Social media is a lucrative discovery channel for the beauty industry worldwide. A large percentage of beauty buyers reported that they find out about new brands and products primarily through ads or updates from brand accounts on social media.

Social media's ability to connect brands and companies directly to their consumer bases enables 2-way conversations—as well as expediting commerce with instant checkouts—giving beauty enthusiasts even more access to brands that they follow online.

Cutting through a sea of messaging in social media feeds is no simple feat. Staying front of mind with their consumers requires brands to regularly post content that are visual-based, representative of the target audience, and cohesively curated to present their product ranges while highlighting benefits. The only question is - how many photos and video content do you need?

Quarterly quantities of photo and video content skincare brands are using in 2021

To find out how many assets brands need per quarter we reviewed all of the digital ads from Facebook and Instagram, as well as all organic posts, for five fast-growing skincare brands.

We tallied up the numbers of photo and video assets posted and advertised by these brands during the three-month period between January 1st and March 31st, 2021 to determine our yearly averages.

Here's what we found:

Glow recipe

• 65 Facebook and Instagram ads created from 10 different video assets
• 72 Instagram posts (63 photos and 9 carousels)
• 23 Vertical Videos (8 Reels & 15 IGTV)

Total visual assets used per quarter: 33 videos and 90 images

Tata Harper

• 10 Facebook and Instagram ads created from 1 video and 6 images
• 70 Instagram posts (45 photos, 12 carousels, and 10 videos)
• 40 Vertical Videos (32 Reels and 8 IGTV)

Total visual assets used per quarter: 51 Videos and 75 photos

Laneige

• 110 Facebook and Instagram ads created from 9 different video assets
• 100 Instagram posts (62 photos, 8 carousels, and 29 videos)
• 8 Vertical Videos (All Reels)

Total visual assets used per quarter: 46 videos and 78 photos

Tatcha

• 58 Facebook and Instagram created from 15 different videos 12 photos
• 54 Instagram posts (41 photos, 12 carousels, and 1 video)
• 29 Vertical Videos (23 Reels and 6 IGTV)

Total visual assets used per quarter: 45 videos and 77 photos

Kora Organics

• 92 Facebook and Instagram created from 15 photos and 7 videos
• 60 Instagram posts  (45 photos, 38 carousels, and 12 videos)
• 13 Vertical Videos (9 Reels & 4 IGTV)

Total visual assets used per quarter: 32 videos and 136 photos

Results

When we added up the quantity of photos and videos from the above accounts, averaged it out, then multiplied by 4 we came to the following yearly totals:

• 165 videos needed per year
• 365 photos needed per year (interesting coincidence!)

Note: Where there was a carousel post used, we used a multiplier of 2 photos. We also considered organic posts on Facebook and TikTok but concluded it was generally the same assets replicated across these additional channels.

Discover what visual trends skincare brands use and which type of content performs best.

[#cta]

How to source and produce enough visual content

Now that you know you need hundreds of photos and videos each year to stay competitive, how will you produce enough of them?

We found that the popular skincare brands we reviewed used content from a variety of sources to fill their content calendars. Here are the three primary ways to produce your content

In-house

The traditional way of creating branded content is to do it yourself, either with an in-house team or via a creative agency. Due to the sheer volume of content required, using professional services can make this a costly exercise, and the results are often over-produced for an audience hungry for snackable content.

Having a variety of content helps prevent your audience from getting bored of seeing the same types of images or falling victim to ad fatigue, however in-house options often have limited access to new locations and sets

Influencer or blogger partnerships

Beauty experts that have grown their own engaged audiences are a great source of socially relevant content. After all, they know what works for themselves! This type of content may not always be visually cohesive with your brand identity as bloggers and influencers create content for their own followers and not yours. Partnerships with influencers to source content can also be expensive as you are paying for their personal networks and distribution as opposed to just the production of content.

From your customers

It's great to see your brand from the perspective of those who love it! You can encourage your fans and customers to share content featuring your products through branded hashtags. Inviting your brand community to participate in your story by sharing or regramming their posts will excite them and encourage others to create content for you as well.

While it seems generally accepted to repost customer content on social channels, we recommend always asking if it's okay first. You also cannot repurpose your customer content onto ads or your website without getting the creator's explicit permission. Otherwise, you may find yourself in copyright infringement!

Content creation platforms

There are a number of online content creation platforms (like Creatively Squared!) that have been developed to solve this exact problem for brands. These platforms have access to a wide number of pre-vetted content creators that are experienced in brand photography.

Brands using platforms like Creatively Squared can save significant amounts of time by not having to individually review, book, brief and manage multiple creators. In built support and quality control takes out all the hassle making it super simple to scale up production and get access to a variety of assets that your audience will love.

Key takeaways

You now need a large volume of visual content to stay competitive online. Audiences are engaged by a variety of visual assets in photo and video form used on different channels.

Producing enough content to satisfy online audiences is a challenge and the best results come from partnering with those that are experienced in providing digitally native content.

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