Every business you have ever come across stands for something. Whether that’s community, environment, safety, or profit — they’ve got values. So what do you stand for? And how do you reinforce this to your audience so they can trust that you’ll uphold your own values?
At Agency Stack, when we create white label social media content, there’s one major pillar that we stick to for each client:
Consistency.
When a business consistently talks about their values and displays them in everything they do, the more an audience can align itself with said values.
Some businesses fail to realise the value of consistent branding, messaging and their interaction with customers.
But research from Marq in 2021 found that more than two-thirds of businesses reaped 10-20% of their revenue growth from consistent branding.
At the same time, the report found that the gap is widening between businesses that stick closely to their guidelines and those that don’t have any guidelines at all.
So which side of the fence will you sit on? Let’s dive into how to stay consistent as you decide what your values mean to you and how you might create value from them.
Style Guides
It’s pretty hard to stay consistent when you don’t have anything to stick to. Flailing about untethered and unsupervised is borderline irresponsible. You wouldn’t give a child rock climbing gear without clear instructions, would you?
Consistency is a failsafe against falling from the minds of your audience.
Your style guide enables consistency by outlining things like your tone of voice, colour scheme, target audience, brand identity, iconography, and typography.
Once you have these defined and understood by the wider team, you’ll be in a better position to climb that mountain.
Scheduling
The other side of consistency is the regular posting of content so that your audience is in near-constant contact with your brand. Posting schedules will vary depending on your business and the platform on which you post, but it often sits around two to three times per week.
Whatever your frequency of content, it helps to plan this out in a shared calendar so that everyone is across the client’s upcoming requirements.
Batch Content While You’re in the Groove
As you schedule drafts into the future, we recommend doing so in batches of at least one month. Not only does this satisfy your client’s needs for the mid-term, but it ensures the content is made in a similar mindset.
What we mean here should be universally understood by creative types — when you get in the groove and grasp a tone of voice, it’s best to bang out a bunch of quality content.
If you create the odd post here and there, you risk losing the rhythm and rhyme of a brand and this will come across in the final product. The worst-case scenario when you don’t batch your content is you forget what you have created days and weeks before and start to repeat concepts — red flag!
Break Things into Categories
When we create social media content at Agency Stack, we call these categories ‘social pillars.’
We outline two or three pillars from which to draw inspiration as we complete a batch of posts, and suddenly, 12 posts per month feels like three or four.
That’s not to say you should repeat ideas within pillars — certainly not! — but it’s much easier to generate new ideas when you’re familiar with a train of thought and you have references from the same pillar.
Take a hypothetical retailer, for example. Their three social pillars might be product spotlight, fashion inspiration, and behind the scenes.
From here, each pillar can be attributed to a day of the week and you’re suddenly filling out batch captions faster than ever before.
Share Things Around
If you have the luxury of a larger team, there’s no harm in sharing your responsibilities. This avoids the risk of creative burnout and welcomes new perspectives into the fold.
But beware, this is where style guides are of the utmost importance. The risk with sharing tasks and clients is each creator may take their own flair to the project and throw the consistency out of whack.
Make sure you’re not in the 13% from the Marq report who said they don’t use or don’t know where to find their style guides!
Keep everyone on the same page and your output will surely boost revenue and consumer trust for your clients.
Contact Agency Stack
Of course, if you don’t have the time, resources or experience to stick with the tips above, you can always get in touch with a white label agency like Agency Stack.
Our team will create and apply style guides to your clients and create content that attracts and retains an audience.
Book a quick consultation today and learn how we can help your business to scale up!