5 Simple Tips for Being Consistent on Social Media Now That School Has Started

Hi Coach,

Coaches have been telling me these last few months that they were great at keeping up with their recruits because of Covid and not having as much stuff to do.  They felt on top of things.

BUT, now that the students are back and practices have started up, I am hearing a different story.  You are busy and are getting pulled in a million different directions so have already fallen behind again.  Is this you?

Coaches have been telling me these last few months that they were great at keeping up with their recruits because of Covid and not having as much stuff to do.  They felt on top of things.

BUT, now that the students are back and practices have started up, I am hearing a different story.  You are busy and are getting pulled in a million different directions so have already fallen behind again.  Is this you?

Most coaches struggle to be consistent. The intention is there but we are so busy with other things we often don’t have enough time or energy left over to create our content and keep up with posting.

Consistent effort is required to be successful at anything.  Not just any effort, though. I’m talking strategic effort. Focused effort on those essential, key things that will get you where you want to go.

In one of my favorite books The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy says “Success is doing a half dozen things really well, repeated five thousand times.”

As you know, you might have the perfect recruiting strategy, but if you are not taking consistent action it is likely not going to work. You can’t just think about the things you should be doing. You actually need to be doing those things. I think it was Amy Porterfield I heard say “Intention doesn’t cook the rice.”

Today, I am going to talk about how to stay consistent with your social media posting.  These strategies also 100% apply to keeping up with your emailing, texting and phone calls.

Because you are allowing yourself to be busy, before you know it, days or even weeks can go by without any social media activity on your part, and that is not a good thing.

It’s better to tweet once a day and be consistent than to tweet 10 times a day for a week, then skip a few weeks because you get busy.

What you need to do is to create a routine that your audience/recruits can follow. The worst thing you can do is to stop posting.

If you are not posting a consistent flow of relevant content to your recruits on social media, it will be difficult to give recruits the feel of your coaching staff, team, and campus, engage with recruits in a timely manner, and be the coach to guide them along the process leading to a commitment.

Fortunately, there are simple and cost-effective ways share to content in a consistent manner and stay on to top of your social media tasks.

1. Schedule Time
   Block out time on your calendar every week or monthly to plan and schedule your social media posts in advance. Spend a couple hours one day a month or an hour a week to plan and schedule your social media. This will keep your pages current and consistent even when unexpected workloads keep you too busy to post on your social media.

Whether you realize it or not, you have messages you can plan in advance:

Proactively answer common questions recruits have for you this time of year.

Show them what they would see and introduce them to who they would meet if they were to come and visit campus.

#Hashtags: Throwback Thursday, Motivational Monday, quotes, quizzes, #FYI and #DYK and other social media conventions are popular with users and give you content ideas

2. Get Organized

How often have you lost track of the pictures or videos you want to use making it harder and take longer to do something? Or worse, It prevented you from doing it at all? It’s a drag, isn’t it?

Create and actually use a system to keep track of ideas and information so that you are not wasting time and energy trying to remember things or find them.

It is not worth the frustration that comes from losing track of ideas and spinning out as the clock ticks away while you are trying to find something.

There are so many good systems to use to get organized.  My best advice is that the best tool is the one you use. Period. The key is just pick one and use it.  Switching from tool to tool is the delusion of productivity. Busy being busy. Getting ready to get ready.

3. You don’t need more knowledge. You need a plan of action.

It’s tempting to jump straight into action, but the importance of planning cannot be stressed enough.

Success is created by making a plan and then acting on that plan every day.

Following a plan helps eliminate distractions, provides clear direction and keeps you accountable so you keep moving in the right direction.

The more complicated you make your plan, the less likely you are to follow it so keep it simple:

• Define your focus/goal is for the next 90 days (If not 90 days, it must still be time-bound)
• Plan your vital weekly actions each week
• Keep track of your execution (not just your outcomes)

4) Use Content Frameworks/Templates

If you want to create quality content on a consistent basis there are few things you need to have in place to make things easier and more efficient and another one of these is frameworks.

Whether you are creating an email, outlining what you want to talk to a recruit about on the phone, a training video, or creating social media posts that tell your recruiting story, using a content framework will help you produce quality content more quickly.

A framework is like a checklist or an outline of what to include in your content. For a social media caption, a simple framework might look something like this:

Image:

What is the hook I can use to get them to stop scrolling?:

What is the story about the image that will benefit the recruit:

Call to action to create recruiting movement to next milestone:

Hashtags relevant to recruits:

By starting with a framework template instead of a blank page, you can more quickly and easily organize your thoughts and deliver a piece of quality content that provides value to your reader.

5.  Batch work and Leverage technology to increase productivity

I also batch my work. I try to group “like tasks” together. This might be producing social media content all at once for the week and then using Co-schedule to queue it up. If I were to instead create social media content and put it into Co-schedule every day, it would be more disruptive to my days and take longer. Once I am in the mode of creating those posts, have my templates open and am in Co-schedule — it is much more efficient to do it all at once.

I find I am better able to get into the flow of a certain type of work and get more done than when I change gears from one kind of work to the next.

One thing that has worked amazingly well for me, despite my initial resistance to it, is documenting my workflows. I make checklists in google docs and use them as templates.

I initially did this so I could delegate the tasks to others, but also have found that by using them for myself, it ensures I follow consistent processes and don’t skip important steps. It also frees my mind from having to remember every little detail.

Coach, if you want to stay consistent with posting or with anything really as a recruiter, you need to develop and use systems to make it easier to create and publish on a regular basis.

If you want my help, email me at [email protected].  I have a 365-day social media content calendar coming out soon.  My goal with this product is to save you a ton of time and effort, never run out of things to say, and to engage and attract the right recruits through telling an amazing recruiting story.  I will be posting more about it hopefully this week on twitter @mandygreencps Follow me to get the details when it is ready.

Consistent effort is required to be successful at anything.  Not just any effort, though. I’m talking strategic effort. Focused effort on those essential, key things that will get you where you want to go.

In one of my favorite books The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy says “Success is doing a half dozen things really well, repeated five thousand times.”

As you know, you might have the perfect recruiting strategy, but if you are not taking consistent action it is likely not going to work. You can’t just think about the things you should be doing. You actually need to be doing those things. I think it was Amy Porterfield I heard say “Intention doesn’t cook the rice.”

Today, I am going to talk about how to stay consistent with your social media posting.  These strategies also 100% apply to keeping up with your emailing, texting and phone calls.

Because you are allowing yourself to be busy, before you know it, days or even weeks can go by without any social media activity on your part, and that is not a good thing.

It’s better to tweet once a day and be consistent than to tweet 10 times a day for a week, then skip a few weeks because you get busy.

What you need to do is to create a routine that your audience/recruits can follow. The worst thing you can do is to stop posting.

If you are not posting a consistent flow of relevant content to your recruits on social media, it will be difficult to give recruits the feel of your coaching staff, team, and campus, engage with recruits in a timely manner, and be the coach to guide them along the process leading to a commitment.

Fortunately, there are simple and cost-effective ways share to content in a consistent manner and stay on to top of your social media tasks.

1. Schedule Time
   Block out time on your calendar every week or monthly to plan and schedule your social media posts in advance. Spend a couple hours one day a month or an hour a week to plan and schedule your social media. This will keep your pages current and consistent even when unexpected workloads keep you too busy to post on your social media.

Whether you realize it or not, you have messages you can plan in advance:

Proactively answer common questions recruits have for you this time of year.

Show them what they would see and introduce them to who they would meet if they were to come and visit campus.

#Hashtags: Throwback Thursday, Motivational Monday, quotes, quizzes, #FYI and #DYK and other social media conventions are popular with users and give you content ideas

2. Get Organized

How often have you lost track of the pictures or videos you want to use making it harder and take longer to do something? Or worse, It prevented you from doing it at all? It’s a drag, isn’t it?

Create and actually use a system to keep track of ideas and information so that you are not wasting time and energy trying to remember things or find them.

It is not worth the frustration that comes from losing track of ideas and spinning out as the clock ticks away while you are trying to find something.

There are so many good systems to use to get organized.  My best advice is that the best tool is the one you use. Period. The key is just pick one and use it.  Switching from tool to tool is the delusion of productivity. Busy being busy. Getting ready to get ready.

3. You don’t need more knowledge. You need a plan of action.

It’s tempting to jump straight into action, but the importance of planning cannot be stressed enough.

Success is created by making a plan and then acting on that plan every day.

Following a plan helps eliminate distractions, provides clear direction and keeps you accountable so you keep moving in the right direction.

The more complicated you make your plan, the less likely you are to follow it so keep it simple:

• Define your focus/goal is for the next 90 days (If not 90 days, it must still be time-bound)
• Plan your vital weekly actions each week
• Keep track of your execution (not just your outcomes)

4) Use Content Frameworks/Templates

If you want to create quality content on a consistent basis there are few things you need to have in place to make things easier and more efficient and another one of these is frameworks.

Whether you are creating an email, outlining what you want to talk to a recruit about on the phone, a training video, or creating social media posts that tell your recruiting story, using a content framework will help you produce quality content more quickly.

A framework is like a checklist or an outline of what to include in your content. For a social media caption, a simple framework might look something like this:

Image:

What is the hook I can use to get them to stop scrolling?:

What is the story about the image that will benefit the recruit:

Call to action to create recruiting movement to next milestone:

Hashtags relevant to recruits:

By starting with a framework template instead of a blank page, you can more quickly and easily organize your thoughts and deliver a piece of quality content that provides value to your reader.

5.  Batch work and Leverage technology to increase productivity

I also batch my work. I try to group “like tasks” together. This might be producing social media content all at once for the week and then using Co-schedule to queue it up. If I were to instead create social media content and put it into Co-schedule every day, it would be more disruptive to my days and take longer. Once I am in the mode of creating those posts, have my templates open and am in Co-schedule — it is much more efficient to do it all at once.

I find I am better able to get into the flow of a certain type of work and get more done than when I change gears from one kind of work to the next.

One thing that has worked amazingly well for me, despite my initial resistance to it, is documenting my workflows. I make checklists in google docs and use them as templates.

I initially did this so I could delegate the tasks to others, but also have found that by using them for myself, it ensures I follow consistent processes and don’t skip important steps. It also frees my mind from having to remember every little detail.

Coach, if you want to stay consistent with posting or with anything really as a recruiter, you need to develop and use systems to make it easier to create and publish on a regular basis.

If you want my help, email me at [email protected].  I have a 365-day social media content calendar coming out soon.  My goal with this product is to save you a ton of time and effort, never run out of things to say, and to engage and attract the right recruits through telling an amazing recruiting story.  I will be posting more about it hopefully this week on twitter @mandygreencps Follow me to get the details when it is ready.

Have a productive week.

Mandy Green

P.S. If you found this helpful, please share it with your coaching friends. I want to help eliminate as much coaching office chaos for as many coaches I can this year. If I can save you 1-2 hours a day and get you so you don’t have to bring as much work home with you (besides recruiting calls), you will have more time and energy to spend with your families, friends, and on your hobbies. Happier and more productive coaches have happier and more productive teams!

P.P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 4 ways that I can help you double your results while working less in 2020.

1. Join the Productive Coach and Recruiter Facebook Group

Get access to some of my best training and a rapidly growing community of coaches working together to become more organized, efficient, and effective so they can get the results they want quicker and get home to their families sooner — Click Here

2. Join Recruiting Made Simple

If you want ongoing training on how to make the process of recruiting more simple, consider joining this group.  We meet once a month and go in depth on 1 topic.  You get my worksheets, checklists, and templates.  You also can get 1-on-1 implementation calls with me.  Click here for the Recruiting Made Simple details.

3. Schedule a Becoming an Organized and Efficient Recruiter On-Campus Workshop

I’ve personally trained hundreds of college coaches individually and as a staff to be smarter, more effective high-level coaches and recruiters. Now it’s your departments turn. I give you a step-by-step blueprints that will teach you how to control your days, conquer the chaos around you, and concentrate on what matters most so that you can spend less time on operational things and more time working with your team on the X’s and O’s. It took me more than a decade of trial and error to discover this formula to how to work more efficiently and effectively as a college coach and I want to share it with you. To get a taste of what the workshop will be about. Email me at [email protected] for more details.

4. Get 12-Months of Coaching from Me

If you would like 12-months of coaching to create a detailed strategy for success and get the accountability you need to succeed as a coach or as a recruiter, set up a call with me by emailing me at [email protected]. We can discuss all of the details from there!