When planning my social media for the month, I try to have the big picture in my mind. What are my future goals? What do I need to highlight? What can I do to add value to my clients? I will start from the top: my website. My website not only acts as a sales tool for future clients, but is also an education resource for current clients.

Batching

All do all my social media in batches, working on my blog & social media a month at a time, which usually equates to 4-8 blog posts and 12 social media posts. Working in this manner gives me the head space to concentrate on doing the same thing all at once. To be honest, I hate having to think daily about what blog I’m going write this week, what picture I’m posting, what caption I’m going to write…it’s exhausting! I’d rather do it all at once, even if it takes me a few work sessions, than think about it on a daily basis.

Brainstorming Blog Posts

When planning blog posts I will start by brainstorming by doing the following:

• What do I want to target this coming month (what work do I want to do more of?)
• Look at upcoming events, holidays, anniversaries, up-coming shoots, promotions, launches
• Client Shoots: I will usually select a few client shoots from the previous month that I want to highlight on the blog. These are usually shoots that I want to do more of since my blog also acts as my portfolio.
• FAQs from clients: if clients are having these questions, those are great questions to answer in a blog post

Outlining & Writing Blog Posts

I will spend some time outlining my blog posts, especially when it’s an informational post. It is so much easier for me to write when I have all my ideas down in an outline…the task of writing isn’t so daunting. My goal is to schedule 1-2 blog posts a week.

Plan Social Media Content around Blog Posts

I plan all of my social media using Planoly. I currently have a free account (allows me to upload 30 images a month), which is usually more than I need. My goal is to post on social media (specifically Instagram, then push to Facebook) 3 times a week (that’s only 12 posts a month). Because I want to see the big picture, I schedule my social media posts for the upcoming month at the same time.

At least 4 of those are blog posts for client work, so referencing those posts is a social media post is easy! On my computer, I have images that are in my “to blog” folder that I haven’t shared yet, so I usually grab an image from there and create a caption straight from the blog post itself, usually something that highlights what I did to help my client. Having these resources in place really makes my life so much easier when planning out my IG posts for the next month.

Daily Tasks

I plan and schedule my blog and instagram posts once a month so that I make my daily life a whole lot easier. How much I’m on social media differs each day, depending on my schedule, but I try to spend about 15 minutes each day being active and interacting with other accounts. These are some of the things I will do depending on the day:

• Share posts on stories (my own posts, posts that I find inspiring, and posts by clients using images I’ve taken for them)
• Comment on posts/stories that my clients have posted
• If I posted a blog that day, I’ll share content from the blog and direct people to my website

On days that blogs are scheduled to post, I also make sure to share my blogs on my other social media platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, & Google My Business. If I don’t get to doing all of these in one day, I will try to get it done by the end of the week (…well because it’s a lot!).

Repurpose Content

Remember, not everyone is going to see everything you post!! So keep sharing your content (I need to be reminded of this all the time) and repurpose the work you’ve already done. You can take that one blog post and make it into captions, an IG story, a Reel, a Live, a Youtube video…and so much more. Work smarter, not harder!!

How long does this take you?

I’m not going to lie, this process takes me the better half a week to prepare for the next month. Because I prioritize blogging for SEO purposes (Google is a huge part of where I get a lot of clients), it’s well worth my time. I make sure to batch work so that my head is in the right space to create content & then I’m done for the rest of the month and let my content go on auto-pilot using my scheduling apps.