11 Ways to Conquer Content Creation Overwhelm: Practical Strategies and Time-Saving Hacks

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If you’ve ever felt under pressure to constantly churn out content to keep your business visible, you know what we mean by “content overwhelm” – it’s a common state of frustration for small business owners who are juggling multiple hats. 

But you know that giving up on content creation isn’t an option. High-quality content is the lifeblood of attracting customers online. It’s how we connect with our audience, build brand awareness, and achieve business goals.  

We believe the process shouldn’t be draining for your energy reserves or your mental health.

So today we’re sharing practical strategies and time-saving hacks so you can more easily get into a state of flow and get more done in less time and with less stress. 

First, let’s talk about the main reasons content creation leads to burnout:

  • Lack of Strategy: Without a roadmap, even the most brilliant and creative minds get lost 
  • Lack of Time: Fitting content creation into a busy schedule is incredibly challenging
  • Writer’s Block: When you’re just not feeling it, it’s impossible to force 
  • Idea Fatigue: Squeezing every last drop out of your brain is exhausting mentally and physically.

We’re going to address all of these common culprits so creating content can be something you look forward to without sacrificing your sanity or time you can’t afford.

So grab your coffee (or beverage of choice) and let’s dig in!

#1 Start with a Content Strategy, Not Just Content

If your approach to content creation is like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks, you’re setting yourself up for wasting tons of valuable time. It’s all about working smarter, not harder.

Starting with a plan is key to creating a workflow that’s sustainable and content that’s effective. A strategy ensures your content is targeted, cohesive, and focused on meeting your business objectives.

In a nutshell, a content strategy is a high-level plan that outlines your:

  • Business Goals: Build brand awareness? Generate leads? Drive traffic or sales? 
  • Target Audience: Who are you creating for? What content will resonate with them? 
  • Content Pillars: The core topics you stick to that position you as an expert 
  • Content Formats: Blog posts, videos, stories, or a mix?
  • Content Calendar: A plan you can follow to ensure consistent content publishing

A content strategy gives you the “why” behind what you’re doing and helps you focus on what you need to create to get results rather than just posting content for the sake of it. 

Recommended:

Which brings us to… 

#2 Use a Content Calendar & Idea Library

Overwhelm happens when you don’t have a plan before you sit down to create content.

A content calendar and content idea library will help you be more consistent and with less stress because it holds space for your ideas and the content you need to execute during your work sessions.

A content idea library can be as simple as a Google spreadsheet or doc. and trust us when we say it’s a total game-changer. Rather than letting your brilliant “aha moments” rattle around in your brain where you’re likely to forget them, you have a place to capture and categorize them.

Our Google Sheets Content Planner (click here to grab it) goes a step further and lets you sort those ideas into the content buckets all small businesses need to be sharing. 

Having your content already planned out eliminates much of the stress in the process because all you need to do is focus on executing the posts – no creative block to worry about, and no wasted time scrambling for ideas. 

You’ll get into a state of flow faster where creativity is turbocharged and time seems to fly by because you’re getting so much done. ✨

#3 Content Batching: Create Content in Dedicated Time Chunks 

Speaking of getting into a state of flow…

Once your brain is able to focus on content creation and ideas start flowing, you want to stay in that zone for as long as possible while you’re still feelin’ it. This is “deep work” and it’s where you’ll be able to get exponentially more done in the same amount of time spent. 

It takes time to get into the zone, but once you’re there, you’re off to the races. 🏇

Content batching is a time-saving technique where you create multiple pieces of content in one focused session. 

  • First, set a goal for how frequently you want to publish.
  • Then, aim to create enough content in one sitting to give you a bit of runway in your schedule. 

For example, if I want to post 3 Instagram stories per week and I can create 18 stories in one batching session, I can schedule them to go out for six weeks in advance. 

Then, repeat that process with other types of content like Reels, blog posts, or emails in the next batching session. 

As you strike content off your list, the pressure you feel will be replaced with a sense of accomplishment, making it even easier for you to get into a state of flow for the next batching session. 

#4 Use a Social Media Content Scheduler 

Using a scheduling tool goes hand-in-hand with content batching because part of that process is to schedule your posts to be published automatically and in advance.

Automating as much as you possibly can means you’ll enjoy more days to not even worry about content. Think of your scheduler like an employee whose job it is to make sure your posts get published to the right channels at the right time while you’re focused on other things. 


There are lots of great social media scheduling tools out there like Buffer, Hootsuite, SmarterQueue, and Planoly that vary in their interface, features, and pricing. You’re sure to find one that fits your needs and budget. 

Our favorite these days and the one we use is Metricool (affiliate link) because it has everything you need for a really affordable price and is intuitive to figure out so you can just dive in and start using it.

We love to recommend it because you can have access to all the important features (with the exception of posting to LinkedIn) on their free plan and you may never need to upgrade unless you publish more than 50 posts per month or need access to enhanced analytics.

It’s free to try it out either way, so definitely check it out. 

#5 Avoid Context Switching – The Sneaky “Productivity Tax” You’re Already Paying

If you group similar tasks in your batching sessions – like focusing on content creation first before moving on to scheduling it – you avoid “context switching” which happens when you switch between different tasks or separate apps. 

This way of working is something we all do, but we don’t always realize the “productivity tax” we pay for it. That is: 

It can take several minutes to get back into a productive flow just by switching between different tools.

Imagine multiplying those minutes by the number of times you do switch back and forth every single day and it’s no wonder you feel overwhelmed. It costs you lost time, decreased focus, and increased mental strain (and even physical exhaustion!).

Constantly switching gears = no bueno. 😩So here are a few easy ways to reduce it it:

#1. Consolidate – If you find yourself switching between two similar apps that serve the same purpose, choose one. For example, if you’re checking messages on all the different social media platforms, look to see if your social media scheduler allows you to check and respond to messages for the apps you have connected to it. 

#2 Integrate – Explore integration options that exist with the apps you use. For example, using the app integration feature in Canva we can schedule our social media posts to Metricool directly from there without needing to launch Metricool. Similarly, if we’re working on a social media post in Notion, we have the MetriCool planner embedded into our page templates so it’s right there and handy.

This reduces the steps it takes to complete a task which helps you stay focused which helps you get more done in less time. 

So take an inventory of what apps you use and see what integrations are available. 

#3 Automate – We’re obsessed with finding new ways to automate what we’re doing. For example, setting up automated email sequences to welcome new subscribers or delivering a free gift to people who fill out a customer feedback survey. 

Check out Zapier to see what automations are available for the apps you’re already using!

#6 Ditch the Fluff: Choose Strategic Topics

Many creators fall into the trap of choosing topics they’re interested in without considering their audience, or spend tons of energy creating super valuable content that doesn’t match their audience’s needs or level of awareness. 

As an expert in your niche topics, it’s easy to forget what it feels like to be a novice.

Even if you know it’s something they need, if they don’t know they need it, they’ll just keep scrolling. It’s about meeting them where they are with topics that are relevant to their problems and desires today. 

Remember… 

Content creation efficiency isn’t just about “speed” or “productivity”. It’s about creating content that hits the target. 🎯 

When you take the time to understand your audience’s pain points, dreams, frustrations, and burning questions, and when you get clear about the ways your business helps them get what they want, creating content that breaks through the noise and gets their attention is much easier.

It takes a little extra work upfront, but it’s the best way to hit that bullseye predictably. 

👉When you know what your audience is thinking, you can respond with your content. 

👉When you know what questions they have, you can answer. 

To them, it’ll feel like you’re reading their minds and they’ll notice. 

Think about your the problems your business solves and the questions, problems, and limiting beliefs your audience has and store that information in a document you can reference when you’re generating topic ideas. 

We keep a spreadsheet like this for every product we sell so we can reconnect with the way our audience is feeling when writing copy. Getting into their minds and really empathizing with them goes a long way to creating content that sounds like you’re speaking directly to them like a friend. 

Click here to open up this example and view it in Google Sheets  
(Feel free to make a copy of it.) 

You can use ChatGPT to get audience insights to help you fill out your reference document – it’s for internal use only and AI is actually super helpful with tasks like this.

Once it’s done, it’s done, and you can use it over again to spark fresh ideas your audience will love.

Now let’s talk about…

The types of content you can ditch:

  • “Me-Centric” Content: It’s great to share personal stories, but it needs to be about you as it relates to them. Your audience doesn’t care about the terrible experience you had at your last dentist appointment if it’s not relevant to their lives in some way.  
  • Trend Chasing: If you can relate a current trend to your niche it may be worth doing, but chasing every fleeting trend is a recipe for exhaustion. Focus most of your efforts on evergreen content that stays valuable over time that you can repurpose and reshare. 
  • Creating content just for “content’s sake”: Every piece of content needs a clear goal. If you can’t articulate its purpose, it’s probably not worth creating. Always ask yourself, “What is it I want my audience to do after they read/watch this content?” and “What business objective does this content serve?” 

If your content doesn’t relate to the things you offer, or if it isn’t relevant to the audience you want to attract, ditch it. It will only confuse your existing audience and attract the wrong people who will never be interested in what you sell.

#7 Keep These Brainstorming Techniques in Your Back Pocket

You’ve taken the time to get clear about your audience needs – check! ✅
And you’re diligently capturing content ideas as you go in a content idea library – check! ✅

But there may still be days when inspiration dries up.

For times when you get really really really stuck for ideas, here are some strategies to keep in your backpocket and the #1 biggest mistake you want to avoid… 

Brainstorming Strategies to Spark Great Topic Ideas: 

  • Revisit Past Hits: Analyze your top-performing content. Can you expand on these themes or create spin-offs?
  • Dive into Your Data: Look at your analytics! What kind of content consistently performs well? What topics spark the most engagement? Use this data to identify winning themes and formats and make more similar content. Note: If you ever feel like a broken record leveraging the same topics over and over with different twists and formats… you’re doing it right. 😉
  • Be an Audience Question Detective: Find out what questions your audience is searching for by looking at the “people also asked” section on the Google results page or search your content topics on AnswerSocrates (it’s like AnswerThePublic when it was still free to use) to generate a list of related questions you can answer with your content.
  • Leverage Industry News: Get caught up on industry news, trends, or research. Share a statistic or the latest development and offer your unique perspective and insights.
  • Competitor Intel (The Ethical Way): It’s okay to peek at what your competitors are doing, but resist the urge to fall into a comparison trap. Instead, focus on what their audience is asking in the comments. This can spark ideas for content that addresses similar pain points but with your own unique spin.
  • Use AI as Your Brainstorming Buddy: Utilize AI writing assistants like ChatGPT to help you brainstorm content ideas. Feed it keywords or a central theme, and let it generate prompts or outlines to spark your creativity.

Supercharge Your Brainstorming Sessions:

  • Pomodoro Power: Use the Pomodoro Technique to combat creative slumps. Set a timer for focused 25-minute work sprints followed by short breaks or bookmark a tool like the Tomato Timer. 🍅⏲️This focused work style keeps your momentum going and helps you avoid getting overwhelmed. 
  • Freewriting Frenzy: Unleash your inner wordsmith with a freewriting session. Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and write down any content ideas that come to mind, no matter how strange or offbeat they seem. You might be surprised by the hidden gems that emerge from this free-flowing exercise.
  • Mind Mapping Magic:  Tap into the power of visual brainstorming with mind maps. Start with a central theme related to your audience’s needs, and branch out with keywords, subtopics, and potential content formats. This method helps you visually connect ideas and spark new content possibilities.

❌ What NOT to do: Get Social Media Ideas on Social Media

Hear me out….

The most counterproductive thing you can do is compare yourself to others and wind up in a social media shame spiral, so resist the urge to go out on social media looking for inspiration when you’re stuck. 

Instead, get inspiration from your competitors’ content on days when you’re not desperate to come up with ideas for your own content. 

And remember, your brand voice and unique perspective are what set you apart. You’ve got this!

#8 Stretch Your Existing Content Further 

Remember that awesome blog post you poured your heart and soul into? Don’t let it languish in the archives! Repurposing is your secret weapon for maximizing the reach of your content and squeezing every drop of value out of your content creation efforts.

Repurposing involves transforming your existing content into different formats for different platforms. For example, turning an email into a social media post or turning your text-based Instagram posts into short-form videos. 

By doing so as a matter of practice, you’ll: 

  • Reach a Wider Audience: By repurposing content, you can reach new audiences who might not have found your original piece. 
  • Save Time: Repurposing is a fantastic time-saver. You’ve already done the hard work of creating the core content, so transforming it into a different format takes a fraction of the time and effort.

Recommended:

📌Watch Sandra’s tutorial on YouTube for how to set up your own content repurposing system that’s easy and works!

📌Or check out our Content Calendar System. It comes with a repurposing bank for Google Sheets so you can easily store and access your best content, making it a breeze to adapt it for different platforms.

Refresh & Reshare Your Best Content 

Most people miss most of your content most of the time. Social media algorithms prioritize fresh content, and audiences are bombarded with information they mostly filter out. That’s why you need to reshare your top-performing content regularly, choosing pieces that best represent your brand.

By strategically refreshing and re-sharing your top-performing content, you can reach a whole new audience without starting from scratch. Think of it like dusting off a hidden treasure and putting it back on display.

Won’t my audience get annoyed seeing the same content again?

Not likely! Social media feeds move fast, and chances are, a significant portion of your audience missed it the first time around. By refreshing elements like the headline, graphics, or lead-in hook, you can pique their curiosity and entice them to engage.

How to Refresh & Recycle Like a Pro:

  • Switch up your graphic: Visuals are key to stopping the scroll. Swap out the original image or video with something new and eye-catching that complements your content.
  • Change up the hook: The first sentence is crucial. Rephrase your lead-in hook to pique curiosity and entice readers to dive deeper. Sometimes just taking a new angle captures the attention of a whole new audience!
  • Revamp the headline: Use a different angle to grab attention.
  • Tweak Subject Lines: For email content, refresh your subject line to spark interest. Highlight a new benefit or use a question format to encourage opens.

Remember, you’re not reinventing the wheel, you’re just giving it a fresh spin!

#9 Use AI Tools Strategically (No Rabbit Holes!)

Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and WordTune (Chrome browser extension) are powerful sidekicks in the content creation process if you know how to use them strategically.

They’re great for things like brainstorming topics, suggesting multiple headlines to see which one grabs your attention the most, and getting past stuck points when a turn of phrase is on the tip of your tongue.

But it’s important to remember content creation is a human endeavor at its core. 

⚠️You can very easily end up down the rabbit hole spending even more time trying to get it to produce something that sounds like you than had you just written it yourself. 

While AI is a helpful tool, you still know your brand, voice, and audience best.

Recommended:

📌To learn our 3-step method for using ChatGPT to get predictably amazing first drafts in seconds, check out The Unconventional Way to Use ChatGPT for Social Media 

#10 Use Content Templates

Pre-written content templates for social media captions, blog posts, and emails are your secret weapon for jumpstarting your creative process. 

What are content templates?

They’re pre-written pieces of content based on proven content formats, types, and categories for building awareness, earning trust, and getting conversions. You can find templates for social media captions, video scripts, blog posts, email promotions, value emails, email sequences – you name it! 

Content templates prompt you to fill in the details about your brand, offerings, and audience rather than starting from scratch. 

In other words, content templates act as a launching pad for your own creativity, providing a framework to ensure you cover key points relevant to your audience and niche.  

If you get stuck personalizing the templates for your brand? No worries! We recommend checking out our ChatGPT tutorial which demonstrates how you can use content templates as “AI prompts on steroids.”  

But don’t take our word for it… 

Starting with a strong foundation (the template) and then adding your personal touch (using ChatGPT if you want to) is our favorite way to leapfrog over the uncomfortable blank page and start with a solid rough draft ready for a quick polish before publishing.

If you want to give this a try, here’s a breakdown of the ConversionMinded content templates we offer: 

  • Social Media Posts: Inside our Content Calendar System, you’ll have a content library featuring a whopping 730 pre-written captions categorized into 6 different content buckets relevant for all businesses. These captions are perfect for streamlining your social media batching sessions.
  • Marketing Emails: Activate Your List provides a system of pre-written broadcast emails based on those same 6 essential content categories. This ensures you have a steady stream of nurturing content to cultivate your audience and turn them into loyal customers. Our Monetize Your List Seasonal Sales Promo Builder streamlines crafting high-performing email campaigns for seasonal promotions.
  • Blog Posts: The Blog Post Vault is a treasure trove of 52 blog post templates categorized into 3 stages: Foundation, Authority, and Domination. Simply choose your topic, and the templates guide you through proven post formulas with clear prompts to follow.

#11 Keep a Content List & “Copy Snippet Vault”

Resharing your best content is a great way to stay visible, get more reach with content you’ve already created, and stay consistent, but you still have to write the copy to promote it… 

  • Writing emails to promote blog posts
  • Creating social media captions to promote freebies 
  • Writing pin descriptions for fresh pins
  • And so on…

It can be a time-consuming hassle just to keep track of it all. But leveraging copy you’ve already written for your evergreen content frees up precious hours!

We recommend maintaining a list of all your evergreen content URLs and keeping a vault of copy snippets related to that content. 

Rather than starting from scratch, you can use things you’ve written in the past as a starting point to drive traffic to your landing pages.  

What You Need:

  • A trusty spreadsheet
  • A few minutes of your time

Step 1: Create Your Content List in a Spreadsheet

Think of your spreadsheet as a one-stop shop for all your content. List out each piece of content you have, categorized by type:

  • Blog Posts
  • YouTube Videos
  • Freebies
  • Products

Then, link to your landing pages for each of these right in the spreadsheet for handy access to the URLs you want to be sharing over and over again. 

Step 2: Build Your Copy Snippet Vault

For every piece of content on your list, you want to create a link to a separate document. 

(If you’re a Notion user, you can set this up as a database and create an entry for each piece of content with a property for your URL. Then, you can store copy snippets in the page that’s automatically generated for each entry.) 

This document (or page) will store things like:

  • Metal descriptions
  • Emails you’ve written about this content 
  • Social media captions you’ve written about this content
  • Ad copy
  • Pinterest Descriptions
  • And so on… 

Step 3: Use previous content you’ve written to write new copy: 

Now when you need to promote existing content, you never have to start from scratch. Just grab something you’ve already written and reformat it. 

You can even use your copy snippets as a way to train ChatGPT what your content is about and ask it to help you turn it into a new piece of content. For example: “Turn this email into a social media caption [paste email copy]” 


Not only does this save you oodles of time never needing to start from scratch, it streamlines your workflow making it much less stressful. 

That’s a wrap!

Phew! We’ve tackled the content overwhelm beast head-on, and we hope you’ve found inspiration to help you transform content creation into a process you can look forward to and one that fuels your business growth. 

May you have many more days when inspiration flows freely and fewer days when the well runs dry! 

Before you go, here are a few of the blog posts, freebies, and products mentioned in this post and a few more we think you’ll find helpful:

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An Unconventional Way to Use ChatGPT for Social Media Posts

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First, the bad news: If you’re thinking about using ChatGPT to generate social media posts so you can copy and paste them into Instagram and call it good, trust me when I say you’re setting yourself up for massive frustration – not only with ChatGPT, but with your results on social media.

The truth is, as of yet there is no “magic prompt” out there that can make this process truly plug-and-play. 

Now don’t get me wrong, ChatGPT is a powerful tool and using it is a game changer that can help you create amazing content faster and easier, but most people are using it in a way that yields less-than-desirable results…

Using ChatGPT to Create Content the Hard Way

The problem with expecting it to “do your homework for you” is that your target audience can spot ChatGPT-generated content a mile away by now. 

Studies have shown that humans can predictably detect ai-generated content more than half of the time and while ChatGTP generates human-like text, it’s not authentically human. There’s just a little something-something missing that it isn’t able to capture yet and it’s why ai-detection tools can tell you whether your content is human text.

At the very least, you’ll want to spend time putting your captions into your own tone of voice when using it for something your audience will read like an instagram caption.

Even more important: AI tools aren’t responsible for your social media strategy. It’s still up to you to know why you’re posting this or that and how it relates to your customer’s journey. ChatGPT can only follow your instructions and if you’re not careful, you might wind up creating content that doesn’t support your business goals.

Most small business owners can’t afford the luxury of hiring a social media manager to figure all of that out for them, so if you’re creating your own content, save yourself a lot of trial and error by following best practices using a content plan that’s already laid out for you in a social media content calendar like this one. 

It’s when you know which types of social media posts you need in order to guide people from “just browsing” to buying that creating content for social media starts to really pay off. 

But ChatGPT doesn’t consider any of those things when you’re just prompting it to create a social media post for you. It’s like throwing spaghetti on a wall and hoping something sticks. 

And even with the best social media prompts (I think I’ve tried them all by now!), ChatGPT can easily go down bizarre rabbit holes and waste tons of your time before failing to deliver what you need. 

If after a ChatGPT session you feel like it would have been faster/easier/better to write it from scratch, it’s a bit of a false economy.

Now the good news…

What we’re going to do today is take a bit of an unconventional approach to using ChatGPT to level up your social media game by using a strategy most social media marketers aren’t telling you about…

This is a chat gpt technique we’ve been using consistently for the better part of a year with predictable, time-saving, and quality results.

We’re talking “WOW, this is so much better than I expected!” results. 

So for now, forget about finding a specific chat gpt prompt that’ll “finally work” and take a look at how we’re… 

#1 Use ChatGPT in combination with Caption Templates

If you’re looking to speed up content creation for social media (and who isn’t!), the biggest secret is to never start from a blank page. 

It’s that blank page of doom that really gets you when you sit down to create content – trying to come up with an idea out of thin air and then finding the right words to express it … 

Before you know it, half your morning is already over. 

Caption templates, on the other hand, are a starting place. They help you leapfrog over that uncomfortable beginning and get right into the process.

Specifically, caption templates that are written by humans who

  1. Understand the customer journey and what you need to be sharing
  2. Know how to properly structure a post so it keeps your audience’s attention, and
  3. Prompt you to share insights and stories your audience needs to hear

This not only saves you time, but it helps you to get results from your social media content. 

Sure, you still have a bit of manual work to do to adapt them for your niche, but this is where ChatGPT really shines. Caption templates can be used as ChatGPT templates. 

By providing ChatGPT with a caption template instead of a prompt, you’re less likely to get results that sound like a robot – requiring you to either edit the heck out of them or spend a bunch of time fighting with ChatGPT to get it to sound like something you’d say.   

Together, caption templates and ChatGPT are a powerful combination!  

Think of it this way… 

ChatGPT is a helping hand for taking human-written templates and turning them into engaging posts that are relevant for your niche topics and unique-to-you.

By the way, you can get 885 human-written caption templates inside the Content Calendar System all planned out with the perfect mix of content all businesses need to be sharing for 2 full years and for one low lifetime price.

How to use ChatGPT with Caption Templates

The prompts you’ll need to execute this method works in three steps:

STEP 1: First, provide ChatGPT with the caption template and then ask it what it needs to know (about you, your topic, your business, your audience, etc.) in order to customize it for your niche.

STEP 2: Answer its questions and provide it with relevant information.  Skip over anything that’s not relevant or if you’re struggling to provide an answer. Don’t worry about grammar or perfection.

STEP 3: ChatGPT will then generate a customized caption for you that will work for your specific niche and all you need to do from there is tweak it and post it to social media. 

Let’s do an example from the Content Calendar System so you can see this in action! We’ll use this caption from the “Connect” bucket: 

Copy & Paste Caption Template

What if I told you I never tried to be an expert in [topic], just a good problem solver? And because I love to learn everything I can about [topic], it just so happens I’ve become pretty good at [helping people achieve X outcome].The first time I realized that was when [share how you discovered you were an expert]. If you have any questions about [topic], I’ll be here.

The words in bolded brackets are your writing prompts where you fill in information relevant to your niche. But ChatGPT is going to help us with that!

We’ll use this prompt:

ChatGPT Caption Template Customization Prompt #1

I need to customize this instagram caption template for my niche. What do you need to know/what questions do you need to ask me in order for you to be able to help me write it? [paste CCS caption template]

Now you’ll answer its questions and it will customize the caption template for you.

The reason why this is so helpful is that rather than prompting ChatGPT, you’re giving it a starting point so it can prompt you to provide it what it needs to make a social media post that’s relevant for your brand. 

The cool thing is, the more you do this, the easier and faster it will get if you store your responses in a “seed text document” for future chat sessions. (We’re going to go into more details on this in the next section so stay tuned.) 

Back to the example… 

Let’s say you’re in the fitness and nutrition niche and your responses to ChatGPT’s questions look like this: 

  • Niche/Topic: Fitness and Nutrition
  • Outcome: Helping people achieve their weight loss goals and lead a healthier lifestyle.
  • Personal Story: “The first time I realized I was an expert at helping people achieve their weight loss goals was when I lost 50 pounds myself. I experienced firsthand the challenges and triumphs, and I knew I could use my experience to guide others.”
  • Keywords: Weight loss, healthy living, fitness
  • Tone/Style: Motivational and supportive
  • Call to Action: “If you’re on your own weight loss journey and have questions or need guidance, feel free to reach out. I’m here to help you achieve your goals!”
  • Highlight: Your love for healthy cooking, workout routines, and nutrition tips.

Let’s paste those into ChatGPT and take a look at the resulting caption: 

Pretty cool, right? It sounds human rather than stiff and robotic and your caption template is adapted without you needing to even come up with creative ideas for what to say.

And, it’s following a proven content strategy. “Connect” content is one of the six buckets all small businesses need to be sharing and includes personal stories your audience needs to hear in order to build up your know/like/trust factor (that leads to sales). 

Further reading: For more information about the other types of content you need, check out our Using Content Pillars for Social Media post.

If it’s not 100% perfect at this point, keep in mind this entire process takes only a few seconds. The result is predictably a pretty solid rough draft and tweaking it is much faster than starting with the blank page of doom! 

Now let’s do something completely different and use as our example a product-based business… 

  • Niche/Topic: Eco-friendly and sustainable home products
  • Outcome: Helping people transition to a more sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle by offering a range of products that reduce environmental impact and promote green living.
  • Personal Story: “My journey to becoming an expert in sustainable home products started when I noticed the overwhelming amount of plastic waste in our daily lives. I felt a strong urge to make a difference, and that led me to source and create products that could help others reduce their ecological footprint.”
  • Keywords: Eco-friendly, sustainable, green living
  • Tone/Style: Professional and educational, focusing on the importance of sustainability.
  • Call to Action: “Explore our range of eco-friendly home products to take the first step towards a greener lifestyle. Visit our website for more information and to make a positive impact on the environment.”
  • Highlight: The range of products, their eco-friendly features, and the commitment to a more sustainable future.

As a reminder, we’re on step 2 so we just need to submit these responses to ChatGPT… 

Two completely different niches, two completely different results. Isn’t that awesome?

Before we move on: Notice that it added some relevant hashtags there at the end of the post. Be advised that ChatGPT doesn’t do a very good job at hashtags despite what it may tell you, so you always want to look them up by searching for them on Instagram to see if there’s an audience for those hashtags. Chances are you’ll want to swap them out or add your own. 

Further reading: You can get more free copy and paste captions just like this over in this blog post if you want to give this “1, 2, 3 method” a try today! 

Tweaking your final caption and making it “yours”

At this point you might be wondering if it’s okay to have a social media post that sounds similar to someone else’s post… I wondered about that too in the beginning, but I’ve been using the Content Calendar System caption templates for 2 years now and our social media content consistently generates engagement, leads, and sales. 

First, the chances that anyone will notice a similarity are astronomical.

Secondly, remember that the entire point of this exercise is to help you stop wasting time spinning your wheels feeling stuck on what to post and what to say. Editing and tweaking is exponentially faster than writing from scratch and you can do that to your heart’s delight.

You can even use a tool like WordTune to help you create variations for your draft captions. ChatGTP is terrible at fine-tuning and it starts to lose the plot, but AI tools like WordTune are designed to help you perfect your copy one line or one paragraph at a time. 

Use ChatGPT to generate topic ideas

There’s one more prompt you’ll need in your toolkit for those times when ChatGPT asks you to provide a particular topic before it can adapt your caption template. What if you don’t have a topic? 

In this scenario you’re going to use ChatGPT to help you generate relevant content ideas for your post!

ChatGPT Caption Template Customization Prompt #2. 

I need some ideas for how to customize this social media caption template for my niche, what do you need to know to help me create a list of possible topics? [paste CCS caption template]

This time let’s use an example prompt from the “EDUCATE” bucket…

ChatGPT Caption Template Customization Prompt #2

Sometimes the truth is hard to hear. 👀 Achieving [goal] doesn’t happen by magic. It takes hard work and results don’t happen overnight. They’re a product of pushing yourself every single day. 💪 So what exactly does it take to do [goal]? Hint: it’s all about your mindset. 🙌 [Insert three shifts they can make]. Remember, I’m here to help you see it through! 🌟

This time I’m feeling lazy so I’m not even going to answer all the possible questions, I’m just going to tell it about our niche and our target customer and see what happens… 

In this scenario, it generated 5 unique ideas I can use as “hooks” I can use to customize the caption template that are appropriate for my niche and target customer. 

A lot of the time, that’s all I need and then I’m off to the races and can quickly finish customizing the caption template. Or, we can prompt ChatGPT to finish it for us…

I’m happy with its suggestions, so what I would do at this point is just copy and paste it into a Google doc or my social media scheduler and tweak it so it sounds like me… and that’s it!

Easy as 1, 2, 3!

Hopefully these examples give you a glimpse of how much smoother the process goes when you’re using caption templates with ChatGPT instead of taking your chances with random prompts. 

You may still need to tweak your final caption in your own writing style for best results, but you would need far more editing if you weren’t using human-written templates as a starting place. 

The final result sounds authentic, and it’s unique to you because you’re directing the substance of the post, but you’ll avoid sounding like you’re just posting generic ai-generated content.  

Now let’s set you up to streamline your workflow even more and circle back to the “seed text document” technique I mentioned earlier… 

#2 Keep a Seed Text Document for a Super Fast ChatGPT Workflow 

As I mentioned earlier, the above process will go faster the more you do it if you store your responses to ChatGPT’s questions in a seed text document. So let’s start by defining…

What is a Seed Text Document?

A seed text document contains text snippets about your brand, your target audience, content guidelines, the topics you stay focused on, the products and services you sell and so on. 

This information can be copied and pasted into ChatGPT to quickly train it on the information it needs in order to help you create content that’s relevant to your business. Think of it like a creative brief that AI can use to produce content tailored to meet the unique voice and needs of your brand.

Why you should maintain a seed text document if you use ChatGTP for content creation:

Consistency: The seed text document helps you articulate your brand’s voice, tone, and values so all content aligns with your brand identity across all social media platforms.

Efficiency: Storing your brand information and audience insights in a seed text document enables ChatGPT to quickly generate content without the need for repeated explanations or references.

Targeted Content: By storing demographics, interests, and pain points in your seed text document, ChatGPT can create content that resonates with your target audience, leading to higher engagement and conversions.

What goes in a Seed Text Document?

This is the part where you may start to groan because it feels like homework (or maybe that’s just me?). But you don’t have to do this all at once! 

The important thing is to have a document handy so you can store snippets of text that you know you’ll need to repeat again when using ChatGPT.

Before we get into the nitty gritty, grab our free Seed Text Document Template here. 

Information about Your Niche: You’ll want to describe your business generally – what you sell, who you sell to, what industry you’re in, etc.

Brand Guidelines: You’ll also want to store things like your brand’s mission, values, unique selling points, your brand’s personality, and brand voice.

Audience Insights: Things like demographics, interests, problems, limiting beliefs and objections your audience has. The better you understand your audience, the more compelling and relatable your content will be.

Content Guidelines: Specify any content guidelines you have. For instance, if you have a list of keywords you’d like to include in your posts, or specific topics you focus on, include them in your seed text document. 

Previous Successful Content: If you have existing content that has performed well on social media, include examples in your seed text document. This can help ChatGPT understand the style and tone of content that resonates with your audience.

And here’s something cool: you can use ChatGPT to help you create these snippets of text! It can take your rough thoughts and polish them up and even help you get clarity about your brand. 

Nobody but you and ChatGPT is going to see this stuff so it doesn’t need to be perfect. This is an “organic document” that will grow and become more useful over time as you add more things to it. 

Now you’ve got a pretty solid method for creating authentic, human-sounding content and a way to make the process lightening fast!

That’s a wrap!

Now you have a way to use ChatGPT to create social media content faster and easier without sounding like everyone else copying & pasting directly from ChatGPT.

With the help of ChatGPT and caption templates, you can create effective posts for all the various social media platforms to attract potential customers and reach a wider audience. In this post we’ve focused on Instagram posts because that’s our social media “home base,” but we also repurpose them as  Facebook posts and schedule them at the same time using Metricool. (affiliate link)

And you can bet your bottom dollar you’ll be able to work just as fast but with a better outcome!

We’re all just learning the ropes incorporating ChatGPT in our workflow, but I hope this has inspired you to think outside the box to find better ways to use ChatGPT to enhance social media presence – authentically and strategically.

While ChatGPT may not be “quite there yet” in terms of automatically generating the perfect social media posts, it’s still an incredibly valuable tool you can use for various tasks to help you make your content creation process much easier and more effective. 

And that it’s possible to use content “helpers” like caption templates and AI together to create original content that sounds like you and helps you get your brand message out there.

I wish you much success with your social media efforts! Before you go, be sure to check out our copy & paste caption templates to test drive the this technique today, and grab a copy of our ChatGPT Seed Text Template below.

You might also enjoy:

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FREE Instagram Captions to Copy & Paste For Your Business

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Have you ever stared at a blank screen for hours, wondering what to post on social media? Or struggled to come up with great Instagram captions in order to get more engagement and attract customers for your small business? 

If so, then you’ve come to the right place! Because today we’re going to hook you up with the best Instagram captions that work for any small business – just copy and paste them into the ol’ Instagram app and hit publish! 

These are totally plug-and-play and take only a few minutes to customize to create perfect instagram posts for your ideal audience.

By the way, these captions are straight out of our signature content program, the Content Calendar System where we’ve planned out two years of content with daily copy and paste caption templates just like the ones we’re about to share with you! 

The best part is that there’s nothing random about these captions, they’re different from those generic lists of content ideas where you have to sort through tons of ideas trying to figure out why you should be sharing this or that and how it’s going to help you build your business. 

Good instagram captions always start with strategy, and that’s why the following caption templates are sorted into our “6-Bucket content system.” 

Each bucket plays a role in helping you guide your audience through the buyer journey (total internet stranger all the way to customer!) and the most important thing to keep in mind is you need to share a variety of different types of Instagram posts.

These 6 content buckets represent the types of content that every business needs to share because they work together to reach people at all stages of awareness. They are:

  1. INSPIRE: Aspirational post captions to encourage likes and shares and helps you get more reach 
  2. ASK: Engaging questions that encourage instagram comments
  3. CONNECT: Stories that build your know/like/trust factor (that leads to sales!) 
  4. EDUCATE: Authority-building posts that build trust and credibility around niche topics
  5. EVERGREEN: Timeless content you need to share on a recurring basis to attract customers
  6. CONVERT: Information about your products and services and encourage people to take action

When you think of it like a timeline and how your audience is experiencing your content, it looks something like this… 

I’ve organized the following copy & paste caption templates into these six buckets so not only can you create the perfect Instagram caption for your small business TODAY, as you read through these different sections you’ll begin to see this system in action so you’re always creating the best IG captions in order increase your engagement, build your following, and generate leads and sales. 

For each of the six buckets I’ll be sharing three captions you can copy and paste and use for your own Instagram account beginning with the first bucket – INSPIRE.

Content Bucket #1: INSPIRE


WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED TO SHARE ‘INSPIRE’ CONTENT

People come to social media to get inspired, so this is a fun one! This bucket is where you can share beautiful photos and inspirational Instagram quotes paired with cool captions that inspire and motivate your audience. 

We all need pep talks to build our confidence and keep going, and this type of content gets people commenting and liking your posts, which the algorithms love becauae engagement is a signal that people like your content.

You can even repurpose these inspirational quotes as engaging an Instagram story – just customize your graphic to the right size using a tool like Canva. 

Copy & Paste Caption Template #1 – You Are Limitless

Imagine no limitations on what you can be, have, or do.’ – Brian Tracy. Don’t wait for someone or something to hand your dream to you or give you permission.Instead, look in the mirror and give yourself permission. Ask yourself what it’s going to take to be successful. You have all the answers you need. You are limitless!

Copy & Paste Caption Template #2 – Forget Your Phone

3 REASONS TO FORGET YOUR PHONE MORE OFTEN:  1) You’ll feel better when you’re unplugged.2) Phones take you away from real life and your environment. 3) You’ll create more connections with people in the outdoors, which we all need. When was the last time you completely forgot to look at your phone?

Copy & Paste Caption Template #3 – Good Things Come to Those Who Work

No dream is too big or unattainable. No problem is too big that can’t be solved. You have the power and are the only one standing in the way of you reaching your dreams.
That means you have limitless potential. Whatever you want to create in your life, you can do it. Just make sure you start SOON!!

Pro-tip! Use relevant hashtags strategically to increase the discoverability of your posts and reach a wider audience such as #MotivationMonday and #businessinspiration

That’s all we have from the Inspire bucket today! But there are lots more content ideas like these in our Content Calendar System.

Content Bucket #2: ASK

WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED TO SHARE ‘ASK’ CONTENT

The second content bucket I am sharing today is called Ask. Think of content that comes from the Ask bucket as “icebreaker content”. This is where you’re going to be asking your audience questions and getting them to engage with you and interact with your posts.  The beautiful thing about “ask” captions is that engagement and interaction show algorithms that people love your content – so they’re going to show it to more people.

The first piece of content is an icebreaker question about good habits. Just copy and paste the following template into a social media of choice like Facebook or Instagram – something that doesn’t have a character limit like Twitter. Don’t forget to insert your own comment into the brackets!

Copy & Paste Caption Template #4 – Good habits

Quick question for you guys… What good habits have you been slacking on lately? No judgments here, it happens! Maybe you’ve been procrastinating, making excuses, or just plain not doing what you should be doing. I hear you! I used [to positive habit you’ve let go]. This week, I’m getting back to it! Let me know in the comments what you want to get back to. I’m here to cheer you on and help you do it!

The second idea in this set of social media content ideas for small businesses is about the comfort zone. Another icebreaker for easy engagement!

Copy & Paste Caption Template #5 – Comfort Zone

The last time I stepped out of my comfort zone was…[describe what you did, how you felt, and a lesson you learned that stuck with you]. Is it time to step out of your comfort zone again? Remember, if it doesn’t scare you – you won’t grow! What’s one thing you know would change everything if you just DID IT?!!

The third idea encourages followers to look back at last year. People love to reminisce, and nostalgia is powerful. Ask your followers what they were doing a year ago at this time, and share the same information yourself!

Copy & Paste Caption Template #6 – A Look Back to Yesteryear

WOW, can you believe how FAST time flies? Just last year, I was [describe what you were doing related to your niche]. Now I’m [share what’s changed and why you’re grateful]. Everything is possible when you put in the work! What’s changed for you this year?

Pro-tip! Don’t forget to use emojis to help you set the tone of your brand voice and break up your Instagram text with visuals.

That’s content bucket number two!

Content Bucket #3: CONNECT

WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED TO SHARE ‘CONNECT’ CONTENT

That leads us right to bucket number three – Connect. This is where great captions will build your know/like/trust factor because you’re relating to them as a real human being with flaws and struggles. You’re sharing your goals and your journey, creating a network of good friends on social media who relate to your experiences.

When you share from the Connect bucket, you’re essentially warming people up to you and your business.The best thing about these is they’re equally perfect for people in your audience who are completely unaware of you as well as your best friends and brand loyal customers too — we all love relatable stories! 

Copy & Paste Caption Template #7 – Shout out to Followers

Thank you for being here. We are [X days, months, years, and x amount of followers] strong. Thanks for making the connection!I truly think it’s wonderful that we can connect and grow and learn from each other. And I hope that my feed can bring you a smile or some inspo as I share my [life and journey/tips and stories] with you!

Copy & Paste Caption Template #8 – Expert in my Niche

What if I told you I never tried to be an expert in [topic], just a good problem solver? And because I love to learn everything I can about [topic], it just so happens I’ve become pretty good at [helping people achieve X outcome].The first time I realized that was when [share how you discovered you were an expert]. If you have any questions about [topic], I’ll be here.

Copy & Paste Caption Template #9 – Flaws

Most people don’t know this about me, but I am secretly [share a flaw or weakness you have]. And I used to hate that about myself! But you know what? I think that’s been the secret to my success. [Share why your flaws helped you get where you are today]. What’s your secret flaw that most people don’t know about? If you need help turning it into a superpower, I’m here.

Connecting with your audience means you’re building a strong following of Instagram followers. Building your know/like/trust factor with content from the Connect bucket is an important part of building customer relationships – which can also improve customer retention. 

Pro-tip! When copying and pasting your captions into Instagram, don’t forget to use line breaks. Whether you’re sharing heartfelt stories or sassy Instagram captions, line breaks help maintain a clean and visually appealing format. To add a line break on most social media platforms, simply press the ‘Return’ or ‘Enter’ key twice.

Bucket #4: EDUCATE

WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED TO SHARE ‘EDUCATE’ CONTENT

The next bucket is bucket number 4, and that’s Educate. This is teaching content. It’s where you’re helping your audience solve a problem or take the next step with something they’re struggling with. And in the process, you’re really sharing your expertise and becoming a go-to resource in your niche, which is continuing to warm them up to your business and what you do. 

Copy & Paste Caption Template #10 – A Better Way to Achieve A Specific Result

Let’s talk about [topic]. 🙄 Many people believe the only way to [achieve X outcome] is to [insert a common approach].But they’re completely wrong. Here’s why: 👆 [Insert three reasons]. For years now, I’ve been [getting the result they want] by [insert your unique strategy]. And guess what? You can too!Ask me about it in the comments. 💬

Copy & Paste Caption Template #11 – 3 Easy Habits to Achieve X

Easy everyday habits you can foster right now 👏 We all want to achieve [ niche topic ], right? Well, here’s the secret – all it takes is a complete switch of your daily habits! For me, these habits were the crucial stepping stones I needed to find success today: 🌟 [ Habit #1 ] 🌟 [ Habit #2 ] 🌟 [ Habit #3 ] To quote Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Are you ready to switch up your daily routine? 👀

Copy & Paste Caption Template #12 – Accountability

Sometimes the truth is hard to hear. 👀 Achieving [goal] doesn’t happen by magic. It takes hard work and results don’t happen overnight. They’re a product of pushing yourself every single day. 💪 So what exactly does it take to do [goal]? Hint: it’s all about your mindset. 🙌 [Insert three shifts they can make]. Remember, I’m here to help you see it through! 🌟

Sharing from the Educate bucket also builds your authority on your chosen topic, positioning yourself as an expert in your niche and building trust factor. Keep in mind that visual content aids in understanding so try to find ways to incorporate infographics, charts, and captivating Instagram photos to help convey educational information effectively.

Pro-tip! With educate posts, add bullet points to list ideas or steps to help break up your copy and make it more visual so it’s easy to skim and scan.

Content Bucket #5: EVERGREEN

WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED TO SHARE ‘EVERGREEN’ CONTENT

Evergreen is recurring content – which is content that you can share at any time. This content is meant to drive traffic to your website, your blog posts, your freebies, videos, and anything that you’re posting elsewhere. 

You can also share your favorite caption from the past as part of your Evergreen content strategy to keep your audience engaged and get more exposure on content you’ve already created. 

Plus, you can share any weekly insights, or those “aha!” moments you have along the way…reintroduce yourself to your community. 

Essentially, what you’re doing is staying connected to your audience by sharing small moments along the way, week to week, month to month.

Copy & Paste Caption Template #13 – Milestones

Woo! I did it. Been working hard on [X], and I’m finally starting to see results![Share your win] Time to check in on your [niche topic] goals!Are you powering through, or have you been slipping lately? DM me if you need help getting [the thing they want to achieve] back on track!

Copy & Paste Caption Template #14 – Favorite Tools and Resources

There are so many tools out there to help with [topic]. And it’s super easy to feel overwhelmed! So I thought I’d share my current must-haves that I’m using all the time and recommending to my customers: [Share 3-5 tools you use and why.]What tools are you using every day? Remember, start slow… you don’t need a gazillion tools, just the right ones!

Copy & Paste Caption Template #15 – Re-introduce Yourself

It’s time we got to know each other, don’t you think? 👋 I see a lot of lovely new faces here lately. So, allow me to reintroduce myself: My name is [ Name ] and I [ insert job mission – e.g., help clients supercharge their business with powerful copywriting ]. 😁 As much as [ niche ] is my passion, it’s not what I do 24/7. In my spare time, you’ll find me: ✨ [ Activity #1 – e.g., hanging with friends and family ]. [ expand – e.g., this helps me to relax and recharge ]. ✨ [ Activity #2 – attending gym classes ]. [ expand ]. ✨ [ Activity #3 – visiting the theater ]. [ expand ]. Tell me about you in the comments below and let’s connect 🤩💭

Bucket #6: CONVERT

WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED TO SHARE ‘CONVERT’ CONTENT

That brings us right to bucket number 6, which is Convert. This is your promotional content. By now, you have loads of other kinds of posts. They’re working hard to grow your account, build that relationship with your followers, and help them make some quick wins. You definitely want to throw promotional content in the mix so they know what you offer. 

It’s easy to assume that our followers already know what we offer, but chances are that they don’t – especially if you’re not using this type of post often. This type of content makes them aware of your products and services and what you have to offer and helps you generate those leads and sales. 

Copy & Paste Caption Template #16 – Here’s How I Can Help

Do you have a plan for [achieving X]? You need a strategy fast! One that will help you get all the way to [a huge milestone]. How relieved would you feel knowing you had a [step-by-step roadmap]? In my program, you’ll get [explain your offer, what’s included, and what it will help them do]. Link in bio to learn more.

Copy & Paste Caption Template #17 – Customer Testimonial

Nothing makes me happier than seeing messages like this from my amazing [product or service name] customers… “[Insert your best testimonial]” High five, [@name]! You made my day.☀️ P.S. – Want to know how you can get results like this too? Head over to my website for more info. Website.com

Copy & Paste Caption Template #18 – Getting out of Your Comfort Zone

What if we all step out of our comfort zone and do something really different that could alter the way we approach life/business? ⁠ ⁠ If you want to [reach X goal, do this]. ⁠ If you want to [reach Y goal, do this]. ⁠ ⁠ If you want to [achieve a really big outcome that you provide], send me a DM. ⁠ The best time to make your dreams come true is today. You may not reach the stars in a day but you’ll be one step closer to them. Heck, you may get close enough to see them sparkle!

We share loads more Promotional social media content ideas in our Content Calendar System – you should check it out! It’s important to share from a mixture of all the buckets in order to have a really well-rounded content strategy.

That’s it for the 6 buckets! These templates will make it easy for you to copy Instagram captions that align with your content strategy and engage your audience effectively.

Caption All Your Social Media Posts Using the 6-Bucket Strategy

So far, I’ve shared 18 expanded content ideas with copy and paste caption templates. If there’s anything you take away from this post, I hope you can see the strategy that’s really baked into these ideas by filling up each of the buckets you need to grow your business on social media. 

These 6 Content Buckets are designed to correspond with all phases of the customer journey and guide your audience through different stages of awareness…

By following the 6-bucket strategy, not only are you growing your following and attracting your audience, but you’re warming them up to your business and guiding them on a journey to become a customer

The journey begins with content designed to attract your audience and boost engagement.

Then, you’re bringing them a little bit deeper: connecting with them on a personal level and earning their trust by sharing your expertise.

Taking them further on the journey, you’ll invite them to take action in order to convert your followers into leads and customers. Rather than coming across as “salesy,” it will feel completely natural and authentic — you’re comfortable and relaxed and just letting them know how you can help, who you’ve helped before, and what you have to offer. 

With your Evergreen content, you’re continuing to build a relationship, sharing your new ideas, new discoveries, and new content that you’ve created. You’re driving traffic to your business and essentially keeping everything you’ve built thus far going and growing!

Having ideas at your fingertips and copy and paste captions will save you massive amounts of time, but just make sure you’re using the 6-bucket content strategy I shared with you today to make sure your social media posts attract the right audience to your content, warm them up to your business, and close the sale. 

The other thing I hope you’re taking away from this post is that consistency is key on social media. Just like anything else, you have to show up regularly to get those results. 

If you find that difficult, you’re not the only one! Tons of small business owners are regularly staring at their phones, wondering what to post on Instagram or what to post on Facebook. 

The easiest way to skip over being stuck on what to post is to have a plan with simple steps to follow ready in advance…

You need content ideas just like this, pre-planned, ready to go, and a way to quickly pull together your content for the entire month in just a few hours so when you’re ready to create your Instagram content, all you need to do is open Instagram and use the ideas you’ve prepared.

I have good news – that’s exactly what’s inside our Content Calendar System.

The Content Calendar System (CCS)

CCS is a great way to show up regularly every day without stress and without overwhelm because you’ll have loads more ideas and captions just like this already planned out for you in a two-year content calendar. 

Rather than taking your chances with an AI-powered Instagram caption generator or pulling from a random list of ideas you find online, CCS is a proven system used by thousands of small businesses just like yours to get results on social media.

You’ll be able to use our daily templates to create new Instagram captions for your posts following the same 6-bucket content strategy we’ve shared with you today. 

All you have to do is grab your caption, tweak it, grab your graphic, and post it. So you’re literally done and done! Never rack your brain for Instagram content ideas again…just shake up your strategy with CCS! 

We really want to save you time and stress creating content so you can show up confidently and super excited about what you’re sharing. 

Remember, the only thing stopping people from showing up on social media the way they want is lack of confidence in their strategy and lack of time. The Content Calendar System solves both. Don’t forget to check it out!

As always, thank you so much for reading, and I will see you next time!

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Content Pillars for Social Media: Complete Guide for Small Business

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Are you curious about how to use content pillars to create social media content but not sure how to get started? You’ve come to the right place! In this illustrated, step-by-step guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about:

  • What they are
  • Why you need them if you want results with content marketing
  • How to figure out what yours should be so you can attract your dream customers into your audience
  • How to use them to create content for social media more effortlessly, and
  • How to streamline your content creation process and save tons of time

Not only that, I’m also going to show you how they fit into your larger content strategy and how to easily plan your content so you can stay consistent with less stress. 

By the time you’re done reading, you’ll have a roadmap for always knowing what to post and when to post it in order to grow your social media presence. 

Sound good? 

Before we get too far, be sure to download the free Content Planning Template so you can put all the steps you’re about to learn into action.

First thing’s first: 

What are Content Pillars?

Content pillars are the main topics or themes that all of your content can be sorted into. 

These themes connect your content to your business goals and make life easier by providing a framework for everything you share so you can attract your ideal audience, earn their trust, and guide them toward becoming a customer.  

The biggest benefit of all? Time savings. The average small business owner spends hours each week stuck on the question, “what should I be posting?” because they’re not following a content pillar plan like the one I’m about to show you. 

A general rule of thumb is that you want to narrow the topics you post about down to 3-5 broad topic categories to make sure your brand message is focused and your audience knows exactly what to expect when they follow you. 

Each of your 3-5 content pillars should represent a topic theme that’s…

  1. Relevant to your brand and the products and services you sell
  2. Relevant to your ideal audience

They can have infinite subtopics and specific topics, but they all must relate to the pillar topics. 

We’re going to go over the steps to determine your own content pillars shortly, but first it’ll be helpful to see where you’re headed. So let’s kick things off by taking a look at what content pillars look like in practice with some examples… 

Social Media Content Pillar Examples 

The easiest way to determine your content pillars is to just start brainstorming topics that relate to what you sell, or what you want to sell, and the things your ideal customers might have questions about. 

Say you’re a digital product and course creator that helps small businesses with digital marketing. The topics you come up with might look like this… 

A picture of topics written on a piece of paper as part of the brainstorming process to create content pillars

Once you’ve brainstormed your list of topics, you want to start grouping them together in common themes or “clusters.” It may take some shuffling around, but eventually you should be able to put them all under 3-5 broad topic categories.

(If you come up with 3 that’s perfect, don’t strain yourself trying to get to 5. The more you niche down, the simpler it will be to manage. But if you need 4 pillars or 5 that’s perfectly fine too.)

In this example, those main pillars might look something like this…

Illustration of topic clusters forming content pillars

For this business (which happens to be ours!), each pillar relates to the things we sell and topics our ideal customers are interested in (as they relate to what we sell).   

That said, this does NOT mean that you should constantly talk about your products and services in your content. Instead, you want to create content that builds brand awareness and trust around the topics that relate to your offerings. 

That way, you’ll fill up your audience with people who are most likely to eventually make a purchase. 

Since we have multiple product lines, our approach is to focus on one pillar at a time in our content depending on what we’re promoting during that particular time period. 

This makes it easier to batch create content for social media posts, emails, blog posts, and videos because we’re immersed in one topic area at a time. 

Notice that each of our pillars is broad enough so we can include multiple subtopics. 

From those subtopics, we have the flexibility to break them down into an infinite number of tips, personal stories, case studies, how-to guides, industry news updates, and so on and still maintain a cohesive brand story (who we help and how we help them).  

Just for fun, I thought I’d show you a few more… 

Content Pillar Examples for Different Niches

Let’s explore examples of content pillar topics for various niches to give you inspiration for your own business… 

An illustration of different possible content pillars for different niches

These topics are just fictional examples to get your creative juices flowing. If you see your niche here, your pillars might look completely different and that’s okay! Your pillars are unique to your business. 

Now let’s take a look at how your pillars will fit into your larger social media content strategy, because this is a key point a lot of marketing gurus fail to point out…  

👉If you want to attract customers and generate leads and sales with your content, having content pillars alone is not enough. You also need to consider the types of content you need for people in your audience who are at different stages of awareness. 

Content Pillars As Part of Your Larger Social Media Content Strategy

I want to zoom out and give you the big picture of creating an effective social media strategy because this is the part that can get confusing depending on who you listen to. 

Content marketers teach the concept of “content pillars” in two different ways:

1) As the 3-5 topic themes you stay focused on 

OR… 

2) The types of content you need to be sharing (e.g. personal stories, educational tips, inspirational quotes, etc).

If you landed on this post because you were curious about which one you need, we’re about to clear this up for good!

Content Pillars vs Types of Content

A lot of unnecessary confusion is created when words like “content pillars” and “content buckets” and “content types” are used interchangeably – it gives the impression there’s something complicated about this or even some controversy (there’s not). 

It’s actually very simple! 

Forget about all the social media marketing lingo for just a second… 

What’s important to understand is that there are 2 main components of a social media content strategy, and in plain language they are:

  1. 3-5 broad topic areas you’ll stay focused on so people understand what you’re about and so you attract the right audience 
  2. Different types of content (e.g. inspirational, educational, promotional, etc.) 

The reason we need different types of content is so we can get the attention of people in your audience who are at different stages of awareness (more on that in a second).   

Here’s the bottom line 👉You need both. 

No matter what people call these components, you need both in order to grow a targeted audience and guide them to a purchase. 

This is all going to come together soon but let’s lock in the definitions for how we’ll describe these 2 content strategy components:

Content pillars = broad topic categories (unique to your business)
Content buckets = types of content categories (that all businesses need to share) 

Here’s a helpful way to think about it…

Your content pillars are about YOU 👉 the topics that communicate what your business is about

Your content buckets are about YOUR AUDIENCE 👉 what they need based on their awareness 

An illustration with of content pillars (YOU) and content buckets (YOUR AUDIENCE)

Each of the different content buckets plays a different role and works to either:

  • Get more followers
  • Encourage them to like, comment, and share your posts (a positive signal to the the algorithms that helps your content reach more people)  
  • Create a personal connection and build the know/like/trust factor that leads to sales
  • Establish credibility and earn your followers’ trust 
  • Position you as the best choice when compared to your competition 
  • Inspire members of your audience to take the next steps with you (sign up to your mailing list, DM you, buy something, etc.) 

If you were just to show up and post about the stuff you sell… nobody would follow you, engage with you, or even make a purchase. It would be like asking someone to marry you on the first date.

That said, while a person who doesn’t know anything about you yet isn’t ready for a sales pitch, a brand loyal customer is just waiting to hear what you have to sell them next. 

👉They need different types of content. 

You need to fill up ALL your buckets because… 

Before someone becomes a customer, they go through a decision-making process and that process can take minutes or it can take years but the process is always the same… 

Picture it like a timeline:

Illustration of the social media customer journey timeline

People start out completely unaware of you and with the help of your social media posts…

→ Move toward becoming a follower. Things like inspirational posts and relatable personal stories work great at this stage to help people to get to know you and like what you’re about.

→ Then you want to earn your followers’ trust and you do that by sharing value – educational content, lessons learned, recommendations, success stories and so on. 

→ After they know, like, and trust you they’ll consider signing up for your email list or buy your products and services. So a portion of the time – about 20% – you need to be sharing information directly related to your offerings and calling your audience to action. 

The other 80% of your time you want to be sharing value to keep guiding people along this timeline.  

At this point, try not to over complicate the way you think about this. All you need to know is that you want to mix up the types of content you share and in a moment, we’re going to go over exactly what those are

The way you ensure you’re mixing things up is to use a content calendar to plan it all out. 

👉A social media content calendar is where your content pillars and your content buckets come together to form a plan for you to follow. 

Illustration of content pillars going into content buckets that are planned out in a content calendar

Using a content calendar helps you stay consistent, reduces stress, and simplifies the content creation process. 

So from here, we’re going to go over the steps you need to reach the final destination: a content calendar all planned out using your content pillars and content buckets: 

→ Determine your content pillars
→ Go over the 6 content buckets you need to share
→ Put them together in a content calendar 

Ready?  

If you haven’t yet grabbed the Content Planning Template, be sure to do that now so you can follow along with the upcoming exercises.

Figuring Out Your Social Media Content Pillars

Having intel about your ideal customer is an essential component of creating great content that’ll capture their attention and get them to stop scrolling and read your posts. 

So we start by getting clarity about who they are and what they need to hear from you…

Step 1: Define Key Target Audience Profiles

You’ll need information like demographics, interests and hobbies, challenges and pain points, goals and aspirations, behavioral characteristics, and preferred platforms. 

But if you don’t have any of those things yet, don’t sweat it. You can create fictional target audience profiles based on the products and services you sell (or want to sell).

ChatGPT is not so great at writing social media content, but it’s an excellent tool for research which means it can help you create audience profiles. Just open up ChatGTP and insert following prompt (after you’ve customized the text in brackets): 

Hello ChatGPT! I’m looking to define target audience profiles for my content strategy, but I need help generating insights. I don’t have specific audience details yet, so I’d like you to help me create fictional profiles based on what I’m offering and the topics I want to focus on.

The products or services I plan to focus on are [describe your products/services]. The general topics I’m interested in are [mention the topics].

Can you assist me in creating target audience profiles based on these offerings and topics? I’d like to understand their potential demographics, interests, challenges, and behavior. Thank you!

ChatGPT will then generate a list of what it considers to be the best target audiences for you and it actually does a pretty great job with its suggestions! When you’re happy with it, you want to store these in a document for handy reference. 

Illustration of people in key audiences - marketing, creative professionals, entrepreneurs

The next step is to … 

Step 2: Create a Customer Persona

Creating a customer persona (or “buyer persona”) can help you speak to one person rather than a big anonymous target audience. This will help you better connect with the people who fit this profile and make sure your content sounds natural. 

You can use ChatGPT for this too. Taking your key target audience profiles you worked on in the last step, you’ll prompt ChatGPT to “now create a customer persona for me and put it in table form.” 

Again, save this in a document for reference. We keep ours in the same worksheet.

Illustration of a customer persona

Now rather than speaking to “just anyone” we can picture Sarah and speak directly to her in our content. 

But we’re not done. Now it’s time to do a deep dive into figuring out what Sarah really needs…

Step 3: Identify Audience Internal Needs and Emotional Triggers


Defining key audiences and creating a customer persona is a great start but it’s not enough. You also need to get to the bottom of what they’re feeling if you want to create content that gets their attention. 

Ask yourself the following questions: 

  • What are they struggling with?
  • What problems keep them up at night? 
  • What do they desire most? 
  • What’s standing in their way?
  • What beliefs are holding them back?
  • What does life look like once they get what they want?

Once you have the answers to these questions you can use “emotional triggers” in every single piece of content to hook them in and keep their attention. 

These triggers are universal to us all, and they have EVERYTHING to do with whether your person takes action, and they include:

  • Goals + Desires
  • Challenges + Pain Points
  • Limiting Beliefs
  • Objections

Think of this as an “empathy exercise.” When you’re able to see things from your customer’s perspective, and you have one representational person to write content for, you’ll be able to create meaningful content for the people you want to connect with. 

When you’re done, you should have something that looks like this: 

Illustration of customer desire map - goals and desires, pain points and frustrations, limiting beliefs, objections

Keep track of this information for reference and use it when creating any given piece of content!

If you’re tempted to skip over these exercises, don’t! With your audience defined and their “emotional map” figured out, you’ll be able to create high quality content with an authentic tone of voice and trust us… it’ll get their attention!

Now we can move on to the next step and that is to…

Step 4: Identify Core Topics and Key Themes

The next step is to identify the core topics or themes that are relevant to both your audience and your business. Start by generating a list of smaller subtopics or content themes you think would be a good fit for you. This will help: 

  • Competitor Research: Study your competitors and their content to identify the topics they focus on. This can inspire and provide insights into potential core topics for your content pillars.
  • Keyword Research: Utilize keyword research tools like SEMScoop and AnswerSocrates to identify high-volume keywords and questions related to your niche. What questions do they have? What related questions do they have? As you find topics that relate to your business, add them to your list.   
  • Brainstorming Sessions: Conduct brainstorming sessions with your team (or with ChatGPT!) to generate more ideas of potential topics related to your products or services you offer and the insights you’ve learned about your audience. If you’re using ChatGPT for this, plug in the audience information you discovered in Step #1 and ask it to generate a list of the most common questions they ask and topics they’re most interested in. 

Step 5: Organize Your List of Topics into Topic Clusters

Once you have a list of topics, start organizing them into topic clusters and keep experimenting until all of them neatly fit under 3-5 broad topic themes to create your content pillars. 

If you can’t narrow your topics into 5 content pillars or fewer, it could be that you’re not niched down enough. If you try to cover too many broad topics, not only will it be harder for you to create content, it’ll be harder for people to know if your content is meant for them. 

Now you should have a pretty good grasp of your own content pillars, but if you feel a little nervous or unsure about it at this point, don’t stress… 

This is not set in stone. 

You are allowed to change your strategy if you find that something isn’t working or if you change direction in your business. 

What matters is that you’re creating a framework for approaching your content so it’s easier to manage day-to-day. In content marketing, if something doesn’t work, you can always adapt and improve it! 

But now we’ve got a great starting point, so let’s continue so we can apply these content pillars to your daily content creation activities…  

The 6 Content Buckets Your Business Needs to Share 

Recall that it’s your social media content calendar that allows you to ensure you’re sharing a mix of content so you can feel confident you’re always attracting, engaging, educating, and converting your audience. 

The good news is, this part is super straightforward!

There are 6 content buckets that every business needs to be sharing because they work together to reach people at all stages of awareness.


We call these:

  1. INSPIRE: Inspirational, motivational, and uplifting content
  2. ASK: Engaging questions that break the ice and spark conversations and engagement 
  3. CONNECT: Personal stories and anecdotes that create a human connection 
  4. EDUCATE: Educational tips, how-tos, insights, and recommendations 
  5. CONVERT: Information related to your products and services 
  6. EVERGREEN: Recurring and timeless content that you need to share for all audiences including answering FAQs and driving traffic to your blog posts and freebies 

Let’s see how a content calendar might look when we include all 6 buckets in your content plan: 

Image of a content calendar planned out with the six content buckets: inspire, ask, connect, convert, educate, evergreen

Pretty cool, right?

In the above example, you can see we’ve got some inspirational content, educational content, personal stories to “connect” with your audience, questions to “ask” your audience to spark conversations and so on. 

How they correspond with different levels of awareness looks like this: 

Illustration of the timeline of the customer journey as they relate to the content buckets, with inspire on the far left, then ask, then connect, then educate, then evergreen, then convert

This is what marketers call the “customer’s journey” and it’s really just a fancy way of describing the process we all go through before we buy something. 

When making content, the most important question you always want to ask yourself is… 

“What do they already know?” 

  • Unaware: Doesn’t know they have a problem or anything about your brand.
  • Problem Aware: Knows they have a problem, but doesn’t know what the solution is.
  • Solution Aware: Knows there are potential solutions to their problem, but they’re still exploring options and might not be aware of specific brands or products.
  • Product Aware: Knows about products or services that might help them get what they want. They compare features, benefits, and brands. 
  • Brand Aware: Knows about your brand and offerings, including features, benefits, and how it addresses their needs or problems. This stage is where most people will make an initial purchase. Then, they evaluate their experience and hopefully share their (great!) experience with others and become a repeat customer. 

In content marketing, we say that we “meet people where they are” (in this process) with our content. 

An image of the customer journey as a funnel, starting with unaware at the top and funneling down to customer at the bottom.

As an example, say somebody is “solution aware” – they know they have a problem and they’re gathering intel about the best way to solve it. They will appreciate hearing stories of how you or the people you’ve helped got an outcome they want (e.g., case studies, success stories, testimonials). 

→ This type of content gets dropped in the CONVERT bucket. 

Let’s say somebody’s “problem aware” and their problem is that they’re feeling demoralized because they can never seem to strike everything off their “to do” list (problem) but they don’t know what’s causing that or how to go about finding solutions. 

→ They need EDUCATE content that speaks to their problem – e.g., “Feeling demoralized because you can never keep up with your to-do list? Today, I have 3 tips to help!” 

Once you show them you understand what they’re going through, they’ll be receptive to hearing about the solutions you offer that can help them even further. 

So far so good? Right now you might be wondering… 


Where do content pillars fit in?


Now that we know we need a mix of different content buckets, any given piece of content that goes into those buckets needs to be relevant to your business and to your audience. 

That’s where your content pillars come in. 

You want to pull from your content pillars to create all these different types of social media posts, but there’s a little twist… 

The most important buckets to fill up with content pillar topics are:

EDUCATE: – tips & tricks, how-to’s, “best ways to”, recommendations, etc.
CONVERT: – customer success stories, promotional posts, answering common objections
EVERGREEN:– core and best-performing content from the educate, connect, and convert buckets that you want to share over and over again 

The above buckets are for people with medium to high awareness. They’re following you because they need help with the problems your products and services solve.

But it’s okay to go a little off-topic with…

INSPIRE: – motivational content 
ASK: – engaging questions 

These buckets are for people with low awareness. 

It’s okay to have a bit of fun on social media and this type of content drives engagement, they don’t strictly need to pull from your content pillars. If you can, great! Just try to make these posts relevant to your target audience. 

This bucket falls somewhere in the middle… 

CONNECT: – personal stories 

The CONNECT bucket includes personal stories – think “how I achieved something” and “what I learned from failure” stories. These are posts that allow you to connect with your audience on a personal level and build your know/like/trust factor. 

You want to try to connect the personal stories you tell to your content pillars as much as possible, but it’s also okay to just share off-topic personal anecdotes and life updates once in a while. 

Below, the CONNECT bucket is represented twice in the middle of the customer journey to distinguish between these two types of stories…

  1. Personal stories – e.g., “Life update! I’m moving to Bali!” will resonate with people at any stage of awareness including low awareness. 
  1. Stories that relate to your content pillars – e.g, “Lessons I’ve learned about [pillar topic]” – will be more relevant to people with problem/solution awareness. 
Illustration of the customer journey as a funnel with specific examples of content in the different content buckets guiding people in the audience toward being a customer


What about the EVERGREEN bucket? Good question!

This is a “wildcard” bucket because there’s certain content you’ll always want to share on an “evergreen” schedule and you want to plug that into your calendar too so you don’t forget.

This includes re-sharing your core or best content from your CONNECT, EDUCATE, and CONVERT bucket as well things like links to blog posts to drive traffic, invitations to sign up for your freebies, and information about your promotions and so on… 

Image of evergreen content bucket with examples such as FAQs, blog posts, testimonials, success stories

Pssst… If you’re feeling like this is a lot to keep track of, I promise it gets easy with practice. Mentally sorting your content into buckets becomes like second nature! Examples of the types of content that go into each bucket can be referenced from our free content planner. You can also check out our signature Content Calendar System which gives you 2 years of daily content prompts all planned out following the 6-bucket content strategy.

Connecting Content Pillars and Content Buckets 

Now let’s take a look at some examples of social media posts that connect the content buckets and content pillars together. 

EDUCATE is a no-brainer bucket – it’s always pillar-focused. You can share tips, tutorials, how-tos, best ways to achieve a desired outcome, recommendations and so on from any of your content pillars and drop them into the EDUCATE bucket… 

Illustration of content pillars going into the educate content bucket


Here’s an example of an EDUCATE post…

Here, we’re sharing tips that relate to our “content creation” pillar… 

Illustration of content pillars going into the educate bucket pulling from a subtopic

Now let’s look at an example of a post from the INSPIRE bucket…  

This is a pep talk about keeping your chin up during times of business adversity. It’s relevant to our audience of entrepreneurs and relates to one of our content pillars… 

Illustration of the Inspire content bucket - a subtopic from the content pillars goes into the inspire category

CONVERT is another bucket that should always pull from your content pillars because it’s the bucket that’s designated for generating leads and sales… 

This post invites our audience to sign up for our free content planner and it’s that call to action that makes it a CONVERT post. Your call to action doesn’t always have to be “buy now,” it can be any action you ask them to take that helps guide your audience to the next step. 

Connecting this post to our content pillars looks like this… 

Illustration of the convert content bucket with a subtopic from the content pillars going into the bucket

The bottom line is that you…

👉Always want to be filling up your 6 content buckets.
👉Almost always want to be pulling topics from your content pillars. 

If you can connect them all of the time, that’s awesome! Because … 

Illustration of content pillars being able to go into any content bucket

Make sense?

The social media content strategy is starting to come together now! 

→ We’ve got social media content pillars ✅

→ And the content buckets we need to fill up ✅


So now that we’ve got our two components for our content strategy figured out, it’s time to use them to create a plan you can follow in your day-to-day.

And the easiest way to do that is to simply map all of this out in a content calendar… 

Turning Your Content Pillar Strategy into a Daily Action Plan

Now we’re going to walk you through the system we’ve used to help thousands of small business owners get results on social media without all the stress and overwhelm! 🙌

Be sure to download the free content planner (pictured below) and we’ll walk through the process step-by-step… 

Step 1: Collect & categorize your content ideas and sort them into the 6 content buckets

Screen capture of a content planner with columns to store ideas by content bucket

One of the biggest time-wasters around is not having ideas to pull from when you sit down to create content. The KEY is to have a way to collect them as inspiration strikes or while you’re researching your competition or doing keyword or topic research. 

This handy idea library will not only help you capture those ideas, it’ll help you start thinking of them in terms of content buckets. 

Each column has examples of the types of content that go into each bucket to use as a reference and above the columns you can see why you’re creating this content and the role each bucket serves in your customer’s journey.

When you want to store an idea, just drop it into the column that makes the most sense. Don’t worry about whether it’s related to a content pillar for now, the important thing is to just capture all your ideas here first. 

The next step is to move your ideas into the next tab, which is a content planner where you can organize your ideas by content pillar to make sure you’re staying focused on those… 

Step 2: Sort your Ideas into Content Pillars Using the Content Planner

Add your content pillars to the header rows in gray and then copy and paste your ideas from the idea library under them. Then, assign its content bucket with the dropdown menu in the next column.

Image of a content planner with ideas sorted by content pillar then a dropdown menu selecting content bucket

Next to the content bucket column you’ll have options for…

  • Selecting the content format (post, video, story, etc.)
  • The status (not started → published)
  • The main channel you’re posting to
  • The social media channels you’ll also share it to to get more reach (a.k.a. “cross post”). 
  • Storing URLS to any images or graphic templates that go with the post
  • Storing URLs to blog posts, landing pages, etc. you’ll be referencing in your posts

At this stage, you’re planning everything out and gathering up all the assets you need so they’re handy. That way, when you sit down to batch create content, you’re not starting with a blank page – you’re just executing your plan.

Taking the time to plan all this out not only makes your content more strategic, it makes the process exponentially more efficient and less stressful.   

Step 3: Add Your Posts to the Social Media Content Calendar

At last, it’s time to move everything into a calendar format! 

→ You’ve collected content ideas that relate to your content buckets
→ And organized them by content pillar…

Now all you need to do is make sure you’re sharing a nice mix of content throughout the month.

You want to use color-coding for your content buckets so it’s easy to visualize, and if you grabbed the free content planning template, that’s already set up for you! 

In that template, you’ll also have one week of social media posts already planned out (with content ideas from our signature Content Calendar System for each bucket with pre-written captions that you can customize with topics from your content pillars).   

As you move your own post ideas into the calendar, the different colors for each bucket makes it easy to see “where you’re at” with your content mix… 

Image of a content calendar planned out by content bucket - where the content ideas can be moved

Notice there are tiny black corners in the top right hand side of each day – that’s where you will store your captions so they’re right there when you’re ready to schedule and publish them. 

In the first row you’ll see the sample captions we provided for you there, so just follow this example… 

Image of content planner storing captions in notes in Google sheets

Step 4: Share your posts & keep track of where you share them

If you have a social media presence on different platforms, you can check off where you shared your posts to keep track using this template. 

This is where it gets really fun because you’ll see a visual of how one piece of content can reach more people just by sharing them to other platforms!  

Image of a content calendar with check boxes where content can be tracked where it can be shared

Final Tips for Planning Your Social Media Content

Use a Social Media Scheduler to Crosspost to Different Platforms

We recommend choosing one main social media platform (e.g. Instagram) to focus your energies to start. But look for opportunities to “cross post” that content to other channels! 

For example…

  • Instagram Posts are great to share to Facebook
  • Reels are great to share to TikTok and YouTube, and 
  • IG Stories are perfect for Facebook and Pinterest too

Once you have your content planned out in your calendar, we recommend creating your content in batches and then scheduling them with a tool like Metricool (affiliate link). 

This will allow you to select multiple platforms to share your content to and in advance. 

That way, you can schedule a week, a month, or even several months ahead of time and then forget about it while you focus on other things in your business – your scheduler will take care of publishing them for you! 

There are lots of great schedulers out there but we always like to suggest Metricool because you can get started for free and have full functionality. All your direct messages across all your platforms will be right there and you’ll have analytics and insights for all your channels too. 

The only time you need to upgrade is if you’re scheduling a volume of content and by that point, it more than pays for itself in the time it’ll save you.  

Image of Metricool social media scheduler planning tool

Use Weekly or Monthly Themes based on Content Pillars

We recommend focusing on one content pillar per week or month, especially if you need to “warm up” your audience around a certain topic to plan for an upcoming launch or email promotion. For instance, if you’re a wellness coach you might make October “Healthy Recipes Month” and focus on your “nutrition” pillar.

Be Consistent

Establish a consistent posting schedule. You don’t have to post every day if you can’t swing it, but it’s good to find a  rhythm that works for you and keeps your audience engaged.

It’s better to be consistent and post 2-3x per week than it is to post every day for the first week and then nothing for the rest of the month. 

Batch Create & Schedule 

Plan out all your content in one sitting and then batch create the actual content in a separate session. This will save you heaps of time and keep your mind focused on one aspect of the process at a time, making it much less overwhelming. 

Monitor and Adjust Your Strategy as Needed

Monitor the performance of your content and adjust your content strategy accordingly. If certain content buckets are generating more results for you, consider allocating more energy to those.

Since we’re an educational business, we go a bit more heavy with EDUCATE content. If you’re a life coach, you may need to go a bit more heavy with CONNECT content. And that’s okay! 

These are both “middle of the funnel” buckets for people who are problem aware so it’s perfectly okay to swap those out in your schedule if it makes sense for your business and audience. 

If you’re just getting started in your business, you may not have a lot of stories to share or offers to promote, so you might start off sharing lots of inspirational content and asking engaging questions. That’s okay too. 

As your business and following grows, you can move toward a more balanced content mix and layer on more content buckets. 

Tailor Content for Each Social Media Platform

Consider tailoring your content in a way that works best for each platform – whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or others.

While all six buckets are perfect to share on any platform, things to consider when sharing to the following social media accounts:

  • Facebook and LinkedIn: Ideal for sharing industry insights, thought leadership, and links to your long-form content
  • Instagram & Pinterest: Perfect for visually appealing content that showcases products, services, freebies
  • Twitter and LinkedIn: Great for sharing quick updates, relevant blog posts and videos, and engaging in industry conversations related to your content pillar strategy

And that’s a wrap! Thank you for reading this illustrated guide to content pillars!

We hope this has helped you get clarity around your content pillars and overall social media strategy, and most of all, we hope you feel ready to plan out a content calendar that’ll save you time and help you crush your business goals.

Last chance to download the free content calendar template for Google Sheets by clicking on the image below and get started with seeing better results on social media without all the overwhelm!

If you have any questions about anything you’ve learned in this post, please don’t hesitate to drop us a comment below. We’re always happy to help.

Further reading and resources:

And before you go, if you’d like to get your hands on the ultimate plug-and-play content plan, Content Calendar System includes 2 years of content already planned out for you with 885 daily caption templates you can use to adapt for your niche. You’ll have hundreds of content ideas at your fingertips already organized in the 6 content buckets your business needs to be sharing so you never get stuck on what to post again! We hope to see you inside! 🙂

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885 Instagram Caption Templates to Promote Your Small Business in 2024 & 2025

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Oh, those Instagram captions. Despite your best intentions to stay consistent on social media, they sure can stop you dead in your tracks.

If you’re anything like us, creating social media posts from scratch goes something like this…

You collect tons of inspiration from social media and know your brain is filled with valuable tips and stories you really should share with your audience….

But your good intentions never actually make it to Instagram because you still need to write the dang caption… 

And oops! Time’s up. A million other priorities have popped up that need your attention. 😩 This is what we call… 

The Social Media Caption Problem

As small business owners, we know exactly how frustrating it is to craft captivating social media captions when we just don’t have that much time to work with. 

Running a small business is a whirlwind of responsibilities, and while we all know how important it is to have an active Instagram presence, finding the time and creativity to consistently produce compelling social media content used to overwhelm us to the point of mental burnout. 

If that sounds like you, the truth is – it’s not easy to come up with great captions. They’re somewhere between a mini-blog and a mini-story, and sometimes you just don’t feel inspired to pull yet another thoughtful story out of your hat.

It can be hard to know what to say, and a lot of people – even full time content creators – can get stuck right there.

And for small businesses? Forget about it. None of us has the bandwidth to create Instagram posts starting from a blank page – you know this is not a good use of your time.

Don’t you just wish that a “Hey, y’all! 👋” would do? 😂

You may have even experimented with generating social media captions with AI tools like ChatGPT, but found that it was more trouble than it was worth and you wound up sounding like a robot 🤖 like everybody else these days. 

If you ever feel like you’re not sure what to write, or that it takes way too long to come up with something brilliant, there’s a method you can use to do it… (and no, it’s not generating uninspiring AI content!)  

I’m about to share the biggest game-changing secret when it comes to speeding up your social media caption writing workflow and that is… to use caption templates.

The Solution: Instagram Caption Templates

Yup! Social media caption templates are a thing, and you can use them to create authentic content to get your business visible without eating up all of your time. 

A photo of caption templates next to a final instagram post.

After years of being frustrated that it would take us hours of our time just to get one single post up on social media, and despite having decades of combined experience creating content, we discovered that many of the top instagram accounts weren’t pulling everything out of the clear blue sky at all… 

They were starting with caption templates.

And it made perfect sense… 

The key to writing social media posts that sound authentic and don’t take forever to write is to never start with a blank page. 

So we experimented with using different free content templates but they were never quite right, they were the type of captions that feel too generic and uninspiring to feel good about posting, or worse, they were just prompts with completely blank captions. 

Caption Templates Alone Aren’t Enough – You Need a Caption Strategy

You have to know WHICH captions you need and they need to be structured in a way that hooks your audience in and guides them to the next step toward becoming a customer, and to be honest, even for lifelong marketers like us, that was a bit of a struggle for us to figure that out at first… 

But we knew if we wanted quality caption templates we needed to create them ourselves. We wanted more than uninspiring same-old-same old caption templates, we wanted an entire caption system that we could use to quickly create engaging, unique content for our social media marketing. 

We started by spending over a year analyzing the content strategies of hundreds of top Instagram influencers until we cracked the code, both for the types of captions we need as well as the flow and tone of the copy within each post… 

Then we set about creating 885 meticulously-crafted caption templates over months and months of writing and editing until we knew that no matter which one we pulled, we’d have a perfect Instagram caption.

And then we kept going!

We planned them all out in a 2-year content calendar with a formula for sharing every type of content a small business needs in order to attract and convert customers and generate leads and sales. 

And the Content Calendar System was born! 

A photo of a 2-year content calendar with caption templates in various categories.

Today CCS is the Best Caption Template System that’s Helped Thousands of Small Business Owners with Their Social Media Marketing 

We found that captions from successful social media accounts getting the most engagement fell into 6 distinct caption categories, each one serving a specific social media goal. There are some to…

  • Build your following
  • Drive Instagram engagement
  • Boost the know/like/trust factor that leads to sales
  • Educate to establish authority and credibility around niche topics
  • Post info about products and services to generate leads and sales, and of course.. 
  • To drive traffic to your business or blog 

Essentially, the captions are organized in such a way that no matter what level of awareness your audience is in, you can meet them where they are in their customer journey and keep moving them closer to taking the next steps with you. 

Because let’s face it… ultimately that’s why small businesses are on social media to begin with: to attract, convert, and nurture customers. 

We wanted to see the caption templates organized by each of the types of content we need to be sharing – educational, inspirational, promotional, engagement questions and so on in a content library we could pull from quickly and easily.

Having a social media strategy to follow and the caption templates there to pull from gave us the solid starting place we were desperate for. Rather than sitting down staring at our screens racking our brains what to post, all we need to do now is adapt the captions for our niche topics and post! 

A Caption Creation Workflow that’s Consistent and Repeatable

Skipping over the “what do I say?” problem means it takes exponentially less time to create the perfect caption and get back to the things we need to focus on in our business. Saving time creating content is mostly just about having a workflow that’s consistent repeatable: look at the calendar, get your idea for the day, and then grab the caption template to customize and post.

Since then, thousands of other small business owners have been using our Content Calendar System with 2-years of daily prompts and 885 pre-written caption templates to stay consistent on social media without all the stress and time wasted. 

But that’s not all… 

It was important to us that the content system be accessible to businesses of all sizes and budgets  – whether you’re a one-person business doing your own social media marketing, a social media manager or virtual assistant creating content for multiple clients, or you own a small business – so that meant making it available for one low lifetime price without the burden of monthly fees. 

In fact, the entire system costs less than outsourcing one single post to a content writer! 

The way it works is that we keep the content calendar updated so no matter when you buy it, you’ll have your content planned out for today and the next 730 days. And there’s a complete content library too, so you can pull caption templates from any of the six categories anytime you need something specific. 

If you’re spending too much time writing social media captions, and if you’re not ready to outsource caption writing, and if you’re like us and you hate the thought of subscribing to yet another monthly-fee program you rarely use… check out what our customers have to say about using the Content Calendar System and how the caption templates have helped them in their business: 

Customize the Caption Templates for Your Niche & Infuse Your Own Voice & Creativity

Think of the Content Calendar System like a “caption builder” that allows you to tailor your own captions to fit your brand’s voice. You’ll be prompted to customize them for your niche topics and many of our customers have even told us that CCS helps them to be more creative. It’s all about having that starting place and then you’re off to the races!

You can also use these in combination with ChatGPT (and in fact, they make using ChatGPT 1000% less frustrating!) – just tell ChatGPT about your business, your audience, and your topic and plug in the CCS caption templates and you’ll be able to generate an authentic-sounding, unique-to-you caption in seconds! We’ve even included 100 ChatGPT prompts for content creators as one of the many bonuses included in the system.

If you’ve been ghosting social media or stuck at the starting line…. Just imagine always having a fully prompted caption template at your fingertips every single day…

No matter your niche, no matter how experienced you are with social media, and no matter how busy…

CCS is for busy entrepreneurs like you so all you need to do is follow along and feel confident you’re sharing the right things to grow your business. With this powerful tool in your back pocket, you can finally say goodbye to writer’s block and hello to a streamlined content creation process. It’s like having a personal content assistant guiding you with every post you create.

Get instant access to all 885 caption templates with a 2-year content calendar planned out and get started for as low as $49 lifetime. No monthly fees and a 7-day risk-free money back guarantee. Available for Google Sheets, Google Calendar and an optional Trello Board. 

We can’t wait to see you inside!

P.S. Still on the fence? You might be wondering… 

“Will this work for my business?” 

It’s the most common question we get and the answer in a nutshell is yes. 🙂

CCS is perfect for 1-1 service providers like coaches, consultants, designers, virtual assistants, social media managers, content creators, bloggers, course creators, online entrepreneurs, digital product businesses and your business! The content categories in CCS are the ones every business needs to share no matter your niche or industry to build brand awareness and generate business on social media. No matter what you sell, you’re in good hands because the key is to be consistent and share captions that are written in a way that grows your audience, builds your know/like/trust factor, drives engagement and generates leads and sales. CCS has you covered with all of that!

“What’s the quality of these captions?” 

We spent months analyzing top-performing social posts to figure out the formula for creating persuasive captions that engage, inspire, connect, ask, educate, and convert. Each caption template was handcrafted by real human copywriters and reviewed, edited, and refined by perfectionistic content marketers until we were all happy enough with them to use in our own business.

In fact, if you’d like to see an actual example of the caption templates you can do that right here. 

“Sounds amazing, but I’m just not ready.” 

We get it! We’ve got something just for you. Why not try out a 7-day sample of the Content Calendar System with 7 free captions? You’ll also get an instant digital download of our content planner and calendar that you can use to create your own social media plan and apply our CCS strategy to your own content. Get the free download here. 

“Will they help me boost engagement?”

You betcha! CCS is so much more than a bunch of ideas, there’s strategy baked into every post to help you grow your following and get your audience commenting, liking, and sharing your posts.

“What if CCS just doesn’t work for me?” 

We want you to be absolutely psyched about using The Content Calendar System! If you just don’t think it’s a good fit for you, email us within 7 days of purchase at team@conversionminded.com for a full refund. We believe CCS will absolutely work for you but we want you to try it out for yourself and rest easy knowing your purchase is risk free. 

And of course, use that email address if you have any questions, we’re happy to help you decide if CCS is right for you and we’ll give you the straight scoop.

What have you got to lose? Join thousands of business owners like you inside the Content Calendar System!

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No Time to Post on Social Media? This Process Reduced My Time By 50% And Doubled My Pinterest Traffic

No time for social media? This two-step process reduced my time by 50% and doubled my blog traffic | Here's how you can use Tailwind's board lists and interval delay features to get a massive boost in Pinterest traffic and cut your time down in half. Click through to see the steps!It’s official. I’m a Pinterest junkie.

It’s become my #1 source of traffic – over Stumbleupon, Twitter and Reddit. So for the next few months my goal is to double down and see if I can boost my traffic even more.

I’ve been a bit of a slacker when it comes to scheduling my own content. I just don’t have the time! Yes, you say, but it only takes 15 minutes or so each day. That’s what you think until you go on Pinterest and see all the beautiful content, and then it’s 2 hours later and you haven’t started the blog post that’s due, like, today. I know this is true. It’s happened to me. Alot.

So I decided to stay away from Pinterest and all those addictive pins. But alas, that didn’t work either! My traffic dipped and – bottom line, I needed to get better at scheduling my own pins.

If you’re experiencing the same thing, today I’m sharing a tip that will help reduce your social media time and boost your traffic significantly using Tailwind’s scheduling and looping feature.

USING TAILWIND TO SCHEDULE YOUR PINS

With Tailwind’s regular scheduling, the pins you share will be sent in sequence. So let’s say you pin something to five of your group boards. It will go out to each board, one after the other, according to the timeslots you have set up there.

But if you pin them this way, you might start to look a little spammy. Your peeps may be following you on more than one board and you don’t want it to look like you sent out your pin to all of them on the same day. Plus, your preset time slots may conflict with the rules of a particular group board and have you pinning more than once per day in the same group. This could put you over the daily pin limit on a specific board and get you banned (which is what happened in my case).

Yes, you can go in to Tailwind’s queue and manually shuffle your pins to avoid looking spammy. Trust me, this takes a huge amount of time. I’ve done it, I know.

With looping, you can automate your pins without making it look like you’re automating them, if that makes sense. Setting up board lists with interval delays lets you stagger your pins so that one goes out to each of your boards in a day, then the next pin goes out to your boards the next day, and so on.

It’s not exactly like looping your pins in Board Booster, but it still saves you tons of time because you can loop your pins for an entire week and then you’re done. And with your pins going out to all of your boards like clockwork, you’re going to see a huge increase in traffic.

LOOPING YOUR PINS IN TAILWIND

Step 1: Set up board lists

To set up board lists, the first thing you want to do is to identify your high performing boards. These are the ones with the most repins and engagement. These are the boards you’ll include in your board lists.

To find your high performing boards:

Login to Tailwind and from the left sidebar go to Track Your Brand Page > Board Insights. This will show your analytics for the past week for all of your boards, including your own boards, group boards and secret boards.

In the top you want to uncheck regular boards and secret boards so you’re just viewing group boards. What you want to look at is the second column from the right, the Virality Score. This will show you which boards are most active in terms of repins. Go ahead and sort this in descending order.

Make a note of your top seven performing boards that have the same theme. You’ll need these for the next step, which is to create board lists.

drive pinterest traffic

 

 

It’s best if you keep these all within one specific niche. I’m in a lot of blogging boards, so I created a list for blogging boards. A few of my high performing boards are related to other niche topics, so I leave those out.

You want to be sure that all of your boards are right for the particular content you want to share, because you’ll be batching your pins to go out to these boards and you want to make sure they’re relevant. Even if you have high virality scores in other subtopics, only include ones that are similar.

Now it’s time to create your boards lists:

Select Publish > Board Lists from the left sidebar. What you’re going to do is to create seven board lists. Then add your high virality boards to each. Make sure you stagger them as shown below. This is how you will set up intervals and looping:

drive traffic with pinterestMake sure you name your board lists as Name 1, Name 2, Name 3, and so on so it’s easy to see which one you’re posting to and keep them organized when you set up your loops.

You’ll wind up with 7 different board lists with each of your boards staggered like above.

Got it? Great, next we can start looping.

Step 2: Schedule your pins

Go to Pinterest, select the pin you want to share from your branded board, and then select the Tailwind schedule button (the button with the blue icon). A separate box will pop-up where you can choose your board list, like this:

drive traffic with pinterest - select board listsDon’t add to queue just yet, first you need to set the interval to complete the loop. Scroll down and select the Interval button at the bottom left. This is what you’ll see:

set interval - drive traffic with pinterestThis will delay your pins by a set time before it pins to the next board on the list. Once you’ve set your time interval, choose “set interval”. If you leave it for 1 day, it will stagger your pins to go on your first board on day 1, the second board on day 2, and so on.

Repeat this process for seven pins, selecting the next board list in the chain. So for instance, you’d share pin #2 to board list #2, pin #3 to board list #3, you get the gist.

What will happen is that each of your pins will be shared to your boards throughout the week. Pin 1 will go to the first board in list #1 on Monday, then on Tuesday it will pin to the second board, Wednesday to the third board, and so on. This will give you one pin each day so it doesn’t look like you’re spamming your boards, plus like I said it’s a good way to make sure you don’t pin too frequently to any one board.

That’s it, you did it! You’re set for the week. You can set up more board lists too. Make sure you check your scheduled pins in Tailwind to make sure everything is working. When I first set up mine, I forgot to add the last board to my lists and only had six, not seven, so everything was thrown off and I was pinning to the same boards twice in one day. So definitely check that they’re set up right and everything’s working the way it should.

And then once a week or so check your group boards to make sure they look okay too.

Have you tried looping your pins? What tools do you use? I’d love to hear!

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How to Use LinkedIn to Win New Business: 9 Easy Steps

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How to really use LinkedIn to get clients. These are the exact steps and tools I used to land my first $32K client.I love LinkedIn. I love its simplicity. I love that it’s all business. I also love that I can leverage it to win new business, because almost half of its user base is C-level executives.

I realized just how powerful LinkedIn is after trying other databases like Google, InfoUSA, SalesGenie, and data.com. I always found myself coming back to LinkedIn.

Here’s why:

  • My prospects are on LinkedIn.
  • Members keep their profiles up to date, so the information is accurate, unlike other databases where the info is often outdated.
  • It’s easy to perform and save searches.
  • LinkedIn mirrors live networking in a social setting.

Today, I’m sharing my system for getting high-paying clients with LinkedIn. Here’s what you will need for this system to work:

  • Sales Navigator account – starts at $75
  • SalesTools – $35 per month
  • Sellhack – $10 per month
  • An email emulator + Vibe – free (or a VA to do this part for you)
  • QuickMail – starts at $39 per month

What I’ve done with these tools (except for Sales Navigator) is keep them active when I’m in deep prospecting mode and turn them off when I don’t need them. With SalesTools, it’s easy enough to create an account later on, and QuickMail will let you go in sleep mode for $5 a month.

Here’s a quick rundown of the tools:

  • SalesTools is a search extractor tool that will save your searches to an Excel spreadsheet. There are others out there, this is just the one I prefer.
  • Sellhack and Vibe are both Chrome extensions that will help you gather email addresses for your list. I use them both. Sometimes Sellhack will find an email that Vibe can’t, and vic versa.
  • The email emulator is an Excel formula that creates email variations based on your prospect’s name and domain (firstlastname@domain.com, flastname@domain.com, firstname.lastname@domain.com, and so on).
  • I found an amazing VA to help gather email addresses.
  • With Quickmail, you can automate your outbound emails in batches, rather than manually one by one.

There are two ways to go about using LinkedIn to get clients:

Prospecting within the LinkedIn platform

You can make 1st degree connections and message prospects directly through LinkedIn. In this case, you won’t need SalesTools, Sellhack, Vibe or Quickmail. This is because you can message anyone you have a first-degree connection directly on LinkedIn. You also have access to their email.

Prospecting outside of LinkedIn

You perform searches with Sales Navigator, save to a spreadsheet and prospect outside of LinkedIn. This is the method I used. You will need all of the tools mentioned above for this method.

There are pros and cons to both approaches

With the first method, you’re building your LinkedIn network while you’re generating leads, so you can continue to engage your connections with new content and products. You also have access to their email, which is a huge plus. All you need for this approach is a spreadsheet to track your connections and messages.

The downside is that you have to message people one by one, which is time consuming. You may hit LinkedIn’s limit of invitation connections using this method. In that case, you’d have to hold up for a while. You also can’t save searches, so it takes a bit more admin to keep track of your progress.

With the second method, you’re working offline (meaning outside of LinkedIn). You’re not building your network, but you still have their data saved in your spreadsheet. It takes some time to gather email addresses, but once you do, you can set up sequences in QuickMail and automate your email outreach. I’ve found that with this approach, I can be a more direct in my emails.

Whichever method you prefer, here are some things you’ll want to before you begin:

 

PART ONE: SETTING THE FOUNDATION

1) Make sure your profile is up-to-date

Make sure your profile reflects your purpose and your message. What a lot of people do is to treat their LinkedIn profile like a CV or resume, when really you should treat it more like a mini personal website for you and your business. After all, you want to use it for lead generation and to grow your business, so you want to make sure you frame it around your value proposition, products and services.

This is especially crucial if you’re using prospecting method #1, where you’re networking within the LinkedIn platform. When you invite someone to connect, they will first visit your profile before accepting.

What they’re going to see first is your profile pic, headline, and your Summary. It should go without saying that you want a professional-looking picture for your profile a headline that clearly conveys what you do.

The area you want to pay special attention to is your Summary. It’s the first substantive section that people will see, and they’ll make a decision based on this to accept or decline your invite. What I like to do here is to tell a bit about myself and my business, with a focus on who I help and how. It’s also a good idea to list your specific services. You can check out my Summary to get an idea of what to include here.

LinkedIn profiles take more time to complete than Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. For my tips on how to optimize your profile, check out this post.

2) Create a prospect avatar

Next up, create a prospect avatar. Think about who you want to reach. If you’re unsure, take a look at your existing clients. Which ones do you wish you had 5 more of? Which are most profitable? Use those to create your prospect avatar.

Here are some things to include in your avatar:

  • Target industries: what specific industries do you want to target?
  • Location: What geographic regions do you want to focus on?
  • Revenue: LinkedIn doesn’t actually list revenue as a search criteria, but it’s still something you should know.
  • Company size: LinkedIn uses number of employees as a measure for company size rather than revenue. The breakdowns are 1-10, 11-50, 51-200, and so on. What size is a best fit for you? To get an idea of how revenue translates into company size, data.com will show you both for any company.
  • Titles/positions: Who are the key decision-makers for your product or offer? Do you want to reach marketing managers, presidents, CIOs?

Then take this info and document it on a worksheet so you can refer to it.

3) Export your current connections

Your current connections are a perfect place to start prospecting. You probably have connections with friends, co-workers, family, colleagues, and friends of friends. Some of these may fit your prospect avatar.

Here’s how to export your connections:

  • Under My Network in the top brown bar, select Connections. This will bring you to a page where you’ll see all your connections.
  • On that page, select the gear icon in the upper right.
  • On your Manage Connections page, under Advanced Settings on the top right, select the “Export LinkedIn Connections” link.
  • Export as an excel file.

Then go through your spreadsheet and make a note of anyone on there who fits your prospect avatar.

4) Use the Advanced Search tool

LinkedIn’s Advanced Search is an amazing tool. If you use it right, you can get pretty granular with your searches.

You want to focus your searches on 2nd and 3rd degree connections and group members. 1st degree connections you already have access to, so you don’t need to include.

All accounts, including free, have access to the filter criteria in the left and middle columns. The right column has two very important filters that you need in order to narrow down your searches and those are only available with a premium account.

Here are the filters you’ll use the most:

  • Location
  • Company, if applicable
  • Industry
  • Seniority level (requires premium account)
  • Company Size (requires premium account)

Once you fill out your desired fields, you can run the search. There’s a bit of an art to conducting searches and after a while you’ll get the hang of how best to use it to get the results you need. Try to narrow the results down to between 200 and 600. Any more than that and you’re probably not being targeted enough. You also want a number that’s manageable.

One thing is for sure. Upgrading to a premium account (at least for the duration of your prospecting) will get you more targeted results than a free account. You will literally get thousands of search results with a free account and it’s impossible to narrow it down further without access to Company Size and Seniority Level.

Two fields from the left column that may also be helpful, depending on your search, are Keywords and Title.

 

PART TWO: PROSPECTING

Now that you have your foundation set, you can start prospecting. I’ll be going into detail on the method #2 in this post.

Here’s what I will point out about method #1 before I get into it:

  • Start with the current connections that you downloaded and send a message to any profiles who look like they fit your avatar. Try to get in the habit of using your connection spreadsheet like a CRM. Make sure you make a note of the date you sent your first message, with a follow up date at least 2 weeks out.
  • Once you’ve messaged your current connections, then run a new search. Look at any profiles that seem like a good fit and send them a connection request. Note: Don’t use the default I’d like to add you to my network message. It’s much better to say something like I hope business is good. I came across your profile and thought it might be good to connect…
  • Try to send about 20-40 connection requests a day, or do something like 300 requests within a one or two-day period. Remember, with this method you can’t save your searches, so you need a way to track each search you perform and where you left off so you can pick back up the next day.
  • After a couple of months, go in and export your connections again. This is where it gets a little tricky because you need one master spreadsheet for all your connections.  You need to merge the two spreadsheets and get rid of duplicates so you can get your new connections into your pipeline and start messaging them.
  • Repeat these last few steps every couple of months

Now on to method #2.

5) Extract your search results

With the search results still open in your browser window, open up SalesTools and enter the URL for your LinkedIn search. SalesTools will save up to 1,000 profiles (which is another reason to narrow down your searches). It will take some time to process, so just let it run while you do whatever else you need to do. Once it’s done, save the Excel file.

You’ll see in the spreadsheet that you have a whole lot more information than you need, so you’ll need to clean it up a bit. The only sections you need are Name, Title, Company, URL, City/State (if needed). Get rid of everything else.

Next you need to start scraping emails, which leads me to the next step:

6) Gather the email addresses

You can either do this next part on your own or hire a VA with lead generation experience to help, which I highly recommend. It’s a monotonous process and you’ll want to stick a needle in your eye in no time (but the pay-off’s worth it!) Someone experienced with lead generation will have access to their own databases, such as data.com and more. I’ve found some great VAs on Upwork.

If you do it on your own, here’s what you do (use Chrome to do this):

  • First use Sellhack because it’s easier. Just enter the name, company, and domain for each prospect into Sellhack. Let it run and it will come back with an email and accuracy rating. If I get a 50% or better accuracy rating, I’m happy. Sometimes it can’t find a result, which is when you need to turn to Vibe.
  • Vibe works with the emulator and your Gmail account. An emulator is a simple formula made in Excel that will spit out common email variations based on your prospect’s first name, last name and domain.
  • Open Gmail and start composing an email. In the “to” window, start entering in different emails from the emulator. As you hover on each email, Vibe will hunt through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn until it finds the email address. When it does, you’ll see the profile appear on the right and that’s when you know you have the right one.

You can see how tedious this step is. But once you have it down, it’s easy enough to train a VA to do it for you or find someone who has access to their own databases (meaning that they have paid accounts with SalesGenie, data.com, etc.)

7) Import your list into QuickMail

Once you have the emails you’re ready to start the outreach, which is where QuickMail comes in. QuickMail is a tool that lets you automate outbound emails and make them look like you sent them each personally, like the old fashion manual way.

The first step is to connect QuickMail to your Gmail account. You can specify another email address to send from, but you’ll lose some functionality if you do this.

Here’s what I mean: when you use your Gmail address to send from, any prospect who replies to your email will be removed from your sequence (not removed from your list, just your sequence). This means that if you have a 4-step email sequence and John Doe replies to the first email in your sequence, he won’t get emails 2, 3, and 4. But if you use a different email as your “from” you will need to manually go into the sequence and remove him. And that’s very easy to forget to do. It’s embarrassing to you and insulting to your prospect if you send follow up emails when he already expressed or declined interest. It totally kills the personalization, too. It’s happened to me and it’s mortifying!

Now that you’ve connected your Gmail, it’s time to import your list. QuickMail categorizes leads with Prospects and Groups. When you import your spreadsheet make sure you assign it to a group. I usually name my groups by niche or company. You can go back in and assign prospects to groups later, but it’s better to do it right away during the import. This way as you import new spreadsheets you have them grouped accurately.

Before you import your list, you need to make sure you follow QuickMail’s naming convention for the header row (Fname, Lname, Email).  If yours doesn’t match, the import won’t work.

And for an extra $10 or so, you can have QuickMail verify your email addresses, which I recommend you do. It will move any unverified email addresses to a new group so you don’t get high bounce rates or send to invalid email addresses. This step is to keep your sender reputation high so you don’t wind up in the junk or spam folder.

8) Craft your emails

Decide how many emails you want in your sequence and write them ahead of time (I usually send at least four). You’ll find that the follow up emails will often get you a better response than your initial email. This is because people are busy and may not have time to respond right away. Most will eventually reply, even if it’s to say No, which is fine because it will help you to focus your efforts on qualified prospects.

When it comes to what to say in your emails, there are a number of schools of thought. What I do is to quickly introduce myself, what I do and firms I’ve worked with (if you have a well known brand you can mention, it goes a long way). Then I list out how I help and how it will benefit them. I always close by asking if they have time to speak on a given day, say Tuesday, of the next week. It’s good to give people an option to choose another day or time that works best for them.

My follow up emails are even shorter – 3 sentences max. I mention my previous email and recap my value proposition and how I can help. I phrase each follow up email it a little differently. And again, I ask for a call. Some people add humor in their follow-ups and say things like I haven’t heard back from you so that means you must have fallen through the cracks like these ducks. This isn’t my style so I’ve steered away from it, but am still curious as to what kind of response a funny email like this would get.

The bottom line with email outreach is that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Make sure you pick a day rather than “some time over the next few weeks”, so that all the recipient has to do is reply with a Yes.

9) Schedule your sequence

Now that your emails are ready, you can add them to QuickMail. You’ll need to create a new sequence to do this.

Note that Quickmail refers to individual emails in a sequence as Steps. So on the left side of the dashboard, select “1st Step”. You can then enter your email in the window on the right side. Don’t forget to add a subject line. Check out this post for how to write subject lines that stand out and get opened.

Below the main window you’ll see a list of merge tags you can insert, like Name and Company. These tags will pull the data from your list and merge it in your email. And this is how you get “Hi John,” and make it personal.  Use these tags to add the person’s first name and/or company as you see fit. Do the same for the 2nd and 3rd Step, and so on.

Make sure you test each email before finalize it so you can catch any typos or bad links.

Once you’ve entered your emails, you’re ready for the last and final step. Let’s start scheduling!!

Actually, scheduling is the easiest part in all of this. Just select the Schedules link from the left side of the QuickMail dashboard (under Sequences). You can specify the days and times you want to send your emails. You will also need to specify the number of prospects to pull from each group and which sequence to send.

It’s a good idea to start out with smaller batches so that your emails don’t get red-flagged as spam. You want it to appear as authentic as possible. I usually send 40 emails per day and break that down into batches of 10 prospects and 4 different times. So I’ll email 10 prospects at 8:00am, 10 at 11:20am, 10 at 4pm, and 10 at 5:30pm. As my campaign progresses I will increase the number to 60 or 70 per day. This will helps you avoid getting red-flagged as spam.

In terms of best days and times to send, I’ve found that I get better responses when I send emails either earlier in the day or later in the afternoon. And Tuesdays and Thursdays are hands-down the best days to send. You’ll need to test to see what’s most effective for you.

That about wraps it up. Happy prospecting and good luck with it! I know this is a lot of info – let me know if you have any questions or have used LinkedIn in other ways to get business. I’d love to hear!

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6 Insider Secrets For Driving Tons of Free Traffic to Your Website With Twitter

Here are my 6 top tips for biz owners and entrepreneurs to drive massive free traffic to your website with Twitter. These same exact strategies helped me grow my followers from 65 to over 17K quickly and easily. The best part is, the results are guaranteed. Click through to read all the tips! Creating successful social media campaigns can be time-consuming, especially when it’s hard to know what will work and where you should invest your time. In a perfect world, you’d have fully-automated campaigns on each platform that drive traffic to your website and provide you with great returns for the time you spend.

The good news is that when it comes to Twitter, it is a relatively easy social platform to master and can consistently drive traffic to your website once you get the basics down. The key is to know how to tap into the massive traffic and truly become part of the conversation so others will follow and promote you.

There are many factors to consider, but you can get off to a great start with these important steps.

1. Use a Customized Twitter Button

A customized Twitter button gives people a chance to promote your site on social media as they view it. These buttons have a great click-through rate and, what’s even better, all the assets are provided for free by Twitter. All you have to do is take advantage of them.

  • Start at Twitter’s button page.
  • Choose “Share a Link” and enter your URL.
  • Add a message and your own @username so you know when others tweet you.
  • Enter the auto-generated code into the HTML of your website.

If you use a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, check out the software’s development community to find free plug-ins that can help you promote your site and amplify your voice on Twitter. Not only can these generate custom buttons, but they also provide many other features.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Drive more traffic to your website with custom Twitter buttons #smm #socialmedia” quote=”Drive more traffic to your website with custom Twitter buttons #smm #socialmedia”]

2. Use Hashtags

#Hashtags are like keywords. They make it easy for people to find and share your tweets and not only that, they can increase engagement by up to 200%. Use hashtags in your tweets to highlight words that you want to appear for when people conduct a Twitter search.

To find the top hashtags to help you use them well, here are 3 tools from Jeff Bullas.

Once you launch a full-scale social media campaign, hashtags become even more vital. As you build a strong following on Twitter, it’s time to try your own custom hashtag. Any word you set off with the pound symbol will become a hashtag, but your followers will have to retweet and promote it aggressively for it to be “trending” – that is, for it to be recognized as one of the most-used hashtags at any given time.

A custom #hashtag helps people stay engaged with your brand’s conversation and locate your latest content even if they’ve been away from Twitter for a while. Make sure your hashtag is memorable and short: A long tag will be more difficult to fit in around your message. Use your tag consistently so others are more likely to pick it up.

3. Install Twitter’s Search Widget

Brands who already have a vibrant social media following can capitalize on it – getting the kind of “social proof” that attracts new followers who might be on the fence. Luckily, there is a perfect tool: The Twitter Search Widget lets your audience see what others are saying about your @username or your #hashtags in real time.

When people are new to your content and they see others already tweeting about you on your site it makes them more comfortable to promote or buy or take whatever action you want them to take.

To install the widget:

  • Start at the Create a Search Widget page
  • Enter your desired search term into the “Search Query” box.
  • Checking the box “Safe Search Mode” to exclude coarse language and images.
  • Select a light or dark-colored theme to match your site.
  • Once you’ve chosen your settings, click “Create Widget”
  • Copy the new code into your website.

The widget will pull data from Twitter and automatically populate the widget with tweets that contain that search query. This helps your profile appear active and vital to audiences. Be sure to keep an eye on how your search terms are performing, if they grow unpopular, it’ll be reflected in your widget.

[clickToTweet tweet=”6 Insider Secrets to Getting More Website Traffic With Twitter #smm #socialmedia” quote=”6 Insider Secrets to Getting More Website Traffic With Twitter #smm #socialmedia”]

4. Use ClickToTweet

People are never in a better mood than just after they’ve made a purchase they’ve been looking forward to. Savvy brands can take advantage of that all-important moment using ClickToTweet. This widget spices up your post-purchase “Thank You” page by adding a contextual Twitter link. That gives your buyers an easy way to share the details on what they just bought with their followers.

To get this done,

  • Visit ClickToTweet.com.
  • Sign in with your Twitter account.
  • Add a message “from” your customer (the one they’ll retweet after their purchase).
  • Link to your sales page.
  • Add your username to get an alert each time ClickToTweet is used.
  • Include your own custom hashtag to drive Twitter traffic to your products or services.
  • Click “Create Tweet”.
  • Add the code to your Thank you or Checkout page.

Not all buyers will tweet their purchase. ClickToTweet is a powerful way to find out which customers are most enthusiastic about your offerings. To show your appreciation, try offering those who do spread the word a special coupon or discount.

5. Target Influencers

Twitter influencers can catapult your brand by giving you the social proof to build a loyal following.

Influencers are those Twitter users who have thousands of dedicated, engaged followers. Generally, these are figures like authors, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and others whose reputation extends well beyond Twitter. Some social media power users have built their very own brand from within Twitter.

To get started, you first need to find the influencers in your niche. These people have an outsized presence and will usually be followed by a large number of your own followers. An influencer’s time is valuable, so get their attention by tweeting on topics that matter to them … including their own products or services. Use their username and hashtags to get their attention.

Once you are confident an influencer has “seen you around” and interacted with you a few times, you can connect with them through direct message. Send them a selection of 3-5 pre-written tweets promoting whatever your most important offerings are and politely ask whether they’d be willing to share. Since you’ve saved them time, it’s likely they will help. Be prepared to take your time with influencers. The last thing you want to do is invite yourself to their party by moving too fast.

6. Put Your Account on Autopilot

Daily interaction is what Twitter’s all about, and the most powerful results to get free traffic to your website comes from engaging directly with people in real time. This is tricky, since you can’t be on Twitter around the clock and you probably have things to say during those off hours. There are several free programs you can use to automate tweets so you’ll be part of the conversation 24-7.

Tools like Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to add any messages, blog posts and curated content you want to Tweet into a calendar that automates your whole campaign. So instead of grabbing a few minutes here and there to find interesting articles, you can schedule your entire week’s worth (or month’s worth) of tweets in just a few hours at the beginning of each week.

Key Takeaway

Making Twitter work for you is easier than you think, and these simple steps will make Twitter a primary source of free traffic to your website. Once you have your Twitter campaign automated, it can really be a powerful marketing asset that allows you to connect with people from all over the world. The more you provide valuable content and authentic interactions with followers, the more you’ll stand out from the pack as a true expert in your field. Over time, this will easily translate into meaningful customer relationships that will have a great impact on your business.

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How to Get 2,000 Twitter Followers in 2 Months (and 17K in 8 Months)

Here are the 3 top strategies I used to grow my Twitter followers from 65 to 2000 in 2 months. And 8 months later I have over 17K followers using these exact same strategies. Results are guaranteed. Click through to see the strategies! If you’re a ninja Twitter user, 2,000 followers isn’t going to impress you, I know. But after staring at my account with 65 Twitter followers for a year, it’s a pretty huge milestone for me.

I just couldn’t take the barren wasteland of followers and decided it was time to ramp up my Twitter game. And over 2 months later, I’ve added over 1,900 new Twitter followers to my account. And I’ve done this by sharing other people’s content, and just a few of my own original posts.

These are the three strategies I came up with to boost the number of Twitter followers and engagement.

Update: It’s been 8 months since I originally wrote this and I now have close to 18K followers, using these same strategies.

1) Adopt a Twitter mindset

Twitter is all about real-time conversations. And they’re short conversations. You’ve only got 140 characters to say what you want to say, and that character limit includes hashtags and links. The lifespan of tweets is about a millisecond.

So you really have to adopt a Twitter mindset of following, tweeting, retweeting and messaging frequently. And understand that magic’s not going to happen overnight.

If that all sounds daunting, trust me, I know.

I mean, what are you supposed to do with Twitter? When I first created my Twitter account, I had no idea what to do first. I’d log in every week or so, search for some people to follow and try to figure out what the fuss was with #hashtags. That was pretty much it, and that got me to about 65 followers.

Getting from 65 to 100 was hard. I simply lost my enthusiasm and couldn’t figure out a better strategy, so I stopped logging in once a week. A month or two later I finally logged back in and noticed that my number of followers had dropped off.

So what should you do?

The takeaway is that there’s a Twitter “code.” You have to show up and engage in order to even maintain your current followers, let alone try to get new followers.

Start by setting aside a few minutes each day for Twitter. Enter keywords and hashtags that are relevant to your industry and your target market to find people you’d like to follow. Try to follow 10 to 20 people each day and watch your numbers grow as people follow you back.

Once you hit 100 Twitter followers, it will be easier to get the next 100, and so on.

2) Tweet frequently

Because Twitter conversations are happening in real time, you need to post more frequently than on Facebook and LinkedIn if you want to grow your follower base.

Up to about 300 followers, I’d tweet four or fives each day, excluding weekends.

On my quest for the perfect Twitter strategy, I noticed that some people I followed were tweeting every half hour or less, and that there was a definite correlation between number of tweets and the number of followers. The more people tweeted, the more followers they had.

Once I increased the number of times I tweeted to 12 per day, things started snowballing and I saw a huge increase in Twitter followers.

So what should you do?

Because Twitter conversations are happening globally in real time, your tweet is bumped down to the bottom of the page just about the minute you post it. You have to tweet more frequently to increase the chances that people will see your tweets.

Tweeting throughout the day doesn’t mean you have to have your eyes peeled on your dashboard all day. There are tools to help you manage tweets so that all you need is an hour or two each week to gather the content you want to share.

Here are some scheduling and automation tools I use:

  • Feedly
    I use this to gather news feeds and curate articles from blogs and publications that are of interest to my audiences. Once you find an article you like, you can either tweet directly from Feedly or add it to a scheduling app.
  • Buffer
    I use Buffer in conjunction with Feedly to schedule tweets. The scheduler is very easy to use and allows you to specify the days and times you want your tweets to post. It’s not just for Twitter. I use it to schedule posts across all of my social channels. If you’re using it with Feedly or another news aggregator, simply add what’s in your Feedly to your Buffer queue and you’re done.
  • IFTT
    IFTT is a big time saver for me. IFTT stands for “If This Then That” and allows you to create conditional statements based on the actions of Feedly. Any new articles added to blogs or publications within one of your Feedly categories can be automatically added to your Buffer queue. A word of caution here: you’ll have to check your Twitter buffer daily to make sure the articles that IFTT pulls in are actually ones you want to share. You can easily delete the ones that have little relevance to your followers.
  • Social Quant
    Once I reached about 1600 followers, I decided to give Social Quant a try. Social Quant is a social media management app that finds targeted follows based on keywords you provide. I don’t recommend using Social Quant when you’re first starting out, simply because it takes some time to know what keywords and influencers you want to target. You really have to manage Twitter yourself until it’s time is right to take the training wheels off. Once you know what you’re doing and what followers to target, Social Quant takes the busy work off your hands.

Using Twitter consistently is the best way to realize meaningful results. The good news is that after a while, you can put automation in place to grow your followers and boost engagement with just a few hours each week.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Automation is a powerful way to grow your followers and boost engagement with just a few hours each week” quote=”Automation is a powerful way to grow your followers and boost engagement with just a few hours each week”]

3) Say thanks and retweet

Many people on Twitter rely on retweeting alone to build their brand. I’ve used this technique and continue to use it to increase my Twitter followers, so I do think it works pretty well. It’s an easy enough way to share content. All I have to do is find a message that my followers would be interested in and send it out there.

Retweeting is also a powerful way to increase visibility with influencers. I’ve gotten a few heavy hitters to follow me back, simply by retweeting them.

If you retweet them enough and the right way, you can eventually get on their radar and increase the likelihood that they’ll share your tweet with followers.

When it comes to people retweeting and following me, up until recently the way I’ve thanked them is to retweet them and follow them back. I know some people prefer to shoot off a “thanks for the share” tweet, but I’m not a huge fan. In my mind, retweeting and following back is a better way to show appreciation than littering up feeds.

Having said that, I’m running a one-month experiment to run my own “thanks for the share” test to see if it fits with my culture and gets better engagement.

So what should you do?

Use a tool like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to track mentions, tweets and follows. Right from the dashboard you can view the activity of people you follow and see who’s followed and tweeted you. These are both great Twitter compilers that allow you to see who’s talking about you and respond right away.

@SandraJClayton Tweetdeck dashboard

If you’re going to retweet influencers, don’t simply hit the Retweet button. Instead, quote the original tweet using the RT abbreviation. You want your quote to read: “RT@TwitterHandle:” followed by the actual tweet. This way all of your followers will see the person’s name as well as your name, and the person you’re retweeting will see it too. This will help you build a stronger following.

Here are some other things to try:

Use lists
You can organize twitter users in groups. I’ve found these to be a great way to monitor and interact with important people. I have lists for my industry, influencers and lists for each of my target audiences.

Rather than hunt through my feed or search for content to share, I can just go to my lists to find out who’s posting what. If there’s an influencer or competitor you want to engage with but don’t want to follow them, lists are a great way to do that.

They’re also a great way to monitor the tweets of your competitors. You can view their updates, check out their offers and see what works for them and adapt it to your business.

Twitter lists

Twitter chats
I have to be honest, I haven’t used Twitter chats yet but have read that they’re a secret weapon for businesses. You’ve probably seen a Twitter chat or two in your newsfeed.

A Twitter chat is a moderated conversation between a group of people on Twitter. A hashtag is used to organize the conversation. #SmallBizChat and #bufferchat are popular Twitter chats for businesses. If I were to particpate in one of these chats, I would use the appropriate hashtag in my tweets so everyone could follow.

Twitter chats seem like they would be a great way to interact with like-minded people and share my content. If you wrote a blog post about a specific topic and there just so happens to be a Twitter chat on that topic, then it would be a good idea to mention your post (so long as it provides value to the conversation).

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How to Use Facebook Contests to Generate Qualified Leads

Here's how entrepreneurs and biz owners can use Facebook contests to grow your mailing list and generate qualified leads.Facebook contests can help you generate qualified leads, and if done right can be a source of business for your sales funnel. They’re also a great way to create a buzz about your products and services and encourage people to become more invested in your brand.

As with all marketing, relevance and emotion play crucial roles to your success. It’s all about qualified subscribers rather than empty leads: you’ll have to weed out everyone else and appeal only to your ideal prospect. To do that, you need to create a visually engaging campaign and offer a prize specifically relevant to your business and your target audience.

Here are 6 steps to running Facebook contests that generate qualified leads:

Map out a plan

Having a solid plan for your Facebook contest will help you follow through and stay on track. What’s the intended outcome for your contest? Do you only want to grow your mailing list, or is increasing your fan base also important? Who is your target audience and what types of prizes will appeal to them? What incentive will you provide to encourage participation? Having your goals in mind when you start your contest will keep you focused and give you the best results.

Pick something to give away

This is where you let fans know why they should enter the contest. You need an exciting prize to generate the feedback you want. Understanding both your business and your audience is the best way to pick an appropriate prize. Prizes should be both relevant to your business and exciting enough to generate interest from your fan base.

You can consider offering your service or product as the prize, but tread with caution here. If you’re an accountant, it may not be very enticing to offer a free consultation. You just won’t generate the interest you need, especially if you have a small fan page to begin with. A sporting store, on the other hand, would do well to offer fans free hiking gear. This type of prize is both relevant and exciting.

In the example of the accountant, it may be better to offer a day at a local golf club. This is a win-win. It offers something exciting and targets your ideal prospect. Remember to think about your audience first, and be creative.

What you don’t want to do is offer a generic price, like a new iPhone. This will generate the wrong type of interest and you’ll wind up with fake fans and empty leads. Keep the prize relevant to your business.

Create your ad

You can create your ad two ways. You can run a simple timeline contest by posting a status update in your news feed. This is ideal for business owners who don’t have time to create a page app or design graphics for a landing page. In this case the entry method for fans would simply be to join your email list.

You can also use a third-party app such as Wishpond or Shortstack. Apps allow you to create a landing page for your campaign, with graphics and a lead form to collect information. They also give you campaign analytics and tracking features.

If you choose to create a landing page for your campaign, here are some tips to make it visually engaging:

Feature your product and prize. This may seem like an obvious point, but one that’s easy to forget. Include images of your product or business, as well as images of the prize. Let fans see who you are and what they can win by entering. The more visual you can be, the better. If you’re offering a day of golf, show them relevant golf images. The images should be high quality so you can resize your campaign without them becoming blurry.

Place the form at the top of the page. Your entry form should be prominently placed so that fans can easily see it when they’re on your page. The form can include more or less information, the minimum being an email address.

Include a short poll. You want to provide value for your fans, but also consider what value the contest can provide to you. Consider including a few short questions in the contest entry that will give you insight into what your target audience likes. You can use the answers to segment your future marketing and to develop services and products that would interest them.

Add like and share buttons. Include steps encouraging fans to like, share, and tweet about your contest. This will bring more people to your page, increase contest entries, and increase the likes on your page.

Make the entry method easy

How do they enter your contest? What do your fans have to do? Make the entry method obvious and clear. Give them all of the information they need to make a decision.

Most contests require an email address to enter. You can also ask for contact names or other information. Depending on the entry rules, you may ask fans for some kind of submission in the form of a photo or video. Don’t forget a strong call to action, such as a “like this page” step, which will increase your fan base in addition to building your email list.

Promote your contest

Once you’ve launched your campaign, you’ll need to promote it. Post about it on your news feed. Change your cover image to match the contest visuals and use an arrow or graphic pointing fans to the contest tab. Remember to mention the contest in your blog and link to it from your website.

Use your existing email list as a platform to get the word out to your fan base. The more you get the word out, the more people you have sharing your contest with their friends. You may also want to run Facebook ads targeted to your audience in order to generate more feedback. You can set your budget with these ads, so they shouldn’t be too costly.

Pick a winner and follow up

How you follow up with your campaign is crucial to its success. Posting the winner’s profile on your fan page will provide social proof and show fans who didn’t participate that the contest was real. Use your fan page to announce your next contest or let fans know how frequently you run contests: once a month, quarterly, or twice a year. Whatever it is, let your fans know. The point here is to encourage them to stay engaged with your fan page.

Follow up with everyone who entered your contest. You’ve created a mailing list. Use it! Make every participant feel like a winner. Consider offering some kind of consolation prize, invite them to a webinar, or let them know about future events. Include a link to the winner profile to get them excited. This way you’ll gain early momentum for your next contest.

In Conclusion

Building a strong email list is a valuable asset for the B2B sales funnel. For your email list to have high conversions, you need to weed out any prospects whose interests aren’t in alignment with yours. Make sure your campaign speaks directly to your target audience by offering prizes relevant to your business.

Don’t forget to invoke emotion in your campaign. Too often B2B marketers focus on logic and facts, and forget about emotion. You want to inspire and encourage fans to take the next step. Let them know the bottom line and what’s in it for them if they enter your contest.

Once you have their attention, keep the marketing ball rolling by engaging and interacting with them. Use polls to find out what products they like or want to see. Make it easy for participants to share the campaign with their friends. There’s a good chance that friends of friends will also be your ideal prospects.

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