Welcome to Codes of Creativity! Made in partnership with Lenovo and Intel, this series spotlights six members of the Dazed community. Ranging from different parts of the company, each essay gives insight into their work days, creative practices and top tips to make it in their field.

Danil Boparai is the Content Strategy Director at Dazed Media, working on all social content across the company.

Since joining Dazed Media, my role as Content Strategy Director has involved everything from ideating, planning and developing social content to managing everything that runs across the company’s social media channels – with the aim of increasing our audience share, driving user engagement and increasing brand affinity. I would say the role sits at the intersection of creativity, data and strategy, with involvement across the digital and creative output of pretty much every part of the business – from how we shoot videos with cover stars for the print magazine, to how we cover fashion week, run editorial campaigns across social or promote Dazed club on our channels.

DAY IN THE LIFE 

My job is half process, half chaos! My day-to-day process involves firstly meeting with my team of editors in the morning to map out the day ahead and delegate creative production on our content calendar, talent outreach and administrative tasks. Once their day is mapped out I have to ensure I’m available to them throughout the day to support with any queries or requests.

The next step is to go through emails and other work messages, this is essential to ensure I’m across what’s happening in the business and aware of external requests that may be of interest. Once that initial housekeeping is done, my daily process really can vary from developing style guides to ensure brand consistency, managing content workflows, researching industry trends, looking into audience patterns in response to our content or attending video shoots for social content – the list goes on! 

The steps I need to take to make sure this all gets done generally comes down to staying organised – I list my day-to-day tasks by priority in my trusted Notes app which mirrors between iPhone and Macbook via iCloud, checking them off as I go. I also utilise different productivity apps such as Forecast, 1Password and ChatGPT to ensure I keep my and my team’s workload streamlined and balanced, to make sure we are achieving our goals while not feeling burnt out.

LEARN DIGITAL SKILLS EARLY

My practical advice would be to learn as many digital creative skills as possible – you do not even need to pay for this, it can all be learnt on YouTube with a simple search. Javier Mercedes is a great place to start if looking to edit and animate video in Premiere Pro and After Effects. PiXimperfect is another amazing free resource for Photoshop and Lightroom tutorials. Whether video editing, grading, graphic design, or motion graphics – being a master of none is more valuable than ever in an industry where audiences have shorter attention spans and more choices than ever. All creatives are now at the mercy of algorithms to help promote their work – so why box yourself in with one skill when a new platform could arrive tomorrow that requires basic knowledge of others?

YOUR NETWORK IS YOUR NET WORTH

Outside of skill development, networking is key. If, like me, you struggle with approaching people at industry events – use social media. I’ve met some of my closest collaborators simply by striking up conversations with like-minded people online. Often, discussing someone’s creative process behind work they’ve shared online is a good way to break the ice with someone who might live a million miles away. Without a network, you’ll never have options you need to fall back on when you’re in a time of need – and that is often in the creative industries!

BE PREPARED FOR CHAOS

As mentioned above, I think to be successful within the world of content or social media, you need to be prepared for chaos – social never sleeps! There can be some days where you get thrown completely off track; so you need to be nimble and reactive. Prepare to do a lot of mental gymnastics on the fly to have the ability to get projects back on track to meet deadlines.

WORK WITH YOUR TEAM

It’s also essential to utilise your colleagues and team if you have them – it’s easy to get caught up in having creative control and taking on too much responsibility, but this is also where blindspots can occur. 

HAVE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

Also in the world of content, diversity of thought is essential – various perspectives can only help to hone and improve the quality or impact of your work. So be open to communicative collaboration in all capacities. 

FINAL KEY TOP TIPS

Aside from the above, if I had just five tips for young creatives looking to build a career in social media or content, they would be:

1. Learn as many practical skills related to content creation as possible. Understanding how every element is created is the best way to have the full 360 knowledge of how to create work that is engaging, eye-catching and delivered on time.

2. Use a content calendar! At Dazed, the social team are all plugged into Asana, who offer free access for individual users. Here we are able to map out our content calendar and share different assets for multiple channels including Instagram, Tikok and YouTube. Finally, Nina Lyre’s Hot Art Directors Don’t Gatekeep is an amazing series worth saving in-app as she frequently shares free creative web tools and other resources that can aid your creative output.

3. Research is vital. Whether audience research, so you can understand what content your followers react best to, or platform research, so you have an understanding of where different content should live and what the restrictions are – without research you’ll be creating and posting content in the dark, making it a waste of time.

4. Be open-minded. The world of social media moves at rapid speed. Be open to industry trends, new strategies competitors are employing and emerging talent to collaborate with.

5. Look at the data! Despite the creative nature of content creation, it’s a results-based business. Use the numbers to teach you what’s going right and what’s going wrong. For example; when is the optimal time to post based on engagement data and audience location? What is the average length of a reel that performs best against your benchmark? Do your followers engage more with single posts or carousels?  Go deeper than just likes, various forms of engagement such as saves and shares can teach you which of your output is having an impact on your audience and what’s missing the mark. If you don’t do this, again you’re just sticking your head in the sand and wasting your time.