How to Create Your Social Media Content in Batches
Do you feel like you’re constantly in “content creation” mode and can’t seem to ever feel caught up with your social media tasks?
You want to have a full week’s worth of content ideas mapped out, but can’t seem to ever maintain a consistent publishing schedule?
Perhaps you’re great at the planning part, but have a hard time executing on the content creation part and feel like you never get to hit publish or complete your social media content?
I want to show you a simple and effective approach to batch-creating your social media content.
The thing is when it comes to producing content, your method for getting this done may need a bit of fine-tuning.
Whether you’re full-time in your business, are working with a team or are just starting out, this content batching workflow can work for you.
Batching your social media content can help you get extra time back in your week or entire month so that you can relax and get a massage, read a book or finish a course you’ve been wanting to listen to or perhaps give you extra time to onboard a new client!
Here are some tips to help you save time by batching your content for social media.
This proven method will help you simplify and streamline your marketing so that you can produce quality content on a consistent basis.
1. MAP OUT YOUR CONTENT PILLARS
Your content pillars are an essential starting point when you’re batching your content. Ideally, you’ll want to have 3-5 content pillars identified.
Creating and identifying your content pillars helps you simplify your content creation process, provides you with clarity in your messaging, helps you identify your target audience and niche, and supports your unique marketing goals.
Your content pillars also help you communicate your products and services with ease.
Content pillars are leveraged in different ways, but they essentially help anchor your message and value for your audience.
Here are some content pillar examples:
If you’re a fitness coach, your content pillars might look like this:
- Nutrition
- Exercise
- Lifestyle
- Mindset
If you’re a clothing brand, your content pillars might look like this:
- Lifestyle
- Travel
- Trends
- Promotions
If you’re unsure about where to begin with your content pillars, you can take a step back and start here:
Educational, Entertaining, Inspirational and Promotional
Brainstorm content ideas on a piece of paper and think of content topics you could share that are related to your content pillars. When you leverage your content pillars, it’s basically a numbers game.
Set a timer for 25 minutes: Write your content pillars on a piece of paper and identify some topics you could talk about related to your content pillar. If you have four content pillars and you come up with four topics, that means you’ve planned out content for the entire month (or quarter) depending on how you space out your content ideas.
2. Leverage Your Long Form Content
Your long-form content is where you share valuable, actionable and a lot of helpful resources and information for your audience. This can be a blog post, a YouTube video, a podcast or a live video.
Identify the long-form content that you are creating on a weekly basis and how you will repurpose that into other forms of content. You don’t want to be creating content from scratch.
Many people make the mistake of creating one piece of valuable content and then moving onto the next. This approach will only lead to an unsustainable publishing schedule or burnout.
Related: How to Easily Repurpose Content
How to Create Your Social Media Content in Batches Share on XInstead, you want to maximize the long-form content you’re creating. Trim pieces from this long-form content into other assets, which leads us into the next step of short-form content which we will expand on more in this article, but before we get to that step, we need to identify how often you’ll be posting on social media and at what frequency.
Remember, it’s easy to get motivated in the moment, but you want to aim for consistency.
Stick to a posting schedule that is strategic and sustainable.
Get access to this course and content calendar that helps you maximize your channel distribution and helps you with your content marketing.
Content Calendar Template
Maximize your channel strategy and marketing efforts using Airtable! The only content calendar you’ll ever need.
This calendar has the foundational elements built into it that will help you be more strategic with the content and marketing activities you’re focusing on.
3. Identify a Posting Framework
If your long-form content is publishing a weekly YouTube, how are you repurposing that content?
Here’s an example of what that might look like.
- You can take your YouTube video and create a blog post, then create 3 TikTok videos and 3 grid posts.
- Or you could take your YouTube video and create 3 Instagram Reels, share on your newsletter and create 2 grid posts.
- You could also take your YouTube video, and create 3 Twitter Threads, 2 Facebook Posts and 3 TikTok videos.
Identify how you will exactly repurpose and post your content on social media so that you have a process.
Your posting framework will help you figure out how you’re moving your long-form content into your short-form content.
Content Batching Tip: Start by identifying your posting framework Share on XWhat you want to do here is get clear on which days you will publish and show up on a platform and commit to publishing schedule. Be realistic and remember that you want to be consistent, not extreme. Don’t burn yourself out.
Here’s an example of a channel posting framework you can create if you’re active on Instagram or TikTok.
4. Identify Short Form Content
How are you turning your long-form content into short-form content?
Short-form content can be leveraged on Instagram Stories, Carousel Posts, TikTok videos or other assets to be used on social media platforms.
Generally speaking, it’s OK to start off with one short-form channel and expand as you start to get consistent and nail down your process.
Many people make the mistake of piling on too many channels and it becomes unsustainable to maintain.
Here’s an example of what that might look like if your long-form content is creating a weekly YouTube video.
3 – Carousel Posts for Instagram
2 – Short Form Videos (Reels, TikTok or IGTV)
2 – Teaching on Stories (something with 3-5 story slides of teaching)
2 – Single Post Images (e.g. lifestyle photo or quote)
1 – Email to your newsletter
1 – Blog Post
See what just happened there?
You took ONE piece of content and turned it into multiple pieces of content for you to use.
You can change the titles of these carousel posts and highlight different parts within your content.
Related: 3 Easy Ways to Organize Your Content Marketing Ideas
For example, if you’re a fitness coach and you create a video about “How to Get Toned Abs in 30 Days,” you can tweak the titles of your short-form content to maximize your original content.
Here's how to repurpose your content on social media like a pro Share on XHere are some ways you can play with different titles so that your long-form content isn’t an exact replica of your original content and you get to really maximize different aspects of your long-form content:
Original Long Form Content: How to Get Toned Abs in 30 Days
Short Form Content:
- How to: How to work the right muscles to get defined abs
- Mistakes: Why you aren’t getting the defined abs you want
- Lessons Learned: The #1 that helped me get defined abs
- How I: How I got abs with this 7 minute exercise routine
This way, you’re using your original blog post you created while also highlighting certain sections of your blog post.
“But what if I sound like I’m repeating myself?”
This is a good thing! You want to be consistent with your messaging and your audience will come to know you as a go-to person in that topic or niche.
Your content calendar is your blueprint that complements your marketing plan and content strategy. Start maximizing your channel strategy and marketing efforts using Airtable.
This calendar has the foundational elements built into it that will help you be more strategic with the content and marketing activities you’re focusing on.
Content Calendar Template
Get access to this course and content calendar that helps you maximize your channel distribution and helps you with your content marketing.
5. Batch Your Content
Now that you’ve planned out all other details you’ll want to batch create your social media posts.
You can do this over a span of a week (or however long it takes you to complete this project sprint).
Blog Post Content Batching
M – Outline Blog Post
T – Write and Finalize Blog Post
W – Design Assets/Images
Th – Optimize/SEO
F – Upload/Schedule
Social Media Content Batching
M – Write captions from existing blog post material
T – Design Graphics/Shoot Photos
W – Record Videos
Th – Edit Videos
F – Upload/Schedule
Which content planning method will you implement for your next content creation session?
