How To Create Your Social Media Content 5x Faster
As a business owner, you wear many hats. One minute you may be immersed in client work, and the next you’re catching up on accounting. With countless tasks on your plate that range from admin to marketing, it can be challenging to keep up with aspects of the business that feel like less of a priority, like social media.
While social media is undoubtedly a powerful (not to mention free!) marketing tool, it can often feel overwhelming to consistently come up with unique content that will engage your audience and draw in new customers.
There may be some days when the creative juices aren’t flowing or you are swamped with client work and the last thing you want to do is come up with a fun or helpful Instagram post on the fly.
In order to make sure everything on your to-do list gets checked off (ideally with time to spare), it’s key to set up systems to streamline time-consuming tasks like content creation.
This is where batch working can save the day.
Batching your work means working on similar tasks at once so you aren’t switching from task to task. In terms of social media, batch working entails working on different elements of social media content at different times, like spending one day finding all your images or creating graphics, spending the next day writing all of your captions, and then another day scheduling all of the posts. This process saves time and allows you to create weeks or even a few months worth of content all at once instead of day by day.
When you batch work your social media content…
You save serious time, first and foremost! Even though you will need to dedicate a few hours upfront, batching your work will save time in the long run and allow you to focus more time and energy on higher priority tasks day to day.
Ensures your social media has consistency. With a month (or more) worth of posts planned and ready to go, you will have peace of mind knowing that you will have a steady flow of content.
Reduces the stress of creating content in the moment every day. With a content calendar in place, you no longer have to scramble to come up with a post last minute.
At GoLive, we firmly believe in the power of planning, which includes batch work for marketing tasks like social media content creation.
How To Batch Work Your Content In 5 Easy Steps
PRO TIP: We like to batch work our content for one month at a time for the best results.
Step One: Brainstorm
When creating social media content in bulk, your first move should be to brainstorm topics. Spend no more than an hour coming up with general topics, prompts, and any thoughts you want to share. This is also when you should take a look at your calendar and keep in mind any upcoming launches, announcements, or notable events like holidays that you can build your content around.
While it may feel intimidating to start with a blank slate each month, just know that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. In fact, sharing similar types of posts on a regular basis helps create consistency and build trust with your followers! To make your batch working process even more efficient, consider creating a recurring series—this could be a weekly tip that’s related to your product or service or a monthly shoutout to another girlboss you admire. This way, you not only have a formula to rely on when brainstorming new content, but your audience has something to look forward to.
Step Two: Put Your Topics On The Calendar
Once you have a few content ideas to guide you, it’s time to organize these thoughts into actual posts by figuring out where, when, and how you’ll share them.
This is where having a calendar comes in handy. Whether you want to use an online template or a physical calendar, the posts need to be laid out somewhere you can refer to throughout the month. The content calendar should include a brief description of what each post is about as well as when and where it’s being published.
When determining how you want to share these posts, consider how they would best be communicated and where they would best be received. For example, if you are a photographer and want to share a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how you edit photos, it would be more engaging to create a fun Instagram Reels or TikTok of the process than it would be to share a Facebook post. Or, if you’re sharing a story about why you started your business, it would be a good idea to create a longer post that lives in your Instagram feed because it’s something that people can read at any time to get to know your brand better.
Step Three: Choose Images
Strong imagery is an essential part of your brand’s visual identity. Not only does it help attract your ideal clients—whether through your website or on social media—but the imagery you choose to put out there is reflective of your brand and helps communicate your overall message.
When it comes to content creation, choosing the right images to go along with your posts is important because it helps set the tone for what the post is about. Keep in mind that it’s perfectly fine to share an image more than once. Chances are, not all of your followers saw it the first time anyways! If you shared an image a couple months ago and feel like it would be a good fit for another post you have planned, don’t hesitate to share it again.
It’s also a good idea to break up the visuals by sharing a mix of lifestyle photos, product shots, and graphics, depending on the product or service you offer. Sharing a variety of posts makes your content visually stimulating. Plus, when you batch this task, you will know exactly how all of your imagery will look ahead of time and can better control the overall aesthetic you’re trying to achieve.
PRO TIP: Consider having a custom photoshoot for your brand. Branded imagery is a worthy investment for any business. Not only are custom photos a better way to communicate your brand (rather than impersonal stock photos), but they can be used to create cohesiveness across all of your platforms.
Step Four: Write Your Captions
Writing engaging captions is undoubtedly one of the most time consuming parts of creating social media posts. But by batching this task and knocking out all of the captions at once, you’re cutting down a ton of time that would have otherwise been spent staring at your screen trying to think of something witty or engaging to say in the moment.
Our biggest tip for writing captions is to just write! Let your thoughts flow and don’t overthink it. Once you have your ideas written down, you can edit and refine them to make them social media ready. This step could take an hour or two, depending on how quickly you write, but once this is done you can breathe a big sigh of relief because your batch of social media content is almost complete!
Step Five: Schedule & Automate Your Posts
The last step in batch working your social media content is to schedule the posts. With everything else in place, this is usually the easiest part. All you need to do is make sure you have the best tool to help you make the process even more efficient.
There are tons of social media scheduling platforms out there. At GoLive, we use and recommend Planoly to plan and schedule Instagram posts. Planoly makes it easy to plan an entire month’s worth of content thanks to features that let you draft captions, schedule content, and auto post all in one place. Plus, as a visual planner, you can easily drag and drop posts to arrange your grid the way you want it to look.
The Wrap Up
To sum it up, your social media content creation doesn’t have to be overwhelming! When you break down the tasks necessary to create consistent, engaging social media posts for your brand, it becomes less time consuming and feels more manageable. Spend a little time each day working on one of these steps, and soon you’ll have a solid month’s worth of social media content that you don’t have to worry about.
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