1. Turn Your Video Content into a Recurring Series

If you’re already creating video content, whether on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram Reels, you have a lot of content that can be repurposed. Instead of creating one-off videos, think about series.

For example, if you’re a marketing coach, create a “5-Minute Marketing Mondays” series where you break down quick strategies every week. Another example would be if you’re in the wellness space, launch a “Self-Care Sunday” series featuring different mindfulness techniques.

By structuring your videos into a recurring format, you eliminate the guesswork for both yourself and your audience. It also makes batch recording easier to film multiple episodes in one sitting, schedule them in advance, and free up your time for other projects.

2. Repurpose Blog Content Into a LinkedIn Newsletter

If you’re already writing long-form content on your blog, give it more life. A simple yet powerful way to extend its reach is by repurposing it into a LinkedIn newsletter.

Why LinkedIn? Because newsletters get direct notifications sent to your subscribers, visibility is increased without relying on the algorithm. Plus, repurposing blog posts is easy if you take a high-performing blog post and reformat it with a more conversational intro. You can also do things like add new insights or update data to keep it fresh. Include a call to action (CTA) to drive readers back to your website.

Not only does this maximize your existing content, but it also helps position you as a thought leader in your industry.

3. Create a Content Bank for Quick Access to On-Brand Assets

If you feel like you’ve ever wasted time searching for the “right” photo, video, or template, a content bank will be your new best friend. A well-organized content library ensures that everything you need is at your fingertips, reducing the time spent searching for assets.

Here’s how to set it up:

• Create folders for on-brand imagery by collecting and organizing photos, graphics, and stock images that align with your brand aesthetic.
• Save reusable stock videos. For example, if you create video content, have a folder with B-roll footage and clips you can easily insert into future projects. Do the same with stock videos that you find if they feel on-brand.

By keeping your content assets sorted and ready to go, you’ll be able to create high-quality posts in a fraction of the time.

4. Batch Create & Schedule Content in Advance

Constantly switching between tasks is one of the most time-consuming thing in content creation. Instead of creating content on the go, block out dedicated time for batch creation and scheduling.

For example, you can spend one day filming multiple videos. You can also write a week’s worth of Instagram captions at once. You could design all your social media graphics for the month at once.

Then, use scheduling tools like Later, Buffer, or Metricool to automate posting. This not only saves time but also ensures consistency because, let’s be honest, life gets busy, and content is often the first thing to slip through the cracks.

Content creation processed can easily be optimized by creating new time-saving habits. You can optimize your workflow and save hours each week by repurposing your videos as recurring series, converting blog posts into LinkedIn newsletters, structuring a content bank, batch developing content, and more. What is the best part? These tips not only save time, but also enhance consistency of content, engagement, and quality.

So, which of these time-saving tricks will you use first?

The post 4 Time-Saving Tips for Content Creators in 2025 appeared first on Stencil.

The more you understand your target audience, the easier it will be to generate content that resonates. Once you know what they need, how do you create an effective content plan? In this blog post, we share simple content marketing tips for brands.

Start With a Clear Goal

Before creating any content plan, you need to be clear about what you want to achieve. Are you looking to raise brand awareness, drive website traffic, grow your email list, or sell a product? Your goal will influence the content you create and where you publish it.

Setting SMART goals is a good place to start. SMART goals stand for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This will also help you create balance with your content and ensure that you create enough content to help you drive awareness, traffic, and conversions.

The better you get at setting SMART goals, the better you’ll get at taking steps that will allow you to get from point A to point B, and this includes creating the content needed for your business to see results.

Focus on Quality Over Quantity

It can be tempting to create a lot of content on a continuous basis, but quality always takes precedence over quantity. A single well-researched, value-packed blog post or video can help your potential buyers at various stages of their journey on an ongoing basis vs trending content that has a shorter life span.

A great way to do this is to use keyword research tools to see what your ideal clients are searching for before creating content.

Repurpose Your Content

Don’t let a valuable piece of content go to waste after just one use. Repurposing content helps you reach even more people by being able to expand on various topics and giving your current content more life.

Repurposing your content doesn’t have to be complicated, and you can create your own simple content repurposing framework that you can reuse on an ongoing basis.

For example:

• Starting with a blog post.
• Turning that blog post into a newsletter.
• Take points from your blog or newsletter and create social media posts.
• Take those social media posts and use them as talking points in video content.

Build a Content Calendar

Consistency is key to successful content marketing. A content calendar will help keep you organized and on track. You can easily create a content calendar using a program like Google Sheets, Trello, Asana, Notion, or any other content management tool.

List important dates and your content categories and keep track of your content progress as well as publishing dates. It doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective.

Analyze and Adjust

Content marketing isn’t something you do once and then forget about. Review your performance on a regular basis to determine what is working and what isn’t. To track critical metrics like traffic, engagement, and conversions, use tools such as Google Analytics and website data and social media analytics.

If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to try something else. Experiment with new formats, topics, and platforms until you find what works best for your target audience. When you see something working well, create more similar content.

Content marketing does not have to be complicated. You can create a successful strategy without feeling overwhelmed by focusing on understanding your audience, creating clear goals, and repurposing content.

The post Simple Content Marketing Tips for Brands appeared first on Stencil.

If you’re a new creator looking to grow a community or a brand that has been thinking of adopting more evergreen content practices, a YouTube channel could be the right fit for you. Just like any other platform, you don’t need a big budget or the best equipment on the market to start a YouTube channel. There are some fundamental tips to keep in mind if you want to optimize your new YouTube channel, and in this blog post, we will dive in and cover some of these useful tips.

Define Your Niche and Audience

Just like anything else, having a niche is key to helping you plan your content strategically on YouTube. Having a niche should also not be a cause for stress, and if you aren’t sure about your niche so far, you can stick to 2 to 3 topics that would fall in the same broader category of your niche or not. Testing the waters with different topics early on can also help you identify what will do well, and when you find what seems to work, you can let that guide you.

If you are someone who wants to become a YouTube creator as a creative outlet and a way to build a community, remember that people buy from people, and people connect with people. In the process of sharing your story and being yourself, you will gain more clarity.

Create Optimized Channel Art and Video Thumbnails

First impressions matter, and if you want people to stop scrolling and click on your videos, you will want to create some video thumbnails. Your channel art and video thumbnails are the first things people see, so make them count!

Consider using a tool like Stencil to create eye-catching, professional-looking banners and thumbnails that reflect the video content. Keep them clear, readable, and visually appealing. Use contrasting colors and text to make sure your message stands out, and think about accessibility when choosing your font sizes.

You can also learn about channel art best practices here.

No Need to Wait for Perfect Equipment

It can be easy to fall into the trap of wanting everything to be perfect, including having the perfect equipment. To get started, if you are working with a budget, use your phone camera and eventually move on to getting better equipment as your channel grows.

Tips for capturing clear content:

• Film facing a window for the most natural light possible.
• If you are recording with your mobile device, always clean your lens before filming.
• Test out different areas of your home if you have a lot of natural light.
• If you don’t have good natural lighting in your home, you can try to find a quiet area in a park or outside of your home.

Create a Consistent Posting Schedule

Consistency will have a big impact on the success of your YouTube channel. Consistency is something that looks different for every brand or creator, depending on the resources available to you. There is no worse feeling than starting a big project and then giving up because you can’t keep up.

Create a content calendar to plan your videos in advance. This way, you’ll always know what’s coming next and be able to prepare your video scripts in advance.

There are a lot of tools available to help you succeed with your YouTube channel. We recommend getting familiar with the platform and creator resources made available to you by YouTube. In addition, tools like TubeBuddy offer incredible tools, such as the Videolytics tool and their keyword explorer.

We hope you found these tips useful.

The post 4 Effective Tips for New YouTube Creators appeared first on Stencil.

In this blog post, you’ll learn a few tips that will help you find better keywords for Pinterest.

What’s Unique About Your Brand

In order to find the right keywords, it’s important to know what’s unique about your brand, offering, products, blog, or services. There are some questions you can ask yourself before doing keyword research.

While this blog post does not focus on any particular niche, here are some examples.

• What is specific about my blog niche? Example: If you have a travel blog, are you a general travel blog, or are you specifically writing blog content for young families who travel full time or travel blogs for solo travelers?
• What is specific about your food blog? Are you a blog sharing vegan recipes, or even more specifically, are you sharing budget-friendly vegan recipes? Or are you a blog that focuses on meal planning for busy parents?
• Are you a business consultant who created a guide for new business owners, or is it more specific, and you created a guide for business owners who want to live a digital nomad lifestyle in Europe?

As you can see, the more specific you are, the better equipped you will be when it comes to doing keyword research. Using the three examples above, here are some example keywords we would use on Pinterest.

• Solo travel destinations
• Solo travel packing tips
• Budget friendly vegan lunches
• Budget friendly vegan meal prep
• Easy budget friendly healthy meals
• Digital nomad lifestyle entrepreneur
• Online business ideas for beginners

All of these keywords were found using Pinterest. Pinterest does an incredible job at sharing what keywords are being used on the platform, and it has many tools available to help you with your keyword research.

Using The Tools Available to You

Speaking of tools available to you to conduct keyword research, we discussed them in a previous post, and you can read it here. As a refresher, here are the most effective ways to do keyword research on Pinterest.

Using the Pinterest search bar, you can see what Pinterest suggests.

Using guided search. Once you hit enter with your keyword in the search bar, you will see other guided keywords provided by Pinterest.

Using the keyword tool in the ads dashboard. What’s great about this tool is that it also gives you search volumes.

Then, you also have Pinterest trends.

As you can see, you have plenty of tools available with Pinterest to help you do keyword research. While there are tools that exist out there to help you pull this data, they are not needed.

Diversify Your Keywords

Now that you know how to find the right keywords when you do Pinterest keyword research, it’s important to also think about diversifying your keywords. This means doing as much research as possible and using a variety of keywords on Pinterest. You’ll do this in your account optimization, when you set up boards, when you create content, etc.

We hope you will find this blog helpful. Don’t forget to use Stencil for your Pinterest pin graphic design needs.

The post How to Find the Right Keywords for Pinterest appeared first on Stencil.

Let’s review four tips that can easily be implemented to help you create engaging blog posts. 

Repurpose What You Already Have

Creating an effective content strategy doesn’t mean creating more content, but in reality, it means making use of what you already have. If you have foundational content like case studies, thought leadership podcasts, or videos, you will have a lot to repurpose into blog posts. 

If you already keep an inventory of your content, this will make it easy for you to know which content has performed well in the past. Take that content, give it a fresh spin, and turn it into blog posts. 

There is Power in The Headlines

Your blog headline is your first impression, and in most cases, the deciding factor is someone will keep reading. One tip that has stood the test of time is to keep your headline simple and tell your readers exactly what they should expect. Another tip that can really help you when it comes to headlines is using positive and authoritative trigger words. 

Trigger word examples: 

• Expert
• Unveiling
• Ultimate
• Best
• Unlock

Tigger words generally tend to increase engagement and are a good idea for headlines as well. 

Using numbers in your headline can also help potential readers set expectations and help readers understand the time commitment they would need to read your post. Just like you would also A/B test your email headlines, it’s good practice to test different formats and headline styles for your blog posts. 

Include Quote Graphics

Quotes are highly relatable; you can find quotes related to most niches, industries, interests, etc. They tend to drive emotion and help increase engagement. Over the years, there have been some discussions questioning whether or not quotes are effective in marketing. 

No matter which side you are on when it comes to this topic, it’s clear that anytime someone shares a quote, whether in the form of a graphic or video, it tends to be followed by engagement. With Stencil, you can quickly add quote graphics to your blog posts and create these images in a matter of seconds. 

Encourage Interaction

Have you ever been told that you needed to focus on increasing engagement and readership for your blog content? One true, tried, and tested way of increasing engagement is to ask for engagement, and no, this doesn’t just happen on social media. 

Here are a few tips for making your blog posts more engaging: 

• Ask for blog shares. Leave a call-to-action at the end of your blog post and ask your audience to share it. 
• Ask for comments. Many plug-ins and website hosts have tools and extensions that make it easy for your readers to share your blogs. If you don’t have this, look into installing a plug-in. 
• Create savable images such as Pinterest graphics. 
• Embed a poll into your blog. 

These are simple ways that you can increase your engagement and help your blog reach more readers. 

Creating engaging blog posts is a blend of keeping things simple with tried, true, and tested tactics while being creative and finding new ways to foster engagement. 

When you know your audience, know how to craft a good headline, and make engagement easy, you’ll set yourself up for success. 

The post 4 Essential Tips for Crafting Engaging Blog Posts appeared first on Stencil.

Behind the Scenes Content

Your community loves getting an insider view of how things are made or what’s going on within your organization. Use Stories to share your process with your audience or even showcase how you’re preparing for a specific task, etc. This transparency not only fosters a deeper connection with your audience but also showcases the skill and effort involved within your organization. A lot of brands who have strong employer brand presences often have their team members take over the Instagram stories for a day and showcase behind the scenes of what it’s like to work there. 

Share Your Workspace

Your workspace is where the magic happens. So many brands and creatives are working from home, and sometimes, seeing where you work allows people to connect and relate. It humanizes your brand and invites your community into your world. Highlighting the tools you use or the organization hacks you swear by can also provide valuable tips to aspiring creatives.

Highlight Challenges and Solutions

Every creative business owner faces a set of challenges. Sharing these hurdles and how you overcome them can be incredibly inspiring to your community. It shows resilience, problem-solving skills, and the reality that not everything in business is a smooth ride. This kind of content can encourage your audience to tackle their challenges head-on.

Sharing Your Brand Story

Instagram stories are the perfect place for sharing the “why” behind your brand. Use it to share your inspiration, the values guiding your work, and your vision for your brand. This can make your audience feel like they’re a part of a bigger journey and deepen their emotional connection to your brand. People connect with people, and sharing your why will have a significant positive impact on your brand. 

Share Customer Testimonials and Success Stories

Sharing customer testimonials and success stories can help other potential buyers in their journey. Use Stories to showcase your testimonials, the successful projects you’ve completed, or any awards and recognitions you’ve received. You can also use stories to share client transformations. Example: How my customer was able to achieve XYZ with [your product or service]. This not only builds trust but also demonstrates the impact of your work.

Announce New Projects and Collaborations

Build anticipation by announcing collaborations and anything new and exciting happening with your brand. This creates anticipation and keeps your community coming back for more updates.

Offer a Glimpse into Your Daily Routine

A “day in the life” style video is a fun way to take your audience along on your daily journey. From the moment you start your day to when you call it a night, share snippets that highlight the diversity of tasks you tackle as a creative. This can include everything from your morning routine to working on your projects and everything in between. The best part is that the footage you record for these stories can also be repurposed and edited together to create a video for your Instagram Reels or similar content for other platforms. 

By creating behind-the-scenes content, sharing your brand story, and taking your audience with you for “day in the life” style videos, you can engage your community in a meaningful way. Remember, the key to success with Instagram stories is authenticity. Be true to your brand, and that in itself will have a big impact on your success. 

The post How to Use Instagram Stories for Creatives appeared first on Stencil.

The Power of a Strong Email List

A strong and engaged email list is a must for any brand. While it’s completely normal that it takes time to build such a list, it needs to be a focus. When a brand takes time to nurture its email list, the return is well worth it.

Crafting the Perfect Lead Magnet

One thing that you’ll need to grow your list is a compelling lead magnet. You need to give people an incentive to sign up for your email list. Your lead magnet can be a free offer or even a low-ticket offer. 

The creation process involves identifying your audience’s pain points and offering a solution through your lead magnet. Ensure it’s high-quality, actionable, and directly relevant to your audience’s needs. Popular formats include video training, free guides, workbooks, and other offers. 

Leveraging Pinterest for Growing Your List 

One of the reasons brands and entrepreneurs love Pinterest to grow their list, is that it allows them to grow their list on an evergreen basis. In order for that to happen, proper keyword research needs to happen, and you need to spend time understanding how the platform works and come to terms with the fact that it’s a visual discovery engine, in other words, a search engine. 

• Why Pinterest?: With over 482 million active users, Pinterest is a goldmine for reaching a wide audience. It’s particularly effective for businesses due to its visual nature and long content shelf life.

• Creating Compelling Pins: Design pins that are visually appealing and aligned with your brand aesthetic. Use high-quality images, engaging copy, and call-to-actions (CTAs) that encourage users to click and sign up. Pinterest does a great job at sharing creative tips and best practices. Using a tool like Stencil is perfect for helping you create beautiful pin designs.

• Optimizing for Discoverability: Utilize keywords relevant to your niche. The key is understanding what search terms someone would enter in the Pinterest search bar to learn more about your products and services. Knowing what makes your product unique is also an important piece when it comes to keyword research. 

Tips for growing your list on Pinterest: 

• When you create your pin titles, create 4 to 5 variations of the pin titles. This means sharing different pin titles on the graphics and in the pin title section on Pinterest. 
• Test a combination of different keywords in your titles and descriptions. This will give you more chances of ranking up when various keywords are trending. 
• Create video pins. Video marketing is really popular on Pinterest, and video content gets a lot of engagement. 

Converting Social Media Leads into Email Subscribers

In addition to using search engine platforms like Pinterest or even YouTube, brands can leverage various social media platforms to grow their list by ensuring that email list growth is always top of mind and a part of your content calendar. 

You should consistently look at your data, measure which platforms drive the most subscribers, and learn from this success to see how you can adapt and implement similar strategies for other platforms. 

Testing New Platforms

While there are certain platforms better known for the results they drive for list growth, it’s important to consider testing other platforms, whether they are new up and coming or simply new on your radar. 

We hope that these tips will make growing a list a top priority for you in 2024.  

The post Understanding Email List Growth & Important Takeaways appeared first on Stencil.

There are many ways to sell your digital products, and Pinterest happens to be a good platform for doing so. There is a process that can help you increase the chances of organic traffic you get to your products, and in this blog post, we’ll share everything you need to know. 

The Preliminary Work

Pinterest or not, there is some preliminary work that goes into using any platform to sell your digital products. No matter what niche you are in, you want to use various keyword tools to find keywords that have high search volume and low to medium competition. Ideally, you would do this research in the product development stage to help guide your creation efforts. 

Knowing this data could help you identify a unique addition you could add to your product that’s in demand or even give you a completely new product idea. 

Oftentimes, when sellers aren’t seeing the results they were hoping for, it’s because they opt to create products that seem popular without realizing that the keywords for these products are saturated. 

Diversify Your Content Type

Once you have your Pinterest keywords and your product is ready to hit the market, you’ll develop a unique strategy based on your goals, target audience, and ad budget. When it comes to content creation, there are a few things to keep in mind. 

In order to promote your products, you should consider the following types of Pinterest pin formats: 

• Video pins
• Graphic pins
• Carousel pins (When creating a pin, you can add up to five images or 1 video. Once you add your images, you will be asked if you want to create a carousel or a collage.)

In addition to diversifying your pin formats, consider these creative tips: 

• Day in the life videos
• How-to videos
• How-to infographics
• Comparative content
• Demo videos

Don’t forget your keywords. When creating content, it’s important to incorporate the keywords from your earlier research. Include some keywords in your pin titles, on the text-overlay of your pins, in your pin descriptions, and on your boards. 

Rinse & Repeat

On an ongoing basis, you’ll want to look at your Pinterest analytics and see which of your pins are getting the most engagement and traffic. When you have a good idea of what’s working, you should use that to make adjustments as needed. 

If you want to succeed with your digital products on Pinterest, let the data guide you. 

The post How to Sell Digital Products Using Pinterest appeared first on Stencil.

Get ready to take some notes as we share what you need to know about evergreen content. 

What is Evergreen Content?

At its core, evergreen content is timeless. It remains relevant and remains relevant even as industry landscapes evolve. While brands evolve, a lot of foundational content and information that makes a brand unique remains relevant and should be shared on an ongoing basis. 

Evergreen content is also great for nurturing your audience. One could argue that every piece of content could be evergreen, even trends, since you could apply an evergreen topic/concept to a current trend. 

We also like to think that evergreen content is the type of content that takes an audience from being curious about a brand to helping them through the various stages of the journey. 

Evergreen Content Examples

Now that you have a better idea of what evergreen content is, let’s dive into some examples. Chances are, you’ll be able to walk away after reading this post and create some new content. 

1. A Brand’s Story: Your company’s founding story, values, and mission aren’t going to undergo drastic changes every year. Crafting a compelling brand narrative can serve as a foundational piece of content that resonates indefinitely.

2. Thought-leadership Content: Deep dives into industry principles, philosophies, or methodologies can remain relevant for years. Consider whitepapers, e-books, or long-form articles that tackle relevant industry questions and topics.

3. How-to Guides: If you’re in an industry with stable practices, “how-to” content can be invaluable. For instance, a detailed guide on “How to Write a Business Plan” or “How to Use our XYZ Feature” can be evergreen because the fundamental process doesn’t change drastically over time. Even if you have to maintain and update some of this content, that can easily be done with proper content update processes in place. 

Tips for Crafting Stellar Evergreen Content

While content strategy and creative processes are not a one-size-fits-all approach, we do have some tips to help you create some evergreen content. 

1. Deep-Dive Research: Comprehensive, in-depth research provides the foundation for content that stands the test of time. Understand industry pain points and ensure that your content addresses them proactively. Give your audience something to work with before they even have to ask.  

2. Avoid Time-Sensitive Language: Phrases like “this year” or “recently” can immediately date your content. Opt for more general terms to ensure longevity. If you use time-sensitive language, ensure that you have reminders and checklists to update this content as needed. 

3. Regular Updates: Ironically, for content to remain evergreen, periodic updates are essential. Ensure statistics, examples, or industry references are current to maintain credibility.

Evergreen content is an investment that, when done right, can yield returns for years. As you dive into the creation process, keep the omnichannel landscape in mind. Your content, in its many forms, can serve as a foundation across platforms, drawing audiences toward your brand’s timeless message. 

Whether you are new to the idea of evergreen content or not, leveraging a tool like Stencil can help you with your graphic creation efforts. Learn how to get started in seconds on our website. 

The post The Appeal of Evergreen Content appeared first on Stencil.

If you want to learn how to create engaging Instagram stories in 2023, you’ll love this blog post. We’ll share some simple, actionable tips to help you create engaging Instagram stories with ease. 

Crafting Compelling Storytelling Content

People are inherently drawn to stories. Creating storytelling content is an effective way to keep your audience engaged and leave them wanting more. Brands often over-complicate the process of storytelling. Between you and your team, you have many stories to share, your customers also have stories to share. 

How do you create compelling storytelling content? 

• Be clear about your narrative and identify what makes you or your brand unique so that you can craft your stories around this. 
• Build emotional connections with your audience. Don’t be afraid to share the ups and downs of your journey. 
• Don’t strive for perfection. You don’t need perfectly curated stories; show up as you are.  
• Create a recognizable repetitive, consistent pattern. Your audience will remember you for it. This could be something as simple as always recording your stories while walking on your way to work, etc. 
• Include a call-to-action. A call-to-action doesn’t have to be all about sales but getting your audience to do something and ask them questions. 

Apply these tips to content where you will share your life before and after working with you. How did your product change the narrative for a customer? And then you go from there. 

Using Simple Yet Relatable Graphics

Information overload is often a make-it-or-break-it for potential customers. If you create infographics, keep them simple, if you create social media graphics, keep them simple and to the point. Use a tool like Stencil to create effortless, on-brand images continuously. You can use Stencil templates or create your own templates to use on an ongoing basis. 

Let’s not forget about using content that is probably already accessible to you. If you get tagged on social media in UGC (user-generated content), share it on your platforms. If you haven’t done so already, you should have a process in place to collect and get proper sharing permissions for user-generated content. 

Using Data to Propel Our Efforts Forward

Behind every effective Instagram strategy, there’s a marketer or marketing team that takes the time to understand what works best and what requires improvement. By understanding your analytics, you can create engaging Instagram stories that truly resonate with your audience. 

Here are a few tips to consider regarding your Instagram analytics. 

• Pay close attention to your stories that received the most reach and those that resulted in messages (DMs). You’ll want to replicate these types of stories and create new spin-offs from the ones that worked well. 
• Pay attention to the navigation data of your stories. If any of your stories tend to drive more “exits” vs. more “taps forwards,” this is something you would want to pay attention to. 

• On the other hand, any stories that drive new profile visits, follows, and email button taps are a win in our books. 

You are now equipped to create an engaging strategy for your Instagram stories. 

Remember, the essence of Instagram Stories is to connect with your audience in a more personal and immediate way. By ensuring your stories resonate emotionally, visually, and analytically, you can ensure consistent engagement and build a stronger relationship with your followers. Happy storytelling!

The post How to Create Engaging Instagram Stories in 2023 appeared first on Stencil.