Social Media takes Time

As a business owner these days, especially a small business owner, you have to wear a lot of hats. And I get that, I mean, I wear a ton of ‘em, even when I have people helping me get things done (which, for transparency’s sake, isn’t the case right now!)

But some of the most difficult, stressful hats can be the “Social Media Manager” and “Social Media Graphic Designer” hats. Especially if they’re not even tangential to what you already do. I mean, if you run a yoga studio, it may not be in your wheelhouse to post on Instagram, or create TikToks. Scrolling on Pinterest might be your vibe, but… creating pins? Do you know where to start? The point I’m getting at is it’s actually fine if you don’t know where to start, because I don’t know where to start teaching someone a yoga flow. It’s not my job.

Keeping Social Media branded can take even MORE time

And not only all that – Social Media taking time away from your actual job, you know, the thing you started your business to do – but creating BRANDED social media content takes even MORE time, because you’re going to spend time tweaking things, shifting things, and perfecting things. Now I tend to tell people that starting with branded content and a fully outlined brand guide helps speed you up with social media content, but to be transparent with you, it’s more of a double edged sword.

Some people find it waaayyy easier to work with a brand guide when they’re creating their own social media content. Especially if that guide had a full outline of how, when, and what you should be posting. But not all brand guides are created equal, and not all branding packages include those details. I don’t include them in all of mine, after all!

So if you don’t have all of those details, OR you’re an overthinker in general, you might end up putting even more pressure on yourself if you’re attempting to adhere to your own brand guidelines when you’re creating social media content.

Batch creation solves both of these problems

And all of those reasons and MORE are why batch creation is your best bet for social media content creation. When you batch create, you get the benefit of creating more than one post at a time, and getting into a flow with it, but it also saves you time overall, and you can keep yourself more consistent. Seeing multiple posts together also gives you a 40,000 foot view of your content – you can see how your Instagram grid is going to look with all of your posts up! You’ll be able to see how your Pinterest feed will look to customers – the benefits just rack up when you really look at it.

Batching keeps you on TOPIC

When it comes to keeping your content branded, batch creation can also keep you on topic. Posting for your brand should all be rooted into your brand values, using things like your buzzwords, and adhering to your content pillars.

And when you’re batch creating, it’s a lot easier to create and stick to a plan for those kinds of elements, because again, you have that 40,000 foot view. Instead of approaching each post as an island, you can approach them as a network. Because all of your social media content should work together – it IS a network. A web, so to speak. Not the kind that catches your customers like flies, but more of a web like a magical interconnected system that promotes the values behind your brand, and not just the THINGS your brand is doing.

And batching can keep you more true to those goals!

Consistent Social Media works for YOU

The other major win from social media content batching, is that you can ensure even if YOU have a lapse in energy… your social profiles will keep working for you. We don’t have the same energy and capacity every day – we’re human, and that’s not how it works. There will be some times when life gets in the way – the big life things, that HAVE to come first. And there will be days when you’re ill, and weeks when you just don’t quite have the same level of inspiration that you usually do for content.

And when you’re batching, none of those things get in the way of your profiles staying active, because you’ve batched your content! You’ve already written your captions, created your graphics, and for most platforms… you’ve even scheduled them to post. Which means you have more time-freedom to handle the things that come up for you.

But that’s not the ONLY kind of consistency it helps with – it helps with ensuring that your PEOPLE have things to read from you, and stay plugged into your content, no matter what’s going on behind the scenes.

Should you start content batching?

That all leads us to the big question – should you start? Well… ideally yes. But there’s no one size fits all approach to social content. There’s not even a one size fits all approach to what social platforms you’re going to use in the first place! Which means that really, at the end of the day, whether you should start content batching comes down to how YOU want to manage your platforms, and whether you work best in big focused chunks of time.

If you’re someone who genuinely works better having a range of tasks that they do throughout the day, and you don’t mind changing your focus to get social media content posted… then by all means, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re like me, and you struggle to maintain your energy throughout the week or the month, then it might help you stay consistent to pick a few days that are your “content” days, and start using them to batch posts.