Do you find yourself dreading your next social media post, blog or newsletter?
Or maybe you’ve got plenty of ideas but can’t work out how to organise them?
It’s a problem many of my clients face.
Well, I’ve got some good news to share. When you get strategic about your content creation, you’ll not only produce better quality content, you’ll save yourself heaps of time in the long run.
Follow my three-step guide to speed up content creation.
Step one: Plan
Once a month, put aside time in your diary to plan your content for the weeks ahead. I have this space blocked out in my Google calendar on repeat every month.
This process should include looking back at what’s worked well in the past. Is there something your audience loved that you can do more of?
Next, plot out a number of themes and decide upon the content that sits within each. For example:
Sales posts - what are you promoting this month?
Expert posts - what can you create to share your expertise and show people that you know your stuff?
Pain to gain posts - what can you post to show your audience that you understand their problems and have a solution?
Personality posts - share behind-the-scenes shots to build know, like and trust.
#Bonus tip: Come up with three ideas for each section and you’ve got enough posts for a month. Use a project management tool like ClickUp, Trello or even a spreadsheet/Post-it notes spreadsheet, Trello board to organise your thoughts and ideas.
Step two: Repurpose
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time you post. In fact, if you’re smart, you can make one piece of content work multiple ways!
Let’s say you do an Instagram Live.
Use the free Otter app to transcribe your Live and turn it into a blog for your website. You can then link to that blog from your socials.
Pick out a number of tips from the Live and turn them into individual posts.
Posts that worked well in the past can also be refreshed and reposted.
Honestly, people’s feeds move so fast these days, they aren’t going to remember the wording of a post they read three months ago.
#Bonus tip: Creating your own branded templates in Canva that you can reuse over and over again will save you a huge amount of time and give your content that consistent brand feel. I do this for clients all the time so that they have a batch of templates to use for products, services or campaigns.
Step three: Automate
Once you’ve decided what to post you can use a content scheduler to speed up the publishing process.
There are lots of great free options available and they’re usually easy to use.
I use Later for my Instagram posts as I love the visual look of the app - you can see exactly what your feed will look like to the viewer, and you can save bundles of hashtags together.
I use Buffer for my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts - it’s simple to use and allows you to drag and drop text and images. It even shortens lengthy urls which make the post look neater.
For my email newsletters I use Mailerlite. I’ve tried others, but this is by far my favourite and you get so much for free! The design features, templates and ability to brand your campaigns are fantastic. Also, the reporting element is really easy to use. You can track who is opening your emails, what they are clicking on and how many times. Excellent for discovering who your warm audience is. I recommend Mailerlite to all my clients.
Facebook also has its own inbuilt scheduler - Facebook Business Suite - which can be used to publish posts and Stories to Facebook and Instagram.
#Bonus tip: Great as schedulers are, they’re not an excuse to load up your content and forget about it!
While they save time on a day-to-day basis you should check in with your accounts and engage on a daily basis. Without consistent engagement, your posts will flop.
Remember to check the comments on your blog posts. Better still ensure that your website is set up so it notifies you when someone makes a comment.
When a subscriber replies to one of your emails, always make sure you get straight back to them, even if it’s just to acknowledge their message. This is all part of the know, like and trust relationship building exercise.
Need help with content creation, planning or scheduling? I offer a range of services including my 10 hour block plan bundle. My 10 hour block plan allows us to work on a specific project (like your content creation). We go through the process of:
Looking at what resources and content you have already
Build a strategy for creating new content such as blogs, newsletters and social media posts
Create a system of re-purposing the new content so that it’s fully optimised
Review or set up your scheduling platforms
Review or set up an email service provider for your email marketing
Creating a bundle of templates for your social media posts to make the process super-easy!
Drop me a line at sarah@sarahforde.co.uk or complete my pre-call questionnaire to book a free chat.
I would love to help you speed up your content creation in the simplest way possible.
