Still in the Dark Ages of Content Creation? Time To Switch to an Always-On Model
Do you feel your content production is not fast enough for today’s world? Or maybe you think there are not enough resources to maintain an always-on content model? Well, it's much easier than you think.
Do you feel your content production is not fast enough for today’s world? Or maybe you think there are not enough resources to maintain an always-on content model? Well, it's much easier than you think.
Forge creator partnerships to start telling stories on-demand
Agencies certainly provide value, but they are expensive and can’t produce content at the fast pace needed to thrive. In the old world, companies hired an agency or producer to manage all their freelancer relationships. Today, that’s flipped on its head: Talent is at the center of the creative process and has a direct relationship with the company. Companies are now in charge of telling their stories, and their creator partnerships are highly valuable and strategic.
Red Bull understood that to produce high-quality stories often, it needed to transform its organization. They created the Red Bull Media House, an in-house media company. The way Red Bull works is different: They’ve employed an on-demand creative workforce, where there are no delays or constraints on creative resources.
Red Bull hired Glimmer freelancer and Executive Producer Jason Beauregard to oversee their animated interview series “For Real.” Jason assembled a phenomenal team, including an editor, animator, colorist, and sound designer who brought Red Bull’s vision to life.
The partnership extended beyond the single series. “There have been times where they’ve reached out to us with specific needs: ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere at this event. And we can’t get anybody to shoot the interview of this athlete. Can you help us out?’”
Jason added: “I hundred percent know they understand that there’s a value in not having internal resources and using freelance options because the accessibility of freelancers through platforms like Glimmer has become such an asset.”
Long story short: You can’t wait for anything. You need the resources to respond to production needs in real time. How can you achieve this? Through building a team of freelancers around the world who can jump in at the right time for the right project.
Experiment with new formats
Snapchat. Instagram. TikTok. BeReal. You need an experimental, always-on mindset if you want to keep up with the fast-evolving nature of social media platforms. It is an essential approach to building your business.
One way of embracing the experimental mindset is through hiring freelance talent. Access to unlimited talent allows you to experiment faster and more often.
How does Glimmer (formerly Storyhunter) create successful content? We experiment. The result is a highly-engaging, animated vertical video for TikTok displaying the breadth and depth of our network. Unless you experiment with your content creation, there is no way you can glean valuable insight into what is resonating with your audience and what simply is not.
Serialize your content
How does genealogy platform MyHeritage succeed in these quick productions? Serialization. Matt Veysberg, the video production lead at MyHeritage, said: “The Glimmer system is awesome and convenient, especially for fast-turnaround global productions.”
MyHeritage has mastered the serialized short-doc format. Their ability to hire local teams in any location has helped the company explain its place in the world and grow to 62 million users. From the onset, they solidified the storytelling format for their customer testimonial series, which focuses on family members who found each other via the MyHeritage platform.
The Israel-based company publishes the same posting for its customer testimonials no matter where they are hiring, allowing them to produce dozens of videos a year. The serialization of content saves time and cuts down the price per project: More projects get made instead of large, slow campaigns typical of agencies. And the increase in volume leads to more data, which drives better creative decisions.
Repurpose your content
The always-on mindset requires you to keep the pipeline full, but there’s a hack easing the workload of marketers everywhere: content repurposing. It’s essentially recycling your current content and presenting it in a new format to reach wider audiences and increase lifespan.
You can hire freelance editors, social media producers, graphic designers, and writers to showcase content in a brand new way.
We repurpose content, too, by tapping into our amazing network of freelancers. We first identified our most popular Medium blog posts. In June, we hired Glimmer freelancer and creative director Eric Hinojosa to transform the blog post and two other popular into vertical videos, which we published on TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. We effectively repurposed our existing content in a fresh and exciting way to attract eyeballs.