How to batch create social media content and save yourself time

As a business owner myself, I know how difficult it is to wear all the different hats to succeed and grow your business. You are the marketer, the finance director, the sales team and legal counsel! And a lot of these things may not even be your area of expertise! I am always looking for ways to save time so that I can focus those precious hours on what will have the biggest impact on my business and its’ growth. We all know that being consistent on social media takes up a lot of time so here’s my top tips for why batch creating your content will help grow your business and save you time.

Social media has been instrumental in the growth of my business but by getting smarter I have also started to actively work harder on my PR and can see results. I want to share how I’ve made it work and helped my clients do the same.

What is content batching?

‘Content Batching’ is when you prepare a lot of content at one time, a productivity technique where you create all your captions and visual content during a set period of time, so that it is ready to post or share at any time. By doing this you focus your time, don’t do things last minute, and create more useful and useable content which in my experience leads to less errors and more laser focus on the strategy and target audience.

Why is Content batching worth it?

1. If you batch create your content, it will save you time!

2. It will help you get consistent with your posting as you’ll plan a clear content strategy – being consistent is one of the fastest way to drive brand awareness and grow your following.

3. Batch creating will give you a bank of content so on those days where you may not be in the mood or for when inevitably things come up, you’ll have content that you can schedule which is already made. It also means you don’t have to think of creative ideas for your content every day which saves energy for other things and extends your recovery time.

4. If you schedule in time, you know it is coming and it means you can start to save ideas using either the save function on a social media platform, pin on Pinterest or add to your notes. When it comes to your scheduled day you are prepared and ready to go.

5. You can manage your diary and plan to batch create your content as you would a client meeting or your monthly accounts, ensuring it happens rather than being dropped off your to do list and not happening at all.

My top tips for content batching:

1. Identify and use your content pillars, an essential part of your social media strategy to create a cohesive message. Ensure there is a balance to what you’re actually batch creating – your content pillars will act as a guide.

2. Ensure you have reviewed your insights prior to doing this so you know what has driven the best engagement in the last month. Don’t focus too much on the reach especially when it comes to reels. It’s all about engagement, which includes saves, shares, follows and comments. These analytics will also tell you the optimal posting time, the best performing content format, and what call to actions converted.

3. Find ways to repurpose your content and turn one topic into multiple pieces of content. You can use different formats as well. This can apply to how you adapt it to different social media platforms or taking different elements of that content. For example I recently launched this blog and generally I can easily create 2-3 pieces of content from each blog. There’s the initial launch and what it is about, a key quote that I know my following will value and a carousel format summary. Below is an example from our recent blog about how to work with content creators.

As an extra bonus, also try to take your best performing posts and think how you can share the same value adding content with some tweaks, as you know people have already loved it once.

4. Capturing your ideas in between batching – you never know when you are going to be inspired so have a placed where you can save inspiration. Ensure that you write, or voice note what you are thinking for your brand as if you just for example save the reel, if you don’t create your content for another week, you are likely to have forgotten. For many of us reels are now are most produced content, so I loved this tip from Erica at @_very_erica_

5. With video becoming more and more important, batch creating your content means you can be camera ready on that specific day and not doing it multiple times a week. It also means you can get any props and the space you’re working in prepared. Don’t forget to outline and roughly script the key messages of each video and tick them off as you go. Doing this will also help you create captions as well.

Whilst the concept of batch creating your content may feel overwhelming at first, I promise it is easier than it looks. The best idea is to start small and slowly batch create more each time as your confidence and rhythm improves. It will take that last minute stress away and support you in achieving your social media goals.

It’s a win-win situation.