Batching means working on similar tasks so that you don’t have to switch from one to another. This saves time and allows to create weeks’ or months’ worth of content at once instead of day by day.
It will allow you to focus more time and energy on important tasks. And also helps you to maintain the consistency of your social media. You will have a steady flow of content which will keep your mind at peace too. We Are Web Design are here to help to make your digital journey smooth as silk.
It’s important to separate the different stages of writing like – brainstorming ideas, planning, drafting & editing. You can jot down different types of content you work on regularly then figure out where you’re going to make space for. You can pick just one aspect to focus on a week if it’s a lot for you. This will make creating content easier for you.
Steps To Batching Your Blog Content And Save Yourself Hours Of Time
Any content you create can be batch produced which is easier & quicker to complete. Once you know how to batch content, you’ll understand why it’s a brilliant strategy. Because it not only saves money but also is creative, focused & productive.
If you are writing blog posts, you can divide the post into four steps. And you can batch multiple posts together at each step.
1. Brainstorming Ideas
The first way to get inspiration for creating engaging content for you and your audience is by using two online tools. One is called Buzzsumo, and the other one is called Ahrefs.
If you’ve never heard of them before, both tools let you see the most highly shared posts on the internet over various time periods and across different platforms.
By looking into what stories are being shared the most, you can figure out what topics are hot right now. After identifying hot topics for your niche, you can then chip in, add your voice and experience to the masses and get your content potentially shown to a wide audience who are eager to learn more about the subject.
2. Make A Draft
It’s helpful to separate drafting & editing. With your planning already done, the drafting will feel much easier. The draft can be as rough as you like as you will get plenty of time to edit later.
3. Content Editing
When you come to the editing phase it is important to stay in creative-thinking mode. Editing makes a huge difference, so don’t rush & take your time.
5. Finding Images For Your Posts
For any brand’s visual identity, strong imagery is a crucial part. The right image not only helps to attract clients but also helps to send your overall message. If you batch images for your posts ahead of time, you will know exactly how your posts will look. So you can control the overall aesthetic you are trying to achieve. Unsplash is a great free resource for this! You should also be taking your own photos and creating your own branded images for this too, a great free, user-friendly tool for this is Canva. This way things don’t feel too stock and will feel more unique to your brand.
6. Schedule Your Posts
The last step of the blog post batch work is to schedule your posts. Our website is built using WordPress, which allows for setting a date for the blog to be released to the world. Here’s a great video tutorial on how to do this.
How To Batch Content For Your Social Media Platforms
You can create a whole month’s worth of content in a very short amount of time on social media platforms by batching your content.
1. Determining A Strategy For The Month
To grow your social engagement, you need a posting strategy. As we’re a service-based business we post a range of different things. From our latest work, information on our services and offerings, free tips, inspirational quotes, personal stories that relate to our business, client testimonials and much much more… Every industry is different and a different strategy will apply to you. For example, if you are an eCommerce business, you may want to post about the launch of a new product line, create an “on the day” post to announce that your new product line is out. And then a week later, create a “progress update post” to keep your audience interested in your new product line. We find inspiration in all sorts of places, including from competitors. But when using competitors as inspiration we do not copy directly. Fresh, unique and on-brand content is always best!
2. Images
Building up a bank of photos for your Instagram page will make your job a lot more manageable and stress-free. With just one photoshoot, you can save up weeks’ worth of images to post on your Instagram. Again we use Unsplash a lot for this, take our own photos and create custom imagery in Photoshop and Illustrator, as mentioned Canva is a great free resource for non-designers. This way things don’t feel stock and will feel more unique to your brand.
3. Write Captions In Bulk
To grab your audiences’ attention and increase engagement for every single post, you need killer captions that help to increase the conversion rates. For example, if you post five times a week, and post about a new topic every week, you need four captions for every “topic” per month.
4. Hashtag Strategy
The best hashtags tend to be relatively short and easy to remember. Use on-brand, relevant and specific hashtags. If it is too obscure, it will be hard to find and it won’t likely be used by other social media users. Also, limit the number of hashtags you use, otherwise, your posts will feel cheap and spammy.
5. Scheduling Apps
There are a lot of apps out there that not only allow you to schedule your content months in advance but also “glimpse” your Instagram grid in advance too, which is pretty cool, and lots of fun. With these apps, you can attach your pre-written captions and hashtags with each image and schedule everything in advance. We Are Web Design currently use Later. Which allows batch posting for Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Which fits our strategy perfectly and social networks.
By implementing these steps you can honestly save yourself a lot of time on all social media platforms.
The Wrap Up:
To sum it up, you manage your time more effectively with content marketing. Start batching and soon you will have a solid month’s worth of engaging blog and social media content to make your life easy and speak to our audience.
