“A picture is worth a thousand words”

It’s one of those statements that you grow up hearing but never really put much thought into. After a few seconds of contemplation, the meaning seems obvious. That being said, I think there is an inherit flaw with its’ specific language.

Content strategy is the process of creating a plan for planning, creating, publishing, and managing content for a business or organization. It ensures that when you go onto a website, you don’t have to think about everything that came before, it just makes sense.

It’s easy to think of user experience as simply a start and a finish. For example, you want to buy a camera, then you buy one. On a surface level this may be true, however the user’s journey has far more steps and is much more individual than that.

When it comes to understanding your audience and creating for the user experience, it’s to simply listen to user feedback and implement it. However, feedback alone does not tell designers anything about what the user needs or what will actually make their experience better beyond what they think will.

Taking time to analyze and audit the content of a brand and its competitors is a great first step in any good content strategy process. However, what should we do once it is time to start creating recommendations for the brand to adapt?

It feels like marketing and advertising tends to get a bad rap in the public eye. But I get it! When it comes to targeting audiences and trying to persuade them to buy your product or service, there are a lot of ethical lines that need to be drawn.

As content creators, it can be hard to truly connect and empathize with our target audience. We may think we know the problems they are dealing with and what they need to have them alleviated, but this is easier said than done. Luckily, there are a number of strategies and methods we can use to gain a better understanding of the people we create for.

A crucial part of coming up with a solid content strategy is comparing and contrasting what you have been doing with your competitors.

When people think of empathy, they typically think of it from the perspective of being a nice and moral person. So how can empathy possibly relate to designers and content creators? Well, it’s actually more related than you may initially think.

When creating a strategy around the content of a brand or organization, it’s important to first take a look at what they already have. After all, you wouldn’t rebuild an entire house if you were just looking to remodel a bathroom.

For designers, it is crucial that we consider the feelings of the people we are designing for. This is because creating a better overall user experience directly equates to the success of our work.

Needless to say, files have piled up after 7+ years of content creation.

Your creative ideation muscles need to be used often in order to keep them sharp. If you don’t use them, you will lose them.

Good ideas are created as answers to problems. Learn the series of steps designers take to create the best possible solution to a problem.

Carminuccio’s Pizza & Subs has done a good job creating a great product and offering services that their customers love. However, they had made little to no effort to build an audience on social media.

Businesses using social media are always trying to crack the code on how to maximize engagement for their posts. Any amount of analysis or change in strategy however does not change that there are always some posts that do better than others. 

AI generated images and copy have flooded social media and made people question everything they see online more than they ever have.

Although there is no one size fits all approach to content strategy, Instagram is arguably the best place to start for brands that are new to the social media game.

Social media is going nowhere. In fact, it has become essential, especially for businesses and other organizations.

In a few days, I will be graduating with undergraduate degree from Quinnipiac University. With this huge change in my life, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my journey as a content creator.