Creating content with your kids

If you have children at home with you, especially during the school holidays, you may feel you have hardly any time to create content, whether it is a blog post or just a few social media posts. Therefore, have you considered getting them involved with helping you to create content?

If you have teenagers in the house then you have a ‘goldmine’ of natural content creators and social media pros. If you have younger children, then you have expert video advisers!

*** Before I go any further, please remember the safety of your children and the use of the internet should always be paramount, and only include them in what you feel comfortable and is appropriate to do so ***

Here are five ideas to help your content creation to be engaging and exciting by getting your kids involved.

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Ask your teenager how they view the world 

Eeeek! This may be a dangerous question or may be met with simply a ‘grunt’…but try having a chat with your older children about their use of social media. A teenager walks in to a room and sees Instagram and TikTok opportunities every where. I still find it so difficult if I see something funny or enchanting to whip out my phone and stick it on Instagram, and I never don’t post more than once a day. I know I should and could but something holds me back. Many teenagers don’t have this barrier or fear – they have been brought up with social media and learned many of its tricks and ways to get both likes, engagement and comments.

Talk to them about your business and what visual opportunities they can see that may be you can’t.

Ask them about hashtags too. I worked with someone in his twenties, recently, and his hashtags were so inventive and on message – they really helped the reach of our content.

Get your children to check your website

I was told by a web designer that you should imagine your website is viewed by someone who is very drunk. They’ll scroll around, they won’t take much in at first glance and they’ll probably forget what they read! When you think about it like that…how clear and easy is it to navigate your website? Now, you could ask a friend to take to the gin for a few hours (!) and then check through your website and tell you what they noticed…or perhaps not…

Instead, how about asking your children to look at your website? The average reading age level for a broadsheet newspaper is around 12, and 9 for a tabloid. With this in mind, if your child is 9 or above then they should be able to understand your copy. Can they? Ask them if they find anything confusing or if they would want to know more.

My children are 9 and 11 and can quite happily navigate a website, via a mobile phone, tablet or desktop, so it is a great time to get them to check your menus and links. You could create a game and ask them if they can find a certain product or a certain blog post (especially, if they can read relatively well). How quickly and easily did they find it? How easy did they find it to read the website copy?

I know it is unlikely that children are your target audience, but it is fascinating asking children what they see and think. And if your children’s education is anything like mine, they are now taught lots about parts of speech, grammar and editing, so they can be perfect copyeditors!

Let your children loose with your camera phone

If you have something super expensive, perhaps consider the child’s own tablet (if they have one) or even a traditional digital camera, that you may have. Then, give your children the ‘recording device’, give them a brief and see what they create.

My kids are so natural on video. They have been doing private video diaries and creating dance videos since homschooling and it is amazing how they can chat directly to camera for 3-5 minutes with no problems at all. Even more scary is my son’s ability to sign off a video with calls to action, like ‘don’t forget to like and share’ or ‘comment below with your own suggestions’ – I’m blaming Joe Wicks!

You may not choose to use the content or share it publicly, but it can be wonderful for opening up ideas.

Keeping your children behind the camera can still be fun too. Ask them to take some photos of you to use as new headshots. You could have some real fun through the holidays finding some good backgrounds and taking some shots or recording videos.

Remember, as my ethos goes for all content creation…HAVE FUN!

Ask them to film you too, perhaps simply working.

If you have older children, why not ask them to interview you? They can ask the questions (which you have worked through together) from behind the camera and you can answer. You can always edit out their voice when you put together the final video.

Many teenagers study media and photography, as well as video editing, at school and college, so now is the time to tap in to their expertise…more on this below.

Use your children’s expertise in video editing

I have been blown away by the amazing videos children can create – adding illustrations and graphics, titles, slides, transitions, etc., using free apps.

I have seen the most professional looking music videos and presentations created by children of friends and family. They are experts at transitions and syncing.

Ask your children about what they can create for you. With the growing popularity of Tik Tok and if they have spent any time on You Tube, they are probably brimming with ideas. Whether it is time lapse or making clever gifs, talk to your children about what could work for your business and perhaps investigate the apps they and their friends use and learn about them together.

Ask your children questions about your business

This is a bit of a fun one to finish…and great if you have very young children. Why not ask them some questions about your business and what you do as a job? I am sure you have seen similar questionnaires on social media and the responses are very funny, so depending on what you ask you could get some great content for a social media post.

Here are some sample questions you could use:

• What do I do as a job?
• Do you think it is an important job?
• Who do I help?
• What superhero am I most like?
• Who do I work with?
• What would you like to do when you are a grown-up?

Try to ask open questions so that you don’t just get ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers.

If you don’t want to use the answers in a social media post, you may find the process inspires some interesting blog posts about what you do, how you do it and why you do it.

In all seriousness, it might also be a great time to talk to your kids about your business and what you do. You may be having to juggle work and childcare and this may help them to understand how important your work is to you and why you still need to work whilst they are home. I hope my children know how passionate I am about my work and how I try to find ways to help people share how wonderful their businesses are. Passion feels like a really important driver to me at the moment.

I can’t wait to see what the kids create

If you find these suggestions useful and appropriate for your business and content creation, do let me know. And don’t forget to tag me in social media posts you create together – @thecontentconsultancy – I would absolutely love to see what you and your children come up with.

Have fun creating content with your kids during the holidays!