Create Successful Content by Planning Ahead
According to a LinkedIn study, 78% of businesses who sell using social media perform better than their peers who don't.1 And a 2023 M&C Saatchi survey found that 92% of TikTok users are willing to make a purchase based on an advert they see on the app.2
Those are some pretty compelling statistics.
As evidenced, social media is a highly influential marketing tool and has the power to boost your sales and grow your business - when used correctly. The key element to creating successful content is planning in advance, and staying ahead of the curve.
We realise that planning ahead, on top of dealing with marketing and content creation, can be difficult to start with. But you have the skills - you just need to harness them. With the help of CloudFO, your AI finance colleague, you can learn to plan ahead and help your business run with ease.
Benefits of Planning Ahead
As a content creator and small business owner, planning your content can help you to practise good time management. Creating a schedule for brainstorming and releasing promotional product content can make you more mindful of how you spend your time, and remove the stress that comes with attempting to stay on top of regular posting.
Scheduling posts can also help you keep the momentum of your business, by having a reserve of content to upload which can keep your audience engaged. Regularly posting - particularly short-form video content - is a brilliant way to attract attention as the algorithms on social media push your content out to more potential customers.
Tips on Getting Started
Now, you may be wondering how to get started. Simple! The best way to do anything is to start small and work up from there.
You may find it easiest to set your goals: follower growth, average number of views, or site traffic generated by social media advertising, and work towards achieving those. Consistently making and uploading content, especially if it’s short videos, can help boost your page and spread your message to more people.
Reels, according to a 2024 SocialInsider study, have the highest engagement rate of all Instagram post types at 1.48%, with the average engagement rate being 1.09%.3 And small brands have double the average view rate on Reels, compared to large brands. In this case, the Instagram odds are in your favour as a small business owner, so make the most of it!
Although it’s a good idea to prioritise short-form Reels, make sure you remember to plan different forms of content across all your social media accounts. Text posts allow you to directly convey large amounts of information to consumers, but don't perform well with the TikTok algorithm. Short form video content tends to perform best on Meta platforms, but is more difficult to promote on platforms such as LinkedIn. Getting this balance right through trial and error can help boost your business’ marketing and draw in more customers.
Having a diverse array of content also allows you to maximise your chances of putting your business out there. Maybe your customers actually prefer long-form video content instead of the text posts you were releasing regularly. Planning your content helps you to monitor performance and stay in touch with your audience, which is vital as a small business.
And finally, having a finance colleague take care of the small things, like monitoring product performance and delivering weekly updates, gives you the time to manage your content creation with less stress.
Making a Content Calendar
One helpful tip for social media creators is to create a content calendar, in order to produce promotional content in bulk and use time efficiently.
It works by allocating a few days to designing and planning multiple forms of content, before using those plans for creating content, which is condensed into a couple of days to a week.
By the time you've used your business content calendar to space out your newly generated material, you may have a month's worth of videos, photos and extra promotional items - all made within the span of a week or so. And as we've established, with social media, regular posting leads to a favourable algorithm, which leads to more interest, and more sales.
The Cost of Not Planning Ahead
Here at CloudFO, we're looking at 'the cost of not knowing' and how we can reduce its impact on businesses. In this case, that includes the cost of not planning ahead of time.
For example, when releasing content without a clear plan, small businesses may lose traction by posting in off-peak periods, or perhaps posting infrequently or erratically. This means the social media algorithms are more likely to pass over their content, limiting the potential customers they can reach, and resulting in burnout or fatigue.
If this sounds like you, you’re not alone - plenty of small businesses struggle with content creation and planning ahead. The basis for planning ahead, as we mentioned earlier, comes through monitoring your business, and we have a solution to help you with that.
With CloudFO's weekly reviews and product projections, your AI finance colleague can monitor product performance directly from your storefront, and let you know which products are likely to run out first. This means you can prioritise which ones to restock, and optimise the underperforming product listings.
CloudFO returns analytics and insights to you about how to grow your business, but by taking care of the small things, it also provides you with the free time to plan ahead and apply those insights to your content creation. It helps to optimise your business spending so you have the financial freedom to purchase items like filming equipment, in order to create higher-quality promotional content.
And it removes the stress by automating the small things so you can work on the creative side of your business: making your products, interacting with viewers and customers online, and creating content that represents you and your business.
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1: https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/social-selling
2: https://www.mcsaatchiperformance.com/reports/tiktok-report-2023/