Have you ever sat down to plan out your social media posts and thought, “I have no idea what to say?” Well today we are talking about all things content marketing and how you can leverage platforms like Facebook and Instagram to grow your business! I know that so many of us feel overwhelmed and burned out with social media, and really have no idea what to post. However, I want you to put those thoughts aside and trust me when I tell you this: with some planning and strategy, you can leverage  social media as the free tool that it is to drive sales to your business! 

First up, let’s really take a look at what social media is in relation to business.

In a world before social media, if you wanted to get a message out to a potential client, you would physically have to take some sort of action. Whether that would be creating a flyer to mail out or going door to door to individual businesses, you would have to physically do something. Fast forward to 2022, where we have platforms at our fingertips that basically offer us the attention of our ideal clients for free. We just need a little strategy to use these platforms  to their fullest capabilities. 

My first suggestion is to break your content calendar up into quarters. Planning 3 months at a time is just enough to be ahead of the game, but not too much that you run into things changing because you planned too far into the future. Personally, I use Trello to map out all of my content. I also have a physical calendar that I copy everything to so I can visually see it everyday. I got my wall calendar from Kat Schmoyer and I love it! You can grab one here. Next, you want to figure out what you want to say to your audience. That is where I hear so many people get stuck. They just don’t know what to say. Each post that you create should be valuable and truly serve your clients. I have outlined 3 things to think through as you work through your content marketing each quarter. Following these 3 steps will help you create meaningful and valuable content for your audience! 

Sales Objectives.

What are your sales objectives for this quarter? Are you trying to book a full calendar of mini sessions? Grow your number of booked weddings? Sell your digital presets? Figuring out what you are trying to sell is going to be your very first step.

Features, Benefits, and Objections.

Now that you know what you are selling, you need to think through this product or service’s features, benefits, and objections. Let’s break these down. 

First, you need to think about the features of your service or product.

For the sake of these examples, let’s use mini sessions. I offer these in my own business as a Knoxville family photographer. Features are going to be the attributes to your mini sessions. Some features of a mini session could be that your client will receive 20 edited images in a gallery or that you will provide them with a free outfit guide prior to their session. You want to lay out for your client what features they will be getting with this product or service. Think of benefits as solutions to external or physical problems (i.e. the need for photos to put in frames).

Next, the benefits are diving into why those features matter.

This is where emotion is going to come in! You want to let your clients feel the benefits of those features. With a mini session, you would want them to feel joy as you describe that they will have beautiful updated images to hang on their wall and smile at every day. They know they are going to get those edited images (the feature) but the benefit is that they now will have fresh photos to hang around their house. Think of benefits as the solution to internal problems. These are intangible problems that your clients has (i.e. the desire to have photos to look back on of their children).

Finally, you also will need to think through the objections that your client may have.

You want to imagine the thoughts that are running through their head as they read your post. They may be excited for a mini session but are thinking that their husband will never go for it and hates having photos taken. Once you’ve thought out objections, you can combat them! You either need to fix those issues for them or prove that they are not true. For example, you could let your clients know that you understand most guys do not want to take photos. This is why a mini session is perfect! It’s a shorter amount of time but still provides the same amazing, high quality photos! 

Platforms.

Your last step to work through when planning content marketing, is deciding which platforms you’ll be posting to. For us, we know that we will be posting to our blog on our website, YouTube, and then Instagram and Facebook. We also know that our blog and YouTube channel are where our big pieces of content are housed and we use social media to push clients to that content! However, it’s also ok if you don’t have a blog or YouTube channel. You can still deliver valuable information to clients with Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.

Going through these steps each quarter can help you stay ahead with your content marketing, reach sales goals, and feel more confident in the content that you are pushing out to your audience! Once you have figured out content marketing, your next step is to grow your email list. Social media is an amazing tool but we do not own our profiles on those platforms. It’s important to have an email list so you can contact your clients at any time, without having to worry about an algorithm. We have a gift for you that will help do just that!.Our Email Marketing Guide will help you get started creating and growing your email list and it’s completely free! 

If you want to see exactly how we plan out our content marketing each quarter, check out the video below!