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Apartments.com
A Simple, Efficient Formula to Manage Your Social Media Content
Content batching is an effective strategy for organizing your time and streamlining your process for creating social media content.
Erica Byrum, Apartments.com assistant vice president of social media, offered a brief overview of this productive approach at this year’s NAA Apartmentalize conference.
What is content batching, and how can it help you? Byrum broke the method down into a four-step plan.
Step 1: Outline your content strategy
Your content strategy is the foundation for your social media content. This is your opportunity to define your content pillars, brainstorm ideas, and plan how you’ll fit these topics into your content calendar.
Content pillars are the main themes relevant to your brand and target audience. Each pillar should contain subcategories to further define your focus.
For example, if one of your pillars is property, this may include content on company culture, resident events, and community amenities.
Now, with your pillars in place, you can start building out your post ideas and then working them into a content calendar. Byrum offered suggestions like introducing your onsite team, spotlighting a resident pet, and taking followers behind the scenes.
You’ll also need to use a calendar to strategically plan your own time. Consider time blocking, an approach where you dedicate specific blocks to different tasks, such as setting aside 15 minutes a day to respond to social comments, or an hour a week to schedule your posts. That way, you can maximize your productivity by focusing on a single task at a time.
Step 2: Write post captions and video scripts
Instead of writing a single caption or video script one at time, take advantage of content batching and write multiple captions and scripts in one sitting.
When it comes to captions, Byrum offered five tips for boosting engagement:
- Draw the reader in with a hook.
- Break up the copy with line breaks.
- Use emojis to add personality and emotion.
- Invite your followers to take action with a clear CTA, like “Tag someone who…” or “Let me know in the comments if…”
- Include hashtags to get your post in front of a bigger audience.
Step 3: Create and edit your graphics and videos
Ready to create images and videos for your posts? As with writing, batch your tasks. Block off time for compiling stock photos, shooting your own photos or videos, and gathering user-generated content.
When you need inspiration, look for existing posts by your residents, and ask for permission to use this content. As many as 90 percent of users trust user-generated content to influence their purchase decisions, Byrum said. A photo contest is another great way to crowdsource original photos from your residents.
Byrum recommended using the brand kit functionality offered by social media tool Canva. Once you’ve defined on-brand templates, you can easily generate graphics that are visually consistent and reinforce your brand identity.
As for Instagram reels, it’s now easier than ever to stitch together video clips with trending audio to make an engaging video. Just rely on ready-made templates, and add in your own video.
Step 4: Schedule your posts
The final step is scheduling your posts in advance. And the key phrase to keep in mind is “in advance.”
“Instead of thinking about scheduling a piece of content in the moment, which is stressful, because you wear a lot of hats and you’ve got a lot on your plate,” Byrum said, “you want to think about how you can schedule your entire month in advance or even a couple weeks in advance.”
When you build out a posting framework, keep it consistent. For example, you might schedule a grid post for Facebook and Instagram for every Monday and a carousel for every Tuesday.
And to stretch the life of your content, repurpose each item into multiple pieces. Got content on “5 Amenities We Love”? Turn it into multiple posts, videos, blog articles, and items in your resident newsletter.
A more effective social media approach
Content batching is an approach that can carry you through each stage of the content creation process. With this strategy, you can avoid creating one piece of content at a time, and this lets you work smarter, not harder.
Want more tips from Erica? Follow @ApartmentsBiz on Facebook and Twitter for Erica’s social media ideas and best practices, or follow Apartments.com on LinkedIn. Interested in personalized support? Check out Apartments.com’s Social Media & Reputation Suite.
Check out more sessions from Apartmentalize 2023! Now available on demand, these presentations offer market insights, advertising tips, and social media best practices. See all on-demand webinars from this year’s Apartmentology Learning Lounge, or watch more from Erica:
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