Content.
We all know we need it. Creating consistent content and getting it in front of your existing audience is the engine that grows a business online.
Content marketing serves a lot of purposes.
It creates visibility and awareness with your ideal customer.
It can position you as an authority in your niche and build trust with your potential customers.
You really need consistent content to be relevant online.
But it's so damn easy to put it on the back burner.
It's time consuming, sometimes feels a bit hard and it's not going to increase your bank account today. So it can often be an easy choice to bump it off today's to-do list when it's already a mile long.
And for those of you who don't consider yourselves good writers or creatives, it can be even tougher. The procrastination can reach an all time high when it comes to creating content.
If this is you, constantly bumping that content creation onto tomorrow's to-do list, and struggling to come up with content ideas for your social media and blog content, read on to find out the simple solution.
The secret to creating content fast is…
The secret to creating content fast is content batching!
The word batching has traditionally been used in computer processing, accounting and baking. It literally means doing large amounts of something in one go.
It's no different with batching your content. It's a simple concept where you get all of your content for a period of time created in one go.
It doesn't matter what kind of content it is. You can use this method with social media posts, videos, Reels, podcasts (if you have one), and blog posts.
You set aside a full day if you can, or perhaps it's spread out over a week with a couple of hours every day set aside for content. I do recommend doing as big of a chunk a time as possible though. Simply because it takes so long to settle into a new task and really focus. The more we chop and change over the course of the day, the less productive we become.
Regardless of how much time you have up your sleeve, the idea is to get as much done as possible within that time.
Once you've actually created the content, you then schedule it out using a tool of your choice and you can pop your feet up and congratulate yourself on a job well done 💥
Not only have you nailed your content goals but you also free up your time in the weeks/months afterwards to work on other projects.
Momentum – here we come!
Why is content batching so effective?
Multi-tasking is a huge problem for many an online business owner! There's already so much to do with all the different platforms we SHOULD be on, let alone managing your staff, finances, product…the list goes on.
This is the reason why so many business owners put off creating content in the first place. It's in a big list of to-do's with a bunch of unrelated stuff, and it's beyond our bandwidth to give it the time it deserves. And we all know multi-tasking is the enemy if we're trying to get good work done.
The beauty of batching content is that you set aside a time period to purely focus on content. Whatever that period of time is, you get in the zone once, and you stay there. You're committed to it.
Suddenly it's seems less impossible. Once you've knocked out two blog posts, it's easier to tackle a third while you're on a roll. And then a fourth…
Before you know it, you've got four weeks worth of content and suddenly that anxious feeling about having nothing to put out there disappears. You are on your way to seriously improving your content marketing!
How much content should you batch?
If you're new to content batching, you've struggled to come up with content in the past, and you know that you're a procrastinator, I warn against just starting small with one week's worth of content.
What will happen is you will do one week's worth, and then not repeat the process again quickly enough to have content for the next period.
I recommend to do at least one months worth of content while you've got that laser focus. Then repeat the process 2 to 3 weeks later! You do not want to wait until you've run out of content before you start your next creation round.
As you get more seasoned on a) the process of content batching and b) what content is working the best for your audience, you can start to batch for larger periods of time.
From there, the sky is the limit. You could find that you're comfortable producing content 90 days in advance, or perhaps you've realised that you can start creating content for that extra platform now that you've mastered the system.
What you can do next
It's time to give content batching a go. Don't have any expectations, just find a quiet spot, block on distractions and give yourself a few hours.
Start with brainstorming ideas for your content depending on what you're creating for.
And then get into the harder part – actually writing out the content. It will feel hard the first time you do it, so don't expect perfection. The key is to start building your content batching muscle – it's only going to strengthen over time.
Group like tasks together. For example, you can work on writing great headlines for a bunch of blog posts at once – this means that once those creative juices are flowing, you can get a lot of momentum. If you've done your podcast planning, batch the recording of the podcasts. Once your voice is all warmed up, you'll be loving it!
Before you know it, you'll be a content marketing machine. Content batching really will become your best friend.
