Most people agree that a brand’s social media presence is more memorable and impactful when it is creative.
It is difficult to create content that meets all the standards when you are working from home and do not have the same resources that are available in an office or on a set. Working from home on social media marketing can be difficult, whether you’re new to it or not.
However, social marketers are nothing if not resourceful. At Sprout, our social and creative teams have come up with a new way to produce social media content that is both exciting andfresh. We are able to do this even though we are a remote, distributed team.
We can help you create new photography, videos, GIFs, and design assets, or give your existing assets a new look. Here are five tips to help you create amazing social media content no matter where you are.
Tip #1: Determine which stories are top of mind right now and your role in telling them
The content you planned for this year may not be relevant or appropriate anymore. You might have a new product or service to promote. Or, maybe what your audience wants to see on social media has changed.
If you want to create new content, it can be helpful to think about how you can build empathy with your audience. This can help you figure out what kind of story you want to tell and what role you want to play in telling that story. Empathy is key for brands that want to be a part of the conversation, provide valuable content, and support their audience.
Hair.com, for example, changed from sharing videos that looked like they were filmed in a studio to videos that were filmed remotely and looked more raw. These videos included tips from people who are influential in the hair care industry. The Beauty Home School series has DIY solutions for bad hair days at home for people who were not able to visit the salon during lockdown.
When reimagining how to better meet your goals with visual solutions, ask yourself:
- What problems are people facing right now?
- Why does my audience care about this topic?
- What is the appropriate tone to take on this subject?
- What medium would be most effective for this story?
- How does my brand relate to this topic authentically?
- Who could I consult with to better guide this story?
Tip #2: Explore new content formats
People are most likely to want to engage with photos above all other content types. One still photo can tell a whole story and you can take it yourself at home. The trick is to keep it simple and focused.
When creating a space to represent your brand, it is important to prominently feature your products or services. You can also try playing with some themes that resonate with people working from home, like workstations, pet love, planners and organization, and of course, caffeine.
In terms of consumer engagement, photos come first, with videos coming in second. Videos are a great way to communicate a message because they are packed with information, creativity, and personality. They can also be turned into other types of content, like GIFs and tutorials.
The remotely directed video option requires more work in the beginning but can be expanded as needed. This approach allows you to focus more on the script, speakers, and concept rather than production quality. After you have thought of what your video will be about, you can use a camera or phone to record it, get videos through conference tools like Zoom, or ask the person you are featuring in the video to send you a video they recorded themselves.
Sprout used the last of its resources to produce a remotely held Q&A session with its Asians@Sprout Business Resource Group in order to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
Stop-motion animation is a great way to tell a story without needing a lot of equipment. If you’re thinking about using stop-motion in your content production plans, you can use the same props, space and resources you have to experiment with it.
A templatized series may be the best way to increase your audience while still having a lasting effect on them. Although it may take more effort to design a series of products, it will be easier to produce them in the long run. Good design will also tie the products together.
The social team has been very successful in working with design to create visual templates for topics that come up often and for major campaigns. We have dozens of ways to customize existing resources for our social media specialist.
Which content types and distribution platforms you choose to pursue should be based on what will work best for your company. Keep each platform’s specialty in mind. Pinterest is unique among social media platforms in that it emphasizes written content and designed templates rather than videos like Youtube and LinkedIn. Although Instagram and Twitter both use forms of media to share content, the two platforms differ in what type of media perform best. Instagram is mostly driven by alluring photography and videos, while Twitter does better with tweets that are concise and include pictures.
Tip #3: Repurpose existing content to tell a new story
Reframing useful dialogue, interviews, soundbites, and visual assets from existing content to fit the current social landscape is a way to repurpose content. Once you have a story direction, find pre-existing sources that relate to your story and offer clear, concise information.
When you use a photo again, it is important to ensure that the photo is always relevant and has not been used too many times or recently. If you keep sharing the same photos with the same captions, your audience will eventually get bored. Adding a new design or using the photo as a background for short copy or quotes from your video content might be a good idea.
There are many ways to make your video content more accessible and longer lasting. Measuring success for Team Sprout has involved cutting down longer videos into more manageable pieces, or creating short, memorable clips that can be enjoyed without the context of the full video.
You may also find opportunities to use older content and make it more timely. In an Always On episode from December 2019, Brittany Sheppard, the Social Media Lead for prAna, was featured. Repurposing Sheppard’s video for Mental Health Awareness Month allows for a greater understanding and creates a platform for discussion. This strategy helps us create new versions of our creative assets and get the most value possible out of the work our video team has done.
Tip #4: Remove friction from your content process
Any sort of complication or inefficiency can hinder your productivity when you’re already not feeling it.
The way you produce content might be the reason why you’re not being productive.
When companies are improving their content strategies, it is also a good time to improve their content process.
Here are some common issues you can fix:
1. Difficulty locating assets and projects
If your team is constantly struggling to find the assets and campaigns you’re working on, then you need to work on your folder system.
How boring! Yup.
Having a consistent and organized way of categorizing your folders for each campaign can be very beneficial. This can include subfolders for raw assets, final assets, and different channels. You may also find it helpful to upload files related to a task into your task management software, rather than relying on Slack where messages can be easily lost.
2. Collaboration happens in too many channels
If your team is communicating about tasks in multiple places, it can get confusing very quickly. Instead of explicitly asking people to collaborate, try encouraging people to comment on the task card, the StoryChief story, or other places where you’d like to see collaboration taking place.
3. Publishing content is more time-consuming than it should be
It can take a long time to produce a new blog post and create social media content to go along with it. If your process is not running smoothly, it is probably not as efficient as it could be. There are tools that let you one-click publish your content to multiple channels.
4. Your content promotion is inconsistent
When we get busy, we tend to de-prioritize and downplay content promotion. The promotion of content on social media is random and varies in intensity.
Create a process for promoting your content that includes three levels of promotion (light, medium, and heavy). Having a standard process will ensure that you have steps to follow every time you release a new post. There are also tools that can help you manage social and content promotion more quickly.
Tip #5: Start your day with immediate content wins
Success leads to more success. It can be difficult to get your day back on track if you start it off badly.
Follow these tips to be successful as a content marketer: Do: • Make a plan for the day • Set aside time for focused work • Get organized Avoid: • Checking email first thing • Social media • Multitasking By following these tips on working from home, you will have a great start to your day.
Avoid during the first hour of work (unless necessary):
- Checking email
- Checking social media comments and engagement
- Planning your day (you’ll likely be more productive if you do this at the end of the previous day)
- Checking Slack threads
Do these things during the first hour of work instead:
- Edit a blog post from a freelancer
- Schedule approved posts to be automatically published on the right date in your content calendar
- Write the outline for your next blog post
- Write the script for your next video
- Run Surfer or Clearscope reports for the SEO content you’re writing
Tip #6: Use tools that are as simple as possible
When you’re not feeling very productive, using complicated tools can make you even slower. In other words, who has time for things that are overly complicated and take a long time? If you’re eyes are hurting from using your tools, it might be time to get some new ones.
If you’re looking to save some time, you might want to try using Adobe Rush to edit your videos instead of Adobe Premiere Pro. If you’re looking for an easy to use Photoshop alternative, try Photoshop Elements.
An alternative to Google Docs that you might want to consider is Notion. Notion is a highly intuitive way to collaborate on tasks and share assets and content guidelines.
Maybe you should try out StoryChief now. Start by writing a story that you can later share with many different platforms with just a click.
You can find more recommendations for different categories by checking out our favorite tools for remote work.
Tip #7: Master the art of content repurposing now more than ever
It’s time to start taking content repurposing seriously if you want to improve your productivity as a content marketer.
Yes, we’ve all heard about it before. But do we have processes around it? Or do we do it willy nilly?
Here are some smart ways to master content repurposing:
- Make different post sets for blog content (different concepts and creatives that is tailored for the networks you promote on)
- Work with a content repurposing freelancer who specializes in turning podcasts into blog posts and Instagram posts, for example
- Create a replicable workflow in your task management software so that repurposing processes always have trackable tasks
- Explore ways to increase the impact and reduce the effort by only repurposing for the channels where you have the most organic traction
- Make more native content for the different channels instead of just posting links
It can be more productive to do small tasks instead of big strategies or new content when productivity is low. Stop trying to create something new all the time and go with the flow. Spend some time repurposing instead.
Tip #8: Make the most of your team meetings
Other companies say that their remote workers are participating in more meetings than usual.
We need human connection. So yes, we need to see our team. And yes, sometimes we need to talk about stuff. (Hey, we’re only human).
It’s not unusual to have more meetings than normal. Just make the most of them.
Some ways to capture and document meeting content are to create a meeting agenda, take notes in one central document or whiteboard, and to record and transcribe the calls so that you can capture exact snippets of the conversation to put directly into content.
Here’s another thing you might not have considered…
Maybe your remote meetings can become content?
We recently posted about the different remote team-building exercises we’re doing in order to stay connected while we’re all working from home. Some of these are literally exercises! Yup, that’s a recent bootcamp-session we did.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, but this concept can work well for many companies.
It can be difficult to remain productive during major life changes, but it can also be a healthy distraction. Hopefully, these tips for working from home will help you achieve that.
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