Most times when I work through a brand content audit with a client, we find one of two things: 1) they have too much variety (in things like messaging and visuals) to where they have started to lose their brand (and confuse their customers) or the opposite—2) they have been doing too much of the same thing for so long that they have begun to lose interest.

If you find yourself in one of these camps, here’s what you can do. Oh yea, and an all-important third ingredient…

Do you find yourself starting from scratch when you have to create graphics or messaging for a new post or product?

When you look at your instagram grid, do you feel like it lacks cohesion? or just feels like you’re throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks?

If this feels familiar, I'd first recommend that you begin with a content audit. Lay out all the content you have or need to create or promote often and begin to organize them by type. Once organized, you will see opportunities for creating branded templates.

Why branded templates? While variety is important and creates interest, as humans we process the world around us (especially visual information) by grouping like information and following patterns.

For your content to be effective, it must create clarity as much as it is creative or compelling. By laying everything out you’ll see how everything can work together (visually and semantically). Once you can see this, then and only then can you identify opportunities to introduce or refine the creative variety of your posts.

Here are some examples of content groups:

Foundational Storytelling
These are evergreen posts that are usually created at the onset of your brand. They tell the story of your brand, your products….how, why and what you do and even who you do it for. These are not templated posts, but can include a variety of media: photography, video, stories, etc. And you can and should recycle this content to remind your audience (and yourself) of your purpose and passion.

Products or Services
Pretty straight-forward—these are the things you directly promote to make a sale. If you have a lot of product, you can also group them into sub-categories.

Example:
My client Alex sells jewelry. She would always post cell phone pictures of her products (regardless of type) to promote it. In the caption is where she would explain that this was the special item of the month. Clients weren’t connecting visually and immediately that this was a special item. So we needed to sub-categorize her content into two groups: her special necklaces of the month and bracelets that she shared and promoted weekly. Each group would need a distinct template for promoting on social, so that customers would start to see the pattern in her promotion and be able to look out for and identify the product they were interested in purchasing.

Events
Perhaps you have events (in-person or virtual) that you often promote. Similarly to the last category, you may need to create sub-categories for ongoing groups of events. Using the same example, Alex holds quarterly virtual events (Facebook LIVE’s, webinars, etc.) and pop-up shops. She was often creating new graphics for each like event or using the same graphics for different types of events. After categorizing, we created distinct templates so the customers could easily differentiate between the two and also get excited about each one because they had a visually compelling new look.

Information
Like any business or brand, you will want to rotate in posts that help educate the customer on your product or processes. This is especially important if you are a service-based business as you will likely need to explain or educate around your unique philosophy or expertise. In my client’s example, she needed some carousel templates for explaining more complicated products, but also used this as an opportunity to share more about her area of expertise (astrology). But say you were a restaurant, you may want to create content around where you source your ingredients, educating your customer on the value of what you’re selling.

Social Proof
Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others. It is especially important and effective in convincing people to buy what you’re selling or subscribe to what you do. In Alex’s case, we created unique templates for her to share positive reviews of products and astrology readings. Keep in mind, the most effective types of social proof show your audience people that authentically reflect what they look like, sound like and demonstrate the transformation they are seeking out.

These content buckets are not all-inclusive as each brand or business in unique. But they do give you a good idea of how to start creating and organizing around your content strategy.

To give you an idea of how this becomes a functional system for my clients, below is a screen shot of Alex’s Canva account where we created all of her unique social media templates. Everything is in-brand, but there is a healthy amount of diversity (visually and semantically). And, with templates, Alex can now easily delegate content creation to her latest hire and social media manager.

Maybe you have the opposite problem.

Maybe you feel lackluster about your content and have begun to lose interest?

Not to worry. This is a great problem to have, or at least I find it the most fun because it's time to ideate new and exciting ways to activate your brand and bring your brand story to life (my favorite).

But sometimes a blank canvas can feel overwhelming to my clients. They don’t know where to start and they are so close to their brand or business they can’t see a path forward.

In this case, I advise my clients to focus in on my four content pillars. These pillars describe at a foundational level what content is designed to do. And quite simply, content does one or more of these four things:

Educate
Content that informs your audience on your products and services or provides related relevant information. (i.e. ingredients you use, definitions, processes, etc.)

Engage
Content that creates interaction between you/your brand and your audience (i.e. giveaways, polls, shares, IGLives, virtual events, etc.)

Emote
Content that inspires action or connection through emotive storytelling (i.e. video content around why you do what you do, sharing more vulnerably, efforts to include or give back to your community or customers, etc.)

Entertain
Content that provides amusement or enjoyment in a way that aligns to your brand’s personality and humanity (i.e. reels, viral challenges, everyday stories, etc.)

The ultimate goal? You want your content to be a good mix of all of these.

So the first thing you can do when ideating ways to expand or evolve your content, is to look at these pillars and identify areas you have gaps or want to focus on. That will give you a nice starting point to create actionable ideas.

For example, if you don’t have hardly any content that would fall under the ‘entertain’ category, think about what your brand personality is and decide to create one reel next week that could bring that side of you out and delight your audience.

Basic content creation strategy is the constant balance of creating interest and intrigue by way of diversity and variety but in a way that creates consistency and clarity for the customer.

…. oh, and one more thing.

There’s one all-important question you should ask yourself whenever you create any piece of content for your brand. And that is, “what value am I creating or providing for my customer?”

Especially, in the fast-paced algorithm-ruled world of platforms like Instagram and Youtube , it can be easy to get swept away in the analytics, in the numbers game, the followers and the likes.

For example, my silly reel that I made about not wanting to adult as I waddled around in a burrito blanket. Almost half a million views. Probably my most seen piece of content ever. Great? Right?

Hmm. I’m not so sure. I could look at that and think, “Wow! That worked. Let me make more burrito videos.”

But, no.

And that’s why this third ingredient to content creation strategy is so critical. You have to constantly and critically ask yourself what value are you adding? While an entertaining burrito video is great here and there, it’s not the bread and butter of my business or my brand. The flood of random followers who liked that video may never purchase what I’m selling because all they are interested in is entertaining burrito videos.

At the end of the day my goal is to add value. Value that generates actual business back to brand, but most importantly serves and builds a true relationship between me and my current or future customers.

So, in summary, my simple formula for content creation is this:

Compelling Content = VARIETY + CONSISTENCY + VALUE

Stick to this, and I promise you, you can’t go wrong.