How would you like to have enough content created to take a vacation AND create it faster while staying completely inside your zones of genius? Does that sound too good to be true?
Well, if it does, you’re invited to keep listening in. I’m going to share with you the benefits of batching your content AND give you a tool to help along the way. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that batching can be a lot of work up front, but the benefits outweigh the cons.
Listen in to learn more about the benefits of batching your content, and how to create a content plan perfect for your business.
Tune in!
Mentioned in This Episode
- Free Content Batching Guide
- Episode 7: How to Develop Your Content Ideas
- Episode 8: How to Create a 90-Day Content Plan
- Client Journey Ebook
- The Content Mastery Lab
Transcription
Abby Herman 0:09
Hey there and welcome to Episode 126 of the content experiment podcast, a podcast that supports the idea that content and marketing are ever moving targets in any business. And it’s okay if you don’t feel like you’re doing it. All right all of the time, you have permission to experiment with little tweaks and changes in your content, to find what works for you, what increases value for your audience, and what grows your business, and most importantly, what feels good for you. I’m Abby Herman, content strategist and coach for online business owners who are ready to make a bigger impact online. I firmly believe that success isn’t about what big marketing brands and so called gurus think is the right thing. It’s about you and your business, your lifestyle, and frankly, your values and belief systems, you get to do business in a way that works for you. Now, as I’m recording this, I’m in the middle of a huge podcast batching spree, I decided I needed to take some time off from the podcast this summer. And I didn’t want to not publish any episodes. So I started interviewing for five, six, sometimes more guest episodes each week to batch them. And it’s been a lot and I’d be lying. If I didn’t tell you that. I’m pretty burned out on it. But here’s the bonus, I am so close to not having to touch a single podcast at the guest episode until the end of August, beginning of September. Yeah, that’s right, September. In fact, the interviews are almost done. And I just have to record a few intros and outros in my solo episodes as well. But that’s always been a struggle for me, I usually put that off, but I am really going to try to get those done through the same amount of time as well. While the work has been really hard, the benefits, I think, are going to be huge. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about On today’s episode. So if you’re thinking, there’s no way I can do that, Abby, then you’re invited to keep listening in, I’m going to share with you the benefits of batching your content. And I’m going to give you a tool to help you along the way. That tool is my free batching Guide, which walks you through the batching process step by step no matter what kind of content you are creating.
Abby Herman 2:34
And of course, you should always take what works for you from the guide. And from this episode and use that and let go of everything else, make the idea of batching your content your own, and do it in a way that works for you. Go to thecontentexperiment.com/batch and grab your guide. This episode is going to be really short and sweet. But I’m just going to dive right into it. Grab your batching guide and follow along. I’m not going to go through the entire guide. But I am going to share some of the benefits of batching your content and how simple it can actually be if you have the systems set up to do it. So I have a question for you. Have you ever gotten sick, or one of your children has gotten sick? Or maybe you decided you wanted to go on vacation? Imagine that you needed to take some time away, or you just got really busy with client work. content. batching is the best way I know how to stay on top of your content month after month because stuff happens, right? So batching is just a really valuable tool that it behooves you to make some time in your schedule for it. So why batching? What is it that makes it so valuable? Well, batching allows you to do five things, and probably more, but I’m going to talk about five specific things. So first of all, with batching, you can create themes of content that your audience can follow along with. So having content themes helps to avoid confusion when it comes to what you stand for and what your expertise is, which by the way is what is going to get you noticed online.
Abby Herman 4:30
So creating these themes of content, it also makes it easier for you to create the content as well. So if you go to episode seven of the podcast, you can find all about content themes and how to start planning out your content. Another thing so number two is batching. your content helps you to plan ahead if catastrophe happens. If something happens in your business or in your life, you Still have content to publish. And again, I’m talking to kids and client work overload or you know, maybe you get in a car accident or you lose your voice or, or whatever. batching is also really good for vacation prep and going away for conferences. So if you’ve batched your content, you have your content created. And you can schedule it to publish when it’s time for it to publish, and you don’t have to worry about it. So number one is you can create themes of content that are really easy to follow along with number two is it allows you to seamlessly publish content even when you need to take time off. Number three is batching. your content allows you to create more content faster. So when you’re super focused on just one task, it is a lot easier to get it done. You’ve heard people talk about context switching. If you are context switching is going to take a lot longer for you to get something done. But if you can sit down and just really outline out six blog posts, or five podcast episodes in one sitting, and then turn around and tweak them and perfect them. In another setting, you are going to create your content so much faster. And I’ll tell you to something that I should have started doing a long time ago, but I just recently started doing is, as soon as I’m done with a podcast interview, I sit down and I try to write the intro and outro for that episode right away. Instead of having to come back to it later. I don’t always record it right away.
Abby Herman 6:38
But I at least get the intro and outro written so that I can do a batch recording of multiple intros and outros at once, it saves me so much time because I don’t have to go back and listen to the podcast episode again. It took me a really long time. I mean, it took me like 100 episodes to get to the point where I was doing that, which I’m a little embarrassed to admit, but it’s the truth. So if you’re creating content in small silos, where you are writing, today, you’re writing your email that needs to go live tomorrow, or tomorrow, you’re recording an interview. And then next week, sometime you’ll record the intro and outro. And then the week after that, you’ll create the social media posts for it, that is going to like extend the period of time that it takes you to create it, or maybe you’re sitting down and you’re just doing one podcast episode today, because it needs to go live tomorrow. And that’s just not an efficient way to do it. Now, as I say that, I know that people are saying, Oh, well, she’s telling me that I need to create all of this content. No, I really am not. Really, what you need to do is a batch of the content that you do want to put out there. And even if you sit down and you batch, let’s say about three blog posts right now, and those three blog blog posts are going to last you three months. Great. You don’t have to think about your content for three months. How awesome is that?
Abby Herman 8:07
Alright, so number four. So number one was creating themes so that your audience can follow along, and it’s a lot easier for you to create the content. Reason number two, why you should bad is because you have content planned in case something happens, and you need it. Reason number three is that you can create more content faster. Number four, reason number four to batch your content is that it allows you to stay inside your zones of genius, because you’re focused on just a few key areas and few key ideas at once. And hopefully just one type of content at once, you’re going to be a lot more focused on the ideas that you want to generate for your audience. And it’s going to flow a lot better, which goes back to number one, but it’s going to flow a lot better, and your messaging is going to be a lot more solid. So this is better content that gets noticed by your audience. So because you’re inside that zone of genius. And number five, and this kind of negates number four a little bit, but I’m still going to mention it because I think it’s really important. It allows you to loop in other mediums. So I’m talking about aligning your message your messaging with being on podcast or with creating webinars or with releasing courses and so on.
Abby Herman 9:23
There is so much strategy involved if you’re just sit down and batch your content. So I actually talked about how to do this and how to do the content planning piece in episodes seven and eight. And I actually walk you through in episode eight, how to create a 90 day content plan. And then in the batching guide, so the content experiment.com slash batch it, you I walk you through step by step of exactly how to create your batching process. So I’m going to go through each up really quickly, and then go to the batching guide to get more detail. So step one is you’re going to identify the themes that you want to create content around. And this is about deciding what is it that you are going to promote in the coming three, four or five, six months. So what are the themes, what’s the the content that you’re going to create number two is you’re going to plan out the content that you’re going to create for each platform that you are creating content for. So this does not mean that you’re creating, you know, a whole bunch of blog posts and YouTube videos and podcasts and social media posts. That means you’re choosing based on an audience survey or your pillar content platforms, you’re choosing where you’re creating content. And then you are
Abby Herman 10:50
getting started with with planning out that process and planning out what that’s going to look like. Then you’re going to outline each step three is outline each type of content. So if you are a podcaster, what are those podcast episodes going to look like? outline your topics, so that you know them. And if you outline your podcast topics, then you’re going to be able to create complimentary social media content that goes along with those podcast episodes. Step four is actually setting aside the time for content creation. So I have a built into my calendar, some time that I’m creating content, sometimes that means I am doing podcast interviews. Other times, like today, I’m actually doing some batching of some intro and outro recordings and batching of some outlining podcast episodes as well, you have to block out the time to do it. Otherwise, I guarantee it’s not going to get done. So put it on your calendar, and then all the way up to Step five, now you’re creating it. So there’s a lot of work that needs to go into your planning process before you actually start creating. So Step five is honor the time that you’ve set aside and create your content. Step six is edit your content. So make sure that you take the time to review what you created. Make sure that you’re sending your podcast episodes to your editor, make sure whatever needs to happen, make sure that you take the time to edit it, or have someone else add it for you. Step seven, get it loaded and get it out of the door. So get it loaded and scheduled. And Bonus points if you do this way in advance. So like I said, I’m in the middle of this massive batching spree right now for the podcast. And my team is working to get it loaded and scheduled as quickly as possible as early as possible so that we can focus on other things in the business because there are a lot of other moving parts in the business that we want to focus on. So that is your seven step process for batching.
Abby Herman 13:03
And I gave you five reasons why you can why you should batch why batching should be part of your plan. And you know what one of them was not that you get to focus on other things, right? That is a huge benefit to it. One of the things that we do inside content mastery lab, my membership community is we actually set aside the time that we all need in order to create the content that we need for our audience members. So that is part of the membership. We have regular weekly CEO dates, and our annual members also get to come together in small groups once a quarter, and we walk through your content planning process together. It’s such a huge benefit. I get a lot done during those sessions, I know that the members get a lot done. So if you’re ready to start experimenting with your content and marketing in your business, and you don’t feel like you have the wherewithal to do it all yourself. Make sure that you check out content mastery lab, you can go to thecontentexperiment.com/lab. And if you use the coupon code podcast, you can get your first month of the membership for just $1 so you can try it out for a buck. And then Pricing starts at $97 A month after that. If you found value in what you learned here today, be sure you share it on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it over on Instagram stories. tag me @thecontentexperiment so I know you’re listening and I would love to hear your biggest takeaways. The more you share, the more we can get the podcast into the hands of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone. Until next time, take care.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
