Madalyn Sklar

Tips and Ideas to Scale Your Content Creation

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Tips and ideas to scale content creation - Twitter Smarter chat with Ted Rubin - September 5, 2019

Everyone struggles with generating content. We know it’s a constant process and unless you’re invested enough, you’ll have a hard time maintaining quality and consistent frequency in your posts. So what’s the best way to scale up your content creation? We decided to ask Ted Rubin, speaker, social media marketing strategist, and CMO of Photofy.

Here’s a summary of our chat:

Topic: Tips and Ideas to Scale Your Content Creation
Guest: Ted Rubin
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share ideas.

Q1: What do you mean by scaling content creation?

Christine said it well. Bluntly put, scaling content creation means creating more content with less effort. It means you’re getting other stakeholders in your brand, like employees, partners, and customers to create quality content to complement yours.

To do this, you’ll need to first establish an organized system for content creation, and divide tasks and responsibilities based on each content creator involved. The system should help them maintain your brand’s voice and tone while scaling the amount and quality of content created.

You can also start thinking about repurposing a piece of content. For instance, making a series of blog posts from a webinar or cutting a lengthy webinar into smaller chunks for easy distribution.

Ted advocates for using employee-created content to connect with customers on a personal level. Consider sharing stories like everyday office events, neighbourhood gatherings, and discussions that your audience can relate to. Employees’ content also elevates your social credibility—people love to see happy employees vouching for their employer.

All these efforts collectively help scale your content creation. As our guest Ted said, you need large volume of quality content to positively impact your search engine rankings.

Q2: What are some ways to scale content creation on Twitter?

Here’re a few ideas that Ted and our community members shared:

  • Re-post blogs as tweets and vice versa.
  • Identify high-traction tweets and write blog posts about each.
  • Repurpose content you posted elsewhere as tweets.
  • Share relevant Instagram posts to Twitter automatically.
  • Cross-promote from Facebook, Flipboard, LinkedIn, and other RSS feeds when relevant.
  • Tweet and retweet other people’s content.
  • Use polls and ask questions, tweet your ideas, and gather feedback from your audience.
  • Use threads to connect a series of Tweets and pin them on your profile.
  • Connect with your audience using Twitter audio and video.
  • Participate in Twitter chats and share relevant and helpful content.

Beth suggested talking about your customers. Feature their experiences and how you feel about working with them. Stories like these help build rapport with your community.

Well, with all these ideas, you won’t run out of content to create. That’s always a good thing, eh? That’s what Ted says too—creating isn’t the problem, having the time to share them is.

Most importantly, don’t stress out about creating content—enjoy the process.

Q3: How is your Twitter content an advertisement?

Twitter is a platform for organic engagement. This means you can get feedback and initiate conversations about almost anything related to your brand. For instance, you can even poll your audience about marketing material and ads you’re considering. It’s a test-bed for you to analyze what works and what doesn’t at a speed that’s unavailable elsewhere. Twitter is instant in a good way.

And so, Twitter content isn’t advertisement in the traditional, salesy sense, but rather a way for you to build relationships with your audience.

As Andrea pointed out, because Twitter is open to everyone, a tweet that gets your audience’s attention, makes them respond, and discuss serves as an advertisement for who you are and what you stand for.

Never forget Ted’s words: Whatever you do represents you and your brand. But the impact you create, the memories you leave people with, the usefulness of your content all make up your reputation. It’s everything that your community shares about you.

Q4: How do you choose who creates content for your brand?

Ted’s a big fan of promoting employees and motivating them to be your content creators. As the face of your brand, they can be a powerful voice in representing you on social media.

Like Ted said, what matters more than the message itself is the person delivering that message. Happy employees can influence your audience. They can help develop your brand, connect with customers, offer instant support on social media where relevant, and showcase the culture you’ve established in your business process.

Some of our community members also suggested hiring in-house content creators over outsourcing the job. Since your content projects your brand, you need to make sure whoever’s creating the actual content knows you and understands your values.

If you’re choosing a third-party, however, like Rachel from Express Writers said, it’s best to establish a relationship with them first. Make sure their values align with yours and they appreciate and support you as a business. Relationship building is the first step to working with influencers.

Q5: How does a good relationship with employees help with content creation?

Having a good relationship with your employees automatically makes them your ambassadors. They’ll want to talk about you without you even asking. J Fritz reminded us that employees share their experiences of working with you. It’s a great starting point to highlight your culture and how you’re perceived within your own establishment.

Also, as Ted pointed out to us, good employee-employer communication translates to great customer service. Find the right tools to help you interact with your employees and encourage them to keep the conversation going. Chat with them as you would with a friend—keep the doors open to their ideas. Brainstorm marketing and branding ideas. They may have valuable observations from customer behaviour that you can use in your research and analysis.

Q6: Share some tips on motivating employees to generate content.

Ted spoke about how you can help yourself by helping your employees. If you communicate the value of personal branding, they’ll be motivated to grow their own. And in the process, they’ll help you grow yours.

Some other ideas, as shared by our community:

  • Thank them—send handwritten notes, freebies, or stop by their workplace and give them a pat on the back. Show that you appreciate their hard work.
  • Consider prizes for best employee-generated content.
  • Share stories about your employees, re-share their posts and show you value their efforts.
  • Allow your teams to takeover your social media for a day or two and use their creative inputs, making sure they still adhere to your branding guidelines.
  • Ask them about customer interactions so they know you’re open to suggestions.

As Tamara so well said, listen to your employees’ ideas and opinions. Ensure proper communication and give them the resources they need—like logos, image guidelines, suggested topics of discussion, and overall dos and don’ts. In other words, make it easy for them to spread the word.

Q7: What’s your advice on choosing the right influencers?

  • Get to know them first, and see if their values and style match with yours.
  • Observe how they engage with their audience—you don’t want an influencer who doesn’t bother to respond to comments on their posts.
  • Consider people who’ve already purchased from you—they’re your fans and will be more invested in what you do.
  • Avoid self-proclaimed influencers focussed on money. You want someone who prioritizes people.
  • Ted told us how influencer marketing is just a large network of good relationships that’ll give you sustainable returns in the long run.

As Jennifer mentioned, the influencer you choose should be a natural leader. They need to understand the value of building a community from the ground up.

And if you’re wondering how to measure the success of influencer marketing, take Ted’s advice: measure your promotion just as you would any other paid media activity. Then add the priceless value of relationship and the number of returning visits it generates.

Q8: Tell us about @PhotofyApp. How does it relate to content creation?

Photofy is an online content creation tool. It helps you streamline content that your employees are creating, so that they all match and resonate with your values and guidelines. You can check it out here: photofy.com

Employee-generated content, according to Ted, gets 8 times more engagement than a piece of content you share from the branded handle. Who doesn’t want that?

That’s all I have for this week, folks. Thanks for reading, and feel free to tweet out to me or Madalyn if you have any ideas and suggestions for our chat. And if you’ve got some time on your hands this Thursday, join us at 1 pm ET for another #TwitterSmarter chat.

About me, Narmadhaa:

I’m a writer of all things—technical and marketing copy to fill the pocket; haiku and short stories to fill the soul. A social media enthusiast, I’m a member of the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and always happy to take on writing gigs.

Say hello: Personal blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

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