How to create a Facebook content plan in 30 minutes

Planning your social media content may seem like a bore, but it will save you time in the long run. Plus, Facebook lets you schedule posts, so you can get your content ready in advance.

Before you set your timer, you'll need a few tabs ready and open:

• Your business Facebook page
• Our Facebook content plan template
• This blog post
• A list of any important dates or holidays in your business calendar
• A word document or notepad to keep a track of notes

Let's go!

1. Your Audience (5 minutes)
Think about who you are aiming your products or services at, your ideal customer. If you have a variety, or can't nail it down, have a look at page Insights (this can be found at the top of your business Facebook page) then scroll down to People in the left hand menu. There will be a bar chart showing the people you are reaching. Most of the time this will be (or should be) the same as your ideal customer.
Keep them in mind throughout this process.

2. Past Content (5 minutes)
Looking at the last 6 months of content on your Facebook page, hone in on posts which got a lot of engagement - likes, shares, comments - and also flag those which got none. A quick way of doing this, to get a good overview, is in your Facebook page Insights, go to the Posts menu option on the left. It will show your posts and engagement in a table. Are there any patterns? For instance, you may find posts with images or video get higher engagement, or maybe your audience prefer shorter posts.
​Note down any observations.

3. Content Audit (5 minutes)
Thinking about any videos, blog posts, images or materials which your business own. Have you shared them all? If not, are some of them still relevant? Which ones - write them down. Maybe there's a blog you wrote last year, which you could update to keep it relevant, or maybe you have a client case study which could be shared.

4. The Content Plan (15 minutes)
By now, we know who your audience are, what they like engaging with on your Facebook page and what content you have available to you. The next step is planning out content. 

For this example, we're going to focus on a 1 week content plan, but you can replicate the same process for 2 weeks or even a month. We wouldn't recommend any further ahead than this, as you need to keep content relevant and fresh.

• Open the Facebook content planner, download a copy, and add in those dates and holidays you listed earlier - do any of them fall in the next week? If so, add them into the 'Key Dates' column.
• Thinking of your audience and the content they like, do you have any relevant resources available to you which you could use in posts? For example, if our audience were males in their 30s-40s and we found that they engaged well with short 2 minute videos, we would be looking for any video content we could re-use, update or create.
• Add these resources into the 'Resources' column.
• Then it's a case of writing the content to go with the resources and key dates.
• Be mindful of how frequently you post. If you have a large following, you can post more regularly, 3-4 times a week. If you are newly established, or have a smaller following, look to post a couple of times a week.
• As a general rule, make 80% of your content useful or interesting and only 20% focused on selling your service or product.
• Have a look at our worked example to help with yours.

Now you have the content, you can schedule it all into Facebook. Just write your post, add your images or videos, then instead of pressing 'Publish', click the drop down and select 'Schedule'. Choose a time and date and you're set.

There is no limit on the posts you can schedule but if you do too many at once, Facebook may mark it as span. For our plan, a week's worth of posts will be fine.

Remember for content that needs new materials, it's best to remind yourself to post on the day, so your scheduled post doesn't go out without any accompanying resources.

Stop the timer! How did you do?

If you didn't manage to get through it all in 30 minutes, don't worry. We can help you flesh out a more detailed social media content plan with a 1 hour one-to-one meeting. Get in touch to find out more.

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Next: ​5 free tools to help your business get video-ready in 2018