Organization of Digital Content
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For Bloggers and Business Owners
In this day and age, businesses must have an online presence in order to be accessible and relevant to their audience or target market. Social media has a strong influence on this, making the internet a noisy place and a challenge for businesses to be seen.
I wonder how many google searches look like this: “how to grow my business using social media”, or “how to get more followers on social media”. I searched high and low for the answers to these types of questions. One answer that stood out above all the rest? Consistency.
Content is like a monster, and it must be fed constantly. Not just any content, though. If you really want people to engage with you, it must be authentic and quality content – it is a social platform, after all. In order to be consistent you must be organized.
Have you ever wondered how businesses do it all? In today’s post we are sharing how.
We’ve teamed up with Sarah and Nick from Nestrs to share how we are doing it: down to the tools and file systems that work for us. Sarah is a professional organizer with the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and hosts a podcast! Each of us are sharing our own systems, so you won’t want to miss Sarah’s post on how she organizes their digital content.
2018: The Year of Organization
The Inspiring Investment’s goals for this year revolve around organization: from the way we file documents to our systems for project management. In this post, we will specifically cover organization of digital content.
Digital Media: File Organization
The most valuable tool for file organization is Dropbox. Additionally, I found that Dropbox is one of the only storage systems that doesn’t decrease image quality. (We do backup files onto our external hard drive as an additional measure.)
Our main goal is to save space and extend the life of our computers while staying organized. We try to keep the bare minimum on our local hard drive.
There are two main folders we use to organize our digital image files: one as a storage area for raw images, and one for images to be scheduled.
Raw Image Files
The first folder is named “Raw Images”, which (for our business model) holds content related to house flips or client projects, as well as DIY’s and collaborations. These images are originals, not modified for specific platforms. Within this folder are folders named by project. For us, this means the house hashtag and address.
Within the specific project folder we will have a before, after, and construction folder; each image named according to what it is and it’s Path Bar as shown above, ex: 5824 Before Living Room 1.
Editorial Calendar: Dropbox
Here is our file structure for scheduling in the editorial calendar in Dropbox:
As you can see, within the editorial calendar, folders are organized first by month, day, then social platform.
The images in these folders are already formatted for the platform they are going on. I need to add a Pinterest folder to this system. ?
Content Organization: Captions and Copy
The next bit of our content organization strategy is an Editorial Calendar in Google Sheets, which holds all the captions and copy for posting on social media. I love Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms! They are powerful tools to a small company. We use them for business development documents, brainstorming, making priority lists, tracking projects, and creating order sheets.
We created an Editorial Calendar with different sheets: Blog, Content Repository, and the others named by social platform. Here is where captions are written, approved, and ready to be scheduled.
For Instagram, particularly, hashtag organization plays an important role and are stored in the Content Repository tab along with other brainstorming lists for content creation.
How It Works
Putting Organized Systems for Digital Content into Action
Our goal is to write and schedule schedule blog posts 1 month in advance and social media posts, 1 – 2 weeks in advance.
The Flow
When sitting down with the editorial calendar, a post needs to be scheduled for tuesday, because it’s #transformationtuesday. We decide to do a “before” and “after” photo.
Step 1: Using Canva, a stacked image is created. The image named “#myhouse before exterior” and “#myhouse after exterior” and upload into the app.
When finished, the new image is then downloaded from the app straight into Dropbox and saved in Marketing > Editorial Calendar > April > 4-24 > 4-24 Instagram.
*For images that don’t require editing or resizing in Canva, we simply make a copy of the image we want to use and move that copy from Raw Images to the appropriate dated folder within the Editorial Calendar folder.
Step 2: Captions are written and stored in the Editorial Calendar (Google Sheet), under the respective tab. Hashtags chosen for the particular image and content are copied and pasted in the hashtag column.
After completion, we’re ready to schedule our posts.
Scheduling Posts
Currently, we are testing two different tools for scheduling social media posts: Crowdfire & Hootsuite.
Hootsuite has been a part of our workflow for the past year, but we’ve been looking at other options. There are pros and cons to each.
Hootsuite
- It’s been around a while
- Can be used to schedule across multiple platforms
But…
- It’s user interface is a bit complicated
- Issues with posting multiple pictures on Instagram
- Issues with resizing images
- Missing some helpful tools that other platforms have
Crowdfire
This tool is newer to us and we are still using the free version for now.
- Easier to navigate and schedule
- Powerful tools, such as hashtag research
- Con: Sometimes an issue with uploading images – they come out blurry the first time
I think I’m almost convinced to switch over, if I could only figure out why are images are blurry.
Organizing Digital Content: Conclusion
It wasn’t until a few months ago we got serious about organizing digital content: creating systems and workflows. I have to say, I am pleased with our progress, thus far. Having an intern assist me in this area has been a life-saver. Have you had a chance to meet her? You can meet our first Inspiring Intern here.
I’m convinced organization is, at large, a key to success. It’s only a matter of doing it. Although I have a love/hate relationship with social media, mainly because it takes so much of my time, I know it’s necessary. I also know it’s pointless unless done well.
Time Commitment
I spend about 1-2 hours per week planning out our social media posts and 1-2 hours per week writing blog posts. Your time is a valuable asset and it’s important to use it wisely so you can grow your business and connect with your followers. Setting tools and systems in place to create efficiency will with help.
Resources
Some resources I’ve found helpful in learning this year of organization:
And of course it always helps to learn from others. How do you do it? Do you have anything to add?
You don’t want to miss how Nestrs is running their business. It’s quite inspiring! Don’t forget to hop on over to Sarah and Nick’s Blog @ Nestrs and read their process for organization of digital content.
You can also follow them on social media:
Hopefully, this post is informative and gives you some actionable steps you can apply in your business. Don’t be shy! Comment below to share your process 🙂
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