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Have you heard the saying, “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time around?” I don’t know about you, but I want those people to be super successful, joyful, smart, and bada$$ businesswomen doing good in the world. I consider the same advice for myself when I’m looking for the latest social media marketing and digital content advice.

When I was thinking about tips I could share with you about building an awesome forward-thinking and impact-generating digital content strategy, I thought about calling on the women I look up to the most. We’ve partnered together, worked endless hours on projects, and at the end of the day, support each other’s businesses.

Get your notebooks ready, these ladies are spilling the TEA on how you can draft a meaningful and engaging content strategy!

 

Joanna Waterfall, Founder of YellowCo.

Know your customer inside and out, and create content that will help them move one step closer to their goal. Content that will really help them move from A to B. Don’t focus on what’s going “viral” or what’s “trendy” at the time. 

Focus on your value offer, how you help your customer and provide content they really need and do just that. It may sound obvious, but it’s easy to stray away from your core purpose in anything you do as a do-good business! Keep that mission at the forefront and you will go far!

About Joanna Waterfall: Joanna is the Founder of Yellow Co., an organization that exists to equip creative women to create meaningful work. With a degree in graphic design and digital media and a background in branding, Joanna believes that creativity, business, and social impact should go hand in hand. She and her work have been featured in publications such as Forbes, The Huffington Post, Darling Magazine, The Zoe Report, LA Lady Magazine, Bossladies Magazine, and others. She is motivated by the belief that women can change the world through stepping into the person they were created to be.

 

Lucy Stevens, Founder of LVS Digital 

When crafting digital content for our clients I always ask myself: how can we add more value? What can we share that most people do not know? 

When you constantly add value, you will establish yourself as an authority figure in the marketplace and sales will start to happen automatically. This is WAY easier than having to push your prospective client through a sales funnel.  If you wake up every day asking yourself “how can I add more value to my prospects and clients lives?” you’ll build a great business! 

About Lucy Stevens: Lucy has been focused on using marketing to help people turn their passions into profitable businesses since 2017. LVS Digital focuses on crafting powerful brand stories that connect brands with their target market, establish their authority and improve their bottom line. 

 

Julia Campbell, Founder of J Campbell Social Marketing

Creating meaningful digital content means that you focus more on your audience than you do on the tools and platforms. Dive deep into the personalities, characteristics, wants, and needs of the people in your online community. Who are you trying to reach? What do they care about? What motivates them? What gets them angry, what makes them sad? What entices them and draws them to you? What makes you unique in their eyes? 

Answer these questions and you have your social media content strategy. Being memorable online to a small, dedicated group of passionate fans is so much more important than being bland and forgettable to 10,000 people who happened upon your post. 

Sharing authentic and human content, insider videos, and behind-the-scenes stories work well to grab attention, pique curiosity, and eventually spark passion from your fans and followers. 

About Julia Campbell: Julia is on a mission to make the digital world a better place. Through speaking, training, and consulting, she shows social purpose organizations how to use social media and storytelling to build communities, showcase impact, and advance their causes. Julia is the author of Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits and has a new book coming out this fall on nonprofit social media strategies. She was recently named one of the top 25 Nonprofit IT Influencers to Follow in 2019 by BizTech Magazine.  

Register for Nonprofit Social Media Summit in Boston – August 29: www.npsocialsummit.com

 

Sara Buckley, Social Media Director at The Buzz Brand

Launching your business on social media can feel overwhelming but you don’t have to be an expert in the social media world to be successful. We’ve all heard the phrase “Work Smarter, Not Harder” and your content strategy is no different! Planning your content ahead of time will be your most powerful tool when it comes to a consistent and successful content strategy. 

Learn to live by a content calendar. Even if you don’t have your posts scheduled weeks out, at least have a plan in place that aligns with your current business goals to guide your way. Identify your main post topics as those will be the bulk of your social posts and ensure you’re creating content that supports your brand messaging and increases brand awareness. 

Be prepared to do A LOT of writing. Knowing and incorporating your business keywords is the “work smarter” part of your planning. Make sure you’re directing traffic back to your website regularly and pay attention to your analytics so you can gauge the success of your strategy and adjust accordingly. 

DO NOT leave Instagram Stories out of your plan! They are a very powerful tool for growth on that platform so if your audience is on Instagram, plan your stories in accordance with your feed posts. Stories offer a great opportunity for more raw, real, and uncurated content that your audience will enjoy. Your creative should also be a mix of videos, photography, graphics and moving graphics. 

So remember: plan ahead, look at your data, and mix up your creative! Social content strategy doesn’t have to be boring. Have fun creating different ways your current and future customers can engage with your business!

Content Calendar Template Example

About Sara Buckley: Sara lives and breathes in the social media world both personally and professionally. In addition to helping businesses expand their digital presence, she has created two fast-growing brands: Not The Worst Mom and Not The Worst Marriage podcast. She is a passionate creative, humorist, and brander who enjoys navigating the social world one post at a time. (@nottheworstmom & @nottheworstmarriage)