While content creation may seem like a task that can be done quickly, if done properly, it actually takes hours of planning, research, editing, and more. Although it’s time-consuming, it allows you to build your audience, engage with your existing customers, and provide a personalized experience that will keep new and existing customers coming back–aka, it’s very important!
As a business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate, and we know you can’t be spending all of your time focusing on this one task. Luckily, with the right tools and tricks, there are ways to streamline the process so you can optimize your content creation without sacrificing quality.
Time-Saving Hacks For Content Creation
Cut Back On How Often You Post
We know what you’re probably thinking–why should I cut back when posting frequently is so important? However, it’s truly about quality, not quantity, when creating social media content. If you’re putting out content just for the sake of putting out content, your audience is going to notice, and they aren’t going to want to engage with it, ultimately making it useless.
If your main source of content is blog writing, consider writing fewer yet longer pieces that are well-thought-out and informative. If your focus is social media, scale back from posting on your feed to a couple of times a week. If this feels like it’s not enough, you can still remain on things such as Instagram’s stories feature, which requires a little less planning and brainpower.
Related: 10 Reasons Why You Should Be Blogging For Your Small Business
Batch Your Social Media Content
Speaking of social media marketing, you can also batch your content. Essentially this means doing similar tasks within a time period to help improve your productivity. So, rather than creating your social media posts every day, set aside the time once a week to create a block of content in one sitting. This could be planning for the week, a couple of weeks, even a month if you give yourself enough time.
Because your brain is already in the content creation mode of finding graphics and images and coming up with creative captions, you’ll find that you will be able to speed up the process without feeling defeated. Instead, you’ll actually find that batching makes you feel more inspired!
Related: Why Social Media Marketing Is So Important In 2021
Keep An Editorial Calendar
To ensure that you’re creating creative content regularly, put together an editorial calendar. Before you begin breaking things up by date, list all of your potential ideas down on a piece of paper and see if you notice any patterns or topics that may be prevalent to the month.
From there, you can plan out when you want to post, what you want to post it, and what you may need for those specific posts. Doing this helps you stay organized and helps you understand if you are still in line with the marketing strategy you put in place at the beginning of your business.
Repurpose Content You Already Have
We’re here to tell you that you’re not expected to churn out new content every day, so take a deep breath and get comfortable with the idea of repurposing content you already created. In fact, a study done by Duct Tape Marketing shows that repurposed content can increase your traffic by 300%!
So how do you decide to which content you should repurpose? Consider any blogs that may have gotten more page views than the rest. Or maybe it’s a topic that seemed to get the most engagement on social. Whatever it may be, if it was popular once, it’ll most likely be popular again.
Some ways to repurpose your content include:
- Breaking down old blog posts
- Turning blogs into different formats (i.e., podcasts, newsletters, videos, etc.)
- Adding images and video to make a post more visually appealing
- Repromoting the blog or subject on social with different imagery
Related: How To Repurpose The Content You’ve Already Written
User A Scheduler
Because social media marketing is so important for businesses these days, it’s no wonder that there are now so many marketing tools that allow you to schedule your content ahead of time. Many of these sites and programs are not only free, but they also allow you to plan your content out so you can see how it looks visually.
Some of our favorites for the different platforms include:
- Instagram – Planoly, Later, and Sked
- Twitter – Twuffer and TweetDeck
- Facebook – Business Creator (Facebook’s own platform) and ContentCal
- Pinterest – Tailwind
Related: How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business
Final Thoughts On Saving Time With Content Creation
As a small business owner, we know that you have a lot of tasks to take on yourself. Content creation can eat up a lot of your time that could otherwise be used doing other important tasks. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. Follow these five easy, time-saving hacks so you can still create meaningful content that your customers want to engage with while still having the time to focus on other elements of your business!
If you really want to take your small business to the next level and save as much time as possible, partner with Cloud Friday. We help you get your finances in order so you can focus on growing. Contact us here if you’re interested in learning more!
