Last week on Optily Radio, our guest Lauren Schwartz, CEO and Founder of The Loft 325, chatted with Claire Murphy, Optily’s Creative Director, about the tactics for making good creative decisions for social media. We covered a lot about the creative process from how to storyboard short videos that get your message across to project management and the briefing process.
If you’re short on time, we’ve got a clip below for you to check out. We’ve also summarized the main points we discussed to give you the gist. But if you have 25 minutes to listen through the whole episode, it will definitely help you develop your creative strategy for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and more.
The highlights of our discussion were:
- Having an appropriate hook
- Concise storytelling for social media videos
- Briefing and managing creative production
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Have a relevant content hook
Lauren stressed the importance of having a good hook but making sure it’s relevant to your offering. A big don’t in her book is having a random hook that definitely catches the user’s attention, but doesn’t follow with the story you’re trying to tell.
So yes, you do need to have something that is unique and eye-catching but not at the expense of the story you’re trying to create.
How to tell a story in a short amount of time
Rather than trying to cram everything into one video, Lauren suggests making a series of videos highlighting different collections if you sell many products, or different aspects of one product if it’s a particularly complex offering. At the end of the day, there’s only so much you can convey in a short 6 or 15-second video. You need to prioritize what is most important to get across and really nail that one message.
It’s also key to remember to get your branding in during the first 3 seconds. If you wait longer, then most people will not get to the end. If you at least have your brand and an impactful image to go along with it, chances are much higher that people will remember your brand later on even after just seeing the first few seconds of your ad.
Project management for creative
A big don’t that came from both Lauren and Claire was to not simply tell your teams to “be creative.” There’s no substitute for a strong brief. By really thinking through how you want to tell your story and present your products, you’ll be able to add the necessary details to the brief.
By spending time developing a good brief, your internal or external creative team will have the backbone for a powerful piece of content. Without this, you may end up with much more back and forth than is necessary which can add time and expense to your content creation.
In addition to briefs, Lauren uses a management platform to keep track of all the assets and steps in the process. Loom videos also work well when a more in-depth explanation is needed.
