Why Your Content Strategy Needs Brand Filters

Last week we talked about the importance of narrative building…remember? If not, read it here but narrative building is the ideas, values, and perception you want to imprint in your ideal customers mind.

That narrative is the intersection of:

1. Your Mission
2. What You Believe
3. What People Will Rally Behind

Then put into 3-5 words.

But, the next step is establishing the feelings/emotions your content needs to evoke while creating brand filters for all content ideas.

1. Feelings

   
   

We’re not talking about a Drake song here. But great content makes you feel something. It evokes some emotion. Just like great writing. But we want to determine the feelings someone should experience/get from your content that matches the overarching narrative.

For example, we work with JockoFuel and their overarching narrative is “Discipline Equals Freedom.” So, would it make sense for people to consume content and feel “happy and light hearted?”

Nope. It doesn’t match. The feelings need to be matched to your content pillars.

So, let’s say you have three content pillars like: Challenges, Documentaries, and Vlogs/BTS.

We’d then attach a feeling to each pillar because each pillar needs to serve a purpose attached to the greater narrative.

So, it’d look like this:

• Challenge = Motivated & Pumped Up
• Documentaries = Inspired & Introspective Feeling
• Vlogs = Inclusive

With this, we can tailor the stories, scenes, and scripts to make sure we hit the nail on the head when it comes to the emotions we want to evoke.

1. Filters

   
   

To be able to achieve the above at the highest level we then need to create filters for every content idea.

So, now the screening process looks like this:

Narrative > Content Idea > Feeling > Filter

The filters are specific to the overarching brand’s narrative.

Again, let’s use JockoFuel as an example…

Overarching Brand Narrative: Discipline Equals Freedom

So, we need to create filters for every content idea that we push and want to implement to make sure it always directly/or indirectly amplifies this narrative.

To do this ask yourself these questions:

• How do you want someone to describe your content/account?
• How do you want your content to position yourself?
• Describe your content strategy in three words?

Round robin as a team. Select the common themes/answers. Dive deep into those and turn them into 1-2 word headlines with a short description.

For JockoFuel we ended up with these filters:

1. “Fuck Yeah” - Does this content make someone say, “Fuck yeah I needed to hear that or I needed that wake-up call” internally.
2. Perspective Shift - Does this alter someone’s perspective or thought process around a specific topic or idea.
3. Mentor-like - Are we giving you the information/education/inspiration from a mentorship place/perspective.

NOW, this is important because every content idea needs to run through the above filter and if it doesn’t meet the criteria then the idea either needs to get dumped or refined until it meets the brand’s filter.

This is key. Because remember content is communication at scale. So, if you’re posting 30 pieces of content a month - it’s imperative to make sure that content serves a purpose.

As a brand, the aim should never be “volume.”

The aim should always be “impact.”

By creating the right brand filters - you create an internal screening process to make sure every piece of content serves a purpose for the brand.

3. Feedback

Everything is theory until it gets posted an validated. So, the next step to the above is to have weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly retros where you focus on the feedback/data your getting from all of the content.

You should be focused looking at feedback in two parts: Engagement & Impact

The engagement metrics confirm that you’re structuring your content in the right way. Think about your opening shot, your hooks, scripting, storyboarding, etc. Engagement metrics validate this and/or give you data to help optimize these aspects.

So the metrics you should pay attention to are:

• Views
• Likes
• Avg Watch Time
• Replay

Now, it’s important to measure those metrics again “impact” metrics. These validate that you’re creating the right content, for the right people, for the right reasons.

Those metrics are:

• Save to Like Ratio
• Share-to-Like Ratio
• Comments
• DMs

If a piece of content has 100k views, and 2k likes, but only 100 saves or shares then your ratio is off and your content isn’t having the impact it needs to have.

So, always separate the metrics and then compare them based on the goal.

Then always rinse and repeat.