How to Create Content Between the Big Projects

We all know big projects have a lot of moving parts, but they are sometimes the easiest to plan for. With big campaigns, the purpose behind the strategy is always expressed by the client, and filling in the gaps of audience, content, and delivery is pretty straightforward.

So you’ve just spent tons of time planning and executing your big projects down to a tee, you have all of your leads, time on site is ticking up, the phones are ringing. Life is good… but now what? Planning engaging content for the downtime between big projects can be the hardest thing to brainstorm and create.

Most of the time, you have that big project on your plate so it’s almost like you have the instruction manual on what to do. When you take the training wheels off it can feel like a free fall. All of a sudden it’s crickets and you don’t know what to do with regularly scheduled social posts.

The Landscape of Social Media

That’s when you should take a step back and really think about the landscape social media experts operate in. It’s our job to stay in the know - but for other folks who aren’t paid to do this, they’re probably out of the loop. What may seem like the same content regurgitated in our eyes is probably the first time other users are seeing it. When we feel jaded, take it as a challenge to make information fun and exciting for others to learn from.

Put Your Content in Context

What I’ll personally do is understand the upcoming campaigns or directions clients want to pursue next, and scope out what is currently going on in their industry. I’ll also consider the two most recent strategies we created for them. I take this viewpoint and identify pieces of current trends, news, or the client’s product offerings and look for a thread to tie them all together.

I take into account what we just ended on for the client because you still want social pieces to be relevant and direct their audience to the big project we just worked hard on. It would be jarring if you went cold turkey on something that was well thought out and executed. And just because the campaign funds dried up or the scheduled dates are over, doesn’t mean there’s not still relevant ancillary content that can be pulled from to redirect potential customers to. 

Trends and News

Between the follow-through and setup, you can always implement current trends as news pieces for your audience. In our business, news will always be appreciated as it gives businesses an upper hand. While it may seem stale to us because it’s our job to stay in the know 24/7, think from an outside perspective and understand that not everyone is as dialed in as we are. Put an engaging spin on a piece of news, see how it works with your audience and keep tweaking it. If you can organically become a thought leader for your clients and people in the industry space, then they will be paying more attention to all the content that you share because whether it’s the big project or the in-between posts, you will always have something valuable to provide them.

Plan for the Future 

I also look ahead to upcoming campaigns and make sure that I avoid creating something that is too spot-on to what we’ll be running paid social on in the future. While it may seem like limiting yourself at first, knowing what we’ll be doing ahead of time does help in terms of setting up your audience to be engaged for what you’re going to roll out. If you keep harping on protecting your network systems with cybersecurity tips or warnings on how hackers are becoming more advanced, but the time your upcoming campaign on cybersecurity solutions is launched, your audience will be ready to soak up what you have to teach them and what protection you have to offer. If knowing ahead of time what clients want next seems like a luxury, chat with some of your account managers. There’s a good chance on their calls they bounce around a few ideas with the clients and know some upcoming needs that you can have in your back pocket.

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