Optimizing Social Media Content

Social media content is something that a business determining their marketing mix will most likely look at investing in. If you’re looking to invest your time or money into posting social media content, then you’ll want to get the most bang for your buck. I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time creating high quality content for businesses in my area, but not all businesses can afford to outsource content creation. Here is the formula I like to follow for producing video content, applied to someone on a budget.

Planning: Concepts & Scripting

Early in the process I ask myself and/or collaborators one thing; what are the absolute craziest ideas we can come up with? I usually type up a list of ideas in a document or jot them down on paper. Once I have a good size list or I run out of time, I pick out 3 (or more) of my favorites. Then on to scripting. I start this with a rough script and see where it goes. Sometimes I knock out a whole concept’s script before moving on, sometimes I bounce around. The idea is to stay loose and get into a flow.

Here is the outline to follow:

1. Hook: Grab the viewers attention in 3-6 seconds.
2. Body: The actual content, keep it engaging so they don’t go away.
3. Call to Action: This is where you share your phone number, website, email, or however you want customers to contact you/buy from you.

Now why ask yourself for the craziest ideas? Because it’s always easier to push the limits in the planning phase then tone things down during evaluation than it is to start small and hope for inspiration to magically strike later for you to go bigger than originally planned. Imagine if Michael Jordan didn’t take his most iconic shots because he didn’t want to be “too crazy”.

Filming: It’ll Never be Perfect

Once you have your scripts for each video, it’s time to film them. Pull out your phone, and if you’re the one appearing on camera, find a window for light and shoot away. Once you retake the same script 30 times, remember, it will never be perfect. Most of the time when I film a new client, they aim for 100% perfection and nit-pick themselves. This will only lead to analysis paralysis and the content will never be created, posted and leave no chance to engage viewers to bring in more business.

Editing: The Most Time Consuming

The editing stage can eat up a lot of your time. If you’re truly committed to it, use the built in editors of the app you’re posting to (Tik Tok, Instagram, etc.). Or get a mobile editor like CapCut or Adobe Premiere Rush. If you want a desktop editor you can use something like Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro (Mac Only) but for a free alternative I’d highly recommend Davinci Resolve.

I would also highly recommend outsourcing editing only if you have the budget for it. I have clients that have their own camera equipment or they just film on their iPhone and send it over for me to edit and post. If your budget allows for outsourcing editing, it is a great way to offload the bulk of the workload.

If you’re at a point where you’d like to outsource some or all of the social media content creation and posting process, check out our work here → or feel free to contact us →