Let’s face it. Social media has become a huge part of our lives since the invention of Smartphones. And here we are, in 2019, where we are bombarded with the same old templated sponsored content – every single day. There are ads on Youtube videos, Instagram, Facebook, online news website, messengers, literally any online platform you can think of. We are at the point where people around me starting to tell me that they no longer find Instagram worth scrolling. That’s an alarming situation for social media marketing.
Digital marketers should start to think differently about how they display content on social media. It’s no longer the “playing safe”, “make sure the product can be seen” and “all these copy lines are mandatory in the post” predictable content that drives the click-through rate.
A study from the Advertising Research Foundation in May 2017 stated that 5-35% of the ROI is from targeting whilst 50-80% is from Creative.
Creativity. It’s not a new word. But what it actually means being creative at the peak of social media era?
After being a content creator for many years (for the agencies plus my personal blog), I realised that no matter what platform you are on, it’s crucial to keep the work original and fun. After all, there are three reasons why people go on social media: inspiration, education and entertainment.
Now, let’s talk about creative development, where I believe that no brief or client is boring – it’s entirely up to you how you execute the brief. But that doesn’t mean breaking the brand guidelines.
Think outside of the box. What other ways can you photograph a table of food? How can you showcase a museum exhibition in a way that is less ordinary? Learn to see beauty from a different angle/perspective.
When the dramatic news of Instagram removing likes with the intention to promote better mental health, many clients wrote to me and wanting new content strategy to “break the internet”. To be honest, I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheels, we just need to be more conscious of the content we send out to the already cluttered world-wide-web, to be more meaningful. One of the suggestions I gave to a client regarding their influencer marketing: instead of pumping thousands of dollar on one influencer, it’s more effective to split the marketing budget across various content creators within different disciplines and on top of that, put in some effort to generate artwork that actually keeps you and your audiences inspired.
Best, Aki x