We know it’s great to have your business across social media, ready to build brand awareness and engage with customers. To be successful, however, you should ensure you have consistent and regular content across your chosen social/marketing platforms.
While I recommend having a suite of professional content such as photos, videos, and designed flyers; creating your own content is a must. Think of it this way: invest in professional content for sales type content that can be used repeatedly to promote your business. The DIY content is more ‘get to know you and your business’ content. It doesn’t need to be as slick and polished, just authentic.
What’s the best way to create DIY content? Use your smartphone. It’s already in your pocket and anyone in the business can do it. Why is the device so good?
Handiness and portability
You always have your smartphone with you. So, it’s perfect for the everyday social bites – quick stories, behind the scenes, or filming yourself talking to your audience. It means you can capture the type of content that lets the audience in. That makes your business open and can build a loyalty base. Talk to your crew about capturing content, too – them pending time with a client, sharing some of their work, anything that fits within your marketing and brand guidelines that you want to show.
Versatilility
Smartphones allow you to take photos, videos, post direct to your favourite platform, you can film live video straight away…and you can edit it. All of this on the one device in the palm of your hand. There are some great editing apps on your phone that mean you don’t need to move or transfer your content to another device and you can do it all yourself. Plus, you have access to the social platforms as well – so you can post organically or go live on the spot.
Cost effectiveness
For your social media, most content is fine to be filmed on your smartphone. The quality is good enough for the type of content that will keep your business looking open and transparent. It means you can keep a budget aside for planned professional content, marketing strategies and ad costs. Your everyday content costs can then be minimal.
A few things to consider
There are a few thing to consider when creating content with your smartphone to ensure the content still keeps your business looking professional and stays within brand guidelines.
Framing
Try to keep your videos as steady as possible. There are a lot of tripods on the market made specifically for Smartphones. Investing in a tripod means you can be hands free and keep your shots steady, plus they also work well as a ‘selfie stick’ if you want to keep moving in the video.
Lighting
Use natural light where you can and check the direction it’s hitting. Aim to have your main light source (sun or lamp) facing directly onto your face or the product you are filming.
Editing
There are great editing apps to help you create your own videos using a group of clips, text, music and adding your logo to the end. It makes it so much easier for you to film, edit and post all on the one device. Try iMovie, inShot or Adobe Rush. You can even do this in the social platform itself, take a look at my article recent ISB on Instagram reels for more information.
