How to Streamline Your Social Media Content Production

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read the disclaimer

Staying consistent on social media platforms is now a necessity rather than an option. You cannot expect to build a strong audience base without consistently feeding valuable content to them. Your online presence and the reach of your social media posts also depend on how consistent you are on the platforms you use.

Unfortunately, consistency is easier discussed than maintained. Maintaining consistency can be more challenging when you don’t have a clear strategy in mind. We’ve talked about how you can develop a suitable Instagram (and social media) strategy in my previous article.

In this post, we are going to focus more on the tweaks you can implement to streamline social media content production and maintain consistency. Let’s get started, shall we?

Limit Your Outlets

One of the first and easiest things you can do to boost consistency and make producing content for social media easier is limiting the outlets – social media platforms – you use to reach your audience. Just because you want to have a strong online presence, it doesn’t mean you have to use every single social media platform available.

If you are a B2B brand, for instance, focusing more on LinkedIn is the better way to go. You can still use Instagram and other social media platforms for expanding your online reach, but they don’t need to be treated as the priority outlets.

plan your content ahead of time (2) (2)

The same is true for the opposite. Brands who are targeting more general market segments can skip LinkedIn and redirect resources towards Instagram and Pinterest. Since you are limiting the number of content pieces you need to produce, improving the production process becomes easier.

Leverage Formats

Posting one piece of content on all social media channels isn’t something you want to do. Some content may be effective when treated this way, but the majority of your key messages will get lost in the different formats. Each social media outlet has its own characteristics, and you must always try to leverage those characteristics when producing content.

This is where being smart with how you leverage different formats come in handy. For example, you can use a video meant for YouTube on Instagram (Stories) as long as you plan ahead for the different formats. You can adjust the framing of the video, how text and messages are added to the video, and other elements of the content accordingly.

The more you implement this approach, the easier it will be to plan ahead and leverage different formats. It will not be long before the approach becomes second nature. You can still produce unique content for certain platforms, but the amount of content you need to produce in general is greatly reduced when you know how to leverage different formats.

Plan Ahead

Content planning is your best friend if you want to streamline content production. Rather than taking product photos every time you need to post on Instagram, you can stage a more comprehensive photoshoot and collect stock images of your products instead. Optimizations like this are easy to find and execute when you have a clear, mid- to a long-term plan.

plan your content ahead of time (1)

There are a lot of tools that can help you plan your social media content and the production of this content better. I personally love using the Kanban system in general since it elevates the agile approach to project management and makes organizing tasks easier.

For instance, Kanbanize can be adjusted to your specific content creation workflow. You have complete control over how the board is set up, which means you can add steps that you are accustomed to and have a Kanban board that represents how your team or organization operates. Planning becomes even easier at this point since you can use cards to plan social media contents.

Think Holistically

An element of consistency that you also need to pay attention to is consistent branding. Brand elements, visuals, colors, and other parts of your social media posts need to remain consistent without boring the audience. In order to achieve this specific objective, you need to maintain a more holistic view of your social media contents.

Find elements that followers – the audience – can easily recognize and stick with them. Since you are posting on your social media accounts, limit the use of logos and brand elements to an acceptable amount. There is no point in showing your logo on every post if they are on your own Instagram account, is it?

The screenshot below is an example of @Bossbabe.inc Instagram account showing how they’ve perfected the consistency without overthinking it. They’re just focused on posting exactly what they’re audience responds to. Nothing over the top and keeping it simple.

That consistency needs to extend beyond the boundaries of how often you post and the kind of content you produce. Intrinsic elements like mood, tone, and even how you write your captions and use hashtags also affect how the audience consumes your contents. Don’t leave these details unattended!

Understand the Audience

Last but certainly not least, you need to spend some time better understanding the audience. The more you know your audience, the more you can tailor your contents for them, and the easier it will be to produce your content. That understanding of the audience will also lead to better scheduling and delivery of social media contents.

Remember that you can combine the production process of multiple social media contents, but only when you have all of the information from the beginning. When you know the kind of content your audience is anticipating, you can craft a clearer production plan without having to wait for each post to receive responses.

The actual production process is the easy part of the equation. With the tips and tricks that we covered in this article, you can be much more detailed when planning content production projects. Using the Kanban board, for example, you can allocate resources more efficiently. Bottlenecks in content production can be eliminated completely and a smoother flow of content can be created.

The result is clear: you can have social media outlets that continue to deliver value to the audience in a consistent way. At this point, thinking about how to better optimize content production or boost your social media presence becomes easier. After all, you already have content production nailed to the last detail.