how to stop your content from being a hot mess

heyoooo! it’s been a WHILE.

I took some (unplanned) time off, but it feels good to back and talking to you. how are YOU doing? fill me in. anything fun happen in the last month? any wins? any questions pop into your head that you’re wondering the answers to?

In the last few weeks i:

• travelled to Mallorca with a bunch of friends to celebrate a friend’s 30th and it was truly an unforgettable trip (you already know your girl crushed it in the duty free section at the airport)

• have currently decided that burgers are my current hyperfixation dinner meal (shoutout amylu ily)

• joined a new gym in brooklyn that i’ve been going to the last few months, but their classes are amazing and feeling very good

• have been getting settled into my new apartment still, but it definitely feels like home despite my dresser that won’t fit into the bedroom and the FB marketplace folks ditching me sitting in the middle of my living room

• listened to obscene amount of megan the stallion

Now that we’re back and rocking and rolling, you can expect newsletter to keep showing up every thursday or friday, but this week you can also be on the lookout for an extra one on sunday, the 18th.

This week, we’re hitting on a subject that i have a lot of love and appreciation for and can never shut up about since it’s one of the main pain points within 99% of the brands I either talk to or consult on: creative organization.

We’re breaking down:

• why it is important to have systems for your creative assets, especially when it comes to your social and marketing team’s efficiency

• essential tools you can use to stay organized from project management, content organization, automation tools for user generated content (UGC) collection and more

• tips for creative workflow that you can take and use for your team that i’ve seen be successful from brainstorming to content creation and more

• the importance of content pillars (for the millionth time)

This one might be a bit longer, but let it make up for the few weeks i’ve been gone, ok?

BUT BEFORE WE GET INTO IT…

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by one of the tools I truly cannot have have not been able to operate without for the last 3+ years: Air. No, i’m not talking about the type you breathe…

If you’re tired of Google Drive and Dropbox (which tbh were never built to support the creative process) or dealing with the random WeTransfer links that expire so that you then have to awkwardly email the person who sent it to you, then keep reading.

After using Air on brands like Graza, Immi, Honey Mama’s, and more to save days of managing content to:

• Streamline work with external partners (agencies, influencers, creators) because you can create public boards to allow guests to upload directly to your workspace from leaving comments, submitting content, and then removing them once the work is done.

• Approve Content by using custom fields to speed up the distribution processes across organic and paid channels. You can also give visibility to other teams around what content can be used for paid media or other platforms by maintaining a living record of whether or not your content has been approved for use, by whom, on what date, and for what platform.

And so much more, but I actually wrote all about it here.

But, just when you thought life couldn’t get easier, Air just announced their newest addition: PAIGE, their new (and very fast) AI assistant who can help:

• Transcribe all your videos automatically and make them searchable within your workspace

• Identify Faces and Texts so that your team and talent can be auto-tagged if specific content is needed of them

• Search for creative that can help answer all your questions. For example, need to find photos for a blog you’re writing about recipes perfect for summer or wondering what the best pieces of creative were for the month of august on Instagram for your brand? Paige will get them for you.

Ari and the team at Air are being sweethearts and want to make sure that if you’re reading this, that you get the chance to try out Paige and Air. Soooooo, they are offering you and your brand 3 months of Paige for FREE ($6,000 value!!!!) when you click right HERE!

WHY CREATIVE ORGANIZATION MATTERS

When it comes to social media, creativity is often seen as the driving force behind successful content since it allows it to be original or add a different spin to what is working for others.

However, creativity alone can lead to chaos if not properly managed. You end up with lists of ideas that never get executed upon, the same concepts being mentioned over and over again for weeks, and more. So, in organizing this chaos, it’ll help you with:

• Enhanced Focus: By organizing your ideas and content, you can focus on what matters most without being overwhelmed by a flood of concepts. This allows you to explore creative possibilities more deeply, leading to higher-quality and more innovative content.

• A Clear Vision: A well-organized approach helps you maintain a clear vision of your goals. Knowing what you need to create and when it’s due gives you the mental space to experiment and innovate within set parameters.

As we know, trends are popping up left and right on top of the goals that you already have within your brand or for your team, but at the end of the day, consistency is key (when you have GOOD content to support it). Just because you upload 7x a week willy nilly doesn’t mean you’re doing it right. Regular posting builds trust with your audience, keeps you top of mind, and can significantly boost your engagement metrics. However, without organization, maintaining consistency can be challenging. As your team expands, it’s important to have:

• Streamlined Processes: Organizing your workflow—from ideation to posting and reporting —ensures that every step in the content creation process is smooth and efficient.

• A Regular Posting and Production Schedule: Content calendars, production schedules and more allow you to plan and schedule posts in advance, ensuring you maintain a consistent presence on your social media platforms, strategically.

TOOLS TO STAY ORGANIZED

Effective social media planning and marketing team planning relies heavily on the right tools to keep everything organized. That doesn’t mean you can’t be scrappy in how you organize, but you should want to build out these systems before it’s too late. So, let’s pretend it’s day one. Here are some easy tools and resources you should have to work towards getting organized to allow your team (or future team) to have visibility into what is happening across your social channels or marketing within the company.

Content Calendars: Planning and Scheduling with Ease

Most of you already know this, but a content calendar is your roadmap for social media success. It allows you to plan, schedule, and track your content across various platforms, ensuring that you stay consistent and understand your distribution strategy for certain campaigns, product launches, collaborations and more.

• Why You Need One: A content calendar helps you visualize your content strategy, ensuring that you cover all necessary topics and maintain a balanced mix of content types that may pertain to your brand.

• My Hot Take: The best content calendars allow for flexibility. You need to react on social media when it makes sense to your brand whether it’s creating content around a specific moment, trend and more. If you don’t allow yourself to react, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. If something changes, it’s not a big deal. You’re going to be okay.

• My Go To Tool for Content Calendars:

  • Asana: Asana offers more robust project management features with timelines, task assignments, and integration with other apps. It’s great for teams who need to collaborate on content planning and execution and have a lot of distribution points.

    • Note: This is also my go-to for all project management across the board from keeping track of influencer partnerships that are happening, brand partnerships that are more social-facing, and breaking out larger social campaigns may have a lot of moving parts to them.

I wrote more about how I use project management tools here in one of my first newsletters.

Automation: Simplifying Posting and Engagement - Should You?

Ok, so this is always an interesting topic because many people who work in social are either team automation or team upload in real time. So, to be fair, automation tools are a lifesaver when it comes to managing social media, especially if you’re handling multiple accounts. These tools allow you to schedule posts in advance, monitor engagement, automate responses, and even helping with your reporting, which frees up time for more creative tasks. If you’re a founder wearing 65+ hats, this may be a better option for you just so you know it’s being handled and taken care.

If you’re automating content, I personally have used Sprout Social or Later as my go-tos, but they are very much an investment these days.

I personally am #TeamUploadInRealTime. I just find the engagement to be better and it allows me easier flexibility whether it’s across creative changes or copy changes, etc.

STEPS TOWARDS BUILDING A SEAMLESS WORKFLOW

An organized workflow is essential for turning creative ideas into engaging social media content. Here are some practical tips for streamlining your content creation process, ensuring that each stage, from brainstorming to publishing, is efficient and effective 🙂 

Brainstorming: Organizing and Prioritizing Creative Ideas

The foundation of a lot of great social concepts and overall marketing planning starts with a brainstorm, but how? Here’s a structure that have been implemented into brands like Graza and more:

• Structured Sessions: To make brainstorming more productive, start with a clear objective.

  • Every month, we have a monthly brand planning meeting for an hour that requires everyone to come in with concepts, questions, and thoughts, around the campaigns or important brand moments that we know are happening the following month so that we can act early, cut early, and know what each person’s role is in making those things come to life whether it’s sending and seeding product to a specific “type” of creator, specific pieces of content we know we need, etc.

  • Every week:

    • General marketing meeting where we update the status on those projects or any major updates that may impact something.

    • Content Brainstorming meeting where the content and social team meet to chat through briefs, production updates, or concepts that we want to test out.

    • 1:1s as needed

• Prioritization: After brainstorming, we prioritize ideas based on factors like relevance, timeliness, and potential impact. Everything might feel like a priority, but once you zoom out, you will realize that’s not always the case.

Content Creation: Structuring Your Process from Start to Finish

Once the ideas are written out and put in the project management tool of your choosing, the next step is to structure your content creation process aka one of the hardest things to do. It all starts with:

• Defining Roles and Responsibilities: If you’re working with a team, clearly define who is responsible for each stage of the content creation process—ideation, writing, design, editing, and publishing. I cannot even stress how important this is. Determine who is handing in the briefs for the content, where those briefs live, and everything in between. For example, on Graza, I often write the briefs for social-forward content for IG Reels, Design, and Tiktok, but then our content producer and designer or held to certain dates to hand in for R1 incase edits need to be made in a reasonable and timely fashion.

• Set Clear Deadlines: Establish a timeline for each piece of content, from the initial draft to the final post. Working ahead should always be the goal when and where you can. It’s not always the easiest, but I always try to have bigger moments done with a week or two in advance so that there’s nooooo stress.

• Batching Tasks: To maximize efficiency, I recommend teams film on one day or hand in briefs on one day. Recently, for my client, Laoban Dumplings, I batch briefs in for videos that I want to put our own spin on or produce for low-fi content (like this and this) on Mondays. They are filmed Wednesdays and edited and handed in by Friday. It’s smooth, easy, and allows time for questions, feedback, and then we are off to the races.

Asset Management: Keeping Your Visual and Content Libraries Organized

This is literally where Air comes in. I actually did a case study with them that you can read here incase you have been wanting to switch on over.

• I use Air to organize assets by categories such as Brand Essentials (Logos, Fonts, Brand Guide, etc), campaigns, platforms and more.

  • Should we walkthrough how I like to build out my boards? Hmmm

• Tagging: Implement a system for tagging your assets with relevant keywords! This makes it easier to search for and retrieve specific files when you need them so I like to tag things in air when they have usuage rights for paid so that the paid team can just search to know what they can and cannot use, what product is featured in a piece of creative so then we can search to find creative just for that SKU, and more.

AT THE END OF THE DAY, IT ALL STARTS WITH YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY

A well-organized social media presence isn’t just about the logistics of content creation—it’s also about maintaining a balanced and cohesive content strategy and that all starts with your pillars.

Content Pillars: Organizing Content Around Key Themes

Content pillars are the main themes or topics that your social media content revolves around. Establishing these pillars helps ensure that your content aligns with your brand’s message and meets your audience’s needs (not your C-Suite’s).

• Identifying Your Content Pillars: Start by identifying the core themes that are most relevant to your brand and audience.

• Content Planning with Pillars: Use your content calendar to organize posts by these pillars, ensuring that you’re consistently addressing each theme. This approach helps maintain brand consistency and makes it easier to generate new ideas, as you can rotate through your pillars when planning new content.

Repurposing Content: Work Smarter, Not Harder

Creating fresh content for social media can be time-consuming (as we all know), so repurposing existing content is a smart way to maximize your efforts. IMO it’s not done enough. Repurposing allows you to extend the life of your content, reach new audiences, and reinforce key messages without starting from scratch each time. You have to remember that today’s followers never saw your best performers from last year. Recycle the concept and put it in front of your audience in a new way.

For example, I uploaded this post for Graza in Spring of 2023 so brought back and repurposed the concept in the Fall here.

Here’s how to get started:

• Identify Evergreen Content: Start by identifying evergreen content aka posts that remain relevant over time. For example, this could include how-to guides, FAQs, or foundational brand messages (example I made for Canopy back in the day). Evergreen content is ideal for repurposing because it can be shared multiple times with minimal updates.

• Repurposing Strategies: There are several ways to repurpose content:

  • Transform Formats: Convert a social media post featuring a recipe (for example) into a blog post that then gets featured in an email or SMS.

  • Update and Re-share: Update older posts with new information or a fresh perspective, and then re-share them.

  • Create Content Series: Break down long-form content, into a series of shorter posts. This not only extends the life of the content but also keeps your audience engaged over a longer period. Not working like you planned? Hey, at least, you tested it! Find ways to make it work for the platform though that you are bringing said content onto. Turning a piece of long form into 7 :30 second clips may not fully be enough.

LOL almost 3,000 words so I am going to shut up now.

LOGGING OFF FOR NOW

I know that’s a lot to take in and it may be some basics for some of you, but my goal with these is to talk to everyone and the level they be on, whether you’re a first time founder or social manager just looking to learn how to do the dang thing or a seasoned vet who just wants a reminder that it all starts with the basics.

I’m off to work from bed since I am sick (womp!) and watch Love Is Blind UK.

I’ll see you Sunday!

As always, if you have any questions or things you want answers to in this newsletter, please hit the “reply” button and send them over.

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Peace, love and KPIS,

KD

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