PART 3 SOCIAL MEDIA

Welcome to week three in our four week series on "Social Media: How to Connect With and Engage Your Audience". Last week we promised to share a method on how to make it easier for you to produce engaging content.

This method is to simply keep a clear Content Calendar. Sounds simple. Very simple.

Now if you only knew the percentage of marketing professionals we talk to who actually DO keep one... Well... Just because something is simple doesn't mean that people will readily do it.

A good Content Calendar will address two things:

1. How often you will publish content

2. What kind of content you will publish

Your calendar will ideally be broken down as follows:

A. Daily
B. Weekly
C. Monthly
D. Quarterly
E. Semi-Annually
F. Annually

Fleshed out a bit further, it might look something like this:

A. Daily
- A quick 300 word commentary blog post on industry news with link to news.
- Response to any engagement from audience.

B. Weekly
- A meatier, 1,000+ word researched blog post that delivers strong value to customers
- Engage with related 'groups' or individual members to your niche

C. Monthly
- A podcast episode, submitted to iTunes
- An email newsletter, downloadable in PDF format on website as well
- A Powerpoint slideshow, submitted to Slideshare, your website blog, and social media platform

D. Quarterly
- Case studies collection of your success stories, downloadable in PDF format
- Video series on industry trends or How-to information

E. Semi-Annually
- An approx 30 page Ebook, downloadable in PDF format
- Announce and run a contest with fun give away

F. Annually
- Publish a well-researched and detailed industry guide or best practices study

Now of course not everything on this list will be applicable to everyone reading this blog post. We understand this. This list is simply meant to be used as a starting place for jumpstarting a few ideas.

Where you should really get the best ideas for what is working is in the feedback from your audience. Which type of content do they respond to the most / best?

Notice... we said "which type"... not "what you said". Some audiences prefer podcasts and PDF reports. Other audiences devour blog posts, case studies, and videos like hungry baby dinosaurs. It's outside of the scope of this post to go into metrics and measuring your audience engagement - maybe a series for next month? :) - the bottom line is, pay attention!

.And the above list certainly doesn't cover every possible way to create great content.

For example, you might be interested in creating valuable daily blog posts. If you have the resources for this – this is highly recommended. You also really need to have something to say. Not just fluff. If you were going to publish daily blog posts then break it down even further by type:

How-To posts.
Interview posts. 
Industry news posts. 
Occasional rants. 

Keep it real to your organization and individual voice. Keep it relevant to the needs of your audience.

Keep a Content Calendar you can stick to and you will never again struggle with the question of 'what can I post?' Now that you are armed with a tested-and-proven, tried-and-true, older-than-dirt method of using a Content Calendar...

You are probably on the edge of your seat in excitement to start engaging your audience. What you have read in this series so far - over the past 3 weeks is enough to get you jumpstarted and moving along quickly to building a highly engaged online audience.
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But just to make sure that you experience a little success just a little faster than might be expected - us living in  the age of gratification and all that - next week we will be sharing the super easy method we mentioned in Part 1. How to get highly targeted traffic to your social media pages and website using a tactic that is very easy to implement. See you next week!