Substance and Style

You have a problem with your content. You need to produce more and more of it, you need it to be instantly recognizable as yours, you need it to achieve the goals you’ve set for content marketing, and you need it to stand out. Once you start mass producing content to meet your quantity goals, everything can start to look and feel the same. Innovation in design has taken a real hit as the popularity of Canva and Adobe Express have skyrocketed. Automation and scheduling is necessary for productivity, but if you scroll through most social media channels, you’ll notice a lot of brands blending into one homogenous blob. How can you balance the need to produce more content while making content that’s actually good?

1. Be very clear about your brand. Before you even start making content, you should be clear on all the elements of your brand and how it will be used both online and off. Create a style guide that includes your logo, brand colors, brand fonts, your style and tone, and any taglines or language that should be included in advertising or content. Decide what kind of artwork will be used (photos, line art, illustrations, etc.). Think about these things as early on as possible…definitely before creating social content, and ideally before even designing your website and physical space, if you have one. You want your brand to be recognizable online and offline. Your content should support your brand, not be your brand.

2. Create brand kits. Most likely, time constraints will necessitate using Canva or Express to mass produce content. Take advantage of the fact that both programs allow you to make brand kits. Use the information from your style guide to import your logos, fonts, and colors, along with any notes on artwork, style, tone, and usage. This will give you a huge head start when you’re creating content.

3. Make branded templates for your content. Now that you have a style guide, you can use it to create templates for your content rather than using the pre-made templates found online. Even if you do choose pre-made templates for convenience or just for inspiration,  you can easily modify their colors and fonts to match your brand once you have a brand kit at your disposal.

4. Create a different template for each kind of content you regularly produce. If you post tutorials, inspirational quotes, and testimonials, for example, have a different template for each of these. Carry over enough elements from your brand kit to make your posts recognizable, but add some variety to differentiate the kinds of posts. For example, you could invert the color scheme or vary the layout. If inspirational posts are always blue words on a cream background, tutorials could be cream words on a blue background, etc.

5. Make a consistent schedule for content types rather than for general content. Instead of just saying you will publish new content three times a week, choose certain days for certain kinds of content. To continue with the above example, publish tutorials every Tuesday and testimonials every Friday, etc. This will give visual consistency to everything on your channel and build trust with your audience as they come to know what to expect, when to expect it, and what it will look and feel like when it arrives. 

6. Lean in to what makes you unique. It’s really hard to stand out online, so play up the things that actually make you different, Post about your values and mission. Talk about what’s important to you and your industry. Don’t be afraid to let some of your personality show.  

7. Finally, embrace and encourage innovation. Whether you’re creating posts yourself or you have a team of content creators, you shouldn’t think of the templates as a mandate to make everything the same. Rather, take a cue from formal poetry and explore what is possible within the constraints of the form. Add surprises like animated elements or video. Say something unexpected. Find little ways to be different on the posts you’ve created to look the same.