anyone else find creating a content strategy for social media harder than the guides suggest?

The other thing the guides skip is where ideas come from. We stopped brainstorming and started keeping a running list of questions customers ask in emails, calls and comments. Every one of those is a post, and you never run dry because people keep asking. One longer piece a week, cut into three or four smaller posts, covered most of our calendar.

yes. the guides assume a designer, a full-time person and something new to say every day. what made it workable for us was picking three or four recurring formats and rotating them instead of inventing every post from scratch, then batching a fortnight's worth in one sitting. the part the guides skip is reviewing what worked each month, and that's the bit that tells you what to stop doing.