Last week, we talked about what to do when you have no social media content, so of course this is a good time to talk about what to do you if you have too much.
Some people won’t believe this, but I frequently have had clients come to me with the problem that they have so much social media content and they don’t know what to do next. They’re kind of frozen by the too much-ness.
As much as this seems like a made up problem, it’s not. It’s just as bad as having no content. In most of these cases, they don’t know what they have covered, they don’t know what has done well and so they have no roadmap for what to do next. All of these are huge problems.
If you find yourself in this place, it’s going to take awhile to dig out, but it can be done. Here’s where I would start.
Organize your social media content
If you are saying that you have too much social media content, it’s very likely your organizational systems have broken down. Before doing anything, I would fix that first.
Obviously, the first step would be to make anything you have out there findable and easily indexed for fans. The point is to get them the information after all. But that’s not enough.
You need to have it findable and easily indexed for yourself as well. You need to pick an internal system that will allow you to give each piece of content keywords. These keywords are not necessarily the ones your fans need, because it has nothing to do with how they search. They should be more descriptive based on how you might search for the content in the future. Because yes, if you have such a large library, you should also have the capability to go back and draw from it as needed.
This organizational system won’t come together overnight, but if you do a little bit every day and commit to doing it for all new content going further, soon, all old content will be categorized and the system will be second nature to you.
Analyze your social media content
Now you need to go back to your analytics. What have you posted that has done well? Why did it do well? Take notes on all of it.
Replicating successes can be a great way to start your social media strategy, since you have some real world knowledge of how they will work. And you also won’t have to re-invent the wheel and can use your past successful content by either re-working it into something new or using it in its entirety.
The brilliant part of the organization process is that you can easily re-use content, which, when paired with your analytics process, will require far less work with similar results. With the increasing demands on social media marketers, that is absolutely gold.
Create a strategy
The sense of overwhelm is probably fueled by the fact that you didn’t have a strategy to begin with. You can look at some of the same factors that you would if you had no social media content and get a better idea of what others are giving your fans that actually connects with them. Or what they’re not giving them that you can easily create.
And then write down this strategy. It can be a living document that you can refer to every time that overwhelming feeling hits. Because if you don’t have something to lean on, you will feel overwhelmed again and much sooner than you think. And you will end up exactly where you don’t want to be.
Take a look at your content
This is going to be where you’re really glad you did all that organizing, because I want you to go back to all that nicely organized content with those super descriptive keywords. Compare it against your plan going forward. What do you already have? Is there maybe a section of a video that fits in? Or maybe it’s a blog post that has the perfect quote?
Take anything that might have a chance of working and put it into the applicable parts of your plan for potential reuse. If they don’t work when you get to working on your plans in earnest, that’s okay. The goal here is to give you a start and to reuse as much as possible which will save you so much work.
I have found that the hardest part of anything is getting started. When you have too much content, you already have so many possible starts to get you going. Take advantage of all of them.
There are many other things you can do, but taking these steps will get you on the road towards figuring out what’s next. If you’re on that road and are still confused, you can always send me an email to get advice on your particular circumstances.