6 Time Saving Tips for Content Creation

Jan 17

If right now, your content creation feels like it takes hours out of your life, this post is for you.

I mean, there's a lot that you have to think about when it comes to content creation.

You’ve got to pick your ideas, you've got to organize those ideas, you have to choose your SEO if you're blogging or using YouTube, you've got to create the content, record it, write it, schedule it, edit it, make graphics.

I get it. I 100% get why content creation feels overwhelming.

But, it doesn’t have to be!

Content creation is my sweet spot. It’s something that I absolutely love doing. I have a lot of strategies up my sleeve, and today I’m sharing 6 of them to help you save hours every single week with your content creation.

Content Creation Tip #1: A Clear Content Strategy

Let's dive into my very first tip, which is to have a clear content strategy. It’s not enough for you to willy-nilly be creating content, posting, and kind of flying by the seat of your pants.

Honestly, that's probably taking the most time out of your schedule.

Having a clear content strategy is incredibly important. At this point, what I want you to think about is where you are showing up. You do not have to be everywhere, on every single platform. In fact, I don't recommend that at all.

You want to be really strategic with where you are showing up.

Some things to consider are:

Where is my audience?
What type of content do I like to create? Is it video? Do you enjoy writing? Do you enjoy recording yourself as podcasting? Do you love making reels or TikToks? Do you enjoy posting on social media?
That's going to be the easiest way for you to create content when it feels good to you.
You also want to think about the type of content that your audience is consuming. So not only do we need to think about the specific platform, and what you like to create, but of that bucket, what is your audience consuming the most of?

Now, maybe you don't have this information right out of the gate, but this is something that I want you to pay attention to in order to streamline your content strategy.

Really dive deep into exploring:

Is your audience watching YouTube videos?
Do they prefer short little snippets of videos on Instagram?
Is your audience reading blogs? Most audiences still are.
Is your audience really utilizing Google?
Do they listen to podcasts?
What do we know about your specific audience that is going to help you streamline your content strategy?

This is incredibly important, because I want you to have a clear base of, "This is where I'm showing up, and this is the type of content that I'm creating."

Content Creation Tip #2: Create a Repurposing Workflow

The next thing I want you to do is create a repurposing workflow. I talk about it quite often over here at Brandmerry, it's one of the core pillars inside of my membership Brandmerry Academy, and I broke down that entire process in this video right here.

I share the entire step-by-step of designing a repurposing workflow in that video, so for our purposes today, let's talk about a bird's eye view of a repurposing workflow.

The idea here is that you take the platforms that you've chosen to show up on, and you think of how you can repurpose your content on each of those platforms.

So for instance, you're not creating videos, and then creating a completely different blog on a different subject, and showing up on social media every day, talking about something different. That is wasting your precious time.

One of the best things that you can do as a business owner is repeat yourself. It's through repetition that really builds that brand authority, and that expertise, and why individuals will continue to follow you, invest in your products and your services, and tell their friends about what you do.

So with this repurposing plan, which again, I talk about in this video right here, you want to figure out how you can create one core piece of content, maybe it's a video like this one, which was turned into this blog and then repurposed onto multiple platforms.

This is going to save you a bunch of time for two reasons.

Reason #1: You're able to utilize repurposing, transcribing this video, creating social media posts, taking the audio and turning it into a podcast, whatever that looks like for you. And that's going to save you a lot of time, because you ultimately don't have to create as much new content every single week.

My clients who have a very clear repurposing workflow typically create one core piece of content every week, and then they push that out in various ways onto different platforms.

Reason #2: The other way this is going to save you time and energy, is that you can repeat this workflow every single week.

What I recommend you do is you take this weekly workflow, and put it into a task management software. We like to use ClickUp, but you can also use Asana, or any other task management software that you prefer, and set it to repeat every single week.

This is really going to take the guesswork out of what you should be doing in order to create content, which is going to save you a ton of time.

Content Creation Tip #3: Plan Your Content

The third tip that I have for you today, is to choose one period of time every 90 days to plan your content. One of the things that I think takes entrepreneurs so much time, is they'll sit down to write their content, or record their content. And they're also sitting down to think about what they're going to talk about.

They're switching gears back and forth.
"Okay, let me do my research on my ideas. Now I’ve got to go ahead and create it. Now I have to create graphics."

And it's this switching back and forth that can really waste a ton of time. So I recommend that you map out 90 days worth of content at a time.

What I mean by map out is not create, but choose your core topic. Remember back to the repurposing tip that I just shared, there's one core piece of content that you're creating every week, and then you're repurposing it to push out to multiple platforms.

So if you're planning 90 days worth of content, you're choosing 12 topics for 12 weeks. So it shouldn't take you that long. But what you're able to do is maybe carve out three hours at the beginning of the month to sit down, finalize all of those topics, and then walk away from it.

When you revisit, and actually create the content, you don't have to think about what you're going to talk about. You can just dive right into creating it.

Content Creation Tip #4: Have a Content Creation Day

My fourth time saving tip for you, is to have a content creation day. Yay for batch scheduling! Yay for batch recording!
In fact, the video for this blog is one of four videos that I recorded for an entire month in one day.

This is a fantastic way to save time and energy.

Now I'm not suggesting that you create 30 days worth of content in one day. I've been doing this for a long time. I have a very refined system. But when I was first starting out, and what most of my clients do inside of Brandmerry Academy, is they choose one day a week that is dedicated to content creation.

Now, based on your schedule, you want to choose the day that works best for you.

When I was first starting, it was Sunday, because I worked a full-time job, and Sunday my husband was home. So I could create content on Sunday.

Once I left my nine to five, I was able to create content on Monday, because I had my mother-in-law taking care of my son.

So you want to pick a day that works best for your schedule. Best if it can be repeated on the same day every week, because that's going to help you get into that habit.

Try and pick a day every week, where you can carve out two to three hours, and get that on your calendar right now.

Honor that time.
Don't schedule anything else during that time.
Really just focus on your content creation for that week.

Content Creation Tip #5: Batch Your Content Creation Tasks

My fifth tip for you kind of falls in line with the last one. On that content creation day, I encourage you to group like tasks together.

What I mean by this is don't try and write a blog, and then hop over and create your graphics for that blog, and then jump back and edit it, and then go ahead and schedule it, and then switch to scheduling your graphics, and then go back to this.

Try not to jump from one core task to another. Really group them together.

For instance, if you are creating content once a week, then you would sit down and you would do all your writing in one chunk. Write your blog, or write your script for your video, and write anything else that you need to do. Maybe it's the social media post, maybe it's the email you're going to send. So you're doing all of your writing during one chunk of time.

Then you can switch gears.

Maybe then you decide you're going to create your graphics. You're going to go ahead and create your graphics that you need for that piece of content. Maybe it's a thumbnail for your YouTube video, maybe it's a Pinterest image for your blog, your social media content that you're going to be doing. You're creating all your graphics in one chunk of time.

Then you're moving into the third phase, which is scheduling your content. More on that in a minute.

What you want to do is you want to make sure you're not hopping back and forth from task to task. This is such a time suck.

If you are doing something like batch creating content for 30 days, or 90 days like I do, and I talk about in this video right here, you want to really group together your full day.

For instance, I will record a bunch of YouTube videos on one day.
Then I might choose another day to record podcasts.
And then I might choose another day to create graphics.

Grouping the tasks together is such a fantastic way to focus on what you're doing and not distract yourself.

Content Creation Tip #6: Scheduling

That leads me to my last tip, which is scheduling. This needed its own little pocket of time from me.

Please schedule your content in advance.

I know, there are so many tips and tricks to getting your stuff seen, and they tell you to maybe not schedule it because you won't get as much of a reach.

But listen, if you're already strapped for time, if you're already really struggling to streamline your process, you're just contributing to that overwhelm by having to post things in real time.

I'd rather you start scheduling, and consistently showing up, and start to streamline your process, and spend less, and less, and less time on creation than not post at all.

We know consistency is important.
We know content creation is important at every single stage of the buying process.

So if scheduling your content is going to help you actually post your content, then please do it.

You can pretty much schedule anything, except for Instagram reels. But I got a fun strategy for that in just a sec.

You can schedule your blog post, schedule your emails, and all of your social media content.
If you're using carousels on Instagram or Facebook, you can schedule those in advance inside of the Creator Studio on Facebook.
You can schedule your Pinterest posts.
You can pretty much schedule anything.

You can't schedule Reels just yet, but a tip that I have is after you batch create them, and download them to your phone so they don't get deleted. After that go ahead and just save them as a draft. Then you can put a little reminder in your task management, or on your phone to just go in, and hit publish when the time is ready.

Scheduling is going to be a fantastic way to save you time and energy. Please do it if you find that you're not consistently showing up, because that is more important than maybe the 1% boost that posting in real time is going to give you on the platform.

CONCLUSION

As you can see, there's a real benefit to having systems in place for your business. And I want you to remember that you are going to refine your system as you go.

The more that you actually implement the system that you have in place, the more you'll notice that it's taking you less and less time.

This happens very often with my clients, and it happened in my own business as well, where it would feel like it still took me a lot of time to implement a system.

Maybe it was taking me four hours to create everything and schedule it all. But then, as I kept doing this week after week, after week, I noticed that it was taking me less and less time.

And that's just like anything, right? You have to build up that muscle and having these systems in place is going to help you.

It's going to support you in saving hours, every single week, with your content creation.

This is something that we teach inside of my community Brandmerry Academy. This membership is all about marketing without relying on social media.

If you want to learn more, you can go to brandmerry.com/academy for some details. Join the waitlist, and be the first to know when doors open again.

P.S. Planning and creating your content doesn't have to be a constant struggle. There is a better way to research, plan, and create your content as an entrepreneur and it's all inside the Content Planning Blueprint!

The Content Planning Blueprint is perfect for online business owners who know the power of content creation but are tired of spending all of their time coming up with ideas, organizing their content, and wondering what will attract their dream clients.

In just a few hours, you'll have 90 days of content planned, a repeatable workflow to save you hours on creating and distributing your content every week, and content topics that will keep performing for your brand for years to come! Get your blueprint now >>