Can we get real here for a second….
One you don’t want to spend all day every day making content even IF you had the time to do it.
Two if you are spending a huge amount of time trying to keep up with constantly creating content you aren’t necessarily growing your business even if you do get crazy visible. This is because you are filling your time trying to get more visible when you could be filling your time working with clients or making sales!
But what are you supposed to do?
You need to create content to get visible and connect with ideal clients…you need to create content that converts…you need to create content to stay valuable to your community….
That is a LOT of content.
So today I’m going to share with you some things that I do to create content consistently without going crazy.
These work no matter how many channels you are trying to fill so don’t think these tips couldn’t work for you if you are only trying to fill up your blog feed.
Just keep in mind that as your content strategy grows and evolves these content creation hacks can stick with you and help you reduce the content creation load!
Repurpose content
If you aren’t repurposing your content you are missing a huge opportunity to cut down on the amount of time it takes to fill your content calendar.
I’ve got a full post on repurposing here.
But for the purpose of this post, you’ll want to know a few quick things.
Just because you posted a piece of content doesn’t mean it has lost any value so keep sharing it with your audience. If you feel like you need to switch it up a bit before reposting consider just adding an update section of things that you’ve learned since writing this first post.
And for another thing, your audience is always changing. Don’t believe me? Just look at one of your social media profiles. You get some followers you lose some followers.
It’s important to remember that your audience may not even know what you’ve posted in the past so re-imagine it, repost it, and repurpose it for your audience to get more out of what you’ve already done.
Talk it out (dictate)
This one was an interesting hack for me find. I realized one day that it was really easier for me to talk about a topic as the first draft than it was for me to try and write it out.
I suspect it has to do with the way I would try to edit and format and worry about the next step of writing the content rather than just getting it all out there and editing it later.
So when I need to get a lot of content out I dictate it to my phone first. Then I edit, chop it up, put it together and fill my calendar with it.
Give it a try you might be surprised at how much content you can get out of your head when you talk it out rather than trying to write it as a social media update or blog post.
Batch it
One thing you can do to up your content creation productivity is to do a bunch of it at once. That way you aren’t switching between tasks losing out on precious moments of productivity if you do.
Your batch process may look different than mine but here is roughly what I do.
I plan out a month of posts at once, 4 in total.
Then I write outlines for all of them.
Then I come back and write up the drafts.
Edit, create photos and schedule.
I see the biggest boost in productivity when I get to the graphics creation phase.
By getting into my software once and creating all the graphics I’ll need that month I don’t have to keep switching back and forth between the different activities.
I spend about 8 hours a month creating ALL the blog content I’ll need for the following month. Including scheduling, optimizing, and pushing it out to my social media channels.
This is because I sit down to get it all done at one time.
Stop consuming
This one may surprise you. But it is so important when creating your own content.
You’ll want to stop consuming other people’s content. You are wasting time and not fully stepping into what content you should be sharing with your audience.
If you don’t know what to write about consuming other people’s content for ideas isn’t going to help you connect with your audience or stand out from the crowd. You need to get out there and talk to your ideal audience and write content around what you learn from them not what others in your niche are doing.
It can be so hard to switch from consuming to creating, I know because I struggled with it. I didn’t have the confidence in my own ideas and I didn’t think I knew enough to get started.
But I did.
And you do too. Get out there and write your own content rather than using your content creation time to consume!
You’ve got this!
Write now edit later
This goes back to talking it out but don’t try and edit while you write. It will slow you down and stifle great ideas from coming to the surface.
Just get in there and start writing. Or dictate it out.
Just do it and worry about all the details later.
Now it’s your turn!
What content creation hacks do you use to create more in less time? Let me know in the comments!
