Prioritize Your Social Media

I plan, create, and schedule out content for my clients on a weekly basis. As I was sitting at my desk on Monday uploading branded graphics to Planoly for a client and scheduling out pins in Tailwind for another client, I realized that the most recent post on my own Instagram account was weeks ago! I’m so guilty of letting the management of my own social media accounts get pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. When you have clients who’ve hired you for their social media, it can feel like your own social media just isn’t as important.

The truth is, if you are helping others with their social media, then your own social media is all the more important. In addition to being a portfolio of the work that you do, it serves as a model for the services you provide. I’m over here telling my clients the importance of posting frequency, but I’m not even following my own advice. So, I’m changing that by making my own social media a priority. I’ve said that before, but this time I’m putting a plan in place. Today, I’m going to plan out my posts for the month on pen and paper. Then, I’m going to prioritize my social media the same way I do my client work, by allotting time on the same day each week to create graphics and schedule out posts.

When I initially plan out all my content, I always go the pen and paper route. In case you’re like me, I’m sharing a pretty awesome free resource to help you get all your content ideas out of your head and organized on paper. These content planning sheets are something I always use to plan out social media content both for myself and for my clients. So join me, and let’s make our own social media accounts a priority starting today!  Print out one copy of the month’s calendar for each account you would like to schedule and let’s get started! If you’re joining me in a renewed commitment to your social media this month, comment below or message me and let me know! I'd love to follow along and support each other with our goals!

Happy Planning!

Once you’ve scheduled out your content ideas on the calendar, find stock photos, or take your own. Then, edit them in a photo editing app of your choice to be of similar style. Upload all of your on-brand photos to a scheduling platform. For Instagram, I use and highly recommend Planoly. I am not an affiliate, I just love it. You can drag and drop all of your images complete with their captions, tags, and hashtags to the calendar, preview how your feed will look, and enable Planoly to post for you! Best part, you can get all these features on the free version. If you have any questions, or would like help styling your social media, get in touch! I'd love to help.

Still stuck? Are you struggling to fill your content calendar? Stay tuned as I will be posting a guide on how to fill your content calendar with branded content that is relevant and appeals to your audience. In the meantime, check out this post for 30 Days of Instagram Post Ideas and tips for making the most out of your Instagram posts.

30 Post Ideas for Instagram

As blog owners and biz owners, we all strive for the same things on Instagram. We want to grow our following, and increase our engagement because we all know, in today's world, that forming these social connections creates customer loyalty and ultimately leads to increased sales.

In order to grow your following and increase your engagement, you have to consistently post content that is intriguing to your audience and cohesive with your brand. No easy task. Last week on the blog, I shared a free printable content calendar with you. However, filling out that calendar can be overwhelming. So, this week I have compiled a social plan for Instagram that you can download below with 30 post ideas to help you fill your Instagram with fresh, new posts!

Organize all your post ideas with the RWS Content Calendar in last week's blog post! 

 

QUICK CONTENT TIPS:

1. Follow the 80/20 rule. Only 20% of your posts should be focused on promoting your business. The other 80% should be helpful tips and resources, and more personal posts that allow you to form a social connection with your followers. The more you genuinely form personal relationships and help your followers, the more open they will be to a 'soft sell.' 
2. It is okay to recycle content. Just do it sparingly. A good rule to stick to is to space out recycled content at least three months from the time of the original post.
3. Monitor your analytics to determine what content performs best. Then, create more of it and recycle. You can make a post seem new by taking old content and use similar image at a new angle. 
4. The ideal image size for your Instagram post is a 1080px square image. Create different images of same content for each of your social media accounts, as each platform has a different ideal image size.
5. Be Social. Instagram isn't just about promoting your brand, it is also about being apart of a community. So go ahead and share other people's content! It is a great show of support and great way to connect with others in your niche so long as you tag them and give appropriate credit. You can also use a repost app to share posts from your peers, influencers, and followers.

That's all, folks. Hope this helps. Happy Posting!

First #FreeFriday!

Since the best things in life are FREE... I want to share free resources with you all! For the first official RWS #freefriday, I'm sharing something with you that I could NOT live without: a printable content calendar. It includes all the popular social media "holidays," trending monthly hashtags, and space to write your own hashtags specific to your brand.

Before I create a content calendar for any of my clients, I start with these things. It makes it SO much easier to fill in the calendar with unique content each month. It can be difficult coming up with daily content, so I hope this content calendar helps you too during these busy summer months to come!

If you are still having trouble coming up with content, I can help! I create similar content calendars for my clients with post ideas for each day of the month as well as a complete list of hashtags for their brand. Upon request, I also make cohesive sets of graphics that correspond to the content calendar. If this is something of interest to you, contact me!

What's with the Name?

Behind every name is a story.

My name is Katie Buczkowski. Try to pronounce that last name. Or spell it without looking. My point is, it’s not an easy name. When you run a business, you want a name that people remember but you don’t want it to be hard to say. So, when I began to think of a name for my business, I knew using my name was out of the question.

Still, I wanted a name that was personal, a name that conveyed something about me. So, I started to think of a name that told something about myself. My first thought was… Chicago.

Ever since moving to LA, my Chicago pride has strengthened tenfold. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving life in LA - no snow, lots of sun, lots of sand. It just seems that whenever you move to a new city, you begin to appreciate your hometown more. Let’s be real- I was blessed to have been raised a short train ride away from one of the greatest cities in the world. So, there was no doubt I wanted to choose a name that was a nod to Chicago.

There are a lot of aspects of Chicago that could be used as elements of a company name. I went through a lot of different ideas. Then, I got stuck on the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier.

Here’s the thing about Navy Pier: if you’re from Chicago, you rarely go to Navy Pier. It’s for the tourists. Nonetheless, it's a pretty awesome place. It’s the home of the city’s iconic Ferris wheel, recognizable even to foreigners. The original ferris wheel was actually invented in Chicago and debuted as the centerpiece of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Growing up in Chicago, this is something every kid learns about and inevitably does a project on at some point. Shortly after I completed such a project, my mom took us into the city for a “staycation.” We went to Navy Pier and walked through the funhouse, shopped the vendors, rented bikes to ride along the lake, and of course, rode the Ferris wheel. We stayed in a hotel overlooking the city. The next day we went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field where we stuffed our faces with Chicago-style hot dogs. It was a quintessential weekend in the city. It was on this mini-trip as a young girl that I began to fall in with love the city. Over the years, I spent many weekends and most of my summers exploring the city. At the end of my senior year of high school before I was to leave Chicago to head to college, I attended my prom at Navy Pier where we all rode the Ferris wheel.

On the same day that I thought of the Navy Pier Ferris wheel as inspiration for my namesake, I was walking the dogs down to the bottom of my street. As we admired the red streaks in sky over the water, I looked to my left to watch the lights of the Ferris Wheel on Santa Monica’s pier. That’s when it hit me - It was meant to be. My Ferris wheel inspiration now represented both my home city and my new city that I love.

So, there you have it. Why the name? I’m a Chicago-raised gal living in Santa Monica.

Oh- and why the “red” in Red Wheel Social, you might still be asking? The colors behind my brand are inspired by the Chicago flag, another iconic feature of the city. What color are the four big stars on the flag? You guessed it- red.

First Post Coming Soon!

Stay tuned :)

Thanks for visiting!