"Just put a post up. It can't be that hard."

These are famous last words for many business owners.

We create a lot of content for our clients. Thoughtful, intelligent and aesthetically pleasing content. Which takes a lot of time to plan, write and design. And so it should.

So how long do you think it can take to write a months worth of content?

2 hours? 2 days? 2 weeks?

For most clients, it's about 2 weeks, beginning to end. It's writing the captions, creating the images, reviewing the content again, review hashtags and links, preparing it for distribution and then posting it. Then it's time to start creating the content for the next month.

Why does it take so long, you might be asking?

Well, if you're going to spend the time creating content, it needs to be for a purpose. You want to engage with your existing audience, or you want to attract new clients or opportunities. Which means you need to understand your ideal audience, whether they're solution aware or unaware, what their pain points might be and how you can really try and engage with them.

Of course, that takes time. Then actually creating the best possible content for that audience, takes even more time.

You can throw any old post up of course. But then what's the point?

Does that post really give you an opportunity to engage with your audience? Or have you just ticked a box that you've published a post to your socials.

Social content is all about storytelling, educating, engaging and eliciting some sort of emotion. This is how you agitate your audience to take action or make a decision. Your content should be reminding them about what you do and give them examples of how your services work in action. The types of action they take could be to:

• Engage with the post
• Write a comment
• Tag a friend who needs your help
• Share your content
• Contact you about an issue

So next time you think that creating some intelligent social content is a quick 30-minute job, think again. If you want to do it right, make sure your team have the time and knowledge to do it properly or outsource it to a specialist team that knows your industry and can do it for you.

Reach out if you want to have a chat about what we do.