How to Batch Content | How To Create CONSISTENT content to GET AHEAD
In this video you will learn how to batch content. I'll show you my tips and tricks to creating consistent content and getting ahead.
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Tell me if this sounds familiar...
Every email and social media post you create comes down to the last minute.
You rush to get your blog post written and published before a deadline only to realize there are glaring typos you missed right in front of your face.
You feel like you are on the content creation treadmill and you never get ahead when creating your content.
Content marketing is meant to be fun, but your process of creating new content is getting in the way.
Enter content batching
By implementing a batching process you will...
Be the blogger who has posts written weeks in advance.
Have a content calendar scheduled and packed with high-quality content for your target audience and free of errors.
Have emails and social media content booked for the entire year within a couple of weeks.
You would never make one cookie at a time. That would take forever. Instead, you put in one ingredient at a time and pop a dozen in the oven to bake them all together.
Making consistent content is like baking cookies.
You should never take it one single piece of content at a time. Add your ingredients one at a time, sure, but then bake them together. But why is our content creation process broken in the first place?
Why your content strategy is so time consuming
Humans are not good at multi-tasking. You may swear that you can write emails and listen to the Zoom meeting with your camera turned off.
You really can't.
And, we can hear you typing on your keyboard because you forgot to mute yourself.
Only around 2.5% of people are able to multi-task effectively. source
Multitasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity. Multitasking causes a 10% drop in IQ. source
When you interrupt your focus between tasks it can take up to 50% longer to accomplish a given task. source
Multi-tasking is just focus switching. When we write the headline for a blog post, then check our email, then answer a co-worker on Slack, we lose traction because we are distracted.
Is this getting too personal?
Your brain can take up to 25 minutes to get into a flow state, something that is essential for creative work like content marketing. source
The Illusion of Urgency
Marketers have a tendency to think that everything is urgent. However, the label of urgent probably means the task is less important than we think.
Our brain prefers to do small urgent tasks with a smaller payoff over longer more impactful tasks with a bigger payoff.
This means we must be mindful of how we take on and assign tasks to our co-workers and employees.
The truth is, most urgent tasks are not truly urgent especially if they can be completed in a manner of minutes.
Like the boy who cried wolf, if we fake urgency we will eventually lose respect and credibility.
Separate the Tasks That Take Creative Thinking From Those That Don't
Do creative tasks first when content batching
Brainstorming and researching topic ideas for your blog content takes creative thought, but plugging in images and captions into your social media planner does not.
Writing content takes tons of brainpower; answering your emails for the day takes much less.
Create a list of your daily activities that require creative critical thinking and separate them from those that don't.
Batch up those urgent quick wins, too. Chances are these will require less critical thinking as well.
Prioritize Creative Projects First
It's a bad idea to do 1,000 burpees right before performing brain surgery.
It's a bad idea to answer emails before doing creative work.
Now that you have your list of creative tasks, choose to do these when you are fresh. Work on those important but less urgent projects before you do the mind-numbing things you don't need to be as sharp for.
Write your blog with your morning coffee or create the images for your content after you come back from lunch.
How to Batch Content Based on the Type of Content
Here is the thing about creating content, when you start big and work your way down you get ahead, but not the other way around.
1 long-form blog post, video, or podcast creates up to 5 emails.
1 long-form blog post, video, or podcast creates up to 2 months of social media content.
When you create your long-form assets first, the ones that are the most difficult to do, you have the ammunition needed to create months of emails and social content in advance.
Essentially, you are just repurposing or redirecting to these larger assets in different forms.