I have previously learned about content creation and the importance of good content and what goes into making it. Now I am looking at content from a professional perspective. I am diving into content strategy this week, and I’m going to start off by asking myself a few questions.
What is my content and is it digital, physical, or both?
I have both digital and physical content. I would say that much of my digital content is primarily delivered through social media. Whether for personal or professional use, I am constantly engaging in social media posts. These can range from photos and videos to stories and memes.
Some of my content may be physical as well. I enjoy reading books and magazines as well as looking at photographs. These forms of content, while not as frequent as my digital activity, are also a great reflection of the different content I interact with.
How do I decide what content to keep and what to discard?
This is never an easy question for me. Ideally, I think all content can be important and worth saving. I have difficulty deleting photos from my camera roll and removing posts from my social media. As I have become a multipurpose digital user, I have found ways that help weed out unnecessary content. I try to only keep content that is relevant to me and/or my job and then disregard other outside content.
How do I organize my content so I can find something? Am I a content hoarder?
For photo and video content on my phone, I have different folders for each kind of photo/video. For example, if I went on vacation over the summer, I can easily move all photos and videos that I took into a “Vacation August 2022” folder on my Photos app. The same goes for my Google Drive storage and just apps on my phone. I separate them based on the categories they fall under and sort them accordingly.
I could be considered a content hoarder because I often find it difficult to discard a lot of content even if it seems unnecessary. I think to myself that I will eventually come back to it or need it later on when in reality it probably has no value to me. But, as I said before, I like to try to keep content relevant to myself and my personal and professional interests.
Do I have a strategy to manage my content?
In terms of my own personal content, I don’t have much of a strategy. I pretty much post what I want and while I do care how others see my content, I mainly post it for my own enjoyment. I like to share exciting moments in my life, so of course, I would like for other people to be engaged with my content. But I post it for my own personal gain.
On the flip side, the content I create for my job in social & digital marketing is a different story. I have to think about the big picture I have to ensure that the content I create is something that will resonate with my target audience. And since our company houses so many different kinds of brands, I have lots of different types of content to make and lots of objectives to achieve in order to engage our audiences successfully.
When creating content for my job, I consider how it can mutually benefit our audience as well as our brand. I try to curate this content for specific types of audiences with specific demographics and psychographics. If I can identify the traits, interests, and buying habits of my audience, I am able to create content that is specifically targeted towards this audience, thus benefitting them as well as acquiring sales and valued consumers for our brands.
How long is content worth keeping?
I would say that content is worth keeping for as long as you deem necessary. If it’s something of great significance to you that you will need in the foreseeable future, I think it is worth holding onto. However, if it is something more temporary and not so significant to your personal gain or your audience’s, it may not need to be kept.