Stop Wasting Time Creating Social Media Posts by Batching Content

So I want to talk today about the importance of creating Social Media Posts and Batching Content and in another post, I know that I've talked to you guys about the Five Reasons Why You Should Batch Your Content. But today I really want to focus on what the actual steps look like to Batch Social Media Content. 

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Where I want to begin is, Are you familiar with what meal prepping is? 

See people do meal prepping to get themselves organized. Typically it's a Sunday or maybe even Monday, they get themselves organized for the week for all of their meals.

They create the meals all at once. And that takes care of them having to cook every night that week, you know, making the different meals. 

So for me and my family cooking can be anywhere from half an hour to an hour worth of time if I cook every single night. I like to make meals that will last as leftovers. Because it saves me time throughout the week. 

Well, with meal prepping, you have the opportunity to do it all in one timeframe. So usually it can be like an hour to two hours to make all of your meals for the week. You could do lunch and you could do dinner in that time block.

The objective of that is obviously to save time, but it keeps you on a plan also. Usually with meal prepping you are on some type of specific diet or meal structure that you're trying to follow. And meal prepping also keeps you on a budget. So you meal prep on Sundays and then boom, you're done for the week.

Get where I am going with this?!?

Well, here's the thing meal prepping is so much like creating social posts with batching your content.

Batching your content gives you the ability to, in one setting, basically Plan, Create and Schedule out your business's social media content.

You can batch for a week. You can batch for two weeks, three weeks, a month, a quarter or whatever you decide, but the whole point of batching your content to create social media posts is to get it done in a shorter amount of time, instead of one time per day for 30 minutes to an hour creating those social media posts.

So let's dive right into what the steps are for batching your social media content. 

Now, if you are somebody who is more of a hands on visual learner, I have a great tool and a great resource for you that is called The Essential Social Media Tool Kit. You can get that here. And if you are subscribed to my email newsletter list you should get a discount code on day two of that newsletter blast. So you'll get a discount code to The Essential Social Media Tool Kit. I definitely recommend that you get on an email list.

Back to the steps. 

So we've got really just three steps in batching, your social media content.

Planning Your Social Media Post with Batching Content - Step 1

So to plan your social media content for the week (let's say you're going to do it for the week, but again you can do it week, biweekly, monthly, etc). It's very important to look at what your important dates are in your business calendar. So are you running a sale this week? Are there any holidays that you need to recognize anything in your community that's going on, that you want to talk about? Put important dates on the calendar first so that you can make sure you have content built for that. 

80/20 Content Rule

And then from there you want to follow an 80/20 rule with the types of content that you're going to create. 80% of your content should be more focused on what your audience likes to see and the reason that they're on social media. You would have engagement types of posts, things that people can interact  with easily. So that can be you asking questions or sharing a meme or things like that. You also want to have educational content or informative posts. 

So maybe educating them about your industry, your products, your services, but maybe not from the standpoint of like, "this is what we do", you know, and "you can do business with us", but more of building value, share information with them that they may not have known. 

You can also link to different articles that talk about your industry or your types of products or services. And another form of content that you can have in there is storytelling and testimonials. So that's the 80% of the content that you should have going out on your social media pages within a week's timeframe. 

So if you post Every day, Monday through Friday, let's say five days in the week, then four out of your five days need to be more of that 80% content group.

Now the other 20% of your weekly content should be promotional where you're actually creating a call to action. You're prompting them to do business with you. Directing them to your site or to fill out a contact form. This is your time to ask for their business in whatever way makes sense for your business.

Okay. So Plan out your week. Got It! It should really take less than 30 minutes to plan out your topics for content. And then I want you to move on to step two and step two is actually creating the content. 

Creating Social Media Posts with Batching Content: Graphics & Captions - Step 2

Creating the content for your social media marketing strategy is all about creating your graphics and your captions. So my process, I like to create my captions first and then I create the graphics, but you'll figure out which one works better for you and your style.

I use a free tool called Canva to create my graphics. You can get a link here to that. I recommend getting the Pro Version. Now the free version is Awesome. But there's so many more bells and whistles and tools that you could have access to by using the pro, which I think is like $12.95 a month. 

So creating all of your graphics in there, there's wonderful templates as well. They even have tutorials to kind of show you how to do that. And then creating your caption. I like to make sure I keep a log of everything that I'm creating. I'll use like a Google doc. Some people use a Trello board to write their captions, to save their content, whether you're using Trello or whether you're using Google docs, you can actually upload your picture that you created your graphic to that, you know, Google doc or a Trello board.

And so you create your content that should really only take you about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, if you're just starting to get into creating graphics and then step three in batching, your content is scheduling it out.

Scheduling Social Media Posts with Batching Content - Step 3

Okay with Scheduling Content you have awesome tools available out there for you that are actually free. My favorite is the Creator Studio by Facebook. That's a really great tool. One because it's free, but two, it gives you the ability to schedule out content on Facebook and Instagram. And you can read all of your social media insights and data and analytics in that tool as well. 

So that's for Facebook and Instagram. If you have social media platforms outside of those two, that you want to be scheduling content for, I recommend Buffer or Hootsuite so that you can connect your LinkedIn, your Twitter, your Pinterest, if you have that, your Google+ pages.

Those are also free, but they have a limitation on their free package. I think you can link three accounts in Buffer and like four on Hootsuite or vice versa. But the details to that, you can click on the links here and you'll be able to find that.

So let's review, we have Batching Your Content is three steps of Planning, Creating, and Scheduling out your content. Again, the whole purpose of this just gives you the ability in a shorter timeframe to get more content done at once so that you save yourself time later in the week, month or quarter. Hopefully this was really helpful for you. I want you to be able to take this and take massive action on it.

If you are someone who wants more of these tips, sign up for my email list, make sure that you get my free guide, 9 Things Your Social Media Marketing Cannot Be Missing If You Want to Grow Your Business. And then in there you're going to get a discount code to purchase The Essential Social Media Tool Kit. It's normally valued at over $500. I have it retailed right now at $27. So you're gonna get a $500 online course program with checklists and worksheets in that, only for $27 If you sign up for my email list by clicking on the banner at the top of this page.

And if you have any questions, make sure that you're a part of my Facebook community group and in there you will continue to learn with me and then I want you to share any thoughts and ideas or questions that you have in that group so that I can continue to be creating content that you specifically need. Hope you have a wonderful day and can't wait to see your work on this!

Hi! I’m Danielle and I’m from the Land of Oz, a.k.a. Kansas! I’m a mom of 2, married to an awesomely funny dude, I have owned a Toto dog in my lifetime, and in case you’re wondering… yes I’ve walked the yellow brick road.

I am also a seasoned social media and digital marketing coach for local small businesses and I have a passion for empowering and educating people to take more ownership of the marketing efforts for their business.

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