Content Guidelines

Each mont, we aim for:

• • 2 links

  • 2 photos

  • 1 videos

  • 2 illustrations

ASK OURSELVES:

• • • • Are there any major events coming up?

      • What are some areas we’ve wanted to cover but haven’t been able to dedicate a full story to?

      • Are there any appearances we’ve had that we haven’t shared yet?

      • Are there any outstanding quotes you’ve seen in stories or that sources have told you (or another reporter)?

      • What areas have we been neglecting? Is there social-sized info we could share about those?

All media must be in line with Matter's brand guidelines.

Tailor Media to Each Platform

• • INSTAGRAM:

    • Photos —

      • • Should be square at 1080x1080px

    • Videos —

      • • Can be up to 60 seconds long

        • Bitrate of up to 5Mbps

        • Frame rates must be 23fps or more

    • Graphics —

      • • Should be square at 1080x1080px

        • Less than 5MB in order to upload to Hootsuite

    • GIFs —

      • • Not allowed :(

  • TWITTER:

    • Photos —

      • • Should be rectangular at 1200x628px

    • Videos —

      • • Supports up to 1280px wide

    • Graphics —

      • • Should be rectangular at 1200x628px

        • Less than 5MB in order to upload to Hootsuite

    • GIFs —

      • • Allowed

  • FACEBOOK:

    • Photos —

      • • Can be either square (1080x1080px) or rectangular (1200x628px)

    • Videos —

      • • Up to 240 minutes long

        • Supports almost all size ratios

        • Live videos get most engagement

    • Graphics —

      • • Can be either square (1080x1080px) or rectangular (1200x628px)

        • Less than 5MB in order to upload to Hootsuite

    • GIFs —

      • • Allowed

Use Common Assets

• • • • Magazine texture, ripped paper, newspaper, tape, fractured

Media Quick Reference / Branding Info:

• OUR BRAND IS

  • • • a bit grungy/zine-y

      • brutalist mixed with memphis

• • Our visual brand is not:

    • • pretty / cutesy

      • overly clean

• COLOR

• • • Only use two of our colors in a graphic unless absolutely necessary. You can add in secondary colors if needed.

      • Purple: #6d2563

      • Teal: #005b52

      • Gold: #dd9910

      • Rose: #f7cac9

      • Black: #000000

      • White: #ffffff

• • TYPOGRAPHY

    • • Always use our fonts:

        • Roboto

        • Lato

        • Bitter

  • PHOTOS

    • Sometimes look better when made B&W or greyscale when used in tandem with other graphic elements that are colorful

  • GRAPHIC TEMPLATES

    • Use the below templates for posts when applicable. To use the templates, click the link associated with the platform you need a graphic for, click the bottom-left buttons and click "Make a copy". From there, you can edit the template to fit whatever you need.

Tool

• I use Instagram to make the reels - if you do it in there without other tools, it really does go fastest and it’s a great tool. It has a green screen feature and everything. Yes, you can make prettier on-screen text and captions in other programs, but the ease and time doing it in reels cuts down is helpful. Like I said, happy to help if you need it. If you’d rather edit the video in another program, that is acceptable, so long as the specs are right:

Aspect ratio

• vertical video (16:9, ig reel/story size)

• Pro tip: we can use Canva to resize 9:16 vids to 16:9... choosing Video and then 16:9 ratio and uploading the video allows you to resize and drag it to exactly where you need it. Export and voila!

Length

• up to 60 seconds in length (the shorter the better, according to the algorithm...but we don't want to sacrifice context/depth and we often are trying to get a lot of info across in a short period of time

Style

• cut tight - don't include dead audio, long transitions, etc., we want to be getting a lot across visually/with text/and sometimes audio in some tightly cut together clips. It's okay if the cuts feel abrupt - thought that's unusual in traditional video editing, it isn't in reels

Closed Captions

• Don’t put on screen words or captions on the very bottom because that gets covered up by the video info…put above the bottom 1/5 or put them at the top (or middle if it doesn’t cover up the visuals).

Text on screen

• 1. 1. 1. usually reels use text on screen to tell the story of what's happening in the video and what the point of it is. For this video, the text on screen over top the protest footage would communicate things like ‘who, what, when, where, why’ of the action

• Even though this isn’t an explainer vid, if you can get across some of the “why” behind the campaign and any criticisms/demands they are making, that’s ideal. Giving people an idea of what

• Make captions and on screen text black/grey/white (unless it's possible to do our brand colors)

Music / audio

• 1. 1. 1. It’s okay for the video to have just some explainer type audio (in the past, I just searched for explainer music in the IG reels music library) and no other audio. However, it’s also okay to include original audio only or a combo

Connect to our content

• Pointing to our longer form content related to this subject is a good thing, if we have it. Ways you can do it:

• Simply added to text on screen

• You could appear on screen at the end and tell the audience that

• You can add a voiceover to the end

• Could even make a graphic or have the articles behind you on the green screen

Post copy/caption

• If you can draft the caption/copy to go with the video, that would be great.

Cover photo

• Note: I can make a “cover graphic” for Instagram’s timeline cover thumbnail. Refer to our most recent IG posts when looking at the profile grid view to see what i mean