“Don’t confuse activity with productivity. Many people are simply busy being busy." - Robin Sharma

We all know how important being on social media is for the success of your business, but we also know the importance of having a good social media account. Most either feel totally defeated and just post anything to get something up with the attitude of “I can’t make it look great so something is better than nothing”, while others are in fear of doing it wrong or trying to perfect it over and over again but never posting anything.

We know that traditional forms of marketing just don’t cut it anymore. The return on your investment is nil because your audience isn’t there. Where are they? They are on social media: but just having a social media account isn’t enough. You need to create eye-catching, emotion-evoking, more-than-just-a-like-type of content.

“But I have no time.”

“But I don’t know what to post.”

The great thing about technology is that there are now ways to save you time and have your social media look better. Templates are a great way to do this. All you need to do is plop your text into a text box or upload your photos/video to a template and personalize a few things – and like magic, now you have social media content to post.

Templates help with the details of formatting, style, and some graphic design choices, but you still need to determine what message you want to get across.

Where to Start

First, you want to determine what you want your content to do for you. Content marketing is marketing and so it needs to market to someone to have that person take an action.

Do you want your content to build brand awareness and connect with your target audience?

Do you want your content to lead viewers to click on the offer to learn more?

Or do you want your content to compel them convert and purchase whatever you are selling?

Of course, you want people to purchase what you sell: however you can’t just be pushing purchases for all your content. This is where having a sales funnel is helpful and making sure your 9-grid/3-pillar strategy incorporates the different goals will help to make sure that no matter who sees your content, if they stick around or go to your profile, they will be able to naturally be led into the sales funnel if they are your target audience.

The 9-Grid/3-Pillar Strategy

Your 9-grid/3-pillar strategy is a content strategy related to Instagram and your home profile feed’s first 9 photos. What do they say about you: what you do, who you are, and why you are different (Unique Selling Proposition)? Are they static photos or videos? IGTV, Lives or Reels? Carousels or one photo? Quotes, framed photos or graphics? Know what you want to say and who you want to say it to will help guide you to make the right content decisions.

Once you have decided what you are going to post and what your brand message/colours/fonts are, you can easily find templates to match that.

Make sure you are using the right content for the right platforms and creating a natural sales funnel and customer experience journey along the way to guide your target audience into the behaviours you want them to have.

Think about your daily messages, your weekly messages, your 9-grid/3-pillar strategy, your overall branding, your type of content, and the sales cycle you want to lead them along. Then you want to plan out your content ahead of time.

Take the time find the photos, create the captions, determine the best hashtags, make the videos: and I would also suggest uploading and scheduling these to an Instagram scheduling software so you don’t have to worry about always being on your phone to post the right things at the right time.

For example, if you are going to post testimonials or quotes (a text-heavy post), you can use Canva for an Instagram post and choose the colours/font that best match your brand. You can even create a Brand Kit in Canva to make your life that much easier.

Then all you need to do is copy and paste the quote or testimonial into the text box, adjust as needed, and download it. If you have your 9-grid strategy, you can plan for the number of quotes you will need in a given 9-grid cycle and batch create those all at the same time and then they are done and ready to schedule.

If you feel a bit lost on where to start with your 9-grid/3-pillar strategy or your content creation schedule in general, I’d love to help you get started on the right path. Feel free to email me to help you get started on the right path: hello@thebridalmasterclass.com.

How to Use Templates

There are other ways to utilise templates for social media with various apps you can download to your phone. You no longer need to be a graphic designer or video technician to make things look professional and on-brand for your social media account.

Some of the most popular ones are: Mojo, Instories, SCRL, Vixer, Videoleap and Temply. These are all just drag and drop after you choose the template you want to use. You can also use CapCut which allows you to either create a video/Reel/TikTok with your own choice of transitions, effects, speed, etc. or you can use their Autocut to have the app do the edits for you. There is even music that will also upload for posting the video to Facebook without worrying about the copyright issues.

When creating Reels (if you are watching a Reel you like) there are a couple ways to use templates.

One, you can use the audio you hear on a Reel by tapping on the bottom audio name and then tapping the button “Use Audio” to create a Reel with that audio.

The other way to use templates inside of Instagram is the “Use Template” button above the account name on a Reel. Not all Reels have this option, but those that do, allow you to create Reels like the one you are watching just by adding your pictures/video. You just replace the clips with your own photos or video.

The great thing about using templates is that it takes the extra guesswork and decision making out of your hands so you can focus on other things that require your attention. As you use templates more, you will become more familiar with the right ones for you and your target audience. Like with anything, you can do more extensive research on the audios, template types, etc. to make it even more targeted but when you are first starting, just doing it allows you to get your feet wet and still have an impact.

If this still seems a bit overwhelming and you’d like more specific instruction, just email me to get on my email list and learn more about the latest news in social media as well as upcoming classes to take you through things step by step: hello@thebridalmasterclass.com.