new year, new you
We know it gets said every year, but how fast has this year gone?
As the pandemic once again took centre stage, it was a year of Zoom calls, too many days in our pyjamas and far too much time spent in front of our televisions watching Netflix.
But there was a harsher subplot occurring in the background that can’t be ignored: many businesses suffered.
Although with things slowly starting to return to normal and the holiday period fast approaching, the birth of a new year gives businesses a chance to reassess their goals and strategies to minimise any harm done by this wild, once in a hundred-year pandemic.
From a creative perspective, there’s no better time than the new year to freshen up your brand (or even a full-on rebrand) and get your business back to where it needs to be.
In this article, we’ll suggest six ideas to kickstart your content and boost your brand to ensure your business starts 2022 with a bang.
1. Plan out your content calendar
Firstly, if there’s one New Year’s resolution you keep this year, it should be to create a content calendar.
Having a well thought out calendar will help you manage your time and plan out your research, creation and promotion for every piece of content you provide your audience.
In terms of what content you should actually create, a good rule of thumb is to provide your audience with a mix of content that falls into the following five categories: educational, informative, promotional, entertaining and inspirational.
This could include a blog post simplifying an aspect of your industry that your customers may find confusing, an infographic highlighting key statistics, an email campaign promoting a new product, a funny meme that makes light of one of your customers’ pain points or something as simple as a social media post wishing your audience a happy new year.
Of course, you don’t need to sit down on January 1st and come up with ideas for the next 365 days, but it’s generally a good idea to plan content at least a month or two in advance to give your business a sense of direction as to what you want to create and what you want it to achieve.
You should also leave some room in your calendar for moments of inspiration as there will no doubt be times throughout the year where you need to act on a whim.
This could include when an amazing content idea you hadn’t previously thought of pops into your head, or perhaps there’s big news within your industry that you need to report on.
2. Post more on social media
Now that you’ve spent some time planning out a calendar detailing the content you’ll be creating over the course of the next few months, it’d be a waste if you didn’t post it on social media to have it seen by your loyal followers.
The content you create, however, should align with your business and the social media platforms you’re currently utilising. If your business predominately uses Instagram, for example, it wouldn’t make sense to write a whole heap of articles.
A great example of a brand that markets themselves predominately on Instagram is Australian online fashion retailer Showpo.
Primarily aimed at young women, the company’s vision is “to be her go to place to shop,” and they leverage Instagram by posting eye-catching images of influencers and celebrities wearing their products to generate social proof, while also using the ‘Shop’ feature to link directly to the product on their website.
However, if you’re trying to appeal to professional audiences on LinkedIn, longer articles of substance that provide the reader with helpful information or new ideas would be far more appropriate.
Procore, a digital construction management platform based in the United States, is one example of a company that thrives on LinkedIn by posting multiple articles per day.
While they also have Facebook (27,746 followers) and Instagram (12.1k followers), LinkedIn (141,620 followers) is their platform of choice where they’re best able to reach their target market of construction professionals with informative and educational articles about their business and the wider construction industry.
Posting great content on social media is a sure-fire way of engaging your followers and getting them to click through to your website, where hopefully they’ll be persuaded to take the next step and make a purchase or contact you.
3. Create videos to boost your brand
Video content has fast become one of the most preferred tools for businesses to connect with and reach new audiences, not to mention they’re also undeniably effective.
According to HubSpot, including a video on a landing page can increase your conversion rates by over 80 per cent, and simply mentioning the word ‘video’ in an email subject line increases open rates by 19 per cent. Not bad, right?
As can be seen below in the graph by Wave.video based on their Video Marketing for Small Business in 2020 survey, there are a plethora of reasons why brands utilise the power of video content.
Whether you want your video to entertain your audience, educate them on a certain subject, explain what your business is all about or promote a certain product or service, you can be certain it will engage your audience and do far more for your brand than your typical run-of-the-mill content.
4. Write more articles
Content marketing in the form of articles or blog posts is one of the most effective ways to build trust and boost your brand.
Aside from providing engaging, helpful information to your customers and thus developing better relationships with them, articles are a great way to build your digital presence.
High quality articles with the correct terms and keywords are a great way of improving your SEO (meaning more people are likely to come across your website on Google), will encourage people to share them on social media (which means exposure to a far greater number of people) and can attract interest from others in your field who may link to your content on their own website.
5. Utilise the power of graphic design
If it’s been a while since you updated your business’ branding, what better way to start 2022 than with a fresh new look?
As we touched on in our article Why graphic design is such a powerful asset to any business, high quality graphic design doesn’t just make you look good – it also creates a powerful brand image, helps you nail your first impression, helps boost your sales and builds brand loyalty.
Whether it be your company logo, marketing collateral, branding, packaging, business cards or stationery, eye-catching graphic design could well be the difference between prospective customers choosing to do business with you or instead opting to go with one of your competitors.
In the competitive digital landscape, getting ahead of the pack requires graphic design that makes customers notice you, encourages engagement and motivates them to make a purchase. Dull-looking design and imagery simply no longer cuts the mustard.
6. Websites are make or break – which is yours achieving?
You know the feeling: you’re looking for a product or service, and the first thing you do is go on the hunt for a solution on Google. There are a hundred different options offering more or less the same thing, so you open four or five tabs to see which best aligns to your needs.
And what do you do when a website either takes forever to load, looks unprofessional, doesn’t give you the information you’re looking for or doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to? You close it and look for something better.
While a good website doesn’t automatically make a business, you better believe an underwhelming website can certainly break one.
And the reality is that when businesses have their website made, many leave them idle for years on end and don’t touch them until they decide it’s once again time to update it to something better.
But in that time, think about how many prospective customers have come and gone, and how much potential profit has gone down the drain simply because they haven’t put in the effort to keep their website up-to-date, functional and looking picturesque.
If you can’t remember the last time you’ve updated your website, the new year is the perfect time to revitalise your site’s design, upload new content, ensure the information about your products or services is up to date and fix any bugs to wow your audience and give them every reason to choose you.
let us help!
Orion Creative has an experienced team of graphic designers, web developers and copywriters well-versed in creating the content your brand needs to once again breathe fire and wow your audience.
As you can see from the examples of our work in the slider above, through solid strategies and seamless execution, Orion Creative is renowned for creating content of all kinds that catches the eye, encourages engagement and drives sales. And after a year that we’ll likely all want to forget, this could be exactly what you need.
To see what we can do for your brand, get in touch with us today for an obligation-free chat. A new client or customer with cash to splash could be right on the horizon, and a killer piece of content could be all it takes to convince them to do business with you.
