Tag: Content Generation

The art of generating content for websites, blogs and social media.

One exclamation mark is enough!

Grammar and proper punctuation are extremely important not only because they will make any text in your ads readable and thus understandable to your audience. They are also very important because your ad could get banned by whichever platform you are using for poor grammar.

No, I’m not kidding. Any ad can be banned due to poor spelling, a syntax error, or excessive use of punctuation signs. Most people think they are excellent at grammar, but they’re not. There are a lot of “rules” spreading around that are incorrect.

Remember, simple is beautiful. There is no need to use complicated wording when you can say the same thing more simply. At least not when writing ads. A simple text will convey a message more effectively than a complex one. So no fancy wording, please.

The dictionary is your friend. Use it. We have many tools on the internet that can help us do this. Most of them are free. If you’re not sure what a word means, look it up. Better make sure that you’re saying what you think you’re saying.

Also, learn how to use punctuation marks. Everybody thinks they are an expert and they are not. A lot of people repeat “rules” they heard somewhere for the use of commas and semi-colons, but most of them are wrong. Don’t do that. Look it up. It just takes a few seconds.

The most common mistakes people make while writing an ad are using too many exclamation marks and over-capitalizing words. There is no need to use three exclamation marks on one sentence, in the same way not every word needs to start with a capital letter.

The dictionary is your friend. If you’re not sure about something, look it up.
Photo by Nothing Ahead on Pexels.com

Think about how people will look on Google for your products or services. What words would they use? That’s how you should write your ad. Simple natural language is way more effective than over-complicated text.

You’re not writing a novel or a technical essay, you are writing a piece of advertisement and it should be simple because you want it to be read and understood by the most people possible. Keep your messages simple and effective. Don’t try to say everything in one little sentence.

If you want people to visit your website, talk about that. If you need people to take a look at your new products, say so. Whatever your objective is, keep it simple. Don’t try to do everything all at once. Clear objectives make better ads and better ads give better results.

That’s it! Use simple wording for your ads, check your grammar, and don’t over-use punctuation signs and capital letters. Google and Facebook will ban your ad if you do that. If you want to find out more about this, read their policies.

29 de May de 2023
Not as easy as it looks!

A few months ago, a friend of mine was telling me he wanted to start posting content on his social media profiles for his business. He didn’t ask for my help and he didn’t ask for any advice, he just said he was doing it and that it was an easy thing to do.

Last week, I had dinner with this same friend. He was complaining about how hard it is to come up with something interesting enough to post. He told two other friends that posting on social media was very difficult and that it wasn’t as easy as he thought.

He was saying he was out of ideas and that he needed help. One of the other friends looked at me and said something like “That is what you do, right?”. This guy looks at me and says “I thought you were in Marketing”. You can imagine what my answer was.

So, yes, you can do it yourself, but you need to have a plan. You need to have a strategy. If you don’t you will run out of ideas very soon. Like my friend did. This is a very time-consuming activity. The best thing you can do is to have somebody exclusively dedicated to this.

I know there are a lot of companies that hire a graphic designer and let them take care of their website, their e-mail campaigns, their newsletter, their logo design, their photos and videos, AND their social media content. That is the worst thing you can do, as we have discussed in previous posts.

There is a reason why Community Managers and Social Media Managers were created. If you can’t hire a Digital Marketing team, at least have someone that will handle exclusively your social media content.

Always have a plan, be ready to answer a lot of questions, and be prepared for all kinds of situations. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Many think that it is “only posting on Facebook”, and “how hard can it be?”. Well, it is a lot harder than you think and no, it is not only posting on Facebook. People don’t like to hear this, but that’s the truth. You need at least one professional Community Manager.

In previous posts, we have already talked about the importance of a content plan. You need a tone, a style, topics for your posts, a graphic concept, and a few other things. But the most important thing is that you need someone with the necessary criteria about what to post and how to post it.

This person needs to have some experience and some knowledge about what they are doing because they will be making a lot of fast decisions and calls about your published content and about how to respond to the interactions they will be having with the people that follow your company on social media.

Taking some online courses is ok, but that’s not everything. Those courses will teach you the technical aspects of being a Community Manager, but they will not give you the creativity or the experience needed to perform this job, as my friend has found out.

There is only one thing that can give you all the skills that you need to become great at this job, and that is doing it. Make a plan, stick to it, and in a few months, you will be looking at the results of your hard work. Be ready, so that when mistakes happen, you know what to do.

23 de April de 2023
What do you mean?

Sometimes we take a lot of things for granted, like the meaning of words. We think that everybody knows what one word means, but to our surprise, it is not always like that. Each of us could have a different meaning for the same word, which could lead to misunderstandings.

Think of the word “house”. What’s the picture in your head? Do you imagine a one-floor or a two-floor building? Does it have a garden and a fence? What’s the color on the outside? Each one of us creates a very different image inside our heads. Each one of us gives a different meaning to it.

Another thing that happens is that we all think we know the meaning of a word. We believe we do, but when we look for it in the dictionary we find discrepancies; most of the time it’s about slight variations, but sometimes we find that words mean something completely different from what we thought.

This phenomenon becomes very relevant when you’re writing a book, an article for a newspaper, or an ad. Are you sure that everybody will understand whatever it is that you are trying to say? Will the picture inside their heads be the one that you want it to be?

That’s why you have to do your research. Make sure that you know what you’re saying and that everybody will understand the same thing. Some companies do this for big corporations, but since we don’t have that kind of budget, we’ll have to do it ourselves.

Words mean different things to each one of us and that can lead to many misunderstandings or even cause conflicts. Make sure you know what words mean. Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

Ask your friends, your neighbors, or anybody around you that you can get to read your ad and that might help you make sure that your message is very clear and understandable to anybody who reads it. Of course, you will make some interesting findings if you do this.

What do we do then? You can’t get inside people’s heads and change the way they think or what they understand, but you can change other things. Choose another wording, use a synonym, or add another word that makes it even more clear. Control what you can control.

I know about a campaign that fell apart after the agency discovered that they were using a word that people didn’t understand. And it wasn’t the case of a little-known word with a strange meaning, it was just that people understood different things. The word was “tolerance”.

Words are concepts, and each one of us has a unique concept for them. That’s why dictionaries were invented, so we could all agree on the meaning of words. Sometimes we need to use images, font faces, colors, sizes, and layouts to make our message clear. But we will talk about this some other time.

12 de February de 2023
The Big Temptation

When a brand starts posting content to its social media profiles it is very common to make the mistake of sharing too much. They post ten times a day on every possible platform they can. This is wrong!

Think about it as a user, a follower, and not a brand. You start following your favorite car company, or whatever you like, and suddenly they start flooding your news feed with their posts and stories. One week later, you unfollow them.

You don’t need to post ten times a day. That will get you nothing. You are not going to get more followers and, very possibly, you will lose the ones you have. Don’t do it.

We have already discussed the fact that you don’t need to be on every social media platform that there is, especially if you don’t have enough content or the strategy to do it. The same thing happens with your post frequency.

You can start by posting two times a week on Facebook and Instagram and work from there depending on how many followers you have and the interactions that you get. For LinkedIn, make it once a week.

If you are using Twitter, you can make between two and five tweets a day, but make sure to stay in topic and don’t repeat the same content too much. Try different days and times.

It is very hard to resist temptation, but in the same way, we avoid eating too much dessert, we have to resist posting too much. Photo by Giorgia Licini on Pexels.com.

Like we said before, it is a great idea to boost your posts when starting on social media. Once you have a reasonable audience, try paid ads. They are really helpful when you’re trying to attract more followers to your profiles.

Remember to keep an eye on your metrics and make adjustments based on what they’re telling you. Resist the temptation of posting too much and having a profile on every social media platform. You don’t need that.

What you need to do is to have a strategy, stick to your plan of content, and build a community. Of course, you can try new things, new formats, and new topics, but you have to make it in a planned manner.

Your numbers will tell you when to start posting more frequently. And even then, make it gradually. You don’t want to overwhelm your followers. Remember you are an intruder on social media. They were not meant for you to advertise there. We use it that way because it works, but that’s not their main purpose.

8 de January de 2023
Starting in YouTube

When you start a new YouTube channel, you will face some new challenges. You will compete with thousands of content creators that are already there and that have the same interest that you have in becoming a success on this platform.

When you start setting up your channel, make sure you have a great title that communicates in an effective manner the kind of content that you will be uploading. Add a well designed banner that helps you do this.

Make sure that your phone number is verified so you can create videos longer than 15 minutes, upload custom thumbnails, live stream, and appeal Content ID claims. Add a watermark to brand your content and make it look professional. It can be your logo.

It is important to choose a topic, and it’s even better if you find a niche. For example, if your topic is cooking, you can focus on vegan cooking or Caribbean cooking, to make it more attractive. Don’t overdo it, so you don’t end up with something just interesting for a very limited group of people.

Once you have a topic and a niche, it’s easier to identify who will watch your videos. You need to do this because you need to know what your audience needs, what they like, and what they don’t. Content that is useful works better. Take your time and try different things.

Every time you can, tell your audience what your content is about and what they will get for watching it. Are they going to learn a new language? Are they learning how to cook? Are you giving them traveling tips? Content of value for your audience has a better chance to be watched.

Another good idea is to check what others are doing, specifically the ones that do the same thing that you do. Maybe they inspire you and give you new ideas. They are your competition, but maybe you could collaborate with them and make some kind of alliance that is beneficial for both sides.

Get the right equipment. YouTube favors videos that are recorded in 4k or at least HD, so make sure you can produce content in such qualities. Photo by Terje Sollie on Pexels.com

Remember that the most important thing is to have a plan. Don’t go crazy publishing ten videos the first week just to abandon your channel for a month. It’s better to upload content regularly (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, whatever works better for you), so people know when to look for it.

If one week you have a lot of ideas, write them down and schedule them, because there will be times when you don’t have any idea at all. This way you will always have something to upload and your channel will not look abandoned.

Keep the tone, style, and quality consistent, don’t rush it. It’s better to upload something a day later than to share something that looks half-done or that doesn’t have the same level of production as your previous material.

Get the right equipment, even if it’s basic equipment, and learn how YouTube works. Find out which keywords work best for your type of content, so you can include them in the description of your videos. YouTube offers a lot of tools for you, so use them.

One last step would be to advertise your content. Like we said before, it doesn’t matter if you have the best content ever if nobody knows it’s there. Invest as much as you can so you get the best results possible. This way you will be monetizing your content in no time.

18 de December de 2022
Give it a boost!

The term “organic reach” represents the number of people that sees your content on social media without you having to pay for it. A few years ago, you could have some pretty decent interaction and reach numbers this way, but not anymore.

Social media platforms have made sure that the organic reach of your content gets seriously limited because they want you to pay. They want you to invest in the promotion of your content because that’s their business, that’s the way they make money.

Surely, you’ve already heard something about the algorithms and their negative effect on the reach of your content. Maybe you’ve heard someone blaming the algorithms for their posts’ low interaction and engagement.

Algorithms are just mathematical expressions that work as a set of instructions when performing a calculation. For example, the algorithm that determines the number of people that sees your content on their news feed for free versus the number of people that sees that very same post when you pay to boost it.

Paid reach is always greater than organic reach, and it helps you grow your audience in a shorter time. It would take you years to get your organic reach to the levels that paid reach does in just a few weeks. So definitely paid reach and boosted content should be a part of your strategy.

Just like a ladder helps you reach higher spots, boosting social media content will help you reach a wider audience. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

But what happens if you are working on a limited budget? Don’t worry. You don’t need to spend a lot, there is no minimum amount to invest. You can spend as little as a few dollars a month and get some results.

Obviously, the more you invest the better your numbers will be, but even just a few dollars a month can make a difference for your brand, especially in the early stages of a campaign or when launching a new product.

Promoting on social media will always be cheaper than doing it on traditional media, like television, radio, or newspapers, and the results you get are a lot better too, so don’t hesitate to invest your money in boosting your content.

It is a shame to see a lot of quality content go to waste because of the extremely low organic reach it gets. Many brands make the mistake of increasing the frequency of their posts, instead of increasing their reach by boosting them.

One important clarification that has to be made is that boosting your content will only get you a greater reach for your content, and more engagement too, but it is not the same as Paid Ads, that’s another story and we will talk about it later

27 de November de 2022
The World Cup has started, be careful

Today, the FIFA World Cup started in Qatar. Many brands see this as an opportunity to promote themselves by talking about this, supporting their home teams, orusing the same hashtags.

That can be a great idea as long as you know what you’re talking about, but if you don’t know anything about soccer, it’s better to stay out of the discussion, because it could work against you.

It is generally a great idea to stay away from topics that have nothing to do with you as a brand, be it politics, sports, or whatever subject comes to mind. If your brand is not related to sports, why would you say something about them?

Supporting your home team is one of the pretty safe things you can do, but be careful and do not engage in a discussion with the opposite team. If you do, keep it polite, keep it brief, and keep it about the sport.

If you’ve spent some time doing marketing stuff, you surely have noticed that you should never engage in a discussion about politics, unless you are a politician and/or fully understand every aspect of the topic that’s being discussed.

The same thing happens with sports. Especially soccer, which is some kind of religion in some countries like Brazil or Argentina, or even Mexico. So, if you are not a soccer expert, stay away from it.

You don’t want to be seen as an opportunistic brand or as a fake fan. That’s a label that’s going to take a lot of effort to remove once you’ve earned it. You’d think it’s harmless, but it’s not.

Sportswear brands are generally very careful with their content. They have to make sure they are not sending the wrong message. Photo by EVG Kowalievska on Pexels.com

Sportswear brands are very careful with this kind of thing. They hire experts to handle their content, so they don’t say anything inappropriate or anything stupid. One post can cause a lot of damage to your brand.

Every time you post something, you should consider every aspect of it. Are you saying something that could be misinterpreted in some way? What is it saying about your brand?

Remember, you should only talk about things that you want to be associated with. When someone thinks about your brand, do you want them to think about sports? About soccer?

If the answer is no, then don’t even think about using the World Cup’s hashtags or saying something about it in your content. Soccer fans are very passionate, and even using the wrong terms can be very costly reputation-wise.

You don’t need to be a part of every trend. Your content doesn’t need to include every hashtag. Pick only the ones that say the right things about your company, above all if it is about soccer and Qatar.

20 de November de 2022
Tools for everything

Once you start generating your own content, you will probably find yourself looking for a website where you can get free images, design resources, video and image editing software, and other similar tasks.

Every social media platform offers free tools that can help you with these, and some of them even do it automatically, but the resulting images look pretty much the same for everybody.

If you want your images to look different and reflect your brand’s personality, one option is to pay for third-party tools, which can be expensive for some budgets, especially if you are a small business.

Luckily, there are free tools for everything all over the internet, and most are really good at what they do. You just have to look for them and pick the one that works best for you.

It’s a matter of personal taste and whether the tool does whatever you need. The great news is that you can try them all and pick one because they are all free or have a free tier of service.

There are free tools for everything on the internet. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Photo by Tranmautritam on Pexels.com

Unsplash and Pexels are two websites where you can get free images. It is always best to generate your pictures, but if you just need an image to go with a post, then you’re safe. Never use them on a campaign.

Maybe you want to modify that free image to make sure your post doesn’t look the same as everybody else’s. You could try Canva or Adobe Express to find some templates that help you make a composition.

If you need to take it a step further, you could use GIMP, a free open-source alternative to Photoshop. Maybe it lacks Adobe’s software most recent functionality, but it can do almost everything its paid cousin does.

You need to have some computer skills to use this kind of software, so if you want to keep things simple, stay with the first two options or try something like Picmonkey or Stencil.

Infogr.am lets you create infographics and maps that you can present to your audience. Piktochart is another popular tool that does the same thing and has a great free plan to start with.

Landscape is a great tool for resizing images that you want to use on social media. What I like about it is that you don’t need to remember the exact size in pixels for each platform, this tool does that for you and it stays updated.

Clipchamp is a free tool for editing video, in case you need something more than the native tools of Instagram, YouTube, or Vimeo. Adobe Express also has a free video editing tool with which you can start.

Like we said at the beginning of this post, there are tools for everything, and all you have to do is look for them on the internet and pick one. Don’t be afraid to try new things.

The worst thing that could happen is that you end up looking different than the rest of your competitors, and that is exactly what you want to do.

13 de November de 2022
Watch your tone

Sometimes we focus on the wrong things. We tend to look for the latest trends in social media, the best formats to use, the best time to post, and the latest graphic design tools, but we forget about what’s important.

Let’s not forget that social media’s main purpose is to generate a guided conversation between our potential clients and us as a brand. It has to be guided because we want it to be about us, about what we do.

As we said in a previous post, this dialog lets us promote not only our services and products but the values and principles we want to associate with our brand. But we have to make it happen.

How do we do that? By defining the language, the tone, and the style that we plan to use in that conversation. We have to make a series of objective choices that will define all that. This is communication 101.

Do we want to be perceived as approachable or unreachable? Serious or funny? Professional or casual? We have to take into consideration all the characteristics that define us as a brand.

Why should people follow you and not your competition? What makes you different? You don’t want to be perceived as boring or as someone that doesn’t listen You want people to follow you, to talk to you, because you want to convince them.

Formal or informal? The style of communication that you choose will affect the way people see you as a brand. Photo by Liza Summer on Pexels.com

The easiest way to do this is to create a character. Don’t worry, this character won’t show up on your social media or anything like that. It’s just a tool that will help create content with a uniform tone, style, and language.

This imaginary person, with their personality, will be who you’ll become while creating content. That way, it doesn’t matter who writes it, it will always have the same traits.

If your target audience is lawyers, you have to speak like a lawyer. If you are talking about cars, learn all the terminology and expressions that car fanatics use. You don’t have to be a petrolhead to talk like one, but if you sound fake, you will lose your audience.

Whatever you choose will affect everything you do later, like the kind of things that you will post about, the kind of images that you will use, and even the colors that you pick.

So make a plan that considers every situation. Prepare a document with all of these choices, some frequently asked questions, and their respective answers – You don’t want to sound robotic, so have some variations ready.

When you start posting, stick to your plan. Always keep the conversation on the positive side and never insult anybody. If you get negative comments, listen to them and try to help, but never delete them. Trolls are an exception, never waste your time on them.

As you can see, you can easily forget about the basic, but most important, aspects of communication. Defining this will save you a lot of future headaches. Like they say: “it takes one thousand posts to build a brand, but only one to destroy it”.

8 de October de 2022