Part 1 – Brands

WHAT YOU MUST KNOW BEFORE ENTERING THE GAME

It seems everyone is a content creator these days right?

The truth is that, as long as you have a smartphone, you take pictures or make videos and post them on social media platforms, then you are a content creator.

But this write-up isn’t for everyone. It is specifically for people like myself that create content for a living. Either for brands, big organizations, or for self.

Creating content for brands {especially big ones} can be quite overwhelming; worse if you create for more than one brand. To be honest you can’t get the hang of it but here are some tips to help work better and improve output.

KNOW YOUR BRAND:

Who are you working for? What are their goals, vision, and mission? What is the story of the brand? Why do they do what they do? Why have you decided to work for them?

These questions cannot be overemphasized because if you do not know the brand; if you haven’t studied the brand then you wouldn’t be able to know the right contents to create. Hence your content might be attracting the wrong type of audience.

RESEARCH YOUR COMPETITION:

Who are your competitors? What are they doing differently? What can you do differently?

You need to understand that you are in competition with other content creators for similar brands. Studying them would give you a better direction.

RESEARCH ON THE TYPE OF CLIENTS YOUR BRAND WANTS

Who are your potentials, what do they like, what kind of content do they engage with, what other brands do they patronize, and why do they patronize them?

Knowing the answers to these questions would help you know and create the type of content that would attract your prospects to your page.

CREATE A CONTENT CALENDAR

My personal favorite. Dedicate a day or days to plan the contents for the next month. For example, I plan my content calendars for the next month every last week of the month. This would help you be more organized and consistent and also helps increase the output of content.

A content calendar should include; dates, days, times, links to the content, caption, hashtags, and the social platforms on the content to be posted.

Below is an example:

Note: content calendars are to guide and make you organized but other content can be posted on social media platforms and on days that aren’t on the content calendar concerning events and trends.

 

BE AUTHENTIC AND VERSATILE (FIND YOUR VOICE)

Who are you? What kind of content do you like to create? What is your niche? Are you a graphics designer, or video editor; what are you?

As a content creator, it is essential to be versatile but it is twice vital to be very good at one particular type of content creation.

There’s this saying “Jack of all trades; master of none” People like omitting the second part for personal benefits. The whole saying is:

“Jack of all trades; master of none but often better than the master of one”

Yes be good at all content creation, do not be found lacking at any but be unbeatable at one.

Do not copy other people’s work. Be you. Find out how you like creating your content.

What makes you stand out from the crowd?

STAY RELEVANT (BE UP TO DATE ON TRENDS)

Why are you a content creator if you can’t keep up with trends?

As much as we have to stay true to the brand’s motive, we have to take advantage of the latest happenings, events, celebrations, and news. Every trend can be diverted to get you engagements.

Even if you have a content calendar; it shouldn’t box you. You should be ready to create content ASAP even if it is by using Canva on your phone or writing a tweet.

Let me give you a little trick. If it has a video, you can repost it with a caption that relates to your brand.

For example, there was a trending video about racism in the UK. I had to jump on the trend for ACU and wrote a caption on how black people need to have a community which is what Afrikan Cooperative Union is all about.

Or, you could tweet, screenshot it, Make it into a picture, and post up on other social platforms.

Quick and Easy. This is why you need to have some fast content creation apps on your phone as we can’t always be with our laptops.

Quick Content Creation APPS you must have:

Canva

Inshot

Procreate

Easil

GoDaddy

Pic Monkey

In stories

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