When it comes to creating high-quality social media content, the list of required steps gets long very quickly; you have to come up with a great idea, draft the content, do multiple revisions, and then finally you post something to whatever is your chosen digital media platform.
Sometimes that final step of posting, especially when it comes to social media, can seem like an afterthought. But that way of thinking about content presents one of the biggest pitfalls in media management. While it can be tempting to receive approval from a client and just ‘hit go’, we urge our clients to ask themselves an important question: Is this content channel smart?
At 4media group, we like to create bespoke content, in the hope that it stays ‘channel smart.’ What we mean is basically ‘does your content make sense in tone, creative, and aim where it’s being posted or placed?’
This consideration goes beyond just Instagram and Facebook, though these two social platforms are the most readily available examples.
At 4media group, we rarely recycle captions. Facebook captions tend to be more informative, and sometimes a bit longer than Instagram captions – while Instagram ought to feature writing and imagery that is somehow aspirational. It’s a platform filled with beautiful people doing beautiful things, so if you want to stand out, your images and copy must fit that bill.
Equally important is the demographic you want to reach when considering channel-smart content on social. Facebook, for example, owns the 35+ demo., while Instagram resonates with younger audiences. What’s important to a 50-year-old woman, versus a 19-year-old one, could be very different in approach, style, and so on.
But beyond even the demographics, image, the length of copy, or the level of aspiration you can create, you need to run your copywriting and image selections through all kinds of other filters. If you’re running a social media campaign, your copy and image choices should be informed by what you’re aiming to optimize; if you’re placing content on a native ad platform like ADYOULIKE, your headlines need to be short, good and punchy and be paired with an engaging image ideally with a person in it.
What we’re trying to say here is that for content to be ‘channel smart,’ it must be thought of as existing in a vacuum. You, the marketer, are responsible for considering your content only as it will exist on Facebook. Make a Facebook checklist and stick to it. If you’ve been charged with driving click through to a website, then ensure your images showcase a product or move someone to action that can be taken on that site. Open a new document. Do it again for Instagram. Repeat as needed.
Though this may seem a tedious final step in an already arduous process of approvals, your client will thank you. If you’ve ever seen a piece of promoted content and thought to yourself, ‘that doesn’t go here,’ it’s probably because it was blanketed across the social web without any thought as to whether or not it really made sense.
If you want to focus on the creation and distribution of content that is truly ‘channel smart,’ all you have to do is reach out. We’re channel-specific experts, and while we may not be collectively MENSA certified, we enjoy managing communications campaigns. We can even work Tik-Tok…