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Even if the stars have aligned perfectly for you to post regularly to social media, sometimes you’re going to hit a wall when it comes to new creative ideas. Or sometimes your old ideas just aren’t working and you need to find inspiration for new posts.
We’re here to help with five quick hacks to help you create branded content for your social media marketing efforts.
1. Create Graphic Templates
Testimonials or inspirational quotes always make for great posts. Why create something from scratch every time? In a tool such as Canva, you can quickly create a few templates to work with and rotate through for quote posts.
Do you often provide tips or want to make something such as #TipTuesday a regular feature? Search around the templates on Canva. Find something you really like, change the colors to your brand, add your logo, and schedule away!
2. Record Video Using Your Smartphone
Lights, camera, action! And it can all be done from your phone in a good quality. Flip your phone to a horizontal view (which makes for easier cropping), record some tips, new information about your business, or capture a testimonial in just 90 seconds or less.
You can upload and edit your video through tools such as wave.video, as well as Canva. If you struggle with your words and want help perfecting your script, try a teleprompter app like BIGVU.
You can also take your video and easily convert it to a blog for your website. Our favorite tool to transcribe videos is Rev.com. You can add this to your video, as well as adding the text to a post on your website.
> RELATED: 5 Incredible Digital Tools to Manage Your Business’s Social Media
3. Get Your Friends and Family to Help
Do you have branded photos of your business? How about you working or talking to clients? With your smartphone, get a friend or family member to help you out for an hour to take staged photos of you.
Remember that photos during a quick session don’t have to be used right away or even within an allotted time period. Photos taken in early summer are good for several months. Older photos also work for days like #ThrowbackThursday or #FlashbackFriday.
4. Use Stock Videos and Music If Necessary
Once again, this is where Canva can be such an important tool. There are endless stock images available there – more than 1 million if you’re counting – since the site acquired stock library sites Pexels and Pixabay. Search the site for your industry and check out what’s there.
Adding layered text in your brand font, as well as your logo, will help make that image part of your brand. In just a matter of a few minutes, you can quickly create a handful of graphics to schedule to your social media pages.
Canva also has stock videos available, as well as music that you can add to your images.
> RELATED: 10 Diverse Stock Image Sites to Make Your Content More Inclusive
5. Use Similar Images Across Platforms
If you’re creating new images for each platform, stop! Save yourself some time and resize the same image for multiple platforms. For the most part, sticking to one size is fine – square. Even Twitter has changed its image algorithm to show more of an original image on tweets.
The exception to this rule would be Facebook and Google My Business. Thanks to recent updates, the standard 1080×1080 square no longer appears appropriately on the respective platforms. While your square image will appear fine on mobile, the ideal size for a Facebook image is 1200 x 630. That way the image will look correct on both desktop and mobile. The ideal size for a Google My business post is 1200 x 900 pixels.
If you’re worried that people will see the same image across multiple platforms, it’s OK. Not everyone is on every platform all day long. You may have some customers that follow you on Instagram, but not Facebook. You may have clients on LinkedIn that never log in anywhere else.
> RELATED: 6 Ways to Boost Your Brand on Social Media
When you follow these hacks to create branded content, you’ll get your creative juices flowing. These tips are also designed to help you take control of your time so you can focus on other aspects of your business!
If you’re looking for social media help, The Social Ginger is here to be your partner! Set up a FREE discovery call today.
