Substance and Style

If you’re like most marketers, you’re feeling pressured to scale quality content production and do it in less time with fewer resources. Here are some ways to make the process go faster without sacrificing quality: 

1. Start with a content strategy that complements your overall marketing strategy. What do you want to be known for? Who are you trying to reach and where will you reach them? If you nail down these specifics and do your research on keywords, hashtags, and your target audience’s online habits, you will save yourself time and wasted effort in the long run. A good starting strategy can guide you through everything else.
   
2. Create a style guide. Nail down your branding, your tone, and your “content personality.” Create branded templates. Take advantage of a tool like Adobe Express or Canva to save your brand guidelines, templates, and a library of assets for everyone on your team to pull from. This will keep everyone on the same page and it will streamline your whole process.
   
3. Write briefs for batches. When people work from a brief that gives them specific guidelines for a batch of posts, they are more likely to create content that is consistent with your brand and true to your vision. Even if you are the principle or only creator, it helps to have a (much less detailed) brief that you’ve created for yourself to keep specific requirements in mind.
   A brief should include: number of pieces, platform, audience, length, access to your style guide, suggested topics, licensing limitations (music, artwork, stock photography, etc.), specific Calls To Action, keywords, hashtags, examples of content you like, deadlines, stages, revision rounds, and any other specific requests or requirements. Make a template of your brief so you don’t have to recreate it every time.
   
4. Scale in reverse. Take inventory of long-form content you have that can be chunked out into social media posts. Going forward, write long pieces first and use their parts for shorter content. Things like case studies, annual reports, white papers, long blog posts, newsletters, and even the copy on your website can all be used to create multiple social media posts.
   
5. Create a calendar that repeats a topic or theme with a template every day. Take the guesswork out of what you need to create and eliminate the need to wait for inspiration to strike. If you’ve already created templates for tutorials or reels or carousels, for example, decide you will do a reel every Monday, a tutorial every Wednesday, and a carousel every Friday. This way, you go into your creation sessions knowing how many of each piece of content you need for the week or month (depending on your actual posting schedule), and you have the templates ready to speed up the process even more.
   
6. Create a good workflow or process for actual content creation. Once you have templates and a schedule, the creation part will come much easier. Make sure to set aside time to actually work on content and be sure you’re creating in batches. Keep tabs on how much time you’re actually spending as well as on what pieces perform and what pieces don’t so you can adjust your strategy accordingly. Be patient; growth is sometimes slow. If you’re focusing more time than you can afford on either strategy or creation, or if you are not able to give it the time or attention it needs, consider enlisting the help of someone on your team or outsourcing the process.