70. Making It Easy: The Content Batching Checklist
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When it comes to making social media content creation easier on yourself, there’s one method I’ve come to absolutely love: content batching. However, the way I felt about it at the start has changed drastically over time, and I believe I have some content batching tips that can help you find your own personal method for batching your content and setting up a “content day.”
How I Discovered Content Batching
As a former social media manager, I discovered content batching by complete accident. It felt like a necessity when I was managing eight different radiology social media clients with only ten hours of time available a week. I literally don't know how I did it, but it's now become a core pillar of how I operate—for not only my own brand, but how I advise others.
Content batching is a great way to stay consistent and stay ahead of your content versus always feeling the pressure to create more. However, my way of thinking about content batching when I was a social media manager versus now has changed a lot.
Changes in Content Batching Mindset
As of now, I believe that content batching doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You really don't need to batch thirty days of content.
The all-or-nothing mindset can lead to so much overwhelm with content batching, and while I'm a huge fan of planning a month's worth of content, thirty days’ worth of posts can be so intimidating. People often can’t stick with content batching because their goal is super lofty, but it doesn’t have to be!
While I love content batching on that level, sometimes just creating one week is really all you need to reap the benefits of batching. You can use content batching to post more intentionally, get ahead of your content, and start showing up in all your social media content with ease.
When I started following this mindset, that’s where the idea of implementing my own content ideas began. I went all-in with content days this year, and it's really been a great way to dedicate my head space to content-related tasks versus being forced to do content creation when my mind is in admin or coaching mode.
Implementing the system of content days has really helped me optimize my productivity and get more done in the same amount of time than if I was scrambling to put some posts together.
Inside my signature video competence program, there's an entire module dedicated to systems. I am a huge systems nerd. If systems have never worked for you or you've never implemented them, this program is for you.
In this program, I talk about not only how to create a content calendar that will help you be more intentional with idea generation, but also how to identify your batching personality type. Everyone's strengths and ways of batching content are totally different, and you want to make sure you're leaning into that when you begin batching. I’ll link to that program below, but for now, let me tell you a bit more about content days!
Content Days
If you’re not sure what a content day even is, or how you can arrange one, let me help you out! I’ve put together a checklist of all the different elements that you would want to include in a content day. This is perfect for you if you have a limited schedule; maybe you're a side hustler, maybe you're a parent, but whatever it is, this method will help you.
1. Daily Goal
The first tick of the checklist is to decide on your goal for the day. I personally find that focusing on three tasks is always the best way to go about planning your goal for the day. When you do a lot more, I find that you end up overwhelmed with more things than you can actually accomplish. For example, if I have an entire day dedicated to content, some of that might be idea generation. Some of it might be outlining video concepts. Some of it might be filming and editing things together. So at the beginning of the day, I'm figuring out what those tasks are, and I'm not just telling myself the goal is to create reels. That's too generic. We want to get very specific about what we're focusing on and what we're accomplishing.
2. Set a Date
The next thing is setting a date for when you want to have your content day. This could be weekly, this could be monthly. It might not even be a single day; I have friends who dedicate an entire week to content creation!
The most important factor of setting this stage is to put it on the calendar and create a task for it. I find that people struggle with batching because they don't have the time and space to actually create, but did they put it on a calendar? Did they actually set the time and plan for it? I’m betting no, and that's really where content days come into play.
3. Location
The next thing on your checklist is choosing where you want to create. You want to think about a few different things for this. You want to make sure that wherever you choose to create, it’s a place that’s supporting your creative process.
What do you need to make it easy? Do you need to be inspired? Do you need accountability? Do you just have to work with what you have?
You can make any location work. I’ve had a coworking space, a bedroom, an office…literally any type of crappy place for creating video content, I probably created in at least once. Sometimes it just means working with what you have, and you might not have the perfect space just yet.
I find that for a lot of people, if you struggle with concentrating or you find that you're more inspired in an outside environment, it helps to go to your favorite park, your favorite coffee shop, the beach, or wherever it is that you feel the most inspired creatively.
Ultimately, all you really need for content creation is a plain corner or wall, even if it means moving things around a little bit during your content day.
4. Shots and Props
The last thing to think about when planning your content day is planning your shots and the props required to pull them off.
Now, this is a bonus step. Sometimes you don't need this—sometimes you just need you!—but it can be nice to have some additional elements.
This doesn’t have to be anything intense. Sometimes it's just what's right in front of you. Sometimes grabbing a coffee cup or whatever’s right in front of you is the best tool.
This will depend on what kind of shots you’re looking for, so you need to decide what content you need. For instance, are you promoting something? Is there a type of content that you’re missing from your page? Is there an outfit that has your brand colors or certain products of yours you want to have ready? Think about those different elements and plan those ahead of time so you can easily grab them.
Go Out and Batch!
I hope you're leaving this episode with a perspective change on what batching actually is, how to make it work for your own schedule by implementing your own version of a content day, and how to utilize my checklist for setting up your content day!
ENTER YOUR CHILL CONTENT ERA:
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