 I love that you said the Facebook. I still do. It's true. I'm vintage. And they'll know if you're just posting for the sake of posting. They'll smell it. They'll sense it. Welcome to The Journey. I'm Neely. And I'm Emma. And today, we're getting organized with a social media content calendar. All right, so let's dive in here. Tell us a little bit about what a content calendar is and why it's important. Great question. So a content calendar is important. You have a lot of great questions. It's grilling me. So a content calendar is really great. And you can do this in a digital form. You can do old fashioned like the one on your fridge. But actually, the idea is to look at that calendar and plan ahead of time your post. Because there's things like holidays. I mean, Father's Day to Valentine's Day to, you name it, Fourth of July. There's a holiday for everything. There's a hot dog day. Oh, and then there's, yeah, the unofficial holidays. Pizza day. Pizza day. National barbecue day. So by planning ahead with a content calendar, where you're writing the dates of the post and when you want to go out, you will then have content that's varied and fresh and not rushed. Absolutely. So do you have some tips to help us create that content calendar? Definitely. So first and foremost, tip number one, set goals. Which is really important. I know you talk about this a lot with like branding your business. Goals are huge. They're everything. It helps you understand like, cool, if I'm going in the right direction, am I successful, am I on track, all these things. Exactly. Because otherwise, how are you gonna measure what you're doing? Yes. So set goals. So with social media, do you wanna get more new followers? Are you looking to get outside of your neighborhood? Maybe you're gonna expand your reach with your services. Or maybe that mobile tinting business that you own is now gonna branch into other cities. Be more intentional about what you're posting. And that's gonna help because it's going to inform what you decide to post that day and then help you to resonate with your audience. Cause that's really important that you're resonating with your audience, your customers. Also, think ahead for your events. Set goals, put in the calendar and it'll help you to get more people excited and informed about your events before the events are actually happening. I love it. And it's like you said, don't just shoot from the hip. Like I've consulted a few just small businesses and when they haven't planned out what they're wanting to post they're just throwing something together. Cause, oh gosh, I haven't posted in four days. I need something there. And it's just not what they originally would have wanted. Exactly. All right. So you've set your goals, now what? Next up, make a monthly calendar. Think of it in a monthly way. Commit to maybe a theme that month. Recognize the holidays that are happening so your posts are timely and embrace it. So what month are you in now? Embrace it and get on top of anything that's happening, events, the timeliness, the holidays, official and unofficial. Can you give us an example of where you saw a small business really like take on a theme super well? Ooh, yes. Well, naturally I think about pizza. So the national pizza holiday, which I believe is like, I don't know, it's like in February. Is it February? You know the date. February 9th. Okay, February 9th, I need it. And a lot of businesses embrace this holiday by basically saying like come in on this day and you get your first slice for free. And people get so stoked about free stuff. You don't need to give them- Especially free pizza. Yeah, you don't need to give them a free whole pizza. Just give them a slice and then they'll bring their friends and they'll eat more and spend money and they'll feel excited about doing it because people get really excited about unofficial holidays. Definitely posted it all over Instagram. Yeah, what's your favorite? Probably pizza. No, you can't take mine. That or cookies? Okay, there's probably a holiday for that as well. There's a holiday for napping, I'm sure. And so you might be thinking, well, I'm not a pizza place. So how is this relevant to me? And that's good, you're on the right track. You don't wanna just celebrate a holiday just because it's a date on the calendar. You wanna make sure it's relevant to your business. But you can also think outside of the box. You know, I also was thinking about too with having that monthly approach and looking ahead. What's that? What about if you know you're gonna be closed? Your business? Just off days or I'm out on vacation? Closed for repairs or closed for vacation or closed for whatever, you deserve a break once in a while. Point is though, you don't want your customers showing up like knocking on your door and wondering, where are they? They're usually open at this time every Friday that I come here. So planning ahead with that so you let your customers know, give them a heads up over on the Facebook or the Instagram or Twitter or all three. All right, so we've almost reached the end of our journey. Our last tip for you, lay it on us Emma. So now the moment you've been all waiting for, share compelling content. What does that actually mean? What's your compelling content? So you know, the kind that gets your audience excited because you're adding value to their life. And they'll know if you're just posting for the sake of posting, they'll smell it, they'll sense it. So don't rush it, cause now you have a calendar, you won't. And you'll think about, does this actually add value to my audience? Otherwise it's not worth posting. Right, so that adding that value is super important but what if we hit a roadblock? Like what are some type of, what are some content that we can create? Yeah, think about it this way. And you might want to just jot this down at home and keep it handy cause we all hit writer's block, even us. And so maybe break it down in a couple of different ways to keep the content fresh. Educational post, entertaining post, user generated content, reviews from your customers. Also maybe you have an update, a new product that you're selling or a new item on your menu or maybe you're offering a whole nother type of whitening style at your dentist. These are updates, that's good to put on there as well. But you want to mix it in with those other types of posts and that's going to be again, meaningful and add value to your audience. So they're going to be eager for your next post, not dread it. Love it, right? And sometimes even after all of that we still hit that writer's block. What I want you to do when you've hit that wall is start documenting kind of your day to day like the behind the scenes, right? Start telling your story. People follow a story, like when you go to a movie you go to not only just see the ending, you go for the plot, you go for the story, you go for the character development, you go for the entire thing. You can ultimately do that with your business and basically let people into the story, not just the final product. I love that. And I was thinking about, mind you, this bakery that I came across and a lot of us, we just go to the bakery, we're ready for that pastry. Absolutely. Get your coffee and you're out. But they did on their Instagram stories of behind the scenes of one of their most popular pastries being made and it was awesome. It was behind the scenes. You saw that familiar face, your favorite staff members at the bakery and you got to see a little bit without giving away the secrets, of course. You got to see the process of it. Another good one, we were talking about donuts earlier but seeing donuts being made, it's just so fun. It's just so fun. Just really anything delicious being made just makes you hungry and you want to go in. Same thing with you. If you have a cool behind the scenes, show that and make people really want to see that final product for themselves. And you start adding that to your content calendar. So on Tuesdays, you'll post educational content and then Thursdays, you post entertaining content. Maybe Sundays are behind the scenes. However you want to do it, your content is yours. Yeah, and get catchy with it. Like Fun Fact Friday, Trivia Tuesday. So big takeaway tip that I want to leave you all with while it's important to set goals and have that content calendar and of course post compelling content. Big reminder out there. Have fun with it. All right, that's a wrap. You've tuned in and you've learned and you're now motivated to start a calendar to get your social media ready, organized and compelling. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure you like this video. Comment on just your favorite tip. Subscribe to our channel. Ring that bell if you want to see these videos first. This has been The Journey. Thanks for watching.