Wouldn’t it be lovely to be ahead of your social media game for 2021? When planning your social media content it can become overwhelming. What images should you post, what copy should you add, how do you plan without it feeling like another chore in your business? So many questions!! 

I, of course, am speaking from a photography point of view but using these rules across all of your content planning will help you feel organised and ahead of your social media game by giving you 5 simple steps to follow in 2021. 

1. Think about what your aim is from your posts 

Whether you’re a service provider or product-based business we all have the same aim from everything we put out and that is to sell. 

However, you’re less likely to sell if you throw a load of sales posts out there. So how do we do it? Well building a relationship with your audience is going to be your biggest winner. 

Images are a powerful way to allow us to build that relationship by storytelling. So although your aim is to sell your aim from your posts is actually to build a relationship with your audience. 

This is where your personal brand can help you. Showing your audience; who you are, what you do, how and why you do what you do. 

Asking yourself each of these questions will help you to plan and begin to tell your story, a story your audience is going to love, building trust which will eventually lead to sales. 

2.  Live and plan 3 months ahead of time

We literally have the year ahead of us so why not get in front. We can learn a lot from 2020 that no matter how organised we might be events can change constantly. So my advice is to break your year down into smaller 3-month chunks at a time. 

Firstly grab your calendar and highlight all of those key dates that are important and relevant to your industry. For example, for me, a key date is World photography day. 

Once you’ve done that start to plan for your first three months. What’s coming up in this time that you need to be ready for? Product makers your obvious one would be Christmas. 

Planning and capturing your images 3 months before will give you time to feel prepared so when the season arrives you have everything ready to send out and can sit back and relax with your family. Instead of leaving it until the last How amazing does that sound?! 

3. Think about what you need and what you already have

What I mean by this is you probably already have images in your gallery that could be really great content but you’ve snapped it and forgotten all about it. Take some time to think about what images you need to tell your story and then have a search to see what you already have.

For example, maybe you have an old image of you as a child that one image could be used for a number of storytelling posts. What were your hopes and dreams back then, were they the same have they changed? Remember you are your brand story.  

Save your images in a file so you can easily access them throughout the year. 

The images you don’t have you can begin to plan how to take these images yourself at home or maybe consider hiring a professional photographer to capture all of the images you need for the next 3 months. 

4, Schedule your posts

This is something in the past I have been personally guilty of I get busy with my work and haven’t planned anytime for my posts. I begin to feel guilty and then stressed that I haven’t put anything out there this week. 

I now use an app called Planoly which I use just for Instagram posts I block out one day per month to schedule my posts and add them for 3 weeks. 

There are lots of apps available to schedule most start off free giving you a chance to find the right tool for you and your business. 

I personally add the image first then write the content around the image. Using the image as my talking point. 

5. Enjoy!! 

Planning and creating your images can be fun! Finding inspiration, getting creative, finding props and putting them all together to show off you, your brand and your business. 

Still not sure? 

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