What is Content Creation?

Content creation is the process of creating content. But what does this mean, exactly?

Just about anything can be content, from blog posts to TikToks to whitepapers and even books. Basically, content is anything that provides information or entertainment. For marketers and brands, content creation is an important way to build and maintain relationships with potential customers.

Let’s look at all the potential elements that can be involved in turning your ideas into content for social media specifically.

What is social media content creation?

Social media content creation isis the process of creating written content, photography, graphics, and videos for different social media platforms.

Social media content has to fit within prescribed limits for character counts, image sizes, and video lengths. You have to cram a lot of value into a very small space.

It’s also important to note that social media content creation is much more interactive than other forms of content creation. You don’t create content in a bubble. Whether you’re highlighting user-generated content, creating a TikTik Stitch, or using trending audio to guide your content ideas, you’re part of a larger ecosystem.

Here are some of the elements involved in social media content creation. (We’ll dive deeper into how all of these roles work together to form your social media content strategy in the next section.)

• Research: Checking on the latest social media trends and using social listening and social media analytics to get a sense of what kind of content your social audience craves.
• Writing: Putting words on the screen — from headlines and video overlay text through to copy for longer posts on Facebook or LinkedIn.
• Photography/videography: Capturing photos and/or video footage, like product shots or behind-the-scenes tours. This could involve professional equipment, but depending on your needs, it can also be done with a smartphone.
• Video editing: Compiling clips into a finished product.
• Graphic design: Combining words and graphics into a meme, infographic, highlight cover, or any other visual that you use on social media.

Let’s put those ideas into action!

Do your research

Any good process starts with research. Sure, everything is content, but that doesn’t mean you can just post whatever you want on your social channels and call it a day.

Before you start creating content, you need to know what kind of content resonates with your audience, or your potential target audience. If you already have a solid following on your social channels, you can start with your social media analytics. These will help you understand what’s already working for you, so that you can model this success.But social changes fast, so you can’t limit your research to your owned accounts. Social listening is a good way to get a sense of what’s happening in your industry, and what people are talking about when they talk about your business on social media.

Finally, keep an eye on trending hashtags, topics, and audio. You won’t necessarily want to jump on every trend that comes along, but you’ll spot some good digital content creation ideas that may help your content achieve greater engagement and wider reach.

Set goals

Now that you have a sense of what’s happening in your industry, you can start to set some goals for your social media content. Are you trying to drive people to your blog? Grow your following? Make sales through social commerce? Maybe all of the above?

The kind of content you create will vary based on what you want it to achieve. For instance, your call to action will be quite different for a sales post versus a post designed to build brand awareness and engagement.

 Have a creative brainstorm

Whether you’re a one-person shop or you have a large social team, take some time to get some ideas up on the whiteboard. (It doesn’t matter whether the actual whiteboard is literal or metaphorical, just that you gather all of your ideas in one place).

This is “no bad ideas” time. Everyone on your team has unique experiences with social, both personally and professionally, that will inform their content ideas and expectations. Allowing everyone to share freely brings all of that knowledge into your shared braintrust, where it can morph into high-quality social content campaigns.

 Build a content calendar

A social media content calendar allows you to plan your content mix across social channels, so you get the most value from your digital content creation efforts.

We’ve created a content calendar template to help you plan how to use content resources across your social accounts. For example, say you want to drive social traffic to a new blog post. You can use your content calendar to plan out when to post the relevant Facebook post, TikTok, and Instagram Reel.

Your content calendar should also include your ongoing content needs.

Schedule your content

Once you’ve filled in your content calendar, it’s time to set your content up for publishing. Sure, you could post each post manually at the assigned time, but that’s a huge time-waster that also sets you up to make simple mistakes like typos and broken links.

Scheduling content in advance gives you a real-time view of your content plan, and allows time to double-check all the details. It also simplifies your workflow by condensing the time you spend actually publishing content into one block, rather than having to interrupt your work throughout the day.