Easy Time-Saving Tips for Your Content Strategy

Jamie Jean Schneider Domm

Digital Strategist for the North American Division

​Social media can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. For most Adventist entities, social media manager is just one of many hats an employee might wear. If you happen to be a full-time digital strategist, you’re likely managing multiple campaigns and projects at once. Regardless of your level of expertise, there never seems to be enough time in the day to accomplish everything you need to do in order to stay on top of the ever-growing evangelistic influence of social media. Over the years, I’ve learned to streamline my approach in order to tackle a large workload.  

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Here are my top three tried and true time-saving tips for developing your content or campaign strategy: 

1.) Schedule your content in batches – Scheduling your content (and ads) in advance helps you focus on big picture items without the urgency of consistent posting. Plan out regular content in advance and make time to schedule it in monthly or bi-weekly chunks. Then you can focus your attention on engagement, community building, data analysis, strategic planning, and other projects. This also empowers you to be more proactive in your digital strategy, as opposed to reactive.

For example: If you’re running four digital campaign strategies (for different brands) at once, keeping up with the continual need for content is easily managed with this technique. It takes me one to three hours, depending on the campaign, to plan, write, and schedule the posts for a month across multiple platforms for each campaign. If you carve out time each week to focus on just one of the four campaigns, that’s between one and three focused hours a week spent scheduling content. Then your social media posts are taken care of for each campaign on a rolling basis, allowing you to stay on top of performance analytics and enabling you to better evaluate and optimize your strategy. This also frees you up to respond quickly to comments or address any unexpected issues or changes.

Helpful resources:

• Download a yearly content calendar template.
• Watch a video to learn how to schedule content on Facebook.
• Watch a video to learn how to schedule tweets in Hootsuite.
• Download a presentation on social media 101 for churches or ministries.
  
  

2.) Create evergreen content or repurpose posts – Just because you posted a piece of content once doesn’t mean your entire audience has seen it or had the time to react. Remember the “Rule of 7” states that a person must see a message at least seven times before they take action. Consequently, it’s a good idea to use one post multiple times to ensure greater exposure. For an awareness campaign like #enditnowNAD, we had two solid testimonies on why greater awareness and education is needed for pastors, church leaders, educators, and anyone working with children to effectively identify and report abuse. Over the course of a six-month campaign, we scheduled each testimony three times, with slightly different wording and images, and at different times of day and days of the week, to reach different groups of people. Each time, the content was well received. It was a long campaign, and we did this with much of the educational content that we were sharing on our various channels. We invested our time into creating compelling posts, strong resources, and images that could be used multiple times to reinforce our mission instead of constantly seeking to create new original content. New content was weaved in as it became available, but by using this technique, we were able to guarantee a consistent posting schedule. 

For event-specific campaigns, you can leverage this technique to build urgency towards deadlines. For example, as the last day for an early-bird registration approaches, you can rework the same message and call-to-action using key buzzwords to attract attention.

For example:

• 2 weeks until the early-bird discount ends!
• Early-bird registration ends THIS Friday. Register today!
• Don’t miss out! The discount price for registration ends tomorrow. Sign up now!
  
  

Then utilize technique 1 in this list and schedule out the posts in advance, as well as any targeted boosts you have planned.

Helpful resources:

• Click here to download a comprehensive guide on how to write for social media.
• Watch a video on the “Rule of 7” for Digital Evangelism.
  
  
  

3.) Build off previous campaign plans for reoccurring events – This is possibly my biggest cheat for annual or repeating conferences and programs. I always keep my strategy outline and performance report from the previous campaign. For the next project, I simply keep what worked, change what didn’t, update/tweak the content and timing for the new event, and freshen up the images. Systematically building off the previous campaign improves campaign performance and results each time you make adjustments that strengthen it. By tracking each campaign performance and studying the results, you can better develop your skills at effectively reaching your target audience to not only improve results/attendance, but lower overall costs. Why reinvent the wheel, when you can just improve it?  

Helpful resources:

• Download an event campaign content planning calendar.
• Download a guide to tracking, analytics, and advertising.
  
  
  

4.) Bonus tip: Alter your posts for partners and create a promotions packet. Click here for more information on how to magnify your reach at no cost by utilizing partnership networks. 
 
Fellow digital missionaries, I hope you found these time-saving tips helpful. Be sure to comment below. I’d love to hear what other ways you save time or streamline your efforts.