4 Simple Steps to Batch Content
Do you ever find yourself trying to come up with an idea for your blog or email campaign? All the of the sudden you realize that it’s been days or even weeks since you’ve posted on social media! But the thought of posting weekly or daily feels overwhelming. So what’s the answer? Get ready to learn how to batch content.
At a very simple level, batching is creating like content for days, weeks or even months, all at the same time.
This could be writing a months worth of blog posts, creating all the graphics you need for social or writing the captions, or even taking a bunch of photos you know you need. The idea here is that by focusing on one part of your marketing, you can get a lot done all at once and then simply schedule it out for the days and times you need it to go live.
So how does this work? Let me break it down for you in 4 simple steps!
Step 1: Define your strategy
Before you can start to batch, you need to determine the content you need to create in the first place. Start by:
- determining the content you’ll produce and how often you’ll produce it each month. Is it a blog post, podcast, or video series?
- choosing the platforms that you’ll use to promote this content. Is it Facebook and/or Instagram, YouTube, email?
- creating your broadcast strategy. With each piece of content you create – you should have a distribution strategy. See example to the right!
Your broadcast strategy will outline how you promote your content and will give you the checklist of items you need to create for each piece. By repurposing the same content on different social media channels and outlets on different days, you are maximizing the chances that your audience will organically see your content.
Make sure your version only includes that outlets that you’ll use! Remember, you do NOT have to be on ALL social channels.
Creating your Broadcast Strategy
Your broadcast strategy should include all the social channels that you are on, as well as email – if that’s a part of your plan.
It should also be specific for the platform. While the content your promoting is the same, the format/layout/design should be reflective of the platform you are using.
For example,
- Facebook has several options for you.
- Lives are a great way to talk about your content and get organic reach. Boosting a live in Facebook is also a great thing to do.
- Create a long-form post to share a bulk of the post as a status update. Make sure you include a great photo.
- LinkedIn also loves video – and also has its own publishing tool. So by utilizing both platforms, you have two days worth of content on that platform.
- Instagram has three different ways you can promote your content:
- Instagram Feed – post a photo and an excerpt from your post.
- Instagram Stories – go live to talk about the post, screenshot parts of the post to share, ask people to DM you with their favorite parts of the posts, or with questions.
- IGTV – this can be a longer form video if you’d like to share about the post.
- Twitter – great place to post snippets and encourage people to check it out.
- Pinterest – by publishing here, you are encouraging people to head right back to your website. This is the best platform for links back to the original blog post.
Step 2: Plan it out on a Calendar
Set the intention you have with your strategy and put each piece of content into your calendar. Due dates will be so helpful in holding yourself accountable.
You should also fill in your broadcast strategy into your calendar for when you need to schedule your content promotion.
Use whatever calendar or project management tool you are most comfortable with. We use a combination of Google Calendar, Trello, and ClickUp.
It’s important to note that we are just making a template at this point. You do NOT need to be worrying about exact topics that you are writing about just yet.
See my example below using the broadcast strategy from above.
From here, you can create your checklist of what needs to be created with each blog post. For this example my list for each piece of content would be:
- Write blog post.
- Image for blog post (this same image can be used later for the article on LinkedIn)
- Write copy for email announcement.
- Image for Instagram Story and copy written
- Graphic for Pinterest
By creating all the assets you need at the onset, you will be able to execute smoothly and consistently each time. If you are producing content weekly, you’ll also have quite a few of your weekly posts already created just in promoting your content.
Step 3: Brain Dump Ideas
The idea here is to make it easy and we’re leading towards batching your content right! So take some time to just throw out a bunch of ideas you could use for your content.
Think about upcoming events, collaborations you have, and the questions you get over and over again from your customers. These are all great places to start generating ideas. If you need some more ideas, here are some places to go:
Once you’ve got the ideas you like, you can add them to your calendar and define what will post when.
Step 4: Batch
Now that you have all the ideas, know where you want to promote and your checklist for what images, graphics and copy you need for each post, it’s time to get into action.
When you sit down to batch, you’ll find that you’re much more efficient! When you work on one activity at a time, your brain doesn’t have to switch gears so much, and can really power through.
Designate a day to write all the blog posts you need for the month. Then designate a day where you can create all the graphics and copy for the social posts you need.
In less than two days, you should have all your content done for the month, and a lot of the social posts you’ll need for the month. Fill in your social media calendar with social holidays, events in your business and a few behind the scenes or sneak peeks, and your entire social media strategy is done!
Conclusion
And there it is, 4 simple steps to batching content to ensure the quality and consistency you need, without taking too much time!
I can’t wait to hear about how you batch your content and what your broadcast strategy looks like!
Share this article to your favorite social media outlet, and let everyone know what your batching looks like!