29 Days to Diva: Day 10 – Batch your content

Do you think that using social media well with give you an advantage in your music business? I won’t lie… social media can be incredibly powerful for increasing your visibility in your field. Social media outlets are a key part of many creative professionals sales and marketing efforts. Sadly, tons of people sinks tons of time into social media without much of a plan to speak of. Then, they end up with nothing to show for all the time they put it. With the number of people trying to sell you courses, workshops, and individual coaching on how to crush it on Instagram and more, you might start to believe that the reason you’re not getting hired for your offers, by the people you want to work with, is because you’re somehow doing social media wrong. That’s not it, honeybun. So, let’s get batching an appropriate amount of social media content crossed off your to-do list so that you can focus on other things.

Your 29 Days to Diva – Day 10 Assignment: Batch your content

There’s a reason this post is titled “Batch your content” instead of “Design a kickass content strategy” (even though we’ll be doing that.) The takeaway that I care the most about for you and your music business is avoiding wasting time on social. We all know the feeling of spending time on a site, creating graphics, or forcing yourself to come up with ideas and suddenly realizing that an hour has passed by without notice. Don’t spread yourself, and your time, too thin. With social media, it’s beyond easy to get sucked into the idea that more is better. Don’t fall for it. We’ve already talked about choosing your social media channels. Now, I want you to efficiently create and schedule content so that you can focus on more impactful activities like pitching, practicing, composing, napping, eating King Cake, whatever you like to do, boo.

Here’s what I want you to have:

1. A simple content strategy
2. A way to generate graphics or video
3. A way to schedule posts ahead of time

A kickass content strategy for creative professionals

As someone who has been doing social media marketing for multiple clients for nearly ten years, I can absolutely get into the weeds about posting and content strategy. But, when it comes to the vast majority of us, a straightforward, simple content strategy is key. Here’s one that I like for it’s simplicity:

• Entertain
  • I like to think about what my audience finds amusing or enjoyable and how I can provide that to them. Note: don’t assume that I just mean, “share jokes or memes” when it comes to entertaining content. What do you find enjoyable?
  • Fill in your own example here:
• Inform
  • I find that musicians are using “inform” as they’re most regular form of content when it comes to what they do. They tell you when and where the performance is. (But even that they only do once or twice at most…) What are some other facts or information you can share about what you do?
  • Fill in your own example here:
• Educate
  • What kinds of instruction are you uniquely suited to provide? Can you share you knowledge with your community in a way that keeps them turning to you for more?
  • Fill in your own example here:
• Inspire
  • Can you create content that urges your audience to feel or do something?
  • Fill in your own example here:

Remember our Branding 3×3? Remember our customer avatar? That information should come in handy when you’re writing content. Knowing your interests and how you want people to feel when they interact with your work plus understanding the values, interests, goals, and pain points of your ideal client/commissioner/collaborator/etc, should really guide the content of your posts.

Tools for batching your content as a creative professional

Social media is dominated by visual imagery and video these days. You’ll want to make yourself familiar with the tools to create consistent, high-quality graphics/video. I use Canva for pretty much everything and I highly recommend it. There are tons of other sites you can use. Pick the one that feels the most user-friendly to you, choose some templates that you want to commit to for a little while, and get to making stuff to share.

Next, I want you to pick what tool(s) you’ll use to schedule your content ahead of time. I’ve used tons of them. If you’re just getting started, you can absolutely use the content planner in Meta Business Suite and post to both your Facebook and Instagram pages from one place. You can schedule up to 90 days in advance in Meta Business Suite at this point in time. So, open it up and get going.

Still have questions about how to generate content? Find me on social media at @mezzoihnen and let me know where you get stuck.