SMM and content
A content plan for the month in two hours
A content plan most often collapses not because there is a shortage of ideas, but because it is built from scratch every time. You sit down, stare at an empty spreadsheet, generate thirty topics and run out of steam by mid-month.
The scheme below removes exactly that stage. The idea is to define the structure once and then only fill it with new substance every month.
Step 1. Four pillars instead of thirty topics
Instead of inventing every post separately, define four permanent pillars — explanation, proof, person, action. This set suits almost any service business and needs no monthly reinvention.
Step 2. The proportion
The most common mistake is either non-stop selling or non-stop usefulness with no offer at all. A working ratio for the month looks roughly like this: half explanations, a quarter proof, the rest split between the personal and direct offers.
The main rule: the offer has to be heard regularly. The audience gets used to how you behave, and an abrupt switch into selling mode feels like something alien.
Step 3. The raw-material bank
This is where the hours are saved. Start one document into which, over the month, you drop:
- questions clients ask — verbatim, in their own words
- objections you have to work through
- situations from work that surprised or amused you
- mistakes you see in clients over and over
This list fills up by itself, between other tasks. When planning time comes, you are not inventing topics — you are sorting what is already collected into pillars.
Step 4. Two hours, laid out minute by minute
The first 30 minutes. You open the raw-material bank and pick eight to ten items, the most relevant right now. Not the best ones — precisely the relevant ones: the season, the market situation, whatever people are asking about at the moment.
The next 40 minutes. You lay the chosen items out by pillar and by date. The gaps become visible right here: for example, there is not a single piece of proof — which means you need to plan a shoot of a result or ask for a testimonial.
Another 30 minutes. For each item you write one line — not the text, but the point and the format. “Explanation of why we take a prepayment — carousel”. That is enough to avoid trying to recall later what you meant.
The last 20 minutes. You mark what needs filming and bring it all into one shooting day. This is the most important item: without it half the plan dies at the “we have no photos” stage.
What to do when the plan breaks
It will break — and that is normal. A client cancelled a shoot, the week turned out insane, the mood is not there.
Two rules for this case. First: the “explanation” pillar always saves you, because all it needs is a phone and your head. Second: better to publish less but within the structure than to fill the gap with a random post about nothing. Random posts pile up faster than you think, and it is exactly they that later create the feeling that the account is run just to tick a box.
The main thing
The scheme works not because it is clever, but because it shifts the effort from the moment of planning across the whole month. You do not invent content — you collect it, while you work.
After two or three months the raw-material bank grows to the point where two hours is already too much. That is the sign the system has taken root.