Social media this, social media that, but what if you’re one of those people where social media just isn’t your thing? No problem! In this blog post, we uncover ways to save business owners time when creating content to build their social media presence – and give them the confidence to post consistently. 

The secret behind every social media account consistently churning out impactful content is content buckets and content batching. Content buckets are themes or topics used to guide what you post for your brand and content batching helps you create content for each bucket at once for easier planning. Still unclear? Keep reading. 

What is Content Batching? 

Wait, so what is content batching? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. Creating content in batches to use for the time period you created it for. For example, instead of writing a caption every time a post is ready to go live you write a week, two weeks, or a month worth of captions in a single sitting. 

Content batching is a productivity and planning technique that leads to a more efficient way of creating content for you and your business. Before we get into how to create content in batches, let’s check out the benefits.

The Benefits of Content Batching 

Not only does making content in advance leave you with more time to focus on bigger priorities for your business, but it leads to a more effective and cohesive method of creating content your followers and you will like. 

Saves Time - Sitting down to create your content in a single sitting saves you time. Instead of creating content every day for a month to meet your numbers, adding time to your regular workflow to brainstorm captions, photo, and video concepts allows you to feel more confident in what you’re creating. It also leaves you with extra time during the week or month to better focus on running your business or brand.

Cohesive Grid - By creating content in advance, you can anticipate how it’s going to look before all the content is made. (Related: How to Save Time by Establishing Social Media Content Buckets)

Room to Adjust - Once you’ve created the content for the week, you can view how it performed using Instagram analytics or PLANOLY’s Analyze dashboard for advanced post and Story analytics. You can evaluate and adjust your content planning accordingly to continue increasing audience engagement. 

How Can Content Batching Help Your Business 

Content batching isn't just a productivity hack. Spending time and energy to create cohesive content gives your Instagram a more credible, professional, and branded look your followers can trust. 

Content batching will ultimately help you spend less time planning and creating for social media. For example, creating content every day isn't a sustainable method for creating social media content – just ask any social media manager.

Establish two or four days out of the month to create content in batches for the upcoming weeks ahead. This will establish boundaries and help you focus – leading to a more efficient and effective social media strategy to grow your business.

How to Create Content in Batches 

Finding inspiration for content isn’t easy for anyone – we can all get into a rut sometimes. Here are a few ways to keep you inspired to create a ton of content.

Shoot one product three different ways. There are several ways to capture the same product in a different light. Try flat lays, lifestyle, stop motion, Reels, regrams, or user-generated content to show off your product or service to your audience. This way, you'll be able to pull from a bank of images displaying the same product. 

Find a month's worth of regrams or UGC at once. For example, if you share a regram every Wednesday, find four posts for the month in one sitting. Check out PLANOLY’s Discover feature that allows you to search for content through hashtags or usernames. 

Write all your educational content in one sitting. Find a few products or ideas you look forward to educating your audience on. Then, write all your educational content out for the month at once. It's easier and faster to write ten posts and captions in one sitting once you find a flow than to space the writing out over the span of several weeks. This takes the pressure off of you or your designer to create in the moment or day of.

Not sure if you can pull this off? Take it from a business owner who is in your shoes. Phoebe Sherman, the founder of Girl Gang Craft – a female-forward community for entrepreneurs and creatives,  shared the following pro tips: 

The number one question or comment I get in the DMs is, "How do I know what to post every day?" or "I feel like I am always scrambling to post towards the end of the day"

BATCHING BATCHING BATCHING. Batching solves these problems. Try planning a week next, and then you can work your way up for a whole month. Batching saves time, reduces anxiety and overwhelm.

How to Schedule your Content in Batches

Batching isn't just for creating – it's a great hack for scheduling content as well. Once you have a batch of content created, you can schedule the content to auto-post. For example, you can spend every Monday scheduling the next seven days of posts. You'll find that once you have posts created, it's easy to schedule them out and write out all the captions at once! For more on scheduling content or auto-post, head here. 

Creating content in batches isn't just for marketing pros – in fact, it's especially important for business owners who are juggling competing priorities. By creating content in batches, you can get back to focusing on what truly matters – running your business!