Last week Digital Marketing Expert and Moxie Digital owner, Jenni Mullins spoke about digital content marketing and social media. Her content producing process allows for optimal content creation across the different social media platforms, giving clients more relevance to their target audience(s) and giving consumers content that they’ll actually enjoy.
For advertisers working in the digital space, she outlined a few key factors that enhance any digital content strategy.
- Set objectives and goals
- Understand the target audience
- Let the content tell a story
- Know how to execute each type of content
- Create a timeline and content plan
Like every aspect of advertising, from media to creative and account management to research, strategy, objectives and goals should always be the starting point of any campaign, whether it’s digital, traditional or otherwise. With a clear strategy, objectives and goals an advertising professional can justify any and all digital media plans to his or her client and begin a content creation process that makes sense and, more importantly, is in line with the overall strategy.
While strategy is arguably the key component to any campaign, half of the battle in obtaining advertising insights are in understanding the client’s target audience. The same reigns true for digital, especially when using social media to connect with consumers. As Jenni Mullins pointed out during her presentation, consumers use different social media platforms for different things and it is important to know where the target is and why. For example, if a client’s target audience mainly resides on Twitter, the content should be brief and to the point; if the target is on Instagram, the content should have rich photographs. In short, the content should meet the needs of the consumer in the same manner that the social media platform is meeting the needs of the consumer. The more natural content feels, the more effective it can be. Storytelling should also have a place in content creation, regardless of media type. “Stories,’ Jennie Mullins said, ‘are the things people remember.”
Understanding how to do something can often prove more challenging, at least for me, than knowing why you are doing something. In advertising, creative executions whether for print or for digital can make or brake the most well thought out strategy. During her presentation, Jenni Mullins shared one of the best content creation tools that I’ve ever heard of, Canva .
Having effective creative tools at hand can truly alleviate the time and energy spent on technical aspects of content creation. In my experience, the less time you spend yelling at Photoshop- I still love you Adobe- and the more time you can put into your copy,images and overall objectives, the better for clients and consumers alike.
Even for the best, social media can be overwhelming at times. For advertising professionals working every day in digital, for multiple clients, across multiple platforms the content creation schedule can get hectic very fast. Jenni Mullins suggests creating a timeline and content plan, that way there are no surprises in what should be done next and there is a set schedule to keep up and stay relevant with consumers. She also suggests planning a daily, weekly and monthly publishing schedule for content, as well as using previous content to generate more.
With a clear strategy, anything is possible…even creating content.
emily mcphail 
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