Growth in your community through Social Media is directly related to several things:
1. The relevance of the your content to your community (ie: if you’re a chiropractor, are you educating people about back pain or posting on Twitter about who you’re cheering for in the World Cup?)
2. The quality of your content (are you providing value?)
3. The amount of content you publish
4. The consistency with which you publish
5. Having a logical progression to your content (starting with the basics, and building on those concepts over time so you keep people interested…”Top 10 tips on…”)
The top performers in Social Media are publishing a LOT of high-quality content that is well matched to their communities, and they’re publishing it in regular intervals (often every couple of days).
This type of action takes planning. It doesn’t happen by accident. The main challenges people face when attempting this are:
1. Identifying what type of content is relevant
2. Knowing what to post and when
3. Setting aside regular time to create content
4. Motivation to consistently publish
5. Illness, vacations, business emergencies and other “life got in the way!” situations that can interrupt a regular posting schedule
The solution? A Content Map. The Content Map is something I develop with my clients in a focused 1/2 day brainstorming session. The end result is a clear and simple, yet powerful map of what content you’ll be publishing over the next 6 months. The Content Map includes:
1. Exactly what type of content to be generating, that will be relevant for your community and provide value to them
2. A publishing schedule of what content to post and when to post it so you can maintain consistency and a sufficient frequency
3. An inventory of content that is created in advance and held back for times when “life happens” and you can’t generate your regular content
The Content Map is a powerful tool that will allow you to overcome the main challenges of Social Media content publishing and build a large and more vibrant community faster.
