Save time by batching your social media content

Marketing is one of my favourite topics and if you’re in business you simply can’t escape it. Without marketing nobody will find you. 

Makes it sound pretty dramatic but it’s true. Even telling your friends and family about your business is a form of marketing. 

In the past 10 years so much has changed in the marketing landscape. With the rise of social media platforms and digital opportunities it can feel like a bit of a minefield for business owners. 

Social media is a great opportunity for businesses to market themselves, but it can also feel overwhelming and it’s not always easy to stand out from the crowd. 

If you’ve read up on what’s what in social media and Googled how often you should post you’ll find a number of different answers. 

In my opinion, quality is much more important than quantity. Posting for the sake of posting isn’t really going to do you any favours. You’re much better off focusing on creating quality content and post less frequently than simply slap a picture on Instagram without any meaningful caption. 

So how do you create content without the overwhelm and time suck? 

Tune in to hear more 🎧

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Episode about finding your ideal audience
Episode about why you need an email list
Leonie Dawson’s course about marketing without social media (affiliate link)
Book a free game plan session
Connect with me on Instagram

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Website: www.newschoolofmarketing.com
Facebook: @newschoolofmarketing
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Instagram: @bianca_mckenzie

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the new school of marketing podcast. I’m so excited that you’re here to listen and learn all about the awesome world of online marketing. 

Marketing is one of my favourite topics and if you’re in business you simply can’t escape it. Without marketing nobody will find you. 

Makes it sound pretty dramatic but it’s true. Even telling your friends and family about your business is a form of marketing. 

In the past 10 years so much has changed in the marketing landscape. With the rise of social media platforms and digital opportunities it can feel like a bit of a minefield for business owners. 

Social media is a great opportunity for businesses to market themselves, but it can also feel overwhelming and it’s not always easy to stand out from the crowd. 

If you’ve read up on what’s what in social media and Googled how often you should post you’ll find a number of different answers. 

In my opinion, quality is much more important than quantity. Posting for the sake of posting isn’t really going to do you any favours. You’re much better off focusing on creating quality content and post less frequently than simply slap a picture on Instagram without any meaningful caption. 

So how do you create content without the overwhelm and time suck? 

Because let’s be honest, as soon as we sit down to create content and start scrolling for inspiration we’ll go down the rabbit hole and lose hours.

There are multiple ways to go about creating content, and I don’t have anything against ad-hoc content creation although it often becomes inconsistent or it takes you out of the flow. That’s why batching is so great.

I’ve used batching for a long time. I used it for writing blogs back when I wrote blogs, I use it for my podcast episodes (most of the time) and I use it for my social media content (most of the time). 

BK – before kids – I often managed to create content for a whole month but right now that’s too much of a stretch. Especially with a 4 month old baby on my lap, so I aim for weekly schedules. 

I have to be honest with you, there are weeks where I struggle and it doesn’t happen or I fall off the batching bandwagon. I used to beat myself up about it but I stopped doing that. This is my life right now and if I can’t post on social media for a few days then I’m ok with that. If you’re in the same position, just know it’s ok. Get back on when you can. 

I think I find it harder now because of the introduction of reels and Instagram changing its format. It takes quite a bit of time to create a reel and with a little baby around it’s actually quite a challenge whereas when it was simply image posts I found it easier to plan ahead.

Anyway, back to our topic. Batching is still an amazing way to create content and save yourself some time. 

The way I batch content is by sitting down Sunday evening or Monday morning and writing down what I want to focus on that week. It’s mostly tied in with my podcast schedule and launch calendar so I don’t have to worry or think about my topics too much. 

I create my podcast schedule at the beginning of the year and largely stick to it. Sometimes things get shifted around and I keep spots open for podcast guests, but a lot of it is pre-planned so I know what I’m going to talk about for the year. Then when I sit down at the start of the week I focus on creating content that ties in with the podcast and try to write as many of my captions as possible upfront. 

The only content that’s created organically and on the fly is my weekend content because I never know what we’re going to do on the weekend, plus I don’t film everything or take photos of everything. So sometimes I’ll share our family outings on the weekend but sometimes I just enjoy my weekend and don’t share anything. 

Before you start your weekly or monthly content creation though, you need to think about how it fits in with your overall goals and where you want your business to go. 

Your first step is to sit down and do some goal setting. 
Think about where you want to be in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months and beyond.

Also look at your offers and whether these offers will take you where you want to go.

Next, look at your audience. Who are they, what do they want, what are their dreams, goals and aspirations? What are their frustrations? If you’re unsure about who your audience is, listen back to episode 

Next is your message. Determine what it is that you are trying to say and how. The easiest way to formulate your message is to listen to your audience and say what they say. Speak directly to their fears, frustrations, dreams and aspirations. 

Now we’re venturing into content creation territory. Now that you know who you’re talking to and what you need to be saying to them,  you can map out a content plan. 

You can start grouping your topics into educational posts, behind the scenes, testimonials, success stories, teaching and selling. Your content needs to be a mixture of different types of content and not just sales posts. 

Decide whether batching weekly or monthly or somewhere in between works best for you. Like I said, I used to be able to create for up to a month but now with two kids around I create a weekly schedule. 

Look at your overall goals, and at which offers you want to sell at specific times of the year or month. This also helps with creating your content calendar as you’ll need to start seeding about your offers in advance and then have more sales content towards the end. 

There are many ways to create content calendars and ways to batch your content. I want to inspire you to find out what works best for you. Don’t worry about what person x, y, z says, because they are not you and they probably work in a different way. That’s why I’m sharing that I used to be really good at batching content for a whole month but I can’t do that right now because of the baby and pre-schooler. 

Everyone’s day is different. You might only have 5 hours a week to work on your business, so you need to find out what works for you in terms of content creation. 

I do believe that batching really helps us save time because we’re focused on one task and not doing multiple tasks at once. By focusing on one thing at a time we get faster and better at it. 

One other thing I want to say is that you don’t need to use social media to grow your business. Leonie Dawson has an entire course about how to market your business without social media. So you don’t need to do any of this if you don’t want to. It’s a great tool but I also know how much of a time-drain it can be and some people just don’t want to use social media and that’s ok. 

I do think you need some form of content in your business, whether it’s a podcast, blog, guest blogging, guest podcasts, news articles, a column in a magazine etc. You need something for your audience to connect with you and see your expertise. 

One thing that’s non-negotiable in my books is an email list. You simply have to have one and I’ve spoken about this in episode and x. If you choose only one form of content, let it be email. 

Ok, that’s it for this week.