In today’s video, I’m going over my process for how I automate social media content for my personal brand. And that helps me segway into leads, sales, and more.
So let’s go ahead and dive in. I’m gonna show you how it’s done, and I’m also going to provide you with guides and templates that you can use. Let’s go.
So the first thing I wanna show you is an example design calendar. Now you can grab this below in the descriptions—no opt-in, just wanna make sure you have this, provide you with value.
So ultimately, this is the calendar that I use, and I break up my social media content into 3 types: usually business tips, web designer branding tools, and then I do web design tips.
Because my niche is web design and development, I focus my efforts there because it can help in two ways: one, I can help other agency owners develop their skills with free value-based content, as well as paid content by courses. But then, I can also prove myself as a web designer to potential clients because they’re seeing a look behind that process.
So when you’re creating content, just think about being as transparent as possible. And so what I do is, I do this a couple ways: one, I’ll add this content here easily, right? So I have business tips, and I have web/branding tools.
Now in this example, one post can be like, “Build, Update, Delegate, Dominate.” Just a quick one to get some engagement with my followers.
And the second type of content—and I’ll show you an example of this—is “3 Resources I Use to Manage Your Online Business.” So I’ll put this content into this doc, and I’ll spend about 2 hours per month—I’ll take one time on the calendar where I’ll go through this for 2 hours to create the content that’s needed.
And again, everyday it doesn’t need to be a robust post. Some days, it can be just something quick and concise, and to the point.
So in this example, this is what that looks like in the finished product. So what I have is an Instagram post—because I post mostly on Instagram and Twitter—with my logo here on the top corner, notification to turn on post notifications, the main piece of content, and then some call-to-actions here with my social media handles, and a tagline.
So that’s the main thing you wanna have on your main page. And then here is the visual content. So, as you can see, we’ve got Deel here where I talk a little bit about Deel, I talk a little bit about Loom, and then I talk a little bit about Clockify. And so the main reason is, I’m taking this content and then turning it into this.
And so what you wanna do is you wanna create a design calendar that you can then gift to a designer. And it’s easy to find a designer on Upwork (or other platforms) that can turn this text-based content into a visual.
Now, you’re probably asking, “Well, how will they know how to create it? How will they know how to make that content look and feel?” That’s when this comes in.
This is a document that I created called the “Training Social Content for John.” This is from my personal page, the last time it was updated was in December. And so I have a training video here, and then there’s three things you need: the design calendar—which we went over, and content reference—and what I’ll do is I’ll usually reference an Instagram page I really like.
I follow this guy called Mizko on Instagram. His content’s really clean and concise, and I love the overall aesthetic that he uses in his design.
And so, what we wanna do is—not necessarily mimic his design, but take elements from it that work really well in regards to engagement. So looking at his page, I can tell that he’s using really bold lettering on the main text, he’s using different diverse backgrounds for interior content, you can see he’s got this really clear call-to-action sections here as well. So we wanna be able to leverage that in our design.
So when you think about this in regards to the process, you wanna make sure you have the digital assets that the designer will potentially need to make sure that design is consistent with what you’re looking for.
So again, the design calendar, and then we have that content reference.
And then, what we’ll do is we’ll create a folder in the Drive that’s called Content Database, and this is where the designer will drop in all that content. You can see this from May, and we have all of them organized by folder and by date. And then if I click one, you’ll be able to see all that content here for my content.
So we’ve recently upgraded the design, that’s why we’re going through this hot new iterative process, and so that’s why I wanted to show you what that looks like here, so you have a general idea of that design. And as you can see here, this is our carousel design.
Last thing I wanna show you is another cheat code regarding Twitter. So with Twitter—really great platform, I only started using it about a year ago. And the great thing about it is, you can leverage your analytical data.
So as I post on Twitter, I go in and look at my top tweets. Based on my top tweets and engagements, I know that that content should be repurposed on a different platform.
So what I’ll do sometimes is I’ll link a direct tweet in here—and I’ll show you some examples here of old content. You can see all this here, some of them just, like, have a link to a tweet, and the designer will update that tweet to the design.
So when that happens, I’ll look at the top tweet and I’ll say, “Okay, this tweet did really well at 355 likes, so this might perform well on Instagram too.”
And, if you’re like, “I don’t have a designer, I don’t have the time to be able to get the design done and get that content up,” there’s another thing that you can do also.
So here’s the last post that I made, and I literally just took a screenshot of that tweet, and posted it on my Instagram. Now it’s not necessarily consistent with the overall branding and feel, but it adds a nice element—and I’m telling you: Twitter shares—like Twitter screenshots—on Instagram performs insanely well. I know they’re not beautiful, but they do perform well.
And Buffer actually has a free mobile app called Buffer Remix, where it’ll take your tweets and turn them into these really cool visual assets you can use on Instagram, Facebook, and other items. So check that out, I’ll link that below as well.
So to kind of walk through my process, this is the overall layout that I have for my team. I’ll say, “Team, we would like to create a repository of social media content for John’s Instagram Carousel and general post. These should be created ahead of time, with new content created daily. John will be posting 3 times a day, Monday to Friday.”
So they visit the design calendar. They check the content, they create that content based on specs, they add that content to the database folder, and then label that content accordingly, and then notify our team via Slack.
Now what this does is it makes it easy for me to work just a few hours each month creating that document, and then I can hire a designer, create that content, and schedule that content out for the month, so that way I’ve got some passive social media ready to rock, and ready to roll.
