Being a social media content creator seems super exciting on the outside. In many ways, it is! You get to deliver content that will potentially be seen by thousands if not more. You also get to think freely and do whatever it takes to increase your brand’s visibility and online engagement.
However, as with any creative job, the pressure can get seriously high. You’ll often find yourselves in downward spirals where your numbers seem to be stagnant and the ideas don’t flow.
If this sounds like you, I’ve compiled some tips that will help you be the best creator you can be!
Use this simple productivity hack
If you are a social media content creator, you’ll be used to sudden dips of productivity, or even a string of very unproductive days. That’s just the nature of content creation; sometimes it feels like you were made to create content. Other days, the words and designs just don’t build up in your head. The work from home scenario that most of us are still a part of makes this even worse with the many distractions one can have at home (pets? Netflix?). It’s natural and completely okay!
However, there is one productivity hack that is particularly useful if you are a social media content creator or a creator of any kind for that matter. It’s one I personally use, and it works wonders for me.
The idea is, to be productive, you first need to get into the flow of completing your tasks. It can be hard for creators to get into this flow because content creation requires a perfectionist’s attitude. Not one element in the piece of content can be out of place, or the copy/creative/video can look very unappealing or unprofessional.
However, perfection in itself can be a productivity killer. If you start your day wanting to create perfect content straight away, you simply won’t be able to start due to the sky-high expectations.
Instead, start your day with the aim of getting into the flow of working. This would often mean producing an average piece of content first thing in the morning. This will get you going without you having to put too much thought into the quality of your content.
Once you do get going, focus on quality will come rather naturally! At the end of the day, even if you have to scrap that first text/creative you worked on, it will be worth it!
Treat your brand as an individual character
Building a singular, holistic brand identity is extremely important if you want your brand to truly stand out. Ideally, a marketer should use all brand elements with the development of this personality in mind. These include logos, taglines, jingles, product design and anything that’s used to express the brand’s nature.
In some ways, social media has given a great opportunity to even small brands, to find their niche and develop their personality. Again, this is important to stand out in a sea of social media pages selling products and ideas.
One of the most interesting brand personalities I’ve seen on Instagram is that of dbrand. This is a company that manufactures skins and cases for portable devices.
While most brand personifications are aimed at evoking positive emotions, dbrand takes a different approach. Their website and social media accounts are portrayed to be run by robots. The brand thus showcases its products in the brashest, least emotive forms possible. It is not uncommon to see a dbrand post with a caption like ‘Give us money.’
As you can see in the post above, the caption is brutally honest, and the brand even goes to the extent of trolling their own followers. While unconventional, this does increase engagement.
In the post above, dbrand is advertising its masks by taking pride in making money off the pandemic.
This is an extremely risky form of marketing and certainly will not work for all brands. However, this strategy has made dbrand the most well-known maker of skins and cases in the entire world.
Just goes to show the power an effective brand personality can have.
Be informed of what’s hot on social media
If you’ve spent ANY time as a social media content creator, you’ll know that some of the most engaging content online has to do with recent events and social media conversations. The concept of integrating trending topics and current events into your marketing efforts is known as moment marketing. We discuss this concept further in this blog!
Essentially, as part of your daily work routine, it can be very fruitful to spend some time going through the Web to find hot topics. Join into ongoing conversations, and ask provocative questions to your followers. Before you know it, your engagement rate numbers will start rallying up!
There are several ways you can efficiently obtain snapshots of what’s happening on social media. Here are a few simple ones:
- Active scrolling through social media: Love scrolling through social media? Great! You can do this productively now! Rather than scrolling passively, take notes on all trends you observe on all platforms so you can later integrate these in your posts. Also, it’s a good idea to follow pages related to your industry so you’ll always be in the loop of what they’re up to.
- Google Trends: The Google Trends homepage can give you a basic snapshot of what Internet users in a particular geographical location have been searching on Google.
- Feedly: This incredibly popular web app lets you create multiple feeds related to topics (and sources) of your choice. This is super helpful if you wish to create content for multiple topics simultaneously, as you can create separate feeds for each. For social media contnet creators, this is one of the most efficient ways of scraping the Internet for current events.
- Browing through discussion forums: Make it a habit to go through discussion groups like Reddit, and not just for the memes. Join subreddits that are relevant to your industry to gather insights on ongoing discussions. You can also join your competitors’ subreddits to see what followers of their brands are talking about!
These tips should keep you on top of all the hot content on the Internet. We’ve written a more detailed blog on tracking social media trends. Have a look!
Make full use of social media tools
A social media content creator often has a lot on their plate. They also have the brand’s budget to respect. While it’s okay to be a little sceptical before spending on tools, you should know that some tools are worth paying for, for how they improve productivity and content quality.
Here are some tools you should check out:
Canva:
Sure, you can pride yourself on attaining Photoshop and Lightroom mastery. But even as a designer, you can’t deny that Canva is a brilliant tool to create aesthetically pleasing creatives fast. It may be a bit too simple to handle complex edits and animations, but when you want to put out good-looking content as soon as possible, there’s little else that does the job as well as Canva.
You can use this effectively when there’s an ongoing discussion/trend on social media and you have to post about it immediately.
Later:
We’ve talked a lot about how your content should be planned rather than posted in the spur of the moment. One of the best ways to plan content is by using a post scheduler. Create your posts (captions and all) in advance and schedule them to be posted on Instagram later. This ensures you never miss a post and always post at the optimal time. It also means you see your future feed before it is live, and get to make any changes that you’d want to, for aesthetic purposes. Later is a brilliant publishing tool!
Predis.ai:
You can think of Predis.ai as a social media content creator for content creators. When you need assistance in ideating quality content, Predis.ai can be mighty helpful. There are three broad ways the app is able to do this.
- Post creator: With a simple input on what you want your social media post to be about, Predis.ai can generate one for you, in seconds. The travel-related post below was auto-generated by Predis.ai, when I requested a post idea for ‘automobile tips and reviews.’ After the post has been auto-generated for you, you can easily edit the captions (or generate more), add hashtags, and get insights on how your post is expected to perform.
- Content calendar: After your posts have been generated, you can conveniently view them in the form of a content calendar. Here, you can see how your social media feel will look, and easily edit all your posts.
- Content analysis: The content analysis feature gives you an insight on how your competitors’ posts are performing on Instagram. Thus, you can take inspiration from their best-performing content, and avoiding pushing content related to their worst-performing posts. Spying on your competitors legally and ethically, has never been so easy.
Read a detailed review of Predis.ai by TechBullish here.
Paying for genuinely helpful social media tools like Canva, Later and Predis.ai is an investment more than a spend. After all, your main goal is to create quality content on time, right?
Spend time researching your audience.
If your brand’s content strategy is saturated, it’s upon you to make a correction as a social media content creator or manager. One effective way of doing this is by researching your audience thoroughly. This often takes time but is very fruitful in the grand scheme of things.
First, it is important to recognise your target audience. Then, you have to figure out their behavioural patterns on social media and work out how you can align your content with these patterns.
There are many ways of doing this. However, you’ll likely gather the most useful insights through unstructured, means. For example, in real-life interviews and focus group arrangements, members of your target audience can give you detailed insights on how they use different social media platforms and on the content they like to see.
You can also reach out to your audience more casually, like asking them for content suggestions on Instagram Story polls/question stickers.
As a social media content creator, be aware of your brand’s goals on the platform.
The kind of content you push on Instagram and other platforms should ideally be contributing to your brand’s social media goals.
For example, most brands selling products create Instagram accounts with a long-term view of increasing sales/website traffic. In this case, you should prioritise increasing followers. Hop on to this blog for detailed insights on how you can increase followers in 2021. But in short, you have to push content regularly, use the right hashtags, and make use of the full suite of Instagram’s features.
If you are tired of that traditional Instagram hashtag research process then you must try our new free Instagram hashtag generator tool that will give you a detailed list of trendy hashtags in just one click!
Alternatively, some brands prefer to use social media to showcase their CSR activities. This has become a trend since the modern consumer is increasingly concerned for the environment and society. In this case, your content should not be geared towards selling products.
It’s no mystery why the job of a social media content creator is so challenging. With the pressure to keep followers hooked, ever-changing algorithms of platforms, and dying organic reach, it is easy to be overwhelmed! I hope these tips help you be more productive and create higher quality content! Follow Predis.ai on Instagram for more updates on social media!
For more social media tips and updates, follow us on our Instagram!
