Why bulk content can make your job a whole lot easier…
“Okay, but before we can do anything, we need content”
If this is something you find yourself saying every day, chances are, it’s taking you and your team a pretty long time to manage your social channels, emails, ads – you name it.
Even if pulling together one photo takes a short time, when it happens every single day, it disrupts the flow of other stuff you have to do and so, takes longer to get out there than you first thought. Next thing you know, it’s 1pm and your to-do list has gone walkies (trust us, we’ve been there).
One of our favourite things about marketing today, is that there are so many tools out there that make can make automation your best pal. But even something as simple as a scheduling tool, can become pretty darn useless if you don’t have the content at hand to fill it up. This is where content grabs come in…
What are content grabs?
Content grabs are, pretty much what it says on the tin – you take a day (or a few days) to capture as much content as humanly possible for a brand. All in one big chunk, you can shoot hero video content, lifestyle photography, interview people, behind the scenes content, voiceovers, podcasts – phew, that’s a lot of content. Basically, it gives you a mahoosive bank of material to dip into, as and when you need it.
Why do a content grab?
Okay, we know what you’re thinking. You’ve got 3 days with alllll these people (and all their invoices) – the thought of it bunched into one cost could make any marketing budget shake in their boots. BUT getting your content all at once, actually helps to save time and money in the long run. Stay with us…
First of all, you only need to go through the briefing process once (which saves you time) and with a whole team of experts working on the same project, there won’t be any weird chinese whispers down the line that take the brief down a whole different path. If you want, you could even take time out over those few days (or however long) to be involved in the process and get the most from the team around you – no-one knows your brand as well as you do. From start to finish, you get content that feels really consistent and puts your brand across in the best way. Woo hoo!
One of the other great things about content grabs is that you get all the different types of content at once – this means a) easier planning and b) more variation (instead of pushing out all the photos, then all the video content 5 months later, you can weave it all into a bowl of melty content nachos with loads of different toppings). Top tip – make sure to include notes on the channels you want to include for the content – this way, your team can edit the content to suit each medium, to save you from resizing everything for Instagram stories, or mail headers anytime you need to publish. With all your content ready and resized to go, you can spend a set amount of time to schedule weeks, or even months in advance, freeing you up to knock that daily to-do list out the park.
Savanna Cider
We’ve been working with Savanna (the South African Cider) on their UK social channels. The biggest challenge? Lifestyle photography already existed, but the style was more suited to a South African audience than a UK audience. This meant, content wise, there wasn’t a lot to work with – mainly designed assets and user-generated content. So, we got our content grab on.
Over two days, we travelled between three different locations in sunny Glasgow, capturing lifestyle photography and video. We focused on different themes – including the bottle on location), the perfect serve, with food and drinkers enjoying themselves. This content was used, not just for social, but for PR, online listings and display ads.
Peatreekers
Whisky brand, Peatreekers, came to us from day dot – we helped to take from still to shelf with branding, bottle design, copywriting and content. On a cant-feel-our-toes cold November weekend, we drove up to the highlands and camped out, shooting content along the way.
This included video and lifestyle photography, including bottle shots, scenic panoramas of the Scottish highlands and groups of friends enjoying the Double Standard whisky (the group of friends were us, we were also breaking out our blue steel as models for the weekend). This content was used when we designed the website, managed social channels and launched the brand.
Our aim was to get as much from the content as we could, so we broke the hero video into a teaser video, interview with Calum (the Founder) and various whisky experts, which was then broken down again into bite size pieces of content that could be used across all channels. We even split wide landscape images into 3 tiles on Instagram, each with their own brand-building caption. If you pop over to the Peatreekers channels, you can see that the content from this camping trip is still used today.
See our full Peatreekers project here.
When you see a full team working on what looks like a mini movie set, it can feel pretty daunting. But, content grabs are an investment (and a worthwhile one at that). From the second you get that folder of organised content glory, it will increase productivity, make planning easier, make decisions faster – saving you time and money with less stress too.
Want us to grab some content for you? Get in touch!
