Spring Cleaning: How to Make Your Content Work Smarter, Not Harder
Spring Cleaning: How to Make Your Content Work Smarter, Not Harder
Most people in the United States have heard of, and participate in, spring cleaning efforts at the start of the season, but it’s not as typical to extend them to your work! While refreshing and organizing are on your mind, there’s no better time to engage in a little spring cleaning of your content.
Read on for some tips on how to make your content work smarter, not harder, this spring and beyond.
Tip #1: Build Templates for Different Content Series
When you build a template up front, you can save yourself a lot of time in the long run! If you’ll be running a series of content, you don’t need to recreate every piece of imagery. In fact, templates can be especially helpful if you’re looking to build a cohesive-looking series, anyway!
Depending on what piece of content you’re creating, your template might have different features, but here are a few you might want to consider:
Start with a base background, whether that’s a solid color or a photo.
Add text boxes with a designated font already chosen, so that you don’t need to search for it again.
Choose colors that reflect your brand.
Include your business’s logo and URL in the template so that you never miss the opportunity to include it!
Quotes, events, and customer profiles are some examples of types of content series that lend themselves particularly well to templated design.
Tip #2: Repurpose Evergreen Content
Informational content (think: blog posts and general web pages) can often remain relevant for a much longer period of time than something more breaking, such as a news announcement about the launch of a product or service. This type of content is commonly referred to as “evergreen” for its ability to stay fresh no matter when it’s shared within your content calendar.
Another version of evergreen content can be your imagery. If you find that you come back to certain product or event photos often in your design work, consider building out an album of “stock” branded imagery so that you can find it easily.
Tip #3: Optimize Similar Content for Different Platforms
It’s important to tailor your social media content for the platforms you’ll be sharing them to, it often only takes a few tweaks to repurpose something you’ve designed for one platform for another.
Save your resources (such as a social media image size guide or your brand colors) in a centralized, easily-accessible location.
Build your design files with a bit of white space around them so that you can crop your graphics no matter what dimensions you need to share it in.
Think about written content you’ve shared through platforms like your blog, and turn excerpts into graphics for your social media accounts.
Tip #4: Don’t Fear Free Design Tools
Just because you have access to sophisticated design software doesn’t mean you have to design new graphics from scratch every single time you want to post to your company’s Facebook account! There are many free applications and design tools out there that can help you create beautiful content for social media, emails, and even print materials.
We have more than a few favorites that we recommend to clients.
Befunky: Befunky is a photo editor and collage maker that can help you turn your images into art.
Canva: Canva is a fantastic resource for not only stock imagery, but also for several creative fonts and design templates. Whether you’re new to designing content, or are simply in search of a time-saving solution, this is one of our top recommendations.
Hubspot: Hubspot offers a unique set of free templates that can be used to create infographics that work for many types of businesses. They take the guesswork out of building a clear, informative piece of content.
Just because something is free doesn’t mean that it won’t be a helpful tool that supports your design (and strategic!) goals.
Smart-Working Content
Finding ways to make your content work smarter is helpful for your internal teams, of course, but it’s also something to keep in mind when you’re working with digital marketing agencies. Always look for experts who can help you create ways to streamline your efforts, so that you’re not wasting your time or your money! Our team at Doukas Media takes pride in our ability to help you build templates and processes that will make your life easier.
What are some of your tips for making your content work smarter, not harder? Do you have time-saving tools that you find helpful? Let us know in the comments!