In the fast-paced era, we’re living in, staying relevant while creating high volumes of content is key to succeeding in the social media space. And planning social media content has never been more important for creators & entrepreneurs looking to grow their personal brand and increase their revenue while staying consistent with their content efforts.
Thankfully, there are tons of tools available to help creators like you and me plan our content while saving time, and avoiding stress.
I’ve tried many of them and I couldn’t have been happier when I discovered Metricool, one of the most advanced and robust tools for anyone working in the social media industry. In this blog, I will also show you how I use Metricool in my creator business.
But first, I want to remind you that Metricool is 100% free! Whether you’re a rising solopreneur or the owner of a multinational company, Metricool offers different plans that will help you stay on top of your content efforts through detailed analytics, competitor research, elaborate reports, and so much more.
And as a thank YOU for being a loyal reader, I will be giving you and your business access to any premium plan for free for 30 days. Click here to claim your offer, and don’t forget to use the code: CREATORACADEMY.
This year, I have decided to streamline my content creation and build systems around it to work smarter and not harder while still being able to produce more content and help me achieve my business goals faster.
Here are the 5 key steps you can take to optimize your content creation too:
1. Start with your content pillars
Content pillars are 3 to 5 topics you will constantly discuss and amplify on your social media channels. They have to be designed with your ideal audience in mind and the common questions, problems, goals, desires, etc. they have.
For example, my content pillars are;
Instagram Growth Strategy - because I know most people within my audience struggle with growing their accounts
Social Media Monetization - because I know most people’s main goal is to generate sales or revenue through social media
Mindset - because as an entrepreneur I have struggled with the wrong mindset for a long time and I know many people do it too.
The life of a creator & entrepreneur - this is key to building my personal brand to strengthen my community.
So I know that any piece of content I create will fall into one of these four categories, which makes the idea sourcing much easier
2. Create macro and evergreen pieces of content
Marco and evergreen content are those long-form pieces of content like blogs and YouTube videos that have a very long shelf life, which means, if optimized correctly, people will be able to find them for months or even years. And it’s here where sustainable brand growth will come from.
So let’s say the month has four weeks.
Week 1 → Pillar one
Week 2 → Pillar two
Week 3 → Pillar three
Week 4 → Pillar four
For each pillar, I will be sourcing new ideas every week from the comment section on my posts or my competitor's posts, from questions people have asked me on the DMs, from trending topics in the social media world, etc, and putting them all into a doc that I can access easily.
Then I will choose one day per month to write a blog post for each of these topics, then adapt the blog into a YouTube script. I then choose another day to record the four videos in a row.
This process will take me in total about 4 to 5 hours per month.
3. Turn these macro-pieces of content into micro-pieces of content
Now, this is where the magic happens and where you put on the “work smarter” hat. Instead of creating new reels, TikToks, Tweet Quotes, or Infographics, you’re going to use the four pieces of macro-content you have created already and repurpose them.
How?
From one YouTube video, you can get between 3 - 4 short-form videos.
I normally get 1 as a teaser for the video and 3 to highlight the key points from the video. I then repurpose these 4 short-form videos into Reels, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and even idea pins.
Then, you can repeat the same with your blog and highlight the key points in the following formats:
Summarize the blog as a carousel post
Create an infographic, or diagram, or even use a photo to highlight another key point
Extract your favorite quote or phrase and use it as a quote post
So now from just ONE piece of content, you’ve got between 6 to 8 micro-pieces of content to distribute in your different channels in one week.
That is a total of 24 to 32 pieces of content in one month.
And this is where Metricool comes into play.
4. Schedule all your content using Metricool
Scheduling all these macro and micro-pieces of content from one dashboard has made my and my team’s life so much easier, and here’s a step-by-step process to show you how you can do the same.
First, make sure you have created an account. Click here to join Metricool for free and if you want to try any of their premium plans for 30 days, use the code: CREATORACADEMY.
Once you create your account, you’re going to link your different social media accounts. You can also link your blog/website.
Go to PLANNING and then select “Create new post”. The following window will pop up where you can select or deselect the platform you want your content to be distributed.
4. Add the photo or video and write down the main caption. Then edit by network to make sure you adapt it for each platform’s requirements:
And then you will see that Metricool will give you specific reminders tailored for each platform:
Go through all the reminders and make sure you fix everything before scheduling your post. You will be able to see a preview on the right side of how the post will look on each platform.
Don’t forget, Metricool helps you research your best hashtags for Instagram and TikTok: (image)
I love this feature because I don’t have to waste time researching hashtags in advance. What I love the most is that it recommends similar hashtags to the keyword you introduced and it also shows you the size, to make sure you’re not choosing hashtags with very few posts or hashtags that are over saturated:
Repeat this same process for all your posts.
5. Track your analytics to guide your strategy for the next batches
At the end of every month you are going to use Metricool’s analytics to understand which post performed the best on which platform.
Remember that every platform has different audiences, and people consume content differently everywhere. A tweet-style post might perform really well on Twitter & Instagram, but poorly on Pinterest.
Some of the KPIs that you should consider when evaluating your content efforts are:
Organic reach
Total engagements
Engagement rate (total engagements/organic reach * 100)
You can export reports for all your social media efforts or one platform in particular, and choose the metrics you want to focus on for the report:
And use your observations and analysis to start your new batch of content creation for the next month.
After a couple of months of using this framework, you’ll be able to understand the type of content preferred for your audience on each platform, and this will make the whole content creation process much easier for you.
Wrapping up
This is exactly how I will be maximizing my content efforts in 2023 while creating less content. And if I were you, this is exactly what I would be focusing on.
Competition on social media is higher than ever, and it will only continue to increase. This is why you should focus your efforts on diversifying your presence to increase reach.
Streamline your content creation, repurpose, schedule, and distribute with Metricool.
Are you ready to take your creator business to the next level?
