Also being responsible for raising a family, probably coaching one of your kids' teams. Um, there's probably some committee or 10 you've been roped into. You don't have time for tiktoks and reels and trending dances and trending audio and all that crap. Okay. So this is how I'm gonna help you be super productive, get a batch of content together, get it done, get the hell back to your [00:02:00] life.
Okay, so let's lay a bit of groundwork first. Cause I don't wanna just dive into these 10 without giving you broader context that you can then put these 10 talking points into. So let's think about first, why. Why do we actually wanna be consistently saying something of value on social?
Well, overarchingly social media is actually a really good way to have that:
"Hi, how are you? This is what I do" conversation that you would typically have with most customers and clients that would walk into your organization. Um, it's a really good way to have that chat on steroids and have it as with heaps of people at once, and you've only gotta really do it once. So it's really a good way to introduce your brand and your values and what you do to other people at scale.
So there's three kind of key reasons we wanna put this consistently out there on social media. So one is, that's just that it's communicating your brand values to those most likely to do business with you. You're communicating your brand values. [00:03:00] It's a really good way to connect with your audience and connect on that really human relatable level.
Like classic example I specifically serve small businesses and not-for-profit organizations in regional rural Australia because we have this shared belief in being really invested in our local communities. So I can talk a lot about juggling family, juggling, volunteer commitments, the importance of these small businesses in small towns.
I can connect with my audience on that level, like, and I've had customers come to me, or people that have become clients come to me purely because they've sat there and gone, oh look, I've seen your stuff on Instagram. I really like your values. I like what you're talking about.
I like what you're saying. I wanna do business with you. So talking about your values, that are sort of embedded in your business and your brand matters a lot to the right people. Um, another really good thing about being consistent in social media, it's a good way to bring people behind the scenes of your business, bringing them behind the scenes of what it is that you actually do and how you [00:04:00] do it.
People love feeling like they're getting like an exclusive access pass to what it is that you do. That's why behind the scenes is, if we all remember back to the days of dv d, there was always a behind the scenes option in the DV D menu. Cause people love that. People love knowing how stuff works.
And you'd be surprised, you might think what you do is kind of mundane, but there are people out there that will find it interesting and almost guarantee you, so don't, don't sort of downplay the 'how' of your business as being interesting to your customers potential and existing.
And the third one, perhaps the most crucial, which gives social media its commercial value to us is social media is a really good way to prepare people to do business for us. I think I've talked about market to the Gap before. So what you wanna do is you wanna sort of, okay, here's your business. This is what you do, where it sits, and your customer's here, where you've gotta figure out where your customer is in relation to being ready to do business for with you, and then market to the Gap.
So what's standing between[00:05:00] them now, and them being ready to do business with you. And it kind of falls into what do they need to know or what do they need to do. And so from there you can reverse engineer some really good educational content. Some really good, "here's how to get started" kind of content.
For example, I do websites for small businesses and regional sort of organizations. And the philosophy behind my website is that you can run this thing. You have everything you need to run this thing. So if I, something happens to me or I go on holidays, Hopefully it's me going on holidays and not the other thing.
If that arises, your business should not notice the difference, you should be able to use this website completely and independently of me as a living, breathing part of your business. That is my philosophy and that's what I want business owners to be prepared for when they work with me, because I don't want them coming into this website design, thinking that I'm going to be doing it for them ongoing.
I need them to be completely confident and aware of the fact that they can do this themselves. So how do I educate them into [00:06:00] understanding that, which then in turn gets them ready to do business with me? Well, I can do a lot of content around how easy the website platform I use is Squarespace. I can do a lot of educational content about how a website can fit into a broader marketing structure, how it's really good for content to link back to or to sort of use as part of a pipeline for people coming from all these orbital channels, like print, radio, ads, things like that to your website through to your business.
So the end result of that is some really good, like face to camera stuff. So maybe some walkthrough videos. When you work back from what do I need them to know or do to do business with me, you can then step it back into creating some really good educational content that your audience will appreciate.
And ultimately that's a really good way to market. If you're marketing from a place of here's the knowledge and the tips and the tricks I wanna share with you. It's so much better than just direct sales. You might be thinking, well, that's all well and good, but like how many, what do I, where do I, what do I do? Like, do, do I [00:07:00] jump on Canva? Do I jump on Instagram live? Like where do I get started? Okay. Nuts and bolts. I like to work on the idea of four posts per week. For me, I feel like that's the sweet spot for being consistent enough without making a massive job for yourself.
And from like a visual perspective, if you start using templates, if you go to four a week it stops this weird column effect in Instagram on your feed. I know that sounds like a really weird thing, but I'm a graphic designer.
Sorry, that's just how my brain works because I like to use templates and then just rinse and repeat templates and just change text and graphics. But if you are using a very similar kind of post, you get this weird three column thing if you're repeating the same three posts over and over again. So visually, I think that's a bit blugh.
So four I think is consistent without becoming a slave. And then within that I like to work in four week cycles. So if we're doing four posts a week, for a four week period, and that's a batch, 16 posts. All right. And this is where we start getting into the mentality that I kind of refer to as like reps and sets.[00:08:00]
So, and I've been using this terminology much longer than I've been using a gym. But I feel like the concept really works. So if you're thinking about a goal you wanna achieve at the gym, you think about your marketing in terms of like reps and sets. From there, you can kind of start coming up with, uh, daily themes.
Now for advanced users: what I do for some of my clients is I go through their analytics and I see what days and times their users are most active and I make sure I'm posting on those. So if you want a bit of guidance on, okay, well which day should I be posting on and what time? That's a really good place to start.
Open up Meta Business Suite, take a glass of wine with you cuz it's a M Fing. Don't even get me started on facebook business suite, and every time you log in there, they've moved the one button that you happen to use. Anyway, rant over, log into your Facebook business suite and have a look at the active times of your demographics that will at least give you like a when.
So it's like I was working on a client's content today, and it looked [00:09:00] like on Facebook, the times their audiences were most active were like Tuesday through friday at varying times. And then Instagram was slightly different. I think Instagram was Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday. So that at least gives you like, okay, they're my four most active days.
They're the days I'm gonna post on. And then what you might do is once you've kind of been doing this for a while, you can figure out what content gets the most clicks and interactions versus what content gets the least. Then you can start scheduling best performing content on your most active days.
That's kind of the theory I apply, but if you're just getting started, I would come up with four different kinds of posts that you do. I'll again cover those in a second when we go through my top 10, come up with four different kinds of posts and then figure out what kind of posts you're gonna do and what day, and get yourself at least a bit of a rhythm.
You kind of want this to almost feel like paint by numbers for yourself, so what you're gonna do is: break down the system into the most simplest form. So then you're not getting overwhelmed and you don't just stare off into space for an hour [00:10:00] dreading it.
For example, I might do say a talking head video.
Much like the videos that I create to go into the podcast, they get broken up into reels. That's Mondays, for example. So it's like, okay, all I have to do is create four reels that are me talking about a point for 30 seconds. Hot tip. I typically do like a 20 minute video, which then gets turned into my podcast, but then that gets sliced and diced into my four face to camera reels.
So, hot tip, but then you can go, okay, all I've gotta do is talk about a point for 30 seconds and do four of those. That's my Monday post. Tuesday it might be something that's like text based, so you can get like a text based template and then it's like, okay, all gotta do is have one topic, have four talking points for that one topic. There's my Tuesday post.
And so you can start to see that, when you break it down into this reps and sets mentality, it becomes a lot more achievable. We go, okay, this topic, four talking points, I'm gonna do it in this style. Next topic, four talking [00:11:00] points around that topic. I'm gonna do it in this style or this format.
I'm gonna do it as a video. I'm gonna do it as a Reel, I'm gonna do it as a carousel post. Make it easy for yourself to achieve it. So let's have a look at my kind of top 10 thought starters. So if I'm struggling for, to get the ball rolling and to get like the juices flowing, these are the sort of things that I like to work within to get me started.
So what's something you see customers getting wrong a lot? Number one: common mistakes, common things you find yourself fixing or correcting them on. Come up with four. What are four things that you find that they're getting wrong.
Second one close link to the first one: misconceptions. What are four misconceptions that you feel your customers are suffering from and that's kind of leading 'em down the garden path, like classic one for me. A lot of my customers are afraid of really getting stuck into social media cuz they feel like it's gonna control their life. They feel like they're gonna have to spend every day on their screen. Some of them don't even know that you can schedule content. Some of them think that to be consistent you have to be [00:12:00] personally showing up daily on social media. I'm here to tell you, you don't have to. So that's a common misconception that I deal with.
Third one, what can they change right now? What can they stop doing? Start doing? What's a, a small habit or a shift they can make to get started? These are really good too because, talking around these sorts of things makes your audience feel like they're getting a quick win off the back of free information they've got from you. Again, it's that really beautiful way of marketing what we do, positions us as a voice of authority, gives us expert status and gives them a quick win. It gives them that feeling of success that they then associate back to us. Really, really great way to market yourself.
Four really good ones: tools of the trade. Like for me, this is really good because it's like I could easily off the top of my head now come up with four software platforms that I use religiously would recommend to everyone. So I'm sure you have the same, you might have products you use, you might have actual equipment that you use. Actual things you have lying around your premises or your workplace, talk about them. That, again, you might be surprised at [00:13:00] how interesting people find this stuff.
Number five: is there something that's maybe changed, on an industry level, on a legislative level? Is there may be a new development, new research coming out that you can breakdown for your audience in maybe four or even eight. Like if it's really juicy, you could maybe get eight posts out of it out. If you're 16, you're half done. for example, one of my clients is in waste management and we can talk about a ban on plastics that came out in New South Wales in November, 2022.
So breaking down what that means for their customers, what their customers can do to be responsible, things like that. They're just a really good way to be a voice of authority, to be the one that educate, to be the one that dispel rumors, to give it to your audience straight, and they're gonna start looking to you as this source of truth.
6. Really good for PR: has your business or organization been involved in a community event recently? From what I really know to be true of small businesses and organizations in regional and rural areas, man, you guys give in spades. Volunteering, [00:14:00] coaching, donations, fundraisers. Don't quietly be involved in these things. Don't be afraid of telling people of the thing that you've done. it's not bragging, it's sharing with people, "oh, we, we were involved in this event and it was so amazing. It was through a good cause. Here's what we did, here's how it went. Congratulations to everyone involved". Like you can talk about the things you're doing in your community in a really uplifting, holistic way and still be inadvertently drawing attention to the fact that, "hey, those guys are doing some really good stuff. Like they're really involved in this community." So don't let the PR opportunity there go to waste. I know you're not doing it for the PR opportunity, so don't take that the wrong way, but don't let that go to waste. Don't let that good karma that you've put out into the universe go to waste cuz you don't wanna talk about it.
Seven: definitions. Okay. If you are struggling for content and it's 11 o'clock at night and you just want this shit done, definitions is a really good for getting like a text-based template [00:15:00] and defining words in and around your industry, like demystify the jargon for your customers. Like my industry, marketing is full of bullshit acronyms and no one understands. I don't understand half of them. So, hey, you might learn something too, but things like ppc, like cpc, cost per click, you know, that's not really my bag because I don't do a lot of paid advertising. My style of marketing is more like, content based and referral based, but even then: What is content? Some people like, they sort of look at me like I have two heads and I'm like, well what do you do to create content? I don't know what's content. I think people are getting a little bit more sort of influencer jargon literate these days. But yeah, a few years ago people didn't know that this was content.
Number eight: rituals and habits that work for you. I'm talking through you one right now. This is how I break down social media marketing. This is how I can do a batch, get four weeks done and dusted, bust through the overwhelm. This is one that I've been using forever. Once I figured it out, oh my goodness. That was my Oprah Winfrey level, like aha moment. [00:16:00] So what's some rituals and habits that you've implemented to success and how can you share them with your audience?
Number nine, techniques. Similar to the habits and rituals. Do you have like a signature technique that you can kind of walk your audience through? Really good for like video content as well. If you can kind of be doing your thing on video, like hairdressers. This is a no-brainer for hairdressers before and after videos. Work in progress videos, even like tradies, like I've got clients who are carpenters and they sort of do like time lapse videos of them building stuff. People love to see how stuff works, how it all comes together. I follow so many artists on my personal profile and I love watching them do what they do. Different techniques, different mediums, things like that. How the paint moves, how things flow across canvases. Really, really cool stuff. So what aspects of what you do, can you actually video so people understand the process?
Number 10, really good one to wrap up with cuz this is kind of like the mother of all content ideas. Your big why. You can't talk about this enough. [00:17:00] Why is it that you do what you do? Really good way to frame this one. Why is what you do important? And that's a really good way to, to reframe the conversation so you don't feel like you're bragging, you don't feel like you're speaking about yourself. It automatically switches the frame of context to who you are talking about and what you want to do for them. Like again, I'll give you my example. Why is what I do important? I truly believe that if I can help regional and rural small businesses, family run businesses, organizations, if I can help them market themselves better, quicker, slicker, more effectively, but in a way that gives them back time - doesn't mean they're stuck to their screen - the benefits will just flow outward.
Cuz these are the guys that give our teenagers their first jobs. They're the ones that are coaching the team, running the barbecue, volunteering, donating money. The minute they've got an inch to give, they'll give it in spades. So if I can help them run more successful organizations, if I can help them grow [00:18:00] and accumulate greater wealth, we're only gonna see it come back to us in our communities.
That's my big why, and I can't beat that drum long enough. Oh, loud enough. So when you can connect with your big why and like it gives you goosebumps, like when you talk about it, you're just like, oh my God, this is why I'm here. When you can find the why that underpins what it is that you do, and you can talk about it in all these different amazing ways that's magnetic.
Like if nothing else, that will attract not just clients and customers and businesses, but the right kind of customers for you. They will see that, and if that aligns with their values and beliefs, it'll be like a magnet and you'll suddenly find your days filled just like I do with fantastic people to work with.
Okay, guys, I really hope that gives you a bit of a leg up in getting the ball rolling on your social media content. I know it's hard, but this has been my go-to strategy for a long time. I really hope it helps you put some really high value content out there and so you're saying something that [00:19:00] matters on the regular.
