Welcome to the Marketing in the Wild Podcast. I’m Julia from Stratos Creative Marketing, where we are obsessed with finding real-life, in-the-wild stories about business and marketing.
All right! So this past weekend, I went and got PRK done. I don’t know if you guys know what that is. It’s similar to LASIK, it’s to correct your vision. But anyway, I was down all weekend. Here was the problem. On Friday, I had this brilliant idea for a new passion project. I told Kat, our ops manager and Roger, my husband about it, and they both were like, “You don’t have time for that, you need to figure out something else.” So while I was laying on the couch unable to see, I started brainstorming this idea for a new social media account. Hopefully by the time this comes out, it’ll be active. So if you wanna look it up, it’s called Humans First, Workers Second. It’s based on one of our values at Stratos, et cetera, et cetera. I could go on because I’m so excited about it.
But I kid you not, guys, Friday night, because I was hopped up on a pain drug, I could not sleep. And it gave me insomnia, which is exactly the opposite of what I expected. I thought I was gonna sleep like a baby, but nope, I was up till 3:00 AM leaving notes in my phone for this new account that I’m creating and ideas for content. So you guys know, we live, breathe, do social media at Stratos. Our whole mission is to help improve people’s relationship with social media or at least businesses. So I was thinking through all these things, but guys, I can’t even read the notes very well because they’re all misspelled because I couldn’t see.
So the next day, Saturday, I was bored, still couldn’t see that great. But I pulled out my laptop and started making content because I couldn’t keep it in my brain. Over the weekend, while I was half blind, I made 63 pieces of content, I believe. I am not totally done. I still need to do some hashtags, I still need to write some captions for them, but I was on a roll. And it was so good for me because it’s been a really long time since I’ve actually created content because our team does most of it. I help out when needed. And it was just really refreshing because I was like, oh, this is what I love about doing this. There were so many ideas! I realize it’s hard when the ideas don’t flow, but that’s why I am creating this quick podcast about five ways to DIY your content easier and faster.
So you might love social media or you might despise it, but you’re probably running out of time to manage it as you grow, especially if you’re DIY-ing. I know for me, I had to do this passion project on the weekend, and I have not touched it since the weekend because I have not had time, because I have way too many other things going on with my job. I mean, that’s really why I have a business, is because people need help with this. But I realize that not everybody’s in a place where they either want to entrust their social media to somebody else or perhaps they don’t have the budget quite yet. And so that’s where this podcast comes in. I’m gonna talk about how to create good content, engage with your followers, keep up on the social media trends, all while trying to grow your business. All of that is a lot. I get it!
So let’s talk about five different things that I personally do, that our team does while we create content, but it could also be super helpful as you’re DIY-ing. So number one, if you have heard us ever talk about it, we talk about reusing past content. So somebody recently in our StoryBrand chat talked about how they had this great piece of content that a client had posted a year ago, and they wanted to reuse it because it had gotten great engagement, but the client said no. Guys, this is silly. People aren’t gonna remember your content to that extent, and people also need to hear something like 12, 17, whatever the number is lately, X amount of times before it settles in and resonates with them. So if you have content that did great 90 days ago, reuse it, maybe reuse the caption, maybe reuse the graphic, maybe reuse all of it. It’s up to you. But if you have something that did well, use it again. Nobody’s gonna remember it. And if they do, it’s because it was so good the first time around. Normally, people aren’t gonna be like, wow, she used the same content twice. They’re actually gonna be like, wow, I can’t believe I forgot about this. So I would encourage it. Number one, reuse posts, reuse past content.
Number two, upgrade to Canva Premium. You know I love free stuff, but this is one thing that we pay for that is 100% worth it. The reason it’s worth it is because of these two of my favorite features. It has a billion features! Actually, I’m gonna add these as three of my favorite features. The first one is bulk creation content. So one of the reasons I created a massive amount of content this weekend is because I found a bunch of quotes that I wanna use. I put them on an Excel spreadsheet, uploaded them into Canva, and it made 20 graphics at once. You still have to adjust a few things, but it’s an amazing tool. That’s one of my favorite features. My most recent favorite feature.
My other favorite feature is resizing. Say you have a bunch of Instagram posts and you want them to be stories also, it will automatically resize. Yes, you might have to do a little bit of editing, but it is so fast! It makes the process so much faster.
And number three, this might be the most important one, brand kits. When you have premium, you can store your brand kit. We love this because we have 20 clients at once usually, and so we’ll have all of their colors, logos, and fonts saved in a brand kit. And so when one of my team members works on client’s so-and-so’s content, they can pull up the brand kit and they don’t have to look up hex codes. But I also love this because you can use the Canva templates and then apply your own colors to it. So then that way, with just a couple clicks, you’re suddenly converting it into something that matches your brand, your style. It’ll go way faster. Again, I know it’s not free, because you have to pay for premium, but I 100% recommend it. And we don’t make money. We used to make money because they used to have an affiliate program, we don’t make money from this recommendation any longer. I would still wholeheartedly tell you to get on the Canva premium train.
So number three, create a hashtag bank. This is something that we do for all of our clients. I’m also doing this for my passion project, the Humans First, Workers Second, but I recommend this to every person, DIYer or not. Research your hashtags, find good ones. So you should always be researching them. But refresh that research every three to six months, and group them together. So maybe you have a content pillar that is about your services, find hashtags that apply to those services and make a services group. Maybe you have a personal brand, and let’s make something up. Maybe you have a personal brand, and you’re a coach, and you are also traveling a lot, and so you have this lifestyle coaching brand and you travel. Maybe some of your content is about travel. Create a hashtag bank that is specific to all of your travel content. Maybe you have some that’s about coaching. Create a hashtag bank for your coaching offering. So once you have these banks, then you can take them and copy and paste them into the posts that are pertinent. That way, you don’t have to look at them every time. You can refresh them as needed, et cetera. Number four, batch your content. I know if you’ve been here for two seconds, you’re like, Julia, you talk about this all the time, we’re so over this. But I have a new idea on this. Yes, you could batch a month of content at a time, but what if you batched a type of content at a time?
So I mentioned to you, for my new project, I have quotes, I have stats, I have stories, I have tips! And these are all types of content. And so guys, I did 30 quotes all in one evening in an hour. It was super easy, super fast. Now, I’m gonna sprinkle them into the schedule. Maybe if that’s on your content plan, and you were like, hey, I wanna do a quote all at once and I wanna do a quote every week, what if you did 12 quotes at once and then you’d have them for every week? Do that with testimonials, with services. Tackle one at a time and then sprinkle them out. Maybe in your brain, batching for a month works better. But right now in my brain, a type of content works better because also, I might have a great idea for one type of content, and not have a great idea for the other one quite yet. And so I’ll kind of lean into creativity rather than forcing something that’s not coming to me.
Number five, use your content on multiple platforms. So here’s the deal, somebody may have told you, “Hey, you need to have different content for LinkedIn, different content for Instagram, different content for Facebook.” There is a time and place that is actually really good advice. But when you’re DIY-ing and you’re just trying to get good content out, now is not the time to create custom content for every platform. Should you know who your audience is on each platform? Yes. So sometimes we’ll create a really great piece of content, and we’ll put it on Instagram and LinkedIn, and not Facebook. But generally, we’re putting it out on all three. Because remember, back to people having to see it multiple times, seeing it on multiple platforms is gonna be helpful. Here’s the deal. You could use the Canva resize feature if you wanna create the graphics to the LinkedIn specifications, to the Facebook specifications, to the Instagram specifications. Sometimes people will just do the Facebook graphic size and then post it everywhere. I would generally say, while you don’t need to make new content for each platform, at least create your graphics so that it fits to that platform, so it looks like you created it for it. That’s my definition of working smarter, not harder. You are also gonna wanna adjust the number of hashtags and the links, because obviously, we know links in Instagram do not work, so don’t even pretend that they do. Facebook, you’re not gonna need hashtags, things like that. So you can make small adjustments, but don’t create new content for each thing.
So guys, those are my five pieces of advice. I’ve used them. I’ve used them over the past five years, but I also have used them this past weekend, and I’m gonna continue to use them next weekend, and hopefully I will be able to see better by then.
So quick recap. We have five things that are gonna make your DIY process easier and faster. Number one, reuse past content. Number two, upgrade to Canva Premium. It’s worth it. Number three, create a hashtag bank. It’s gonna save you time. Number four, batch your content. Lean into that creativity when it hits. Number five, use your content on multiple platforms. Work smarter, not harder.
Guys, I hope this was helpful to you. Come on over to Instagram, tell us which one you are gonna try out. Also, come and follow my passion project, if you want, Humans First, Workers Second. It’ll be a super fun and really cool space that I’m hoping will be really, really beneficial to a lot of people. So before I get sidetracked and get too in the weeds on my passion project, I just wanna thank you for tuning in today. I hope you’re having a great one and that you continue to have a great day, but also meet us back here next week. Tune in, we will be back with some more content.
Friends, thanks for tuning into this week’s podcast episode. I am so glad that you have. If you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have, I just ask you to subscribe so you know each time we have a new episode coming out. If you loved our podcast and wanna give us a rating or a review, I promise, we will read each and every one of them. A special shout out to our friend, Carson Childers, who is producing our podcast. We really appreciate him and all the hard work that he’s done for us.
Also, thanks to the Strato team. They have been behind the scenes doing all of the graphic design, brainstorming, et cetera, et cetera. Really, this wouldn’t be possible without them. I’m thankful for each and every one of you guys.
Lastly, listener, we’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too.
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