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How to create a content calendar for the year ahead

Motorcycle Marketing - 2022-12.1 Creating a content calendar for the year ahead

How To Create a Content Calendar For the Year Ahead

Creating a content calendar is an essential part of building a marketing plan that will help you reach your target audience. The more organised you can be and the further ahead you plan, the less stress you’ll experience along the way, allowing you to focus on the quality of your output and hitting your KPIs.

Firstly though, what is a content calendar? In this context, we will explore creating a content calendar which includes first planning content production, then making a subsequent plan for when the content will be used on social media and in your wider marketing efforts.

For those involved directly in motorcycle racing, whether it’s a championship such as MotoGP, MXGP, Hard Enduro or one of the other numerous forms of two-wheeled competition, forward planning is usually based around the race calendar. But for brands indirectly linked to racing, or those who have no association with the racing scene, planning ahead is just as important.

What Content Would You Publish In an Ideal World?

A pragmatic approach to planning ahead with your social media and marketing content is to set out what you would like to publish in an ideal world and work back from there. Knowing that it may not be practical or plausible to produce all the content on your wish list, you can then undertake a feasibility review of your dream plan.

Once you’ve plotted out the major pieces of content you’re going to produce you can work on a detailed production plan for each major video or photo shoot in the months ahead. Then you can fill out your content calendar around those events, to ensure a consistent rate of content publication throughout the year. In this previous blog post we covered how to maximise photo and video shoots to get the most content from them.

Getting Practical

It’s important to make a list of products that need to be promoted at specific times of year, define the content formats that you know will engage with your audience, then fill out a week-by-week plan, including the days and times that you will post to social media and a mix of content types to be published.

A content plan should include:

  • A summary production plan of when content will be made
  • A description of the content you plan to publish
  • The date and times the content will go live
  • The social network and account where the content will be published
  • Additional marketing channels you will publish on (web content, email marketing, content to share with influencers and press)
  • Creative assets (photos and videos) and pre-approved captions to be published with the assets
  • Any links, mentions and tags to include

In terms of setting everything out in a clear plan, the friendly folks at Hubspot and Jotform offer free social media content calendar templates which you can use as the base to build from. Alternatives include creating a designated Google Calendar for your content, or simply building a calendar yourself in Google Sheets.

When Should I Publish My Content?

In this post from Hootsuite on the best time to post on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram researchers analysed over 30,000 social media posts to see if certain days and times typically get more engagement than others and – SPOILER ALERT – they found that the best time to post on social media overall is 10am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. In the article they also reveal their findings on the best time to publish per platform. Having said that, every audience is different, so it’s even better to experiment with different times and see what works best for your brand.

How Much Content Should I Publish?

The answer to this should really be, publish as much content as you can with the resources you have available, whilst also aiming to make that content meaningful.

Large, established brands such as Ducati have the resources to produce enough content to be publishing interesting posts on a daily basis. They will be producing content via in-house teams, as well as agencies, country-level franchises, race teams, athletes, influencers and even customers themselves.

A smaller brand such as Mitas tyres publishes less frequently, but they do a fine job of mixing up fun content such as burnout videos, photos and videos of racing, incredible action shots, beautiful adventure riding pictures, street riding content, event promotions, seasonal content and specifically polished product imagery.

If you are managing social media and marketing for a rider clearly the amount of assets that can be produced and published depends on how busy your rider is. Likewise, if you’re a content creator yourself it’s all about the amount of time and energy you can put into your work.

Off-road and freestyle rider Jordan Booker does a great job of publishing frequent, engaging content which he clearly has planned out well in advance. Jordan is able to push out a great mix of content such as photos, shorter and longer edits, mobile filmed and professionally filmed video, shots on the bike and behind-the-scenes images. Whenever he’s at an event or track and has time on his bike he produces an array of content to publish over the following days.

Visibility Content vs Promotional Content

As you build your content calendar look for combinations of photos and videos that will grab the attention of your audience and positively trigger the news feed algorithm of social networks, ensuring you get maximum visibility.

Ultimately the mix of content you publish should match your business goals. This may differ from platform to platform. You might split your planned content out like this:

  • 30% of content is aimed at driving traffic to your website
  • 30% of content will be created in house just to drive engagement and go softer on commercial messaging
  • 20% of your content will support specific commercial goals (selling products, lead generation, capturing user data etc)
  • 10% of content will be user-generated content from influencers and collaborators to drive engagement and credibility
  • 10% will be behind-the-scenes content from your factory, shops or offices

Those are just suggestions and the percentages can be adjusted depending on what you’re aiming to achieve.

Other models, as described by the knowledgeable team at Brand Muscle, also include the 80/20 rule of content marketing, whereby 80% of content should be useful to your audience (it educates, entertains, or offers a solution to their problems) whilst only 20% should explicitly promote your business.

Or you may find that the social media rule of thirds, as explained by Neil Patel here, is better suited to your business. The basic concept with the rule of thirds is:

  • 1/3 of content promotes your business, converts your audience in customers and generates profit
  • 1/3 of content shares ideas and insights from thought leaders in your industry
  • 1/3 of content should drive personal interactions with your audience

If you’re looking for advice on how to create the perfect content calendar, book a free consultation with our expert team by emailing hello@motorcycle.marketing.

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How to Make the Most of Your Video and Photo Shoots

Motorcycle Marketing - 2022-11 How to make the most of your video and photo shoots

How to Make the Most of Your Video and Photo Shoot

When organising your next content creation event it’s well worth building multi-purpose asset production into your overall strategy. In other words, ask yourself ‘How do I get the most content possible out of my next video or photo shoot?’

Answering that question is especially important for motorcycle marketers, given the expense of putting together shoots with bikes, both indoor and outdoor. It’s not all about quantity, it’s about getting the right shots for the right purpose and what works well on Instagram Stories is very different to what racks up the views on YouTube.

Video and photo shoots can quickly become costly affairs, so making the maximum use of the action once the cameras start rolling is the smart move for brand managers.

Even without the budget and reach of the big guns like Red Bull Motorsports all brands should be aiming to create engaging content. It pays dividends to carefully plan how to make your content relevant for several different channels, on your own social accounts and digital platforms, as well as those of your ambassadors, influencers and media partners.

Getting the most from your content is all about making practical decisions throughout the process, from pre-production, to production on the big day (or days) and in post-production.

Get Inspired!

The first stage of pre-production is all about getting creative, whether you’re taking inspiration from outside the motorcycle industry or you want to align your content strategy with the coolest trends you’ve seen from other bike brands and content creators.

Husqvarna's excellent story telling in the Making of the Norden 901 series, Ducati’s well-optimised, highly engaged video content on Instagram and Gray Pham’s killer social content are all excellent examples of what to aim for. The contrast between Fortnine’s quickfire TikTok content and their longer-form, beautifully produced YouTube videos is a solid example of how to create the right content for the right platform.

Pre-Production: Checklists, Shot Lists and Formats

Ahead of the shoot, in the pre-production phase, you can make creation of an expansive array of media assets a key part of your plan.

So when working through a standard pre-production checklist think about adding to that list to make the content produced go that bit further. Sprout Social keep this brilliant social media video specifications guide constantly up to date, so you can refer to it when planning the shots and cuts you want.

Write down a list of all the types of content you aim to create in terms of photos and video, from content you can produce on a mobile, to Ultra HD 4K video. Think about the equipment, videographers and photographers you’ll require in order to get what you need for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, web content, advertising assets and any additional content to send to media.

Working on a Tighter Budget?

If you’re working on a tighter budget you can still make these lists and cut your cloth accordingly in terms of filming on a mobile-only, or combining various shots from GoPro and higher quality cameras if they are part of your plan.

Even with just a smartphone (or two) you can create a big media archive from your shoot in terms of photos, GIFs, Reels, Stories, square/portrait/landscape aspect ratio content, longer videos, behind-the-scenes pieces and even interviews.

Lights, Camera, Action

When the day of filming arrives it’s good practice to make sure that everyone on set understands the production plan with a short meeting at the beginning of the shoot. It’s surprising how often this does not happen, but it’s important even if your on set crew is just two people.

If you have a large film crew present then line managers should ensure that everyone understands the plan of action for the day and how important it is to get all the key items on the shot list.

Let the Creators Create

If you are working with ambassadors or influencers give them the impetus to create content themselves, provided that doing so can be combined with the main shoot. Many influencers in the motorcycle industry are content creators themselves, so it’s productive to enable them to get the content they need for their channels to promote your brand.

If you're shooting with a rider such as Killian Moreno - a digital creator who collaborates with brands such Mosko Moto and Outback Motortek - it’s clear that he is more than competent at making his own content. 

With a high-profile personality like Josh Hill - a Monster athlete and Fox Racing ambassador - he is vastly experienced at working with big production teams AND at producing his own content from large-scale shoots for major brands. When working with a rider like Hill production of multiple assets can be a really efficient two-way dynamic.

Allowing these kinds of riders some time on set for improvised shooting might give you material for several different social media publications.

Hands On or Hands Off

By contrast, if you were working with a young Moto3 rider who has never handled a camera before, you and your team would need to be in full control. If you have engaged with an agency to produce the content for you it’s important to let them work without intervening too much, provided you can see that they’ve read your brief and are working to get all the material required.

When combining content production with a media day for a new product, give your media guests controlled access for a specific period only and make arrangements for catering and editing off site so that the day is productive for you and them.

Helping Other Brands is an Investment

Part of your production process could be to produce similar shots with different partner or competitor brands being featured. Consider whether the shot needs to include or exclude specific brands, such as energy drinks, helmet manufacturers, clothing companies, tyre manufacturers and so on. If you make Monster Energy or one of their athletes look cool, they might share that content piece to their 8 million plus followers in Instagram.

The Magic of Behind-The-Scenes Content

It’s also good to allow some room for ‘natural’ content to be filmed on set, whether that’s with an additional, dedicated videographer or filmed on a mobile by approved crew members. Clearly it’s important that this does not interrupt your main production plan and often those ambient shots, b-roll, ‘the making of’ style content and the unscripted interactions that take place can hugely expand your asset library.

Deliver Content Conveniently to All Relevant Parties

Whether it’s on the day as you wrap things up, or as soon as possible after a shoot, delivering content to the relevant editors and collaborators on hard drives or through the cloud can make a big difference to the amount of material processed and then made available to publish.

The concept here is to make it as convenient and efficient as possible for your team, collaborators and contacts in the motorcycle media to review raw or edited content.

Make Post-Production Simple and Realistic

Whilst quick delivery of material can expand the timespan over which it can be published it’s also important to be realistic with post-production expectations. Forwarding cool mobile-filmed video through Telegram or WhatsApp ready for immediate social media publication is one thing, whereas content with higher quality production values takes time to create.

If you end up with a film like Meta’s beautiful Last Wilderness feature for Vahna, along with amazing photography and all the relevant teaser content they produced for social media, it’s well worth the effort.

As you can see, content creation can become an enormous project, but when resources are limited, you can make the most out of what's available.

If you need help with your video or photoshoot, or other content creation, don't hesitate to send us an email and discuss the possibilities.

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