Ask the experts: favorite hacks for creating content

Shannon Hinderberger

My favorite content tip for turning your blog into social media posts.  When I write up a blog post for DASH Content Collective or a client, I will pull social media posts directly from this long form content. This has saved so much time and stress on what to post on social media PLUS I get weekly long form content that turns into searchable gold.

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@heyshannonlee

Katie

My favorite content hack for social media is to re-purpose your content, and you can do this in 3 different ways.

1. Take your best performing content of one type and recreate it as another, for example, take your best performing Reels and turn them into carousel posts.
2. Cross-post relevant content to other platforms. If you’re already creating short-form video content for Instagram, there’s a good chance that it will also fit well on your TikTok, YouTube and Pinterest accounts as well (provided they speak to generally the same audience). Pro-tip, use Repurpose.io to make this process so much easier, and in some cases, automatic.
3. Re-post your social media content. Yes, you can post a piece of content more than once, especially since we know that only a fraction of our audience sees each post. Again, take a look at analytics and re-post your best content, and if you still feel sketchy about it, switch up the caption or add some new text on screen.

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@heykatiecasillas

Victoria Chiampas, Champ Social

My best practice when creating Reels is to ‘Scroll with Purpose’ throughout the week, saving inspo as I go. On ‘content days’, pull that Saved Folder up and shoot all the videos back to back to back in your camera roll (while letting audio roll on your laptop or external device) with or without outfit changes. After filming is done, sync those videos up to the saved audio. From there they can live in drafts until you feel the creative energy to add text, write copy, add hashtags and post. The most important hack is not to forget about all those drafts or log out of your account and risk losing them. 

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@champsocialmediamgmt

Shelley Webb

I continually stress the importance of growing and nurturing an email list because social media platforms are rented space. You “own” your email list. For newsletter content (mine goes out weekly), I choose themes for each month and sub-themes for each week at the beginning of the year. For example, January is all about self care and new beginnings. May is National Photograph Month and November is National Entrepreneur Month. That way, I always know what I’m going to write about. I can even batch newsletter content, save it to my ESP (email service provider) and have it ready to go. Of course, the themes can be used for social media posts, as well.

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@shelleywebb

Darlene Veenhuizen

I love checking out what’s trending on Google, and then also seeing how certain keywords do or test variations of keywords on google trends. Got to trends.google.com and see how words are performing. You can look at the home screen which will give you topics that are basically going viral or you can put in your own topics, which is what I suggest. You can even put in similar key words or phrases and compare how they are performing on search right now. And finally, Google will give you related terms that you can consider making content around or including in keywords. 

A sort of lesser known place to look for content ideas, but it’s SUPER cool, is a site called Answer the Public. I say it’s lesser known because I always tell people about it and no one else I have talked to has ever used it, so here you go. A top secret tip. 

Go to AnswerthePublic.com and put in a search term or keyword. You can use a free account or pay for pro for more features (I use free!) Then it gives you all these questions that people are asking around your topic. Basically free blog post titles! It’s a fun visual tool to use and it will even give you some Cost Per Click data too. It will show you the search volume those terms are getting. 

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@picklejarstudios

Jordin Jewell, West Loop Soul

One of my favorite content hacks is drawing inspiration from your clients and audience, and there are three simple ways to get started doing this.

1. Whenever you get an insightful question in your DMs, save it to use in future content. If one potential client has that question, it’s likely others do too.
2. During client calls, listen for any questions, comments, or concerns they might have. These are perfect insights to start your next piece of content with.
3. Ask your audience directly what they have questions on in an AMA! This can be done through a Live video with your audience, via Instagram story stickers, or by asking people to leave a comment on your post.

Bonus: 

One of the most common pieces of pushback I hear from business owners looking to create reels is that they don’t have videos. And I get it! When you’re starting out, you typically don’t have a backlog of content to start using. That’s why I recommend creating a folder on your phone with a name like “video clips.” 

Once you have this folder created, start capturing little 5-7 second clips of your workday and saving them to the folder. Try propping up your phone and recording you working. Pan over some of your favorite products. Record yourself giving a presentation. You can even capture some general BTS content (I even have clips saved of me walking my dogs). 

These little clips are perfect to stitch together in reels with a trending audio and some text on the screen, or you can pull them together to show what your workday looks like!

Follow Jordin Jewell:

@westloopsoul

Need help finding content for your brand, product or service? At DASH, we got that. Give us a call for help!

You can also save all your great ideas after reading this post to your Content Planner, available for download here.