Today, I’m sharing my current social media strategy. This is how I market my small business on social media. I’ll be explaining why we show up on platforms like YouTube and Instagram, and not Tik Tok, as well as the types of content we create and how it all fits into our overall marketing strategy. I create content with strategy and intention, and I want you to do the same! Let’s jump in.

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What to Consider for Marketing

Platforms You Own

Let’s start by breaking off the four main attributes of the platforms you could be showing up on right now.  First, think about platforms that you own vs. platforms that you don’t own. I bring this up because it’s really important that at least one type of content that you create is on a platform that you own. Your email list is probably the biggest option here. But it could also be a blog or something along those lines. I always encourage my students to choose one platform (at least) that you own to show up on. A lot of the platforms that are out there, we don’t know and newsflash, something could happen to that platform. We could lose everything we’ve done if they get shut down or shut off. So, make sure you have somewhere to connect with your audience that is just yours.

Cold vs. Warm Audience

Next, think about reaching a cold or a warm audience. Certain types of content online are going to reach a cold audience and some content you create is for your warm audience. This might vary platform by platform, but the types of content you share will speak to to different people. Let’s use Instagram for example. Instagram does a great job of incorporating different types of content so you can reach a cold audience quickly – with Reels. But your Stories are more about nurturing your warm audience. Your email list is very much for your warm audience – it’s people who have chosen to follow you and receive your content. YouTube is more for a cold audience. Your content is geared towards reaching people who don’t know your name, your business, or much about you.

Evergreen Content

The third thing to think about when working on content is creating evergreen content. It’s so important and I think it’s really overlooked by a lot of business owners. When we’re thinking about evergreen content, we’re looking at content that takes longer to build but is usually going to last longer, too. For example, this is something like a YouTube channel. It may take you a year or longer to build a channel that’s actually gaining views and makes an impact on your revenue. But, once you start to rank and show up in the searches, the effect snowballs from there. I have videos from years ago that are still reaching new people. That’s so worth the effort!

I know the hang-up with evergreen content really is the time and energy it requires. But remember this will last a long time. These pieces of content often allow you to go deeper with your audience, which leads me to…

Foundational Content

I always recommend building a long piece of foundational content each week. This is going to be more evergreen and reach more of a cold audience than a short-form piece of content. From this long piece, you can create shorter, smaller pieces of content. For many businesses, it’s something like making a blog post then turning that into multiple Instagram captions, sharing the post on my stories, and sharing it to my email list. These days, I use my podcast episodes or YouTube videos for this piece of content.

Our Content Strategy

Now that we have those four things in mind, let’s look at our content strategy. Of course, everyone’s strategies will look different, but I want to share how we do it. Feel free to steal our content strategy! So, the platform that we own is our email list. We drive upwards of 25K views a month on our content and we’re driving them to our email list there. If you want more information on that, we talked more about this in a recent YouTube video!

Now, we use our email list and a blog. To reach a cold audience, we focus on Instagram’s short form content, like Reels. Then we use YouTube and our blog as our long-form evergreen content to reach a cold audience consistently. People are finding our content through searches on Google or YouTube. For our warm audience, we also use our podcast. Most of our listeners are people who chose to join us on this journey – not necessarily people who found us online. We’re not really trying to reach new people using the podcast. We also are nurturing our warm audience through Instagram stories and our email.

Each week, our long-form foundational piece of content is our YouTube video and/or podcast episode. We’re actually testing out using the same content on both platforms right now. After it’s shared there, we take the episode and turn it into an optimized blog post. Then, we share the new episodes on our email list every week and eventually through our nurture sequence, too. We use the outlines that I create for our videos or episodes for Instagram Reels, captions, or things I share on Instagram Stories. We’re repurposing that content as much as we can across all platforms. Oh, and we use Pinterest too to share our content, especially video content these days! Our Pinterest manager, Jenn, has been amazing!

Our Social Media Marketing Workflow

I wanted to briefly mention what it takes to put out all this content each week. I usually block off a half day to record new episodes for the podcast/YouTube. That takes me about 4-5 hours, and I can film 4-5 episodes. From there, our team uses Trello to go through our workflows. My team takes care of pretty much everything after I’ve done the recordings. Michael edits and then Maggie schedules everything for the podcast and YouTube. Kristina, our copywriter, transforms everything for the blog. We communicate throughout the steps, and everything is completed thanks to my team! If you’re interested in how we use Trello for content creation, we sell our templates in the SK shop!

One other thing I want to touch on is Tik Tok. You might be surprised to hear that I don’t post on Tik Tok in this process or workflow. I love it personally, but I don’t use it very often. I’ll get too sucked in if I do. But I don’t post for the business there. I just don’t think it’s effective and that’s okay. This is your permission slip: you don’t have to show up on every new platform. For us, it’s not a priority. We also don’t feel like our clients are showing up there and so it’s just not where we want to put our effort right now.

I hope that breaking down my social media strategy helps you find a good starting place for your own social media! Remember, you don’t have to be on every platform to be effective for your business. Focus on what makes the most sense and is within your time to manage!

Other Resources

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Learn inside the course ALL of my strategies for seeing real growth on the platform, including gaining loyal followers, monetizing your Instagram, increasing engagement, posting consistently, creating content with ease, and more! Join us at http://stephaniekase.com/instagramgrowth . Use code PODCAST for 15% off your purchase! 

Wondering what to make for your next Reel? Free quiz to find out what type of reel idea you should make next! 

Need ideas for Instagram? Grab our free sample Instagram posting schedule here!