A Content Creator's Guide to Understanding Goals and Planning:

When the Personal Blog Crops up in the Classroom:

 	Throughout our semester social media project and the readings of the recent weeks, a huge emphasis has been placed on content planning and preparation before beginning a social media campaign. My team and I developed a social media calendar plan for the next two weeks, and the chapters talked about framing a lot of these plans and calendars around client goals and objectives. In practice, this seemed really hard to wrap my head around for our group project client, but I realized I have done this plenty of times in my own life so how do I bridge the gap between my past experiences and the project in front of me. 

In building my personal blog, YouTube channel, and social media networks I understood the goals and objectives really intimately. I also think a key aspect of being able to connect the goals and objectives with the specific content ideas was a lot easier in my blog space because I knew what content I wanted to create and what kinds of past videos or posts my audience responded to really well. I feel like because my blog and YouTube channel is so connected to who I am and my interests, and because I’ve been so hands-on with my content, that it’s easy to plan content that I know will do well based on my passion for the subject and my audience’s previous response.

Personal Goal-Setting and Planning:

In class, I was excited to start planning content and learn how to use calendars and things like that and looking back it feels silly because I realize I’ve done this before. I’ve even created videos on my YouTube channel about how I plan my content. I’ve put together binders and files tracking my previous engagement rates, follower changes, and watch time in order to set a standard of how far I should be growing in the next month. Filling out sheets such as this one:

really helped me to organize my thoughts and set standards to work towards. These predictions helped me plan content that I knew would get the right number of views or comments to achieve these goals. From there, I would fill out sheets like this:

in order to plan out my specific posts and content ideas in an organized way. These sort of resources gave me an overall look at the month if I ever needed a quick glance at what was coming, but it also allowed me to be really intentional about when I posted what content. This helped to make sure my YouTube content was balanced, connected well with each other, and also was “bingeable” in order to increase my watch time. Also using a calendar like this helped me keep a consistent and regular posting schedule, which is so important to be successful in a social media campaign.

Bridging the Gap: From Blog to BSU:

Reflecting on these two aspects of planning content, it has made me rethink how we approached this project. I think if we had focused more on our audit and looking at the content that’s been shared previously, as well as their audience responses, we might better be able to understand the kinds of content to focus on. In terms of the BSU PRSSA, there is so little pre-existing content to go off of, that it’s hard to see what did well and what the audience responded to. With other brands that are more active, it’s easier to see what has been done to lead the way to where you’re supposed to go. However, we still could have gone a little more in-depth in our research of the chapter or in other chapter accounts to see what is successful for them. Just like in my personal social media, I now realize that if I had followed the same procedure, I could identify the growth and goals for the chapter, and then plan content that would appeal to the audience but also help achieve these goals.

I find this to be the case with most concepts and topics, hands-on practice and experience is the best way to learn and understand ideas that at first seem really abstract. It took months for me to identify growth patterns and plan content that would continue those patterns. I especially feel that through reflecting on these skills, I have been able to build the bridge between my personal practices and understandings to other projects. But now that I’ve taken the time to practice them myself and understand how to apply these techniques to other clients or organizations, I feel much better prepared for professional opportunities in social media management performing these tasks.