This is part of an on-going newsletter where we look at one thing that has been impacted by COVID-19 in the world of marketing, content, and design. Subscribe to get each one in your inbox.

Someone (maybe Bill Gates in 1996) coined the term “Content is King.” Content strategy is at the heart of what I love doing because it is so deeply rooted in storytelling. It’s also hard to nail down because it describes a wide variety of things from movies and software to music and social media. 

For the sake of keeping this post short, I’ll stick to social media content because it’s easy to show how it’s changed over the last 30+ days. Blake Lawrence, the founder of Opendorse, posted last week the percentage difference in Twitter content from before most of the major sports closed down compared to the current state. They saw athletes in almost every major sport post anywhere from 19-181% more content on Twitter now than they did before, and a larger spike in video content than photo content. 

This is no doubt similar to most industries, so that leads me to one thing I’ve been thinking about over the past few weeks as it relates to content and how brands can continue to engage with their communities. One major shift I’ve seen is the shift of content creation from the brand to the consumer. What I mean by that is before the pandemic hit, brands were in charge of creating the majority of the content you see in any of their channels. Today, that has shifted to us as individuals! 

The Adidas #hometeam campaign is a prime example of this shift and a pretty easy one for them to pivot to because of their previous investment in their community and the individual content creator level (I could rave for days about Adidas community strategy). 

One thing to think about: With this increase in content, be thoughtful about what you’re posting and which channels you’re using. Quality is far more important than quantity right now and your community is far louder than you are as a brand.