Time-saving Techniques to Provide Consistent Content Effortlessly by Lisa Balthaser

As a content marketer, I talk to business owners every day who tell me they just don’t have the time to provide consistent quality content to their fans and followers. While I completely understand where they are coming from, what most business owners fail to realize is how crucial consistent quality content is to your brand.

Providing your audience with consistent content shows them you are on top of your game. Not only that, but it shows them you are open for business. If you post inconsistently, people may think your business is not important to you or that you are not serious about your business. Worse yet, if you have not posted in a while, they may think you are NOT IN BUSEINSS!

Here are some simple techniques I share with my clients to help them provide consistent QUALITY content without a lot of stress and time creating it.

Know Your Audience

Before you do ANYTHING, you need to know who you are talking to. This is one thing you DO want to spend time on because if you don’t have this part down, your message will not resonate with your audience. If you are already getting sales, take a good hard look at who is buying from you. What do they have in common? If you are having trouble getting sales, it is probably because you do not have a CLEAR picture of who your ideal client is. I know you have probably heard this before, but this is THE most important piece you actually DO need to spend time on until you get it right.

Decide on the Type of content you will share

Okay, now most people think of blogging when they think of quality content, but quality content does NOT have to be a long-drawn-out blog post (although I highly recommend blogging be a part of your content strategy for many reasons). This is where you want to decide they type(s) of content you will share on your social media platforms. My recommendation is you share a mix of educational posts, tips, quotes, behind-the-scenes, curated content, blog posts, and live video.

Now before you stress yourself out because this list sounds daunting, note that this is my recommendation, and it does not mean you need to do all of them. As a matter of fact, I am going to share my system with you because I don’t always have time, either! The next few sections will outline simple steps to make it easy and quick for you to provide content every day – even when you only have 5 minutes.

Create Themes for Every Day of the Week

This is the key right here. Write out your days on a piece of paper and assign a theme to each day of the week. Make sure the themes are consistent with your brand. For Instance, I start mine with Monday Mantra, Tuesday Tip, Wednesday Wisdom, etc. I promise you once you get everything set up for yourself this is going to be such a time saver for you!

Decide on a Brand Color Theme or Style

Here you can choose to use your brand color theme or you can choose to use photos consistent with your brand. Whatever you choose, know that you will be using the SAME PHOTO or color template each week .

Create a Template for Each Day of the Week

If you have not signed up for a Canva account yet, you MUST! The free version will allow you to do everything you need for your themes. Once you have your free Canva account set up you are ready to create your daily templates.

Click the work Canva in the top left corner and then choose the Social Media square in the top left of the first row (see below, left).

You will use the social media square for all your templates. While Canva does offer customized sizes for most of the popular social media platforms, this size will work for your themes and shows up well on most platforms (plus it saves you tons of time). Upload the photos you want to use, or choose your colors and/or patterns for your daily templates. Label them at the top (for example, Monday Mantra, Tuesday Tip, etc.) using the text tool. Be sure to use the same text on ALL of them to stay consistent with your brand. At the bottom, put your logo or website (using the same text font). There should be open space between the daily title at the top and the logo or website at the bottom. Name the template and DOWNLOAD IT TO YOUR COMPUTER.

Your templates are ready to go! When you want to use them, all you need to do (initially) is upload the one you downloaded (do not use the one that saved to Canva in case you need it again) and, using the same font write in the post for the day in a smaller size than the title. Once you upload them once in Canva, you will see then on the left-have side under Uploads (see below) and you can reuse them each week without uploading them ever again. All you need to do is type in a sentence or two for your post! This gives you content you can use for all of your social media platforms. Just don’t post to all platforms at the same time!

Use these templates regularly or as filler if you cannot find anything else to post. I try to use Tuesday Tip, Wednesday Wisdom and Fabulous Friday almost weekly because these are the three I use to provide tips to my audience. I generally use the others as filler posts when I am low on other content.

Your Posting Strategy

Remember those other types of content I mentioned? Here is where you can mix it up. If you find great articles you curate that other experts wrote, schedule them to post on specific days or days you don’t have anything for your theme or if you have a few articles, skip your theme for that day.

Want to use quotes? Pick a day for them. Don’t use them daily, as it looks like you are not making an effort at your own content. If you blog WEEKLY, you will have one day designated as your blog post day. If you are not blogging consistently or not blogging weekly, post your blog when you have one and skip your theme for the day.

Remember that Live Video I mentioned? I highly suggest you try it. Why? Because Facebook gives live video prominence in the news feed and it will help your page. You want reach, right? If you are not quite there yet with the live video, give it a shot at least once. Then keep doing it! Force yourself and schedule it. This is how I become comfortable with it. Don’t think for one minute I was comfortable when I started. I wasn’t. I was a nervous wreck, but I knew the benefits were great and you don’t grow your business if you don’t grow yourself!

The best way to use a live video strategy is to actually have a regular time and day of the week. That way your audience knows when that is and they can look forward to it. If you have this scheduled for every week at a specific time, then make that the highlight of the day and skip the daily template post. Video should be made the highlight because it gives your audience a chance to know, like and trust you MUCH faster than any other type of post.

Last Word

While there are many opinions on how often you should post on social media, you really have to experiment and see what your audience supports. Sometimes an audience will want more than once per day, other times once per day, and still others may only want several times per week. The key is to be consistent in what you are doing. I would suggest starting with once per day and see what happens.

You can use the templates as filler like I do, or you can pointedly post them each and every week so your audience knows exactly what to expect from you. If you post them every week, make sure you are providing quality content that is useful or educational to your audience. You should not have to think too hard on the daily themes because you are the expert on whatever your themes are, so it should be simple to come up with a few sentences for them. Use Evernote, Google Keep, or another list app to keep a list of post ideas for each theme. When you go to create them, you can sit down and create your whole week in under 30 minutes, or you can create them as you need to in only a few minutes each day. This is how you can have quality content consistently in under 5 minutes per day!

Lisa Balthaser

Owner, fleur de lisa solutions

Providing Solutions and Strategies for all of your Content Marketing, Social Media and Blogging Needs!

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