Need a touchdown career? Let's cover the "bases" of the tools and strategies necessary to start a career in sports content creation.
Information for this blog post was obtained from Semrush, Hootsuite and Social Media Today.
Touchdown!! The crowd goes wild, everyone's standing and cheering, chants roaring and canons firing. With mediocre knowledge of football, I thought the touchdown was pretty cool, but what would be even better? To write about it!
As a student who has been creating content by chance not trade, diving into the social media marketing platform, can seem daunting. The social media world is complex, with thousands of creators, how do you succeed or stand out? Lucky for you, utilizing the right tools is the KEY to success.
Especially in the beginning stage, take it easy on yourself and practice using helpful tools to enhance confidence and establish a strategy. As every coach says, practice makes perfect. Currently, I am a social media manager for FHSU Intramurals, I walked into this position with absolutely no background in marketing or graphic design. These last few months I have been playing around with several tools and seeing what works best without spending a dime.
Creating content requires good access and knowledge of tools, and resources and establishing a strategy. Content marketing is well-defined by a Semrush author, Kelly Lyons, “Content marketing is the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant content. The goal is to grow, engage, and retain your audience.”
If you want to market, you need to have your own strategy and tools that work best for you. An exceptional content marketing strategy cannot be replaced with tools, however, utilizing the right tools can help accelerate the process, "tee up" for new potential audiences, and score new insights in the marketing platform.
Determine the Why
Imagine that you got that homerun career, and it is a sports brand or a team. Before creating content the first thing is to determine the "why." It's necessary to know the driving force of the content. Strive to understand why that company/brand exists, its mission statement, how it makes your audience's lives better, and its defined purpose.
Be the dime and save time by posting content that is RELEVANT to the "why." Do not confuse your audience by reposting the latest Spongebob meme, when your business is a basketball team in Florida. No need to empty the bench with a few random customers whose profit chance is low.
If there is no known "why" statement, Social Media Today utilizes an exceptional strategy to develop a great "why" factor:
"You start with a statement, either ’We make X products’ or ‘We provide X services’, then you ask ‘Why is that important?’ and you provide an answer to this question. Then, in response to that answer, you probe a little deeper, by asking again, ‘why is that important?"
Once this statement is attainable and appropriate, build the content and align the outreach in correlation with the "why." If working with recreation or intramurals, try focusing content on bringing more students/citizens in, how-to tutorials, and tours of the facilities. For teams, try an introduction of the team, videos of practice, insights to games or events, or even the history of the team itself. With the development of the "why" factor, it's time to slide to base two: content research and planning tools.
Content Research and Planning Tools
For the tip-off, lets start with content research and planning tools. Topic research is one of the most effective ways to quickly develop ideas to explore further and inspire your content plan. Set aside some time to think about your keywords, for they will be the main drive to capture an audience.
Semrush’s Topic Research Tool, is hypothetical to be the most advanced tool, only if you’re willing to pay $99.95. Despite the cost, this tool comes with almost everything- an entire suite of content, PPC, social media tools, SEO and PPC.
Free topic research tools include
Google Trends: helps users understand the popularity of the search among individuals who utilize Google (aka mostly everyone)
AlsoAsked.com: free keyword research tool giving insights into longtail searches and topics.
Answer the Public: keyword research tool that combines the recommended searches from Bing and Google. The favorable tool that returns results from auto-complete searches.
MarketBold: this one is an app/extension that works best on chrome. This app takes keyword lists, analyzes, and sorts them into groups for PPC and SEO drive.
In the sports realm, practice with these tools on keywords and trends on the sport you are creating content for.
Creating Content Platforms and Tools
Now that we are heating up on keyword research, let's dive into content creation. Creating an attractive design is KEY to grabbing the attention. As a student majoring in Health and Human Performance, I am not an editing genius. Photoshop and Adobe are on my bucket list, but I have not mastered them yet. However, being a non-Photoshop genius does not put you in the dugout. There are many tools that are beginner friendly. Some of my personal favorite tools I have explored and utilized are:
Canva: hands down the BEST tool for beginners. You can create outstanding content by using pre-made templates or creating your own. From announcements, infographics, blog images, or social graphics, you will love Canva.
Remove.bg: have a person sneezing in the background of that slam dunk you captured? Well look no further and utilize this tool to remove that background in seconds.
Piktochart: a powerful tool for organizing and creating attractive infographics
Giphy: no doubt one of the most popular marketing trends. What’s better than adding some humor here and there? This tool allows the user to create your own gif or use a pre-made template to create gif in no time
Unsplash: first pick for any picture I need. Whether it’s diving, baseball, slam dunks or ballet. Unsplash contains license-free photos created by aspiring photographers.
Instagram: Honestly, editing with Instagram videos can be easily edited to fit with music. Music is a huge driving factor for college-aged audiences. Utilizing music with under 25K usage is another great way to bring in new audiences. Pick your audio and then place videos to match the beat of the song, and you will have an eye-catching video in no time.
The editing does not have to be perfect! Make content realistic, not edited so much that it looks fake. As a beginner content creator, my editing skills have a long way to go, but I know I have reached a great amount of audience and that is what it is all about! Below is a video I created during flag football season utilizing only Instagram editing. This video led to record numbers for flag football teams and 100+ new followers on Instagram. It is the little things!
Video created by Caitlin Tinkham~FHSU Intramurals Social Media Manager
"Perfect" Social Media Schedule
Before you jump into the career, notice the wolf of scheduling. Content creation is not a 2-3x post and calls it good. As a Hootsuite author, Colleen Christison, describes the algorithm of social media platforms, she highly emphasizes that frequency and timing matter are for optimal success. For starters, I would highly recommend the Meta Business Suite for Instagram and Facebook content planners. This site allows you to download any content and schedule it to post days or months in advance. Super helpful when you have content ready for the week and you can just schedule it right then and do not have to worry about it the rest of the week. There is no need to post 4-5x a day when you first start out, but consistency with high insights and audience potential is key.
Based on research, different social media platforms have different algorithms. If you're scratching your head like Heinz Doofenshmirtz when he can't find Perry the Platypus, well an algorithm is basically the system of that designated platform the targets what the user wants and then puts that info on their screen.
Hootsuites highly suggests:
On Instagram, post between 3 and 7 times per week.
On Facebook, post between 1 and 2 times a day.
On Twitter, post between 1 and 5 Tweets a day.
On LinkedIn, post between 1 and 5 times a day.
On TikTok, post between 1 and 4 times a day.
Seems overwhelming at first, however when starting out on a career in social media marketing, strive for accuracy of the "why," tools to make content creation easier and a planner to reduce the stress of scheduling posts at the best time. Click here to scroll back up to the keyword research tools or the content creation tools.
Overall, starting a career in content creation is no easy par, even in the sports realm. The SMMU also has great tips on careers in social media marketing. One blog in particular discusses successful attributes necessary to achieve in a social media marketing career. One thing he discusses is actively participating in the real world and staying on top of tools, trends, and the news. Check it out here. However, use the free tools, do the research on developed social media marketing platforms, and understand the "why" of the company. Start out by posting a few posts a week with relatable and attractive content, whether it's a photo, event announcement, or video. Utilizing any of these tools listed above can get your foot out the door and rise above many social media marketing content creators.
Resources
Christison, C. (2023, January 18). How to Make a Social Media Posting Schedule [Free Template] [web log]. Retrieved February 20, 2023, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-posting-schedule/
Hutchinson, A. (2023). Planning for 2023 – Defining Your Brand and Content Mission [web log]. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/Defining-Your-Brand-and-Content-Mission-2023/639569/
Lahey, C. (2020, September 21). 41 Best Content Creation Tools and Resources: Free and Paid [web log]. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://www.semrush.com/blog/content-creation-tools/
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