Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
The importance of the creative plan
Creative content forms a crucial part of your social media strategy. Developing a creative plan enables you to embed your content creation strategy into your social strategy. The plan should outline what content you will create for your social media posts.
The content you create should align with the content preferences of your followers. So the creative plan needs to grow out of your audience research. For your social strategy, you’ll want to create content that your followers are likely to engage with.
Make sure you develop a clear, creative message and creative strategy, and then identify what your creative assets will look like.
As with all phases of your strategy, you must consider costs when developing content. Your budget will affect how much creative you can develop, as well as how technical or sophisticated that creative content will be. Remember, however, that you can reduce costs by re-purposing existing content or by encouraging user-generated content. Your overall aim is to reduce content costs without sacrificing content quality.
With this in mind, you need to manage expectations to ensure that your social strategy isn’t aiming at too high or too low of a development standard.
Creative formats
From your creative plan, you should have a clear outline of what creative formats you will require. Because social media is a rich-media environment, you can use a variety of creative formats, including photos, video, live streams, polls, competitions, and so on.
Each platform has its own guidelines for the different media formats it can support. For example, you could have Stories on Instagram, or use specific filters on Snapchat. Be sure to consult with the style guides of the different platforms and format your media accordingly. For example, check that your images are the correct size for your chosen social media platform.
Julie Atherton
Julie is an award-winning digital strategist, with over 30 years’ experience. Having worked both agency and client-side, she has a wealth of knowledge on delivering marketing, brand and business strategy across almost every sector. In 2016, Julie set up Small Wonder. Drawing on her past experience, she now supports a wide range of businesses, from global brands, to educational organisations and social enterprises.She is the author of the book, Social Media Strategy which was a top read chosen by Thinkers360. You can find her on X and LinkedIn.
Clark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
