But when it comes to creating organic social content, not everything needs to be!

In Taylor Loren’s (formerly of Later) recent 2021 Content Planning Workshop, she emphasized the need for what she calls “Content Gold” and “Content Gems”. These two concepts don’t work against each other, but rather complement each other and make your overall content more effective.

Start shining bright like a diamond.

The first step is actually taking a step back from the nitty-gritty details. Don’t look at what each piece of content can do for you, but look at what you actually want done.

Define what your overall business goals are and look at the year as a whole. You might want to increase brand awareness, revenue or community engagement—whatever your main goals, the key is identifying exactly what they are.

Once you have a few set goals, then you gild your gold. Content Gold includes your big initiatives, these are the things that will help you achieve those big business goals. This could include specific campaigns, product launches, sales or new channels.

Figuring out what your Gold is makes planning a lot of content much more manageable in the long run.

Once you know what your Gold is, you can concentrate on your Content Gems. These are your day-to-day content pieces, which are individual items like social media posts, blog posts, newsletter topics, emails or videos.

Your Gold and Gems should work together, not conflict with each other. When you start planning your content, place your Gold (your big initiatives) into each quarter as suitable. Then, add your Gems around the Gold in your monthly planning to fill in the gaps.

Make sure each of your Gems is geared towards one of your business goals. This won’t just help you achieve them but also streamlines content creation because you already know what outcome you’re working toward.

Content planning requires equal measures of strategy and creativity. This technique of working from the top down (Goals > Gold > Gems) doesn’t just keep you on track and organized, but can help prevent creative burnout.

If you’re not able to set aside time to gild your content planning with Gold and Gems, GMD’s team of Social Media Strategists can turn your business goals into social media treasure.