Spend More Time with your Family over Christmas, and CUT YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA IN HALF!!
With a Free Downloadable Workbook so you can ACTUALLY ACHIEVE THIS!!
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I don’t think there’s a person out there that at the end of Christmas Day, sits back and goes “I wish I spent more time on Social Media today”.
I’m pretty sure that for most of us - especially parents of young children - our cry for December is: “I wish I could spend more time with my kids, making crafts and home made gifts and cookies… and just ignore my social media for a few days so I can focus on them!
Well, today I’m going to share FOUR things with you, that are potentially going to have you thanking me all the way to New Years (and beyond)!!
A way to re-think your social media priorities - the mindset change that will free up your mind during the Christmas break.
Planning your social posts for a month, in under an hour
The tools to speed up creating and scheduling your posts that my team and I use
- Helping you to not reinvent the wheel - repurposing old content.
Number One: A way to re-think your social media priorities - the mindset change that will free up your mind during the Christmas break.
For many, Christmas - from about Thanksgiving on - is all about sales, sales, SALES. It’s one of the biggest times of the year for advertisers, getting us to buy, buy, BUY, in the name of the Jolly Red Fat Guy.
Now, I am not a Grinch, or adverse to Santa or presents - BUT - the best gift you can give your kids is time during the Christmas season.
Call me old fashioned, but it’s the time to make gifts. Wrap them. Bake cookies. Stroll the streets dusted with snow and glimpse at all the beautiful shop displays.
But how does this affect your business and your mindset surrounding it?
First, you need to think about what YOU want over Christmas. What time off do you want? Do you have a deadline for when Christmas orders have to be in by? Do you have any Christmas traditions that you need to be PRESENT for? (no pun intended. lol) What dates does your significant other have off?
Hop off the hamster wheel for just a moment, and consider what you would LIKE your December to look like. And I’m pretty sure that at the end of Christmas day - you won’t be thinking “gee, I wish I’d spent more time on social media this holiday season”.
So first - consider YOU.
And also think about this: Yes, people will still be looking for gifts up to the last minute - but maybe they’ll be wanting to spend time with THEIR loved ones too, instead of being sold to be constantly on social media?
There’s not one true fan who you would lose, by simply saying the following:
“Wow, I can’t believe it’s December already!! Thanks everyone for your amazing support this year, it’s been a blessing. (We will still be available by email if there are any outstanding orders / courier issues though!).
Just to let you know that the final day for orders will be Friday the 10th of December, and our final day for the year will be the 17th.
We’ve decided to take a few weeks off over the holidays this year to make those special memories with our kids / family, and to recharge for 2022!
Anyone else taking some time off over Christmas this year?”
TO DO: Check in with your spouse, your family, the kids school holidays, and anything special, and schedule that into your calendar now. Do that FIRST, so you can clearly make sure nothing is going to clash.
Number Two - Planning your social posts for a month, in under an hour.
Now, I’ve designed this freebie to be used ANY month of the year - so if you’ve decided to take my advice and NOT post for the last two weeks of Christmas, then this will be a snap for you to complete!!
The first question you should ask yourself is - how often should I post? Truthfully, this is dependent on how much time YOU have available. There’s SO MUCH INFORMATION out there on how often you should post on every social platform - but almost no one is talking about how much of YOUR LIFE you want it to take up.
So first of all, lets look at it this way. If every post is going to take you 20 minutes - from planning to posting - and you’re doing 1 post every day - that’s a minimum of 10 hours worth of work, just to put up social posts for one month, on one social platform.
BUT, if you can plan them all and execute them all at once, you minimize the time going in and out of platforms, logging in and out of networks, pulling up your list of hashtags every day…
Plus - if you are a small business, who doesn’t have a huge amount of interaction on your posts - the time you are putting in - is not giving you a proportionate ROI on your time. (ROI - return on investment - just in case you’re not familiar with the term).
So - here’s some time savers:
Consider posting 3 - 4 times a week, instead of 7 days. Work on creating QUALITY CONTENT instead of quantity.
Re-use your content. Make it once, share it twice (or 3 or 4!) Consider making one post and putting it up on both facebook and instagram. If you don’t have a huge audience and a lot of interaction - you’re wasting your time doing anything that isn’t the most efficient.
Write a long form blog post on your website, and then cut out snippets to put up on facebook, instagram or twitter. Quote yourself and put it in an instagram story.
Create “content buckets” for the week. Include any national / international holidays that you would like to be a part of. (Like National Chocolate Cupcake Day...yep, it’s a thing!) Monday’s could be for something motivational. Wednesdays could be a snippet from your blog post or youtube episode with a link to your site. Friday could be a day to talk about your products. This is also a good way to group your hashtags so you are changing up your hashtags on places like twitter or instagram, rather than using the same ones over and over.
Now I’m not saying this will work for everyone - I’m simply inviting you to think about what your current situation is, and how much you are getting (in actual sales or brand equity) from your social accounts - and create accordingly.
TO DO: So now, on your workbook, fill in your content buckets, and schedule them into your calendar.
Number Three - The tools to speed up creating and scheduling posts that my team and I use.
Google Calendar. It’s online, you can access it from every device, and when you’re blocking out your month, it’s easy to see. Plus you can make future notes - so at the beginning of the year you could schedule in all the national / international days - so when that month comes, you’re already good to go!
Trello. We use the free version of Trello to plan our social media for the month, as I work with a small team and we all chip in! This way we are all clear on who is doing which task, and we can execute on it regardless of which time zone we’re in. You can download my free Social Media Planning Pre-made Trello board to get started here:
www.shannonketchum.com/trello-templateCreator Studio for Facebook and Instagram. This is the scheduling tool made by Facebook - so you know you won’t get any algorithm strikes against you for using an external tool. (There’s been a lot of debate over the years if using external scheduling tools hurt your reach on Facebook - but by using their own tool, you can guarantee you won’t end up in the Facebook dog-box. ;) ). It’s a bit clunky, but once you understand it, it works perfectly well.
Canva. We create weekly graphics that we share on Facebook and Instagram. Within Canva we have our brand all set up, templates made, and a library of stock images to use as we need! It’s an all in one spot to pull anything together for any graphics you may need.
Slack. Slack is great to communicate with other team members if you have a small team, rather than using email or getting lost over Facebook. (Or getting a million “dings” from your Facebook notifications!
Free Stock Photo Sites. Not every image has to be taken by you, and there’s some fantastic images available for TOTALLY FREE on the two we use: Pexels and Unsplash. Bookmark them, you’ll use them LOTS.
Not all tools have to be complicated or “top of the industry”. Google calendar is available to everyone - it doesn’t make it any less a valuable tool. Use what is in your budget and that you have a workflow on.
TO DO: Write down YOUR workflow. Have a look at it - does it make sense? Or does it look crazy and all over the place? How could you refine it and save yourself SO MUCH TIME over the next month by working smarter instead of harder?
Number Four: Helping you to not reinvent the wheel - repurposing old content like Potato’s…. ;)
One year, one of my favourite influencers decided to take a month off over the holidays. But instead of leaving us with nothing - she did a 30 day email blast with her best posts from not only that year, but years prior. As a relatively new follower, it was a great way for her to take a month off, AND for me to still feel like I was getting ALL the great content.
Not only was it a GREAT way to save her time, it was also an excellent way to reinvigorate old blog posts. I mean, we take all this time to create, and then share it a few times, and then it just goes and sits somewhere to go stagnant in the back corner of the blogosphere.
You could use this as she did - as an email blast; or by simply repurposing that old content into Facebook posts, Instagram reel ideas, tweets, etc.
The same can be said of your current blog posts. I post once a month, because right now in my business and life, that’s all I can spare. But I then take those posts, and drip feed parts of that content out to my Facebook AND Instagram each month.
But if you are posting weekly - that’s a HUGE amount of content, that you’ve ALREADY created, and - aside from your super fans - you’re the only one that’s going to read every piece of content you create. So you’re doing both yourself and your fans a disservice, by making every piece of content different. One piece of content - how many ways.
Think of your blog post or youtube episode like a potato. You could turn that potato into a soup, casserole, pie, stew, chips, mashed, baked, fried… It can be versatile! And imagine that your customers are only coming to your house for dinner once or twice in that week - they don’t know you’ve had potato for dinner every night! Because they’re only showing up occasionally…
So, look at what you ALREADY have in your back catalogue - and see if any of it is time to be recycled. You could do a series on “my top 4 favourite blog posts from this year” and post one a week on Facebook (with the link to your actual original post on your website).
One potato (post), so many options.
TO DO: Take one blog post, and see how many different forms you could turn it into.
Your best lines could be tweets.
Your best paragraphs can be cut and paste into Facebook and Instagram.
The links could be re-shared as “my favourite posts from 2021 (incase you missed them.) ;) “
Now go schedule them into your calendar.
To finish up...
Look at your calendar. Allow for 10-20 minutes for each post depending on how much work you have to do. Block out two afternoons (or mornings, or evenings) and just get into it! Turn off your phone, don’t get lost in your social media, ;) and just knock it out!
Get it done in the first week of the month, and then go enjoy time with your kids and loved ones!
Lastly - consider this: You’re doing your fans a disservice, if you don’t take time to relax and unwind, and allow a new vision for 2022 to come through. What do we teach our kids - you can’t grow up to be big and strong if you don’t get enough sleep and let your body heal and prepare for the next day.
We often put so much pressure on ourselves to just keep going - social media has just exacerbated this, and especially since many of us work from home now - there’s no boundaries.
Love yourself this Christmas, and give YOURSELF the gift of time.
From our little team and family to yours, we hope you have a fantastic Christmas for 2021, and Santa’s good to you. Stay safe.
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