Brkaway scheduled the delivery of 5000 UGC Videos in a year - Here's what we learned

Do you ever wake up knowing you have so many things to do but quickly realize you have absolutely no idea in what order things needed to be tackled? For the better part of 2022 we were there.

The daily ritual of getting your day started by figuring out what was behind schedule, what was due today, and what we could let slip was exhausting. Over the course of the last year and a half we’ve facilitated the delivery of thousands of videos and through trial and error, several cups of coffee, and a few tears, we learned what worked and didn't in the UGC content scheduling process.

The importance of structure and expectations

When Brkaway started, a structured content submission process was non-existent. Brands knew the number of videos they were getting but didn’t know how or when these videos were going to be delivered. We worked out of email, Google Calendars, Google Sheets, Monday.com, Asana, Click-Up, Notion, Slack, Microsoft Teams and at one point we were receiving daily text messages from Brands! It was chaotic and I’m working up a sweat just writing this down.  

Eventually we moved over to a structured system of google sheets and we began walking our brands and creators through our submission process along with timelines prior to kicking off. The process was far from perfect but it allowed the Brkaway team to manage nearly 1000 due dates at any given point in time.

Schedules are fluid, $h!t happens - adjust

Whether it’s a google calendar, a page on Later, a Notion template, a whiteboard pinned to your wall, a note buried in the 100 other notes you have on your iPhone, or a good old fashioned journal, at some point every social media manager or creator has put together a calendar and thought “Well, that’s it!! Everything is carved in stone and now in perfect order!” 

In the world of content creation, it’s inevitable that this sentiment doesn’t last more than a whole 10 minutes. Things happen. Shipping gets delayed, the weather doesn’t cooperate so lighting is bad, an approval gets held up, creative block hits, someone gets sick, revisions are requested, or your car gets stolen and your phone was in the backseat - we’ve seen it all.

It’s important that when delays happen you adjust your schedule accordingly. If you let it slip, dates no longer reflect reality and the schedule becomes meaningless. Expectations between brand and creator become misaligned and you're back at square one where no one knows what to expect. It may seem like work to manage your calendar (unless you're on Brkaway) but when push comes to shove, it’s worth it.

Approvals are key, but so is timely feedback. Bake it in!

In the early days of Brkaway we learned a valuable lesson. A Brkaway creator was seconds away from posting a video that contained a not so PG quote from Mean Girls. Although we’re all big fans of Regina George, not everybody thinks she’s so fetch. When creating content on behalf of a brand, approvals matter. As a creator you always want to make sure you’re delivering content that matches what a brand is looking for. 

On the flip side, timely approvals and clear feedback are just as important. As a brand approver you want to ensure you let the creator know if they are good to move forward in a timely manner. This keeps content flowing and is respectful of the creator’s time. When providing feedback, it’s crucial you give clear direction to ensure the creator knows what to adjust moving forward. 

An approval process, no matter how light, is essential. It’s a crucial step that makes sure the creator knows what to deliver and the brand is getting what they're looking for. Baking an approval process with revision request timelines into a content schedule is vital to keeping everyone on the same page.

At Brkaway our goal is to make it easy for brands and creators to work together to produce incredible video content. Through observing tens of thousands of brand and creator interactions these are a few of the many lessons we’ve learned. We strive to always learn more so if you have any recommendations, you know where to find us!