Laura
It gets to this time around a Thursday lunchtime when my mind begins to wander.
Oh not badly. I’m still beavering away. But I’m increasingly aware the weekend is a day and a half away. I can see the end of the week and when I’m tired or I’ve been travelling I’m looking for little tidbits to inspire me and encourage me in my wandering mind.
That’s what we all want to be, isn’t it? The 30 second diversion, the momentary treat while you pause working, the lunchtime read. When we’re talking about digital content, profile raising, thought leadership or whatever, that’s what our aim is. We want to be the thing you engage in when you’re trying to encourage and entice your mind to wander from its work and the life outside your laptop.
Sharing that content via channels is easy and more are making it look more attractive. Yes, as expected I have found I can barely remember life before Twitter preview. It was jarring and weird but now I like scrolling down a feed and seeing colourful snaps people have shared. I have found myself on behalf of clients actively looking for interesting and engaging pictures that will make their feeds look prettier and more illustrative.
Facebook has shifted its own viewer. It’s two column upload is easier to use and pages do look more like blogs. For one client I’ve found these brilliant vintage adverts. They will tie in for Christmas undoubtedly. Facebook albums are (still!) an utter nightmare to use but hey, at least they’ve finally (finally!) made it easier to schedule posts. How that has taken five years who knows? Perhaps next year you’ll be able to book adverts in your own time zone.
If our feeds are more colourful and curated we need to really think about content. Great images, fantastic short videos, galleries, albums, infographics; these are all baubles we should be spending more and more time on. You don’t need to spend a lot of money and much of it is DIY. If you’re sharing in a small browser, especially on mobile do you really need to film on anything other than a smartphone? Big brands will always spend big, but for smaller ones who are focused on mobile sharing can relax with their smaller budgets and you can use handheld devices.
The problem – because yes, there’s always a problem – will come from skills. It isn’t just enough to be able to do a quick bit of HTML code. If you’re looking after social content then you need to be able to edit images, video, audio. These won’t be the remits of designers because if you need content up quickly then you can’t bash it around over email for half the day. You have to be able to do it yourself.
I’m still convinced that when we all watch I Love 2013 we’ll all laugh at the gifs we shared with eachother but they are the first step to truly curated and engaging content feeds. In two years we won’t be using Twitter and Facebook. We’ll have moved on (teenagers already have from FB). But if we start DIY-ing good content now we’ll get into good habits. Good feeds will stand out from the crowd and that’s what catches the eye when our mind starts to wander. Now I must go, my Twitter feed tells me there’s something happening at Urban Renewal …