Generating Business Content With Your Smartphone

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Smartphones are usually unique to each of us and we frequently use these devices to generate content for our social networks which are often personal.

However, there's no reason we can't leverage our smartphones to generate content for our business or company. There are a lot of brands successfully using mobile phones to generate content using apps like Instagram or Vine.

Use your mobile

Leveraging your mobile phone can add a new dimension to your content and social presence as a business. Before you go out and start creating social accounts and snapping photos and videos it's important to say that, ideally, your organisation would have a content and social media strategy in place.

Regardless as to whether or not you have a plan the odds are your business has a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account.

Decide your brand's personality

Before you start capturing and sharing content you need to consider the personality of your brand. Some brands opt to have a fun and even silly personality like, GrubHub, Sharpie and Buzzfeed. They're great at producing fun and sometimes humorous content.

In many cases these brands use apps that are typically only available for a smartphone or they've used a phone to capture an image which is then shared to their social networks.

Here's are a few examples of fun content that started with a mobile device:

GrubHub's Facebook Photo

Sharpie's Instagram Photo

BuzzFeed's Vine Video

Your brand doesn't have to be funny or silly

However, even for a modest brand that may not capture photos of their team goofing off there's still plenty of options available for showing the world your personality. We found the image below by RecruitMilitary on their Facebook page but it could've easily been taken via a mobile phone on a test flight. We also found some pretty straightforward images and video from howies' and Urban Outfitters.

RecruitMilitary's Facebook Photo

howies' Instagram Photo

Urban Outfitter's Vine Video

Make the content your own

The above images and video go a long way to deliver the personality of the brand. Just because your organisation may be a law office or professional service it doesn't mean that there isn't content that can be captured and shared.

Find opportunities to capture content

After you've decided on your brand's personality the real art behind content is knowing how and when to capture or create it. Often this content may be available without any changes to your existing business.

Here's a few ideas:

• Capture and share new products as they arrive
• Look to customer interaction points
• Provide insights into the working of your company or industry
• Share portions of your brainstorming sessions
• Use short videos to capture project milestones

Get a content strategy

Generally, we would advise you determine your strategy before picking the tools you'll use for capturing and sharing content but if you just want to experiment with a few of the available apps for your smartphone then here's the list is below with links to the iPhone store. All of these apps also exist for Android and you can find them on the Google Play marketplace.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a tool to find your inspiration and share it with others. Use it to collect things you love, organise and plan important projects and more.Open this article

Instagram

Over 130 million users love Instagram! It's a simple way to capture and share the world's moments on your iPhone.Open this article

Flickr

Smile. Everyone gets a free terabyte.That's right, a terabyte of space. Flickr lets you share your photos in brilliant, full resolution from anywhere to any device and anyone.Open this article

Flipboard: Your Social News Magazine

Flipboard is your personal magazine. It is the most popular way to catch up on the news you care about, discover amazing things from around the world, or stay connected to the people closest to you.Open this article

Vine

Vine is the best way to see and share life in motion. Create short, beautiful, looping videos in a simple and fun way for your friends and family to see.Open this article

After a few good brainstorming sessions you may be able to pinpoint opportunities to capture and generate content which is enabled by the social networking apps above.

If you're keen to integrate a content strategy with your business, regardless of it's size, get in touch with us @studioskylab or via [email protected]

References:

1. “NEW #sharpieNEON glows under black light! Here's one of our favs from #EDC last night” - sharpie - June 23, 2013 - Instagram
2. “#Sharpie ” - sharpie - July 15, 2013 - Instagram
3. “Flipboard: Your Social News Magazine” - July 22, 2013 - App Store
4. “Flickr” - July 22, 2013 - App Store
5. “Pinterest” - July 22, 2013 - App Store
6. “Weather is going to be great over the weekend. Plan to be out in it.” - howies - July 5, 2013 - Instagram
7. “The most important Vine you'll ever see. #uodogs” - Urban Outfitters - July 22, 2013 - Vine
8. “Dancing” - BuzzFeed - July 22, 2013 - Vine
9. “Vine” - July 22, 2013 - App Store
10. “Instagram” - July 22, 2013 - App Store
11. “Timeline Photos” - July 22, 2013 - Www.facebook.com
12. “Timeline Photos” - July 22, 2013 - Www.facebook.com
13. “Timeline Photos” - July 22, 2013 - Www.facebook.com