Videos

Content Creation Checklist for Retailers

“Content is King,” It’s a phrase you’ve most likely heard before. But it was actually coined by Bill Gates in a 1996 essay published on Microsoft.com. In his blog he wrote “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.” So two decades later, is content still king? The answer is a resounding yes, with an asterisk. There’s more content being uploaded than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of gigabytes of white noise. From Facebook posts to YouTube videos, you’ll need to put in a bit of extra effort to make sure your content breaks through the white noise and is seen by the right audience. 

Here is a content creation checklist for retailers that runs you through the entire process, curated by the social media experts at Thumbstopper. 

Step 1 is Pre-Production, AKA brainstorming. Creating content for the sake of checking a box won’t serve your or your business well. For instance, before you dedicate time to creating a product demo video, do some research on which products are currently getting interest well online. (Cheeky) Hint: we actually have a whole video about researching your competition that you can check out in the description below. There are load of easy-to-use tools online that rank common brand keywords, including the free & commonly utilized Google Trends. 

In a few clicks, you can enter a few different brand or product names and see how they compare to ensure you’re focusing your effort on the right topics and positioned well for the highest possible ROI. 

Now, it’s time to either produce or find high quality media to serve as the meat of your content. We have dozens of videos and services dedicated to helping retailers find high quality digital media, so let’s focus on producing content specifically.  

Your goal is to create engaging pictures & videos of the products you previously identified as the best candidates to post about online. Smart phone cameras have come a long way and can genuinely substitute for real cameras if used by the right person, but if you can get your hands on a DSLR camera or something similar, your content will start out of the gate looking better than the general public, who is most likely using their iPhone. 

Regardless of your equipment, make content that you’re strategically enabled to make as a retailer. Chiropractors are popular online because they have the advice and knowledge people need. Social media influencers are popular online because they get the newest video games and gadgets from brands for free. 

Not everyone has access to a business full of experts & popular brand products. Make content that you and others in your field legitimately want to be looking at. There will be others just like you, trust me! 

Now that you have a library of videos/pictures that already stands out due to the unique assets your business has, you need to optimize the content for a multitude of platforms. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all these platforms have ‘best practices’ and ‘guidelines’ for you to follow to make sure your content stands out. 

Here are a few aspect ratios on screen for you to reference when optimizing your content. 

It’s tedious, cropping and resizes pictures to work for each platform, but the end result is absolutely worth it. You will notice immediately how far these minor tweaks go to making your content stand out even further. At this point, we’re really just finetuning every detail of the content to make sure it is positioned to succeed. 

Lastly, it’s time to make variations to connect with specific locations and audiences. Going the extra distance to connect the brands you carry & your retail shop to someone’s personal community goes a long way. If you’re producing organic content, then customizing the image, adding a few hashtags, and “checking in” at a specific city can go a long way. Since you’re doing it by hand, you can even reference sporting events, current local happenings, etc. 

If you’re interested in starting a paid ad campaign, you can quite literally control every detail of the end person who ends up seeing your content. Down to their location, gender, age, household income, interests, and hobbies. This last detail, tailoring your content to a specific demographic, might just be the most important part, whether it’s done by hand or automatically by a third party tool. 

Now that you’ve identified products that are performing well on social media and have produced high quality content that is both tailored to specific social media platforms & sub-demographics. You are ready to go live! If you want to make sure you’re posting at the absolute best time, than watch our “Best Time to Post on Social Media” video where we break down the best times to post, by platform. Regardless, you can rest assured that the content you’re posting features popular brand names and was optimized every step of the way to find its intended audience. 

… 

This video is brought to you by Thumbstopper. Remember before when we mentioned that third party tools can help automate the process of tailoring social media posts to specific locations and audiences? That is where Thumbstopper comes in. To learn more about how we can do the heavy lifting for you, visit Thumbstopper.com. 

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Key Points:

 

  • Companies should understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure their websites are accessible.
  • Brands that concentrate on accessibility on social media demonstrate care for their customers and build a positive brand reputation.
  • Brands should always consider inclusive design, such as plain, straightforward language, in their social media posts.

 

 

Accessibility may not be a term you usually associate with the internet and social media. You might picture wheelchair ramps, directional signs in braille, or sign language interpreters at live performances. The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 dictates the legal necessity of these and similar accommodations in public spaces. As we’ve come to rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to buying groceries, it’s become clear that the internet is now also a public space. It must be accessible to everyone. And like other applications of ADA, businesses that do not comply are liable for damages caused by inaccessibility.

 

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an international set of standards to provide instruction on meeting accessibility needs. It’s important for companies to understand how this applies to their websites, especially if they engage in e-commerce. In terms of social media, the requirements are less concrete. But prioritizing accessibility on your company’s social media is essential to your reputation, even if the legal requirements are uncertain. We’ll look at why it’s important to your customers, how it affects the perception of your brand, and how to make these changes efficiently.

Social Media for All

The cornerstone of accessibility is inclusive design: products or experiences that are accessible for everyone regardless of disability. The most important place where this shows up is on company websites where most users expect to also find links to the brand’s social media profiles. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of websites are not accessible, despite the fact that the application of ADA to the internet is over 20 years old. Making websites accessible is a complex process without the use of specialized software like Accessibe or EqualWeb.

Unlike websites, making sure your social media is accessible is a straightforward, ongoing process. Every social platform has been quick to release optional accessibility features. These features are important to many users even if they don’t rely on them to use social media.

Making your social presence accessible tells users that your brand cares about people, not just profits. It’s the same idea as the push for the representation of different body sizes in fashion or more expansive skin tone ranges in beauty products. Brands that meet the needs of underrepresented groups endear themselves to others as well. And while optimizing your brand website for accessibility might be a larger project you aren’t ready to tackle yet, starting with your social media pages is a great way to show customers that you’re listening to their concerns. 

 

Making Content Accessible

Shifting to accessible content means incorporating inclusive design into your creative process. The practice varies by type of media. For platforms that have graphics or videos with captions, it means not only adjusting each component but also being mindful of how they interact with each other.

For example, YouTube’s automatically generated closed captions and subtitles are often inaccurate. It's one of many examples where the caption generation software has issues picking up strong accents and mumbled words. This could be remedied with handcrafted video transcription services. If that’s not in the budget, the video creator could add their script or transcription to the video description.

None of the technology for accessibility is perfect yet. Teaching computers to digest complex information for human understanding is difficult, and the variations in disabilities further complicate it. The majority of adjustments creators need to make revolve around helping assistive technology better understand their content. Let’s look at how to make different kinds of content accessible. 

Text

  • Use plain language that’s easy to understand 
  • Avoid text in all caps
  • Capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag, like #SocialMediaMarketing, a practice called camel-case

Videos

  • Provide descriptive captions. Instead of just displaying the words people on-screen say, explain background noises and other sounds that are relevant to the scene.
  • Add your own subtitles or enable auto-subtitles on the video platform of your choice
  • Use captioning for live videos when possible

Graphics

Distribute Accessible Content

Many users find their new favorite brand through social media. When disabled people (who make up 26% of the population according to the CDC) can’t access your brand’s social posts, you miss the opportunity to connect with a demographic that’s eager to engage in online communities. On a hyper-local level, that kind of connection goes even further.

That’s why ThumbStopper exists to help brands distribute their social content to their retailer network. Retailers can connect with their local audience - with your accessible, branded content - in a more personal way. And since content goes to their page automatically once they sign up, retailers can effortlessly promote your brand online while focusing on running their business. 

Ready to see how ThumbStopper can help your brand improve its reach? Check out our brand reach calculator or book a demo.

 

 

accessibility
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