By now you have already created your social media accounts but you may not be sure how best to use social media with your Reiki practice. The best way to work out how to use social media is to create a social media content plan. A social media content plan defines what you will post to your social media accounts and when you will post. This blog post will help you create a plan that will cover your social media content for an entire year.

Your social media plan should ultimately help your Reiki therapy business by increasing awareness about your Reiki practice and ultimately generating income if you work with paying clients. You may want to set some basic goals for your Reiki practice such as:

• build awareness about your Reiki practice
• Find clients who book Reiki appointments
• Find Reiki networks that help develop your skills

Your goals are relevant to you what you want to achieve both personally and professionally as a Reiki therapist.

Creating content for multiple social media platforms can be an onerous task, however, with some careful planning you can learn to create a minimal amount of content and share it across multiple social media platforms for a broader reach to potential Reiki clients.

Below is an example of how you can use one blog post and modify it into 16 different social media posts. In this example, assume you have written an article about Reiki therapy.

Below is an example of the subtitles within your blog post about Reiki:

• What is Reiki?
• Different types of Reiki
• Where to find a Reiki practitioner

Below is an example of how you might share the content from your one blog post using the subsections listed above:

BLOG TITLE: Check out our new blog post about Reiki
1. Post on Facebook – Check out our new blog post about Reiki
2. Post on Twitter – Check out our new blog post about Reiki
3. Post on Pinterest – Check out our new blog post about Reiki (use image from blog post to pin)
4. Post on Instagram – Check out our new blog post about Reiki (use image from blog post to Instagram)

BLOG POST SECTION TITLE 1: What is Reiki?
5. Post on Facebook – Check out our new blog post: What is Reiki?
6. Post on Twitter – Check out our new blog post: What is Reiki?
7. Post on Pinterest – Check out our new blog post: What is Reiki? (use image from blog post to pin)
8. Post on Instagram – Check out our new blog post: What is Reiki? (use image from blog post to Instagram)

HIGHLIGHT BLOG POST SECTION TITLE 2: Different types of Reiki
9. Post on Facebook – Check out our new blog post: Different types of Reiki
10. Post on Twitter – Check out our new blog post: Different types of Reiki
11. Post on Pinterest – Check out our new blog post: Different types of Reiki (use image from blog post to pin)
12. Post on Instagram – Check out our new blog post: Different types of Reiki (use image from blog post to Instagram)

HIGHLIGHT BLOG POST SECTION TITLE 3: Where to find a Reiki practitioner
13. Post on Facebook – Check out our new blog post: Where to find a Reiki practitioner
14. Post on Twitter – Check out our new blog post: Where to find a Reiki practitioner
15. Post on Pinterest – Check out our new blog post: Where to find a Reiki practitioner (use image from blog post to pin)
16. Post on Instagram – Check out our new blog post: Where to find a Reiki practitioner (use image from blog post to Instagram)

All of the above content comes from one single blog post. You may think you can only post a link to your blog post once and then the content is considered used and can’t be used again. This is not the case with social media as not all of your audience will see your blog post links the first time.

To ensure your readers have the best opportunity to read your content you should post it multiple times. Additionally, your social media accounts will always be found by new readers in the future so if you post links to a blog post in April, this means that new readers who like your Facebook page in September won’t have seen your earlier blog post links. From this perspective, it is helpful to your readers to reshare your content multiple times.

Furthermore, by posting multiple content from the one blog post you can begin to gather data on what headings and social media platforms appeal to your readers the most.

As we detail the planning process below, we will keep the details simple so that you can easily create an entire year of social media posts in 1 hour. If you have more experience with social media you may want to create a more sophisticated social media plan with very specific goals and types of content.

The aim in this blog post is to provide you with a simplified example of how you create efficient and effective social media content in a short amount of time.

WHAT IS THE TYPE OF CONTENT YOUR WANT TO CREATE:

As part of your planning process, ask yourself how you would like to create content. Your decision should be based on your skill level and your interest in specific media types. You may want to create your own content through blog posts, podcasts, video, or you may want to curate content from other sources, or maybe you would like to add content to your social media platforms that are a mix of both.

Social media is about sharing, so many companies actually encourage you to share other content in addition to your own. This is particularly relevant to Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

SET YOUR POSTING GOALS:

Before you begin to create your social media content, it is helpful to set some goals for how your business will use social media and what you expect to gain from using a specific social media platform. Some ideas may include:

• Increase your email list
• Increase Reiki appointment bookings
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase knowledge about Reiki

From setting your goals you will then be able to determine the best type of social media content that you should create.

CHOOSE THE TYPES OF CONTENT POSTS:

To help make the process of posting social content easier and quicker, it is helpful to create a set number of categories of types of content that you will regularly post. This could include inspiration, recommendations, or quotes for example. For more ideas on the type of posts you may want to create, you can read the previous blog post: Free Social Media Schedulers Review 

Included in the post Free Social Media Schedulers Review you can download a social media checklist which contains over 30 social media post suggestions. It’s not recommended to do all 30+ post types but instead focus on a few different types that are easy to create and ca,n maintain your interest as you will need to regularly create this type of content.

Some post types include:

• Book recommendations
• Fact Sheet
• Blog post topic
• Business details
• Top 10 List
• An example of when to use Reiki

CHOOSE THE TOPICS YOU WISH TO TALK ABOUT:

When you create content, it is always beneficial to create based on topics that you know about and have personal experience with. Creating content on this basis means you are using the skills and knowledge that you already have and that interest you the most.

Some topic ideas for a Reiki therapist include:

• Reiki
• Wellness
• Natural therapy
• Physical and mental healing
• Lifestyle
• Self-care
• Self-improvement

CHOOSE THE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS YOU WANT TO USE:

You should choose the social media platforms where the majority of your clients can be found. If you are not sure of the best social media platforms for your client demographic you can try a few posts on each platform and analyze how they perform over a number of months. Over time you will see a trend that determines the best social media platforms for your potential clients.

Marketing with social media requires some experimentation until you can obtain some data about how your potential clients interact with your posts on each platform.

Each social media platform favors it’s own type of media. For example video is best on YouTube, images are best on Instagram, Twitter is best for short text and Facebook is good for a combination of all media types. If you have a preference for the type of media that you like to create, this may influence the social media platform that you use the most.

Creating social media content needs to be a balance between what you like to create as a business owner and what your potential clients like to view.

Although you may ultimately choose one or two social media platforms to focus your efforts on, there are many ways in which you can automate how information is shared between each platform without any additional effort from you.

Below is a guideline for the general use of each platform:

• Facebook – for general audiences with a wide age range including your potential clients and other Reiki professionals. Facebook is good for creating your brand awareness as it is easy to promote various types of media including text, audio, video, and still images.
• Twitter – useful for networking within your industry and following leaders in your field
• Instagram – useful for connecting with clients based on your preferred topics eg. Reiki, natural therapy etc
• Pinterest – useful for for connecting with clients based on your preferred topics eg. Reiki, natural therapy etc

At the end of this blog post, you will find a social media planner for you to download and use to create your own social media content.

Begin the process by creating a schedule for one month and then use this month as a guideline to plan social media posts for additional months in the year. Included in the template we’re providing, you will see some sample data for the first month of the social media planner.

Once you have created your social media post plan, you can then create the actual content that you intend to post on each social media platform.

If you need additional help to develop your content, we Blogging Package available for purchase in the store. The blogging package is available for purchase in 3 different electronic formats including:

• Evernote
• Microsoft Word
• Scrivener

Below is a snapshot of the content within each Blogging Package. You can find more details on each package on the website here.

Once you have planned your social media content and uploaded it to your different social media platforms, you should track and analyse the engagement that each post gets over the period of a month. You should also make note of which social media platforms are growing in readership the most.

Each social media platforms provides analytic reports to help you determine reader engagement on your page. Use these reports to adjust your content, posting time, and mediums used (video, text, photo, audio etc) if necessary. It is good to test the content and way in which you use social media to determine if any specific variables are more effective based on the response of your audience.

It’s important to remember that most social media companies now expect businesses to utilise their advertising services to promote your content. When you are first building your presence on a social media platform, it can be difficult to receive a lot of organic engagement (without advertising) in a short period. In this case, it is important to keep consistently posting content to help your social media presence build momentum.

You may want to use advertising to help build your initial audience readership. Using social media effectively as a business will require a balance between organic traffic and using advertising services.

Once your social media content plan is completed, you may want to use a social media post scheduler to automate posting your content.

We’ve written a blog post that explains how social media schedulers work and some of the free options that are available. We’ve also included some ideas on the content that you can include in your social media plan. 

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BONUS TIPS:

1. Use hashtags for Twitter (minimum 2), pinterest (minimum 1), instagram (minimum 10)
2. Recommended image sizes for each social media platform: Facebook (1200x630px), Twitter (440x220px), Pinterest (600x1100px), Instagram (1000x1000px)
3. Guidelines for reposting content:
   – Twitter – repost 5 days, 1 month and every 2 months after the original post
   – Facebook – repost 1 month and then every 2 months after the original post