If you’re a business owner or marketer…you know:
Content creation is a time-consuming process.
Whether it’s a blog post, social media captions, or email campaigns, writing requires patience and dedication (and time. A lot of time.).
While time is not something many entrepreneurs and business owners have a lot of, content is a crucial part of connecting with your audience. But like every good business owner, you can figure out ways to streamline this process.
As the CEO of a content marketing and copywriting agency, one of my specialties is….you guessed it…creating content strategies. So, let’s walk through three easy steps on how to streamline your content creation process so that you have more time for you know…creating even more content.
Step #1: Brainstorm Content Ideas
Let’s start with the simple stuff.
One of the easiest ways to streamline your process is by brainstorming as many different topics and angles as you can think of. And then making a list that includes both broad and niche subject matter—the more, the better!
Start with big-picture items: What is your audience talking about? Which problems are they struggling to fix? What are their goals, needs, and challenges?
Then move to the more granular aspects: What are some small hacks for making that problem more manageable? What are some tips they could use? What are some common misconceptions or myths about this topic that you can dispel for them?
You should also keep in mind what your strengths and interests are—what topics do you naturally gravitate towards, even if it’s not the most popular subject matter right now? Don’t be afraid to talk about those things! You never know who might resonate with them.
Finally, wrap up by brainstorming some of your most popular content. You never know when these topics might resurface or need a refresh. Think about which ideas you could expand on or provide even more information. What questions came up that you could still answer?
Step #2: Batch each part of your content creation process
Now that you’ve got a complete list of ideas to work off of, it’s time to get creating! One of the most efficient ways to create content is to batch the process. So instead of taking each piece of content from start to finish, you do all similar tasks for all your content in one go.
To do this, you first need to outline your content creation process.
Think about which tasks need to happen for each content type (blog post, social media posts, email campaigns) and put them in order.
For example: When creating a blog post you first brainstorm ideas then outline the article structure before writing it up and finally publishing it.
Then when batching this process, all these steps would be done at once with one task per step. This will save time because instead of starting on the next part after finishing your current piece of work—as we do naturally—everything is already laid out. You can just focus on what needs doing without needing to think about what comes next or how long it’s going to take you.
Time batching makes it possible to create a week or even a month’s worth of content in advance, which will free up your time for other activities.
Step #3: Schedule it Out
Now that you’ve got your ideas and your plan of action, the next step is to schedule your content out.
It’s much more manageable to create one task per day or week than to have the content scattered throughout your calendar. The time you spend when creating all of these posts in advance will be easier as everything is already laid out, and it’ll save you a lot more stress.
Decide how much content you want to create on a weekly or monthly basis and create it based on the batching method you laid out in step two. Time yourself so you know how long it really takes you. Then block off that time in your calendar every month or week.
This will keep you on track with your content goals and your deadlines.
Other Content Creation Tips
Having a process that you return to again and again will make content creation easier because you’re not starting from scratch every single time. In addition, here are some other content creation tips to keep your editorial calendar running smoothly:
- Keep your content calendar public so that you can easily share it with other members of your team. This will help keep everyone on the same page and avoid any confusion about deadlines.
- Share a document or spreadsheet in which to track all relevant tasks, including creating summaries for upcoming posts, assigning draft titles and due dates to yourself or others, and keeping notes about how progress is coming along each week/day.
- Maintain an editorial calendar at least one year ahead (or longer) so that you have ample time to plan out subjects long before they come up. Planning in advance means less scrambling later when topics need addressing more urgently.
- Utilize tools like Grammarly and Ghost to edit your content before posting.
- Track the topics that are most popular each month so you know what type of content resonates best with readers. Track keywords in order to repurpose old blog post ideas for future use.
- Monitor how people interact with your blog via Google Analytics and adjust accordingly (e.g., if few visitors linger more than three minutes, it might be time to find a new angle).
- Ask yourself these questions: “What is my goal?” “How will I measure success?” One way is by looking at engagement rates; another way would be increasing web traffic from organic search results because this is free marketing.
- Focus on content that is of high quality and not quantity. For example, don’t just publish a post every day in the hopes that something might be viral; instead, take time to craft thoughtful blog posts with more depth.
- Use social media as an extension of your strategy through native posting (publishing directly on one site from another). This will increase your reach because readers are likely following you across different platforms which promotes engagement and authenticity.
- Enroll in copywriting courses so that you know that the content you publish is written in a way that compels and resonates with your target audience.
Yes, You DO Need a Content Strategy
Creating content that is valuable, engaging, and drives results will make or break your business. The key to success in the content game lies through understanding what type of content you can produce for your target audience at any given time—don’t just publish blindly!
Once you have a clear strategy on how to create impactful, quality content then all that’s left is execution and consistency.
