Speaker 1: In the social media industry, the word strategy gets tossed around a whole lot. But do you as a social media manager really know how to create a killer content strategy for your clients that gets them fast and great results? Well, after today's video, I promise you're going to feel confident in creating a social media marketing strategy for clients in my seven steps. Now, with the skills that you will learn today, you will be able to actually charge the big bucks. Hey, my name is Milne. I own a multi six figure social media agency, and I now help social media managers do the same. If you're new here and you're an aspiring six figure social media manager, make sure to grab my roadmap to becoming a six figure social media manager that I will link right here. Now, let's dive in. The first step in creating a killer content strategy for your clients is by conducting research. Now, a great portion of creating a strategy in general is going to be research. Now, while this may seem boring, this is really going to help set you up for success because you need to know what you're working with. Now, there are a couple of different ways you can conduct research. You know, one of the most common ways is through social media itself. Right. Where you're looking at different accounts in their industry, their own accounts. But you need to gather data on a lot of different aspects that have to do with the client. Right. So I'm going to show you a way that I like to conduct research myself and through different tools. So I like to actually use SEMrush to conduct research on social media by using their social media tools. Now, back in the day, these were actually free. I've mentioned them before in different videos, but this is actually now a paid tool. But if you're just looking for the social media insights from SEMrush, I believe it's around $20 a month. I can link them in the description. But what I like to do here is I would like to look at all the different insights and analytics of my client. Right. And I need to get an idea of what are they doing well, what aren't they doing well, what does their current content strategy look like? And you can see all of that here in SEMrush. So here I can see in the last 30 days, I can see exactly how often my client posts. So they post half a time a day. So that's 14 in an entire month. I can see the kind of posts they do. So mainly reels here and carousels. And so that way I can gather so much data on why something isn't working for them when they mentioned that in a call. Right. I can see their engagement rate and what types of engagement they get. And I can compare them also to other competitors, which we'll dive into later. But I do want to show you that you can gather a bunch of data here, specifically in SEMrush, that I prefer to use. Other tools that you can use is one that I like to use from time to time is Ninjalytics. Ninjalytics is quite a common tool, too. And it has similar insights, I will say. But one thing I like to check on Ninjalytics specifically, like if I use my own name, is you can find someone's engagement rates and things like that. Now, the reason why that's actually so important in the research phase that you take note of all these things is because you want to compare the data in 30 days, in 60 days, in 90 days. Right. So you need to have these insights so that you can showcase the client what's going on, where you can see the growth, which I really like on Ninjalytics as well, the follower growth. And so you can go back into certain dates. I think they have Italian and English here. So if I go back in here, you can see like on this date, this was January 4th, I gained a lot of followers. So I can go back into that day and actually look, OK, what did I do that day that made me gain these followers? Right. The number of posts you can see here as well. And the weekly and monthly followers and account gains, as well as hashtags that the account used. So you want to gather again as much data as you can about an account so that you can then set yourself up for success. See what's working in the industry as a whole. Things that are doing well on social media and doing not so well before you dive into anything else. Right. Gather as much data as possible here. Now, if you're wondering how I create monthly analytics reports for clients, I actually do have a full video on that where I also go over data and how to interpret it. So check it out right here and let me know what you think. Now, the second step in creating a killer content strategy for your clients is by setting the expectations. Now, how do you do this in the onboarding phase? I specifically ask clients, what are your goals? What are the business goals? I'm not even asking them for their social media goals because I am the expert at the end of the day. Right. They hired me for my expertise. So I'm simply asking them, what are your business goals? And how do you see social media play into that to work towards these goals? Because here's the thing. Let's say a client wants to increase their revenue. Right. And all they do is post reels. They get great engagement. They get a lot of reach, but they're not making a single sale. And their content strategy needs to be tweaked. Right. Now, let's say someone is just looking to create brand awareness. Then maybe, yes, you do want to go very heavy on the reels in order to get their name out there, because you're not that focused on generating the sales at that point. Right. That's why getting their goals and their expectations is so important so that you can align the content strategy accordingly. So something that I like to do in my marketing strategies is I will line up the goals they mentioned for the business. Then I will line up the social media goals on how I see social media work towards these goals. Right. Whether it doesn't matter the time frame, but how we're going to work towards these goals. And then I like to line up the metrics on how do we measure success? Right. From a social media standpoint, how do we know that we as a team have done our job? Now, I cannot emphasize how important this is enough, because what you will see is that if you don't do this and you're not on the same page, the expectations aren't there. Then within three or six months, either you, the client, is going to be disappointed and where they're at because you haven't had that conversation. So setting goals is so important because it will determine your entire content strategy. Now, if you want to know how I create a general social media strategy, I do have a post about that as well that you can check out right here with a step by step guide into the social media strategy. Now, the third step in creating a killer content strategy for your clients is by spying on the competition. Now, I don't want you to completely get carried away looking at other accounts, right, and going into the comparison trap. But it is important for you to know what's out there. And also, it can provide a lot of clarity. What I've had before with clients is that in the onboarding session, they were not sure about certain things. I'd given them advice. You know, they're still unsure what direction to go with certain things. And that's when it's a good time to pull up competitors, because that's when you can say, hey, this is what that person is doing. They seem very successful with it. We should take a chapter out of their book or hey, look at what they're doing and take little things from everyone and put it together into your own strategy. So again, here is how I like to do the competitor analysis. And again, I'm gathering data. It's still research, right? But again, I go back into SEMrush here because they offer so much data. So if you are inside the social media tools of SEMrush, they have under social tracker, what you can actually do is when you open a project here, you can add in competitors. So here you'll see I have my account here. That's called you. And then I can add anyone else that I want to add. And you can compare your activity, your engagement, your audience to the competitors. And this is just so valuable because you can see exactly what they're doing. You can see their best performing posts and you don't even have to be hooked up to their account. So again, super valuable insights into their content strategy so that you can steal the things that they're doing well. Right. So this is a big, big part of your content strategy because you need to know what they're doing well and not doing well. And another reason why this is so important is because if one month your client may feel like, well, our engagement is low, our story views are low. Nothing is quote unquote working. What you can do is you can compare them to their competitor and say, hey, you know, we're actually doing the best out of our competitors in terms of engagement. Right. So you want to look at competitors that are within their range. I do want to emphasize that. So you don't want to compare a startup to an account with a million followers. Right. Because it's not a fair comparison. But you want to keep the competitors kind of within their range and a good variety so that you can pick and choose different things from each of them. And in that way, they have an overlap. They have things in common and you can create a well-rounded content strategy. Now, the fourth step in creating a killer content strategy for your clients is by auditing their current content strategy. Now, whether your client has an actual strategy in place or not, you can still learn a lot from whatever they have been posting and doing. Right. Every post we put up gathers data and it gives us valuable insights. So you want to technically go into their account at that point when you have access. And let's say we take Instagram. Right. You want to go into their insights where you can see exactly what has been working for them. So I like to go to insights content I've shared. And then what you can say is you can say the last six months. Let's say that is a good time frame. Gives you a bunch of data. And it's not too far back to where there's a lot of old content. Now, what you can do, you can filter these by different metrics. Right. By shares, accounts. Now, actually, what also if you put it on posts where you will see that's when you will get more options on the metrics. So now you can see, OK, what got them the most saves? So now I can see exactly, oh, this type of content is getting me the most saves. So maybe I should create more of that type of content. Right. Or what type of content is getting them the most follows? And then again, I will see exactly the type of content that is getting them the most follows. So depending on their goals, you now know things that they have been doing well. And sometimes what I do is I like to repurpose content that they have done that well, but could do even better. So you're going to optimize the content and see how it performs the second time around. But all the thing what they have currently been doing is key, because even though they don't have a strategy or didn't really know what they were doing, you can still learn a ton from the insights that they have in their current account or whoever whoever has been managing their accounts. Now, if you want to know how I myself create over 30 pieces of content within 10 minutes and I show you the exact system on how I do it, then check out this video. It will help you a ton. Now, the fifth step into creating a killer content strategy for your client is by creating a content funnel, as I like to call it. Now, your client does need to have a basic funnel in place in order to set you up for success. Right. So a couple of things that a basic funnel have is a lead magnet, like a free download of some sorts to get people into the funnel, into their email list, a low ticket offer. Preferably, this could be a course, maybe a bundle, templates, anything, and then an application for whatever high ticket offer they have. Now, I do realize this isn't for mainstream service based business, right? This will be different for e-commerce. But again, you need to have these pieces in place for any any funnel. So this is something important, because when you're looking at the content funnel, I like to base this off top of funnel, middle funnel and bottom of funnel. So you have three different boxes and three different types of content that you want to be creating in order to get people into your client's funnel. Right. So top of funnel is the awareness type of content, as I like to call it. This may be the real, the trends, the fun things that attract a lot of eyes. Right. The middle of the funnel. This is where you want to educate. People already are aware of you, but they want to learn more. They want to dig deeper. They want to know they can trust you and what you know. And then lastly, bottom of funnel is really the promotional content. This is where you convert them into a customer at the end of the day. Right. So again, it's really hard to have a content funnel if your client doesn't have a funnel in place. And that would be a huge risk for them unless their goal is simply to exist and be active on social media. They need to have a funnel in place so that you can create the content funnel. Now, if you want to know all the do's and don'ts of 2024 for social media management, then make sure you catch up on this video that I launched at the end of 2023 that gives you all the insights that you need to know this year. Now, the sixth step in creating a killer content strategy is by creating content pillars. The content funnel simply itself isn't enough. You still wouldn't know what to talk about necessarily. Right. You know the type of content you want to create, but you need to have the specific topics for this business, for your client. That you will regularly touch on. It really depends on the client and the things that are important to them. So, for example, for myself, social media strategy is a big one that I often talk about social media management, Instagram. So these are all different topics that I touch on. And depending on the client, you want to add these in and give a little bit of a description on what that would look like. And then you don't have to worry that you feel limited to these pillars because each pillar can have a bunch of subtopics underneath them. Because, of course, social media strategy is very broad. Right. This can entail Instagram strategy. This can be social media manager versus social media strategist. This can be a quote. There's a lot of things that go underneath that main topic. But you need to have these different topics in place so that you can actually audit later on what topics have been doing well. So the seventh step into creating a killer content strategy for your client is by experimenting. Now that you have all these pieces in place that I've mentioned in today's video, I need you to execute, create the content. But remember that I need you to experiment. Now, an important part of executing the content strategy that you come up with is that you need to know your platforms. OK. Instagram isn't the same as LinkedIn. LinkedIn isn't the same as YouTube. YouTube isn't the same as TikTok. Right. Different things work on different platforms. So you want to optimize accordingly, but always make sure you stay experimenting so that you can learn what works best for each account. And that brings me also to Instagram specifically, where some accounts simply thrive of reels. They convert. They get a lot of reach. And if it does well for them, you know, don't fix it. Don't fix what isn't broken. But otherwise, you need to really figure out what are we going after? The goals that we set in the previous step. And how are we able to get to their goal with the content we create through the content funnel? Right. So, again, all of these steps together will form a killer content strategy that you can execute, experiment with and adjust over time. No strategy is ever set in stone. As you know, this is a very fast paced industry. So you want to leave room for experimenting along the way. Now, this wraps up the seven steps to creating a killer content strategy for your clients. If you found this video helpful at all, then you could help me out by hitting the subscribe button so I can create more free content just like this for you. And I will see you in next week's video.