Batching content is an essential system and workflow that you should establish and refine. It’s a productivity practice that will save you time and help eliminate any overwhelm that comes with creating content or managing small repetitive tasks.
Batching your content also eliminates creative burnout and stress that may come with creating content on the spot. You want to avoid scrambling the day-of and trying to figure out what you’re going to write or post on social media.
I’m going to show you a process that you can implement to help you create content with ease and focus. Over time, you will get faster and more confident with your content batching process.
Establish a content batching system to help you maintain a consistent and productive workflow. Share on XWhat is Content Batching?
To get started, you’ll want to plan every quarter and then aim to stay 1-2 weeks ahead of your editorial calendar.
Planning ahead gives you peace, control and makes you feel like you’re being very intentional about what you’re creating and sharing online.
The discipline of planning ahead and executing that plan helps you feel a sense of focus and clarity. Avoid creating content on the spot. Plan ahead to avoid the overwhelm and eliminate creative burnout.
Why You Should Batch Your Content
Content batching is a productive approach you can take to creating your content.
A few hours or days of pure focus helps free up your time for other important projects and marketing or business activities.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you with your content batching workflow. Share on XGetting Started with Content Batching
Pick a Day of the Week
The first thing you need to do is commit to a day of the week when you’ll do your content batching. Make content planning part of your weekly routine and pick a day of the week when you’ll get it done.
Schedule it into your calendar like any other task (i.e. laundry, workout, etc).
You can start doing content batching every Sunday or Monday to help you stay ahead. One way to start today is to make a note on your calendar every Friday to see what’s coming up next week and leave yourself notes for Monday morning.
Step-By-Step Process of How to Batch Create Your Social Media Content Share on X
Allocate Time
How long should content creation take? You could spend hours and hours creating content, so it’s helpful to have a baseline of how much time you need to create the content you need to publish every week.
Here’s how I figured out an ideal time of how long things take me to create. I started using a time-tracking tool Toggl. I started using Toggl to track how long it would take me to shoot a video, how long it would take me to edit a video, how long it takes me to write a blog post or create Instagram posts.
Save time with content creation by batching your content on a weekly basis. Share on XAfter using it for about 2-3 weeks, I started to see a baseline. Toggl is free to use and there are some premium features. You could also use the “Projects” and “Tags” features within Toggl.
I recommend you use a time-tracking tool to see how long it takes you to create content so that you can find ways to streamline your content creation process or to also help you realistically manage your time. I generally find that I can complete most of my tasks in 30 mins to 2 hours, depending on what I’m creating.
Content Calendar tEMPLATE
Using this Airtable Template will help you streamline your content creation process, optimize your workflows and help ensure your content mix is strategically aligned with your marketing goals.
Identify Your Strategic Goal
Make sure that when you’re batching your content you identify what you’re planning to accomplish with this piece of content. Do you want someone to click on a link? Enroll in a program? Make a sale? Share their email address? Send you a DM? Subscribe?
Be sure to identify what the outcome is for your piece of content. This is often overlooked, but so important with your content creation process.
If you overlook identifying a strategic goal, it could lead to confusion, create an unfulfilling feeling or cause burnout. Remember, you don’t need more content, you need effective content.
If you’re creating content without identifying a clear strategic goal or outcome, start by asking yourself why you’re creating it in the first place and the result you want from your content.
When you’re creating content, make sure you’re having fun. Work with your strengths. If you excel at writing or video editing, maximize your strength and it will make content creation more fulfilling for you.
How to Batch Your Content
You want to be very clear on which long-form content you will create and how you will repurpose it into short-form content. For example, if you create a blog post as your long-form content, you can identify ways to repurpose that into an Instagram post, TikTok video, Twitter post and so on.
You’ll want to identify the steps you take when creating your content (researching, writing, editing, etc). Below is a workflow to help get you started. The long-form content you’re creating is great foundational content to build from.
You should be maximizing your long-form content for your social media posts. Here’s an article to help you repurpose your content and maximize your channel strategy. You can incorporate your content pillars on social media by curating your pillars in your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn posts.
➜ Related: How to Easily Repurpose Your Content
Content Batching Process
1. Research
Before you begin creating any content. Do some research on the topic. Is what you’re creating something that people are searching for or seeking an answer to?
Do you have unique contributions or opinions to add to the topic? What’s out there and what’s been done that you can improve on? While conducting research, be sure to look at trending topics, themes and content topics that align with your content pillars.
Use this time to conduct keyword research and title options. Identify what’s top of mind for your audience or what may be going on in your industry that is worth discussing with your audience.
Capture notable data, research or insights that your audience will find useful. There may be existing content on the same topic, but your unique research, opinions or approach to the topic will help make it unique.
➜ Related: Organize Your Content Marketing Ideas
2. Outline
This is probably the most important and fun part of creating content because it helps you organize your thoughts, your takeaways for your audience and the actions you want your audience to take.
Outlining helps you organize your content and gives you clarity in the message you’re trying to convey to your audience. During this time, you also want to leave yourself notes related to any editorial or design assets that you will need to help complement your content.
For example, as you’re outlining your content, you may identify that you want an infographic or video or specific social media graphic for your post to repurpose later.
Outlining is something that cannot be overlooked as it’s the part of the process that helps you make sure your audience is receiving valuable information from your content.
You can use a notebook, Evernote or a Google doc to outline your content.Your outline should include the enticing value you’re going to provide to your audience or the problem you’re going to solve, tools or value they will get from reading your content.
Content Batching Workflow
Download this worksheet to help track and identify how long it takes you to complete content tasks.
3. Write
In this step, you write out everything into a the optimal format for you to distribute.
This is where you incorporate all of the research, strategic goal and outline to put it all together. If you’re writing a blog post, you’ll write out all of the details of your article. If you’re producing a podcast episode or YouTube video, you’ll write out your script on the topic.
During this part of the content batching process, you’ll also get a better idea of the assets you’ll need for the next step.
Push through your content batching and dedicate your 1-2 hours toward completing your content. Remember to make use of a time-tracking tool to help you identify how much time you need to create content.
➜ Related: How to be a more consistent content creator
4. Create
In this step, you’ll record your video or podcast, design any graphics for your content or take photos for any content you need. In this step, you solidify the assets needed for the content you’re creating.
You have identified the assets you’re going to need and can create everything.
Make sure you give yourself some creative constraints so that you can move quickly and efficiently with your content batching process.For example, perhaps you’re going to sit down to write for 45 minutes or you’re going to give yourself only three colors to design your graphics with.
Certain creative constraints actually help you move quickly because it gives you a healthy focus.
Follow this breakdown of how to batch create your social media content Share on X
5. Edit
You also want to set aside time to edit and review your content. Make sure you have a quality assurance process so that you can ensure metadata, captions, keywords, graphics or images are formatted correctly and don’t have errors in them.
During this time, you’ll want to pay attention to details so that there aren’t any weird sounds, typos or grammatical errors in your final version.Don’t obsess over every pixel in your graphic being perfect.
Instead, edit and review your content to make sure it’s error-free (i.e. fix any typos, fact-check the information you’re sharing and make sure any relevant sources are credited in your content).
➜ Related: Ultimate 1 Hour Instagram Workflow
6. Distribute
In this step, you’ll want to ensure you’re making the most of the primary content you’re creating and repurposing and remixing it across other channels to maximize the time and effort you have put into creating your content.
A general rule of thumb is if it took you an hour to create, spend an hour promoting it and talking about it on other platforms.
When repurposing content, remember to either trim, expand or convert your original piece of content. You can find more ways to easily repurpose your content here.
BONUS: Analyze
After you have published your content, make sure you allocate time every week to review your analytics and gain insights on the content you’ve created and how it’s working and ways you can improve and iterate your process.
Reviewing your insights is a great way to help you become a better writer, video editor, communicator and business owner.
Which step of the content batching workflow will you work on improving?
