Solutions for a Lack of Content During The Pandemic
If these uncertain times have impacted your usual content creation systems, we completely understand. Whether you are an event business that can’t hold in person events, or a small business that can no longer afford photoshoots for your products, we have compiled some tips to help you navigate content creation right now.
Create Content from Home!
We know this one sounds obvious, but there are so many ways to create fun and high quality content from the comfort of your home right now. Whether you have access to a DSLR camera, or are using your iphone, you can create content for your business without needing to be a professional photographer or videographer.
We recommend showing a behind the scenes look at how your business has changed. Show your customers how you have updated your protocols, what your home office looks like, and how you can go above and beyond in this new environment.
bonus tip: find good lighting! as much as possible, try to find natural light sources in your home and take photos with natural light on the subject.
Take Advantage of More Candid & Casual Content Platforms
With the lack of in person events for your business or larger scale photoshoots, we are thrilled to see more candid forms of content trending. Tik Tok videos and Instagram Reels allow you to create short form videos about your business or industry. The best part? The videos that are professionally created don’t perform as well as the videos shot on a phone with real people! This is an opportunity to share what you and your customers are passionate about without stressing about production quality.
User Generated Content
Right now is the perfect time to utilize user-generated content from your real customers! Incentivize posting content of your product or service on social media, and allow your customers to create content for you! We recommend creating a hashtag or way to track content users are posting, and encouraging them to continue by sharing their content on your feeds. A great example of this is Article who share photos on their instagram stories and feed from customers of how their furniture looks their homes. While they still share photos shot in professionally designed spaces with their furniture products, they also share content from how their products look in real and realistic spaces from their customers. This is a content source that doesn’t involve a lot of time and production on Article’s part, but still achieves high engagement numbers.
We recently sat down (virtually) with Peter Hunt, president of Victoria Distillers, in our SMC Club. We discussed with him how important user generated content has been in the marketing strategy of Empress Gin. Our key take-away from him was how these photos shot on an iphone from one of their customers consistently outperform professional photography they are shooting in a studio.
Work With Micro-Influencers
We have all heard how important Influencer Marketing has become, but more than ever working with micro-influencers can help you with creating content during this interesting time. Work on sourcing smaller accounts with curated audiences perfect for your business. These could be influencers with smaller followings, or individuals who do not classify themselves as an “influencer” but would be willing to create and share content in exchange for free product.
Collaborations like this not only provide you with content for your feeds, but gets your business posted on new accounts and introduces you to potential customers.
Hire a Local Photographer
When it comes to creating content for your business, we always preach using local photographers! Not only does original content perform better than generic stock photos, but it supports your local community of creatives.
If you have the budget to invest in professional photography, we highly recommend reaching out to local photographers and seeing what options they have available during this time. There are many ways photographers are getting creative and producing amazing visuals while following health and safety guidelines.
When Necessary, Use Stock Photos
If you have followed any of our advice on visuals previously, you may be surprised to see this tip. The truth is yes, we preach original content, but that is not always possible. If you are in need of photos to accompany a post or announcement right now and have no way of producing it yourself, stock photos are the solution.
We personally love using Stocksy, a stock photo company out of Victoria, BC that uses a curated editing approach to select useful and authentic photos. While we often associate stock photos with free generic images we have seen on many different feeds, paying for stock photos not only assists in supporting creators, but limits how many other businesses will be using the same imagery as you.
If you find yourself with no budget for content, we recommend Pexels or Unsplash.