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How to Build a Swipe File (4 Easy Steps)
Discover what a swipe file is, how to build one, and why it’s a crucial resource for writers, creatives, and marketers.
Are you in a creative rut and need new ideas for your marketing campaigns? Or perhaps you want to step up your copywriting game with amazing email subject lines and social media captions? If so, building a swipe file could be the solution you need.
This robust research tool that can help inspire, inform, and ultimately improve your content and scale your business. In this guide, we'll explain the ins and outs of swipe files and show you how to build one in just four easy steps.
What is a Swipe File?
A swipe file is a collection of marketing materials that have caught your eye or piqued your interest. Typically created during the research phase of a project, it serves as a source of inspiration and a reference for future content creation. Think of it as your personal library of ideas and resources that you want to refine and perfect, whether it’s:
- Digital advertisements
- Blog post titles
- Email subject lines
- Social media posts
- Landing page designs
- Article headlines
The content of your swipe file will depend on what you’re researching. For instance, if you’re struggling to write email subject lines, you can add successful examples with high open rates to your swipe file. If you’re looking for design inspiration, you can add screenshots of aesthetically pleasing websites or social media posts.
Remember, a swipe file is meant to inspire, not to plagiarise. It’s a tool to help you develop your own unique ideas, so always give credit where credit is due. Whether digital or physical, your swipe file should serve as a starting point for creativity, not a shortcut for copying.
Why Use a Swipe File?
The beauty of swipe files is that they can be used by anybody, regardless of experience level or industry. Since most of us aren't creative machines, having a swipe file to refer to can be incredibly helpful.
Let's explore why it's worth having a swipe file:
Helps You Come Up With New Ideas
Swipe files are essential resource inventories, meaning they serve as the perfect starting point for any project. They offer a rich source of inspiration by showcasing successful strategies employed by others, sparking new ideas, and encouraging creative thinking.
Offers a Peak into Competitor Strategies and Industry Trends
Sometimes, you'll want to use your competitor's tactics as the foundation for your own marketing strategies. With a swipe file, you can easily collect and analyse your competitor's content to see their most successful strategies.
For instance, if you're creating a Facebook ad for your clothing store, you can discover which ad formats, tone of voice and visual elements work best for your competitors. This can help you stay on top of industry trends and ensure you're not falling behind in terms of creativity and strategy.
Streamlines The Research Process
Swipe files help to organise ideas and information. Without these folders, you'd have to sort through heaps of information from different sources each time you need inspiration. With a swipe file, all information is readily available and accessible in one place, streamlining your research process.
Helps to Brainstorm Ideas Amongst Team Members
Swipe files, especially ones accessible online, can be shared with your team members for brainstorming purposes. This is especially helpful when collaborating on new content ideas or campaigns. Everyone can contribute their own findings and insights to the swipe file, creating a diverse collection of ideas.
The Best Swipe File Tools You Can Use Today
For the sake of efficiency, it's best to use digital swipe file tools. These are some of the most highly recommended tools that you can add to your marketing arsenal:
MagicBrief
MagicBrief is an advertising platform that lets you save ads from Facebook, Audience Network, Instagram, and TikTok with its Chrome extension. These can then be organised into ad boards for better organisation and used for storyboards, competitive analysis and more.
Users can save ads from external sources or within the platform itself:
External sources: These sources include transparency tools like the Facebook Ad Library, or TikTok Creative Centre. With the MagicBrief Chrome Extension, you can hover over any ad and save it directly to your swipe file.
MagicBrief Library: The MagicBrief ad library offers a collection of all saved ads from its users. These include various ad formats from different social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Featuring over 5,000,000 ads from 25,000+ brands, it's currently the largest library of ads to date.
Pinterest, while not specifically designed for swipe files, is still a viable choice for creating one. Like MagicBrief, you can create boards to save visual content, whether it’s a new product design, website layout, or a catchy headline.
One great feature of Pinterest is its home feed, which displays content based on boards you follow. This simplifies the research process as you'll be constantly exposed to content you find relevant and useful.
Evernote
If you're a copywriter or anyone who writes a lot of text-based content, consider Evernote. With its web clipper extension, you can save articles, web pages, or PDFs, ensuring it's not lost if the original content is removed or deleted. Screenshots can also be saved, including just the parts you need.
The primary drawback of Evernote is it's inability to save videos, whether it’s YouTube tutorials or a competitor's ad. For advertisers or video creators, a tool like MagicBrief would be a better option.
How to Create a Swipe File
Step 1: Decide on What Type of Marketing Materials You Need
First, you need to identify what it is you want in your swipe file. Naturally, this will depend on your industry, marketing goals or simply what interests you. Whether it's ads, email subject lines, landing pages or social media posts, make a list of the types of materials you want to save for future reference.
. For example, if you're a graphic designer, you may want to include:
- Website layouts
- Colour schemes
- Typography inspirations
- Logo designs
Or, if you're a Facebook ecommerce store, you may want to include:
- High-performing competitor ads
- Highly relevant and compelling visuals from social media videos
- Email marketing campaigns from other ecommerce stores
- Landing page designs
If you have no idea on what to add to your swipe file, ask yourself what parts of your marketing campaign you are struggling with. For example, if your social media posts lack engagement, you can start adding viral social media posts to your swipe file for inspiration.
Step 2: Start Collecting Resources for Your Swipe File
Next, it's time to gather all inspirational sources for your swipe file. However, these sources won't just magically land on your lap. You have to actively search for them. But, don't worry! These resources can be found by doing the following:
- Emails: Subscribe to email lists to similar brands and businesses to receive their newsletters, promotions, and updates.
- Infographics: Use platforms like Pinterest or Google Search to find infographics in your niche.
- Social media posts: Follow competitor or industry leader pages and see what they regularly post.
- Landing Pages: Visit websites of top-performing companies and analyse any landing page elements you could incorporate into your own. Screen capture or save them as a PDF file.
- Blog posts/articles: Use RSS feeds or Google Alerts to stay updated with industry news and articles from websites you deem valuable.
- Videos/Podcasts: Subscribe to your niche's YouTube channels, podcasts, and use YouTube downloaders like SaveFrom.net to save videos for offline use, or rely on screen recording software to capture content.
- Design templates: Use platforms like Canva, Creative Market, or Envato Elements to find design templates that apply to your project.
How to Gather and Save Social Media Ads for Inspirational Purposes
Luckily, you won't have to look too far for social media ads to add to your swipe file. Platforms like the Facebook Ad Library, Twitter Ads Transparency Center, TikTok Ad Library, or TikTok Creative Centre all provide searchable databases of inactive and active advertisements.
To find ads on these platforms, simply type in a keyword related to your industry or target audience, and you will be presented with various ad examples. You can also filter by date, region, or type of ad (video, image, carousel).
Step 3: Find Marketing Materials You Want in Your Swipe File
Different swipe files allow you to save different types of content. However, this guide will focus on saving digital ads as they are the most commonly used in marketing campaigns:
- Install the MagicBrief Chrome Extension
Start by installing the MagicBrief Chrome extension.
With it, you'll be able to instantly save ads from transparency tools like Facebook Ad Library, Twitter Ads Transparency Center, and TikTok Ad Library. However, for the extension to work, you'll need to log in to your MagicBrief account.
If you don't have an account, sign up for a 5-day free trial to test the tool and see if it's right for you before committing to a subscription.
- Head Over to Your Preferred Ad Platform
With your Chrome extension installed, it's time to find your resources for inspiration. When looking for ads, discover ones that are similar to your brand, product, or service. For best results, save a combination of different formats, i.e. messenger and banner ads from different platforms.
Step 4: Save Resources into Your Swipe File
On your ads search results page, click on the 'Save ad' button embedded on each ad. This action will trigger the MagicBrief pop-up that allows you to save ads into your swipe files. However, if you only have one swipe file, or board, just click on 'Save Ad.'
With your ads saved, it’s important to keep them well-organised for easy retrieval. MagicBrief offers powerful features like custom tagging and automatic ad trait tagging, which streamline the process of categorising your ads. This functionality ensures that you can immediately find what you're looking for, even as your swipe file grows with ads from multiple campaigns.
Additionally, you can share your swipe file with team members or clients for collaboration and feedback.
Additional Considerations When Choosing the Right Swipe File Tool
When choosing your swipe file tool, there are other considerations you may want to keep in mind:
Ease of Use
Swipe files aren't complicated tools, since they primarily serve to store your gathered resources. As such, you want a swipe file that says exactly what it does. Look for tools that have a simple interface and easy navigation to make the process of saving ads seamless.
Also consider where you'll be using your swipe file the most. If you're constantly on the go, then your swipe file tool should be mobile-friendly. If not, by the time you get home, that amazing ad, headline, or website may have slipped your mind.
Tagging and Search Functionality
It’s not unusual for swipe files to become cluttered with a large variety of content, making it harder to identify and retrieve what you need. In this case, a swipe file tool with tagging and search functionality is essential. This allows you to quickly locate specific content by simply typing in a keyword or tag.
For example, if you have 100 ads, you should be able to tag them by industry, target audience, product type, or campaign theme. This makes it much easier to find relevant resources exactly when you need them.
Analytical Tools
Many swipe file platforms today, particularly for digital marketers, offer analytical tools. These features display relevant ads metrics that help to refine and optimise your campaigns.
MagicBrief, for example, uses AI to score ads based on script quality, longevity, and other factors, so you get inspired by only the very best ads in your industry. Furthermore, users can link their Facebook ad accounts to their MagicBrief account, which makes it easy to analyse and compare the success of different ads and campaigns.
Media Support
Great swipe file tools allow users to include a variety of media types, not just one. While saving links can be useful, they often expire and may not be accessible when you need them. Therefore, it’s important to choose a tool that lets you save the actual content directly within the swipe file, ensuring it doesn't expire or get lost.
When choosing a swipe file, select one that allows you to save images, videos, and audio files. This way, you can easily access and refer to the original content whenever needed.
Collaboration Features
Who uses swipe files the most? Digital marketers, content creators, and copywriters. These professionals, while they may work alone most of the time, are often grouped in teams to execute large campaigns.
Therefore, your chosen swipe file should be accessible to anyone on your team, allowing for seamless collaboration and sharing of ideas, comments, and feedback in real-time. This will help you get diverse perspectives on your ideas and improve the quality of your content.
Organisation and Customisation Options
Chances are, at some point, you'll require more than one swipe file, whether it’s for different clients or different ad campaigns you're managing. In this case, your swipe file tool should have the capability to organise and customise files into categories or folders. This will help you stay organised, save time, and keep your resources easily accessible.
Final Thoughts
Remember that a swipe file isn't a stangant tool. As you gather more ideas and inspiration, keep adding to it and updating it. This will ensure that you always have a pool of creative resources at your disposal whenever you need them.
Additionally, don't limit yourself to just collecting content from others. Use your own ideas and creations as well. After all, the best swipe files are those that are unique and tailored to your own needs and interests. With the right swipe file tool and regular updates, you'll be well on your way to creating killer content that stands out from the rest. Happy swiping!
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