As podcasters and business owners, content creation can become overwhelming fast. Especially when we're constantly trying to adopt all of those "best practices" we hear others talk about.

Today's guest, Amanda Warfield, is here to share how we can simplify our marketing and content creation once and for all. We chat about batching content, the details of how to actually do that so you can try it for yourself, and showing up less often and in fewer places. Sounds pretty great, right!?

⭐️ Resources Mentioned:

• Descript
• Follow me on Instagram @podcastingforeducators 

🔗 Connect with Amanda: 

• Check out her book, Chasing Simple Marketing
• Listen to her podcast, Chasing Simple
• Follow her on Instagram @mrsamandawarfield

🎤 Recommended Podcasting Resources:

• Hosting: Captivate.fm (Get a free 7-day trial!)
• Transcription: Otter.ai
• Project Management: ClickUp
• Private Podcasting: Hello Audio
• Launch Your Podcast: Free Podcast Launch Guide & Podcasting for Educators Prep School
• Level Up Your Podcast: Podcast Like You Mean It
• Leverage Podcast Guesting: Guesting for Educators Mini-Course

Show Notes: https://podcastingforeducators.com/episode123

Some links mentioned are affiliate links. This helps to support this podcast at no additional cost to you. 

Topics in this episode: tips for podcasters, educational strategies, marketing tips for TPT sellers, online educator tips, batching content, online marketing

Sara Whittaker 0:00

As podcasters and business owners content creation can become overwhelming fast today's guest Amanda Warfield is here to share how we can simplify our marketing and content creation once and for all. We talk about batching content and the details of how to actually do that so you can try it for yourself. And the idea of showing up less I think that is something we can all get on board with. Amanda is a simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, author of the book chasing simple marketing, and host of chasing simple a podcast to help creative entrepreneurs uncomplicate their marketing and business. She traded her classroom lesson plans for speaking and educating creative entrepreneurs on sustainably fitting content marketing into their business without it taking over their business so that they have time to grow their business. Let's go meet Amanda. Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager. And I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators. Hey, Amanda, welcome to the podcast. This has been a long time coming. We've We've rescheduled a few different times. And so I am just so excited to connect with you today. Welcome.

Amanda Warfield 1:30

Thank you. I know it's funny, I feel like life has just really thrown a lot at us at both of us recently. I mean, I think it's been what, four months, since we originally connected about getting on each other's podcasts and doing a podcast swap. I mean, that's a long time to, to run up to something like this. So I'm super excited to finally be here with you today.

Sara Whittaker 1:51

It is a really long time. But all good things are worth waiting for. So this is been well worth the weight. You talk all about simplifying your marketing. And I think I hear that word simplify. And it's just a word that I love so much. Because I am always looking for ways to simplify anything, whether it's like in my business, in my personal life. And I know that people listening feel the exact same way, we all have so much on our plates. So I'm very excited to talk about how we can simplify at least some of the things in our business today, a lot of the podcasters who are listening, if they're a podcaster, they are obviously choosing to focus on content marketing for their business. So I'd love to start with you just kind of explaining what exactly is content marketing? And why is it something that becomes super overwhelming for people?

Amanda Warfield 2:48

Sara Whittaker 4:10

That's perfect. Yeah, and I totally what you said about how maybe you're like in a groove with your marketing, and then you see that somebody else is doing something and you try that and you kind of just like bounce all over the place. I think that we do that a lot. So what do you see is the reason that that like once people are focusing on content marketing, like when does it become overwhelming for people? And how can we simplify this process so that it's not so overwhelming,

Amanda Warfield 4:40

it becomes overwhelming because we see all of these different experts telling people what best practices are, because that's our natural, you know, human instinct is how do I do this in the best way possible so that I see the most results and so those are the type of questions that get asked which makes the different experts Tell those different results and say, Okay, well, you need to put out X amount of podcast episodes each month, you need to put out this many YouTube videos each week, this mini Instagram stories a week or a day. And what ends up happening is, while each expert is only giving one small piece of advice, we collect different experts for each type of con that we're putting out. And then we end up having this entire plate full of best practices. And when we try to stick to best practices, well, it's not realistic, because most of us are either a one woman show or we have a very, very small team. And we're comparing ourselves to the Amy Porterfield and the Jenna coaches of the online business space that have massive teams and are able to help put out that much content, they are paying people to help put out that much content. And those creators, those educators are only doing the bare minimum of the creation process. And so we compare ourselves to that, and feel like we have to live up to that even though we have a fraction of the manpower that they have.

Sara Whittaker 6:06

Yes, I tell podcasters this all the time, like even some of my clients, you know, people will hear people like Amy Porterfield and Jenna Kutcher talking about how they have millions of podcast downloads, and you have to sit back and think a they have a huge team. People are probably writing their podcast outlines and their podcast scripts for them, they are showing up to record, they are putting out multiple, often a lot of these bigger podcasters are putting out multiple episodes a week. So they're going to hit those milestones a lot faster. And they have massive audiences. We can't always compare ourselves to these huge businesses when like you said, we might be a one woman or one man show in our business.

Amanda Warfield 6:51

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you can even listen, they I mean, they're honest about it, right. I remember listening to an Amy Porterfield episode where she was talking about, I don't remember the exact metric, maybe it was 1 million downloads or something like that. But they hit some big milestone that had been a big goal of theirs. And she even explicitly says in that episode, a huge reason we even hit this is because we doubled how many episodes we were putting out each week. And it just, it's a numbers game in a lot of ways for those types of metrics that we're aiming at. But yeah, we end up so overwhelmed, because we're trying to follow what they're doing. Because best practices are what we think we should aim for, when in reality, best practices are sure they're great. But they're not necessary to have a thriving and successful business.

Sara Whittaker 7:38

Yeah, absolutely. And not to mention, like each individual platform themselves, like you can't be everywhere, especially when you're doing your business by yourself. And everybody has different personalities, they have different amounts of time that they even have to pour into their business. If you're somebody who has five kids at home, and they're at all these different activities during the day and you're spending half of your day driving in the car, you don't have as much time as somebody else. So you really have to, like set those realistic expectations for yourself, and think about who you are as a person. And as a business owner.

Amanda Warfield 8:12

Absolutely. And even just looking at different business models that we all have, right. I mean, obviously most of the people listening are educators. And they're probably either have or are working on online courses. But most of us have to sustain ourselves with clients in some way, shape, or form, in addition to the education side of our business, whereas these bigger names, they don't have to do that they can simply just run the education based side. So they're not having to pour themselves into client work every day. They're not having to spend so much time one on one with others, they're able to focus on some other things like marketing, and operations and leadership versus the actual day to day nitty gritty. And that just, frankly, it takes away how much time you have to market.

Sara Whittaker 8:59

Okay, so that kind of leads us into this big question of what can we do to really simplify things and make content marketing just a little bit easier. The

Amanda Warfield 9:11

first thing that I recommend for everyone is to show up less often, actually, and on less platforms. So if you're someone who's trying to show up in all the places and you feel like you need to have a podcast, and repurpose that podcast to YouTube and write a blog post for each episode, and send an email newsletter and beyond Instagram and beyond tick tock and beyond LinkedIn, this is your permission slip to slow down. You really only need your podcasts and email newsletter and one type of social media you do not need to show up anywhere else to have a fully functioning content engine.

Sara Whittaker 9:48

Okay, I love this and I actually I talk about this I call it like the trifecta. If you are going all in on your podcast like podcast, email, Instagram, for example, like that's what I do. that's those are the three things I use. Those are the three things I focus on. And I kind of put blinders on for everything else. And that combination might look a little bit different for people. But I could not agree more.

Yeah, absolutely, it really is just keeping it really simple instead of trying to show up everywhere, because again, even those three that can be overwhelming, which is why the other part of that is to show up less often. So show up in less places, and then also show up less often, if you are finding yourself stuck on the content creation hamster wheel where you are rushing to record your episode and get it posted the same day it's supposed to go live, or not even getting episodes out, like you're supposed to show up less, it's okay to only have an episode come out every other week versus every single week. That is perfectly fine. And like I said, you can have a thriving and successful business with an every other week schedule versus feeling like you need to show up every single week, or even multiple times a week, it's just not 100% necessary in order to see that success. So show up less often cut back on how often you feel like you need, quote, unquote, to show up and show up at a rate that is going to actually be sustainable for you and for your business.

Yes, because if you are on that hamster wheel, and you're like pushing yourself and barely getting out your weekly episodes, and if you do miss a week, or you're scrambling every single week, then you're beating yourself up internally, like why can't I keep up with this? This is too much. So yeah, sometimes you just need to take that step back and say, Okay, I'm gonna take this pressure off myself, I'm going to switch to every other week or I know a lot of podcasters who don't even they like completely take social media out of the equation. And, and like you said, they have a thriving business and a thriving podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. The other tip I have that can help with the whole social media thing. If you're like, I want to have a presence, but I don't want to show up a ton is to repurpose and reuse content that you've created. So take your podcast episode, transcribe it using descriptor, Otter, or there's a ton of others have it transcribe though. And then literally copy and paste parts of that transcription to use a social media captions and pop it up with an image. It can really be that simple. And then you're not having to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel, you're able to just go okay, this was a major point from this week's episode. Let me just pop it into social media. And you can easily take five different captions from a podcast episode transcript and use them on social media. And you've got a few weeks worth of content right there where you're not having to come up with anything new. You're literally just copy pasting.

Yes, that's so true. And like I think we hear this term repurposing all the time. But so many of us are not actually doing it and doing it in a way that's so easy. Like you just explain, you have that transcript. It's already in your voice for your social media caption because you're the one who recorded the episode. And yeah, just like pull out those little pieces. It doesn't have to be reworded in a crazy way, you can literally like copy and paste it onto Instagram if you need to.

Absolutely. And the same for your email newsletter, copy and paste into your email newsletter and let that be your newsletter for that week. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Yeah. And then the final tip I have for keeping it really simple is to batch out your content. And this is the one I get the most pushback on. But it is the one that truly makes the biggest difference. Because when you're able to only have to think about content creation once a month, that leaves you three weeks, every single month that you are marketing your business, without actually having to market your business, it's doing it for you and you're able to take a break, to really focus on your clients to focus on those operational things that you need to do behind the scenes to move the needle. It gives you so much space. And because you're getting off of that content creation hamster wheel, it gives you so much more creativity because you're not constantly creating. And in those three weeks, that creativity comes back and you have all of a sudden have all of these different ideas for what you can create next.

Okay, I'm so glad that you brought this up. I am always I this is like one of my favorite topics to talk about because people who do batch I feel like they there's so many different ways to go about it. And I actually I have to mention, and we'll talk about this later. But Amanda, you just came out with a book and you had sent me kind of like a pre copy the text of the book. And I was reading through it and you had a story at the beginning, telling about how you first started this batching process and how it was like this big realization for you and it kind of happened accidentally, which was really cool to read about. I love that story. So can you tell us a little bit about how you go about batching like what does that look like for you?

Yeah, so I I set aside one week each month, I already have it when I plan out my year at the beginning of the year, I know every batch week for the whole year when it's going to be. And that week very much looks like breaking up the content creation process in two steps. So what a lot of us get wrong about batching is, we think, okay, I need to create a ton of content. And I'm going to sit down, and I'm going to create piece by piece podcasters, I think do this last because naturally, we're going to if we're pulling out the microphone, we're just going to record all at once, right. But we see this a lot with social media, with email newsletters, with blogging, especially where we'll go, Okay, I need to write 10 email newsletters for the next month. And I'm going to write the first one, and then I'm going to edit it, and then I'm going to get it scheduled. And then I'm gonna write the second one, and I'm going to edit it and get it scheduled. And you don't get very far into that before realizing this is going to take a lot longer than I thought and it's exhausting. Yeah. And that's because you're not actually batching content, you're just trying to create a lot of content all at one time. Whereas with batching, instead of creating piece by piece, you want to think of it like baking a batch of cookies, right? You're not baking one cookie at a time, you're not mixing the ingredients forming the ball, putting one cookie in the oven, mixing the next set of ingredients for me one ball, but you know you're not doing that. No, you're mixing all of the ingredients for all 12 cookies, you're separating out all 12 cookies, and you're baking all 12 cookies at once you're breaking it up by step. So what we would want to do is we would want to start by, okay, I'm going to outline every single podcast episode, I need to record for the next month, then I'm going to sit down the next day and I'm going to record every single podcast episode that I need for the next month, then I'm going to if you don't have an editor, going to edit the next day, all of them before I outsource, my editing was my least favorite day. But it's one day and you get through it right? And then you've got repurposing where you're going, Okay, let me take this target script. And real quick create email newsletters and social media. And then you've got a final day of okay, let's clean up the social media and the email newsletters and get everything scheduled, create graphics and be done. And so it's this. It's a whole week process. But it's broken up by steps so that by the end of the week, you're able to go, Wow, all of my content for the next month is scheduled out. And I don't have to think about it again for three weeks.

Yes. Okay. First of all, I'm obsessed with this cookie analogy. I feel like that's the most clear. And like I really got a visual of how we can think about batching. I love that. And I was just actually an episode that aired today on my podcast, I was talking to Brittany Blackwell. And we were talking about a similar, this similar idea of instead of doing the whole thing at once, breaking it up into tasks. And I love this because you do use different parts of your brain for all these different things like producing a podcast episode is a pretty long process from outline to production, like hit publish, then you have promotion to so I love this idea of taking a day and dedicating tasks to each of those days and knocking everything out in one week. Do you usually do this? Like at the beginning of the month? Or? I guess I could really do it? Yeah, it doesn't matter as long

as you are doing it each month, which is why it's important when you plan the year to put a ball on the calendar. As long as you're doing it every three to four weeks. It doesn't matter what week of the month you do it. It's whatever fits most natural into your schedule. I personally am attempting to align it with my cycle. Yeah, it's a work in progress. I love

this idea. Yeah. But yeah. Have you found that helpful?

Yes, very much. So because it does. Let's be honest, right? Like, it's not an easy week. It is a mentally draining week, because like you said, there are a lot of different mental processes. The beauty of breaking it up process by process is that it does make it easier because your brain isn't hopping from one process to the next to the next to the next. That's even more exhausting. But it is still a lot like let's be real, right? And so I do find it easier if I can align my batch week schedule with my cycle and be in a week where I have more energy and more creativity. It does make it easier. But there have also been weeks where I've just had to do it when I'm not so energetic and it works out that way too. Luckily, with podcasting, you know, you don't have to get dressed you can do in your sweatpants, which is nice.

It is so nice. I know another reason that I haven't switched to full video podcasting yet. I also think doing it this way is you mentioned like maybe you're outsourcing your editing, maybe you're not doing this type of batching is also just a really great way for you to become really self aware of okay, I really enjoyed doing this part of podcasting. Like maybe I really like editing or maybe I really like writing show notes, but like graphics day I dread the most so that would be something that that can become a goal for you of the first thing to hire out. For your podcast, too. So that's kind of another perk.

Yeah. 100. I mean, that's exactly how I realized that that was podcasting was the first thing I outsourced in my business because I started batching. And then I really quickly realized, this is this day feels like, I need to bribe myself to do it. This is probably a pretty clear indicator that I shouldn't be trying to do this. This is not worth my time. And you know, it's funny when I was again, it was the first thing I outsource. So I was having these conversations with my husband of like, I think I need to outsource this. I think I need to hire someone. And he was like, does that make sense ROI wise? And I was like, mathematically No, but mentally one on your personally not on paper. I can grow math this for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. It's 100% worth it. And it's

so worth it. It's been years and I cannot imagine ever having to edit again.

Yeah, yeah, I actually like love editing. But we're also I have like a podcast production company. So it's a good thing. But that's, that's for sure. The number one thing that people are like, please take this off my plate. I can't do it anymore. It's super time consuming. It takes forever. And it just Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, it's like little tiny details like the mouth clicks and the breaths and the

thought, yes. We're also thankful for those of you that this is your zone of genius.

Yes, I out my for my own podcast, I have a podcast manager and she does it for me, because I think it's good from a creator standpoint to be able to pass that part of the process off to somebody else so that you can focus on the content creation, and you're not like second guessing yourself as you're editing your episode and feeling like you have to dissect it. Yeah. Well, okay, now that we're on this topic of batching, I especially think about this with Instagram, like if you were to batch your Instagram content, when I hear people do this with reels, especially the question of okay, well, you know, we're told to use trending audio and things like that. So how does that fit in? If you're batching, a bunch of your content? How does that work with trends? Will trends be then dead before it becomes time to post the content?

This is a great question. This is something that I talked about in the book is my Sunday theory, where what we want is the majority of our content to be education based. Because when your people are educated, they're more aware of whether or not they actually need your offer. And if they're more aware of whether or not they actually need your offer, they're more likely to be a great client or student, versus someone who gets in and isn't happy with it. So that's what we want. We want educated people. Plus it just as an easy way to market by helping, let me give some value to you. And you can decide whether or not you want to stick around. So I always say for myself, and for my clients, the vast majority of what you put out should be education based, teaching your audience what it is that you do, and how you can help them. That stuff. It's really easy to just, it's like stories, you hold the phone up to your face, you give a tip or two, and you move on. And so then the audio is your own voice and it's evergreen. The other parts of an ice cream sundae though, so that's the ice cream, right? You've also got the Caramella, the hot fudge or whatever, that you're marshmallow fluff whenever you want that topping to be. Those are going to be things like personal things, letting others get to know you sharing about your dog, or I mean, you and I connected with this before we hopped on hit record, right, you saw that I was posting about Carolina football. And you're like, Oh, hey, my parents went to USC too. And so it's like things like that, that like they have nothing to do with your business. They're just connection points, you want to add that on? Not quite as liberally, but you know, you want enough of it to be good, right? Then you sprinkle on the trending content. So when it comes to batching out reels and content that we tend to think of as more trendy, you would want to batch out the educational the ice cream, and the personal the fluff. But then, because you've batched and because you don't have to worry about recording next week's podcast episode or writing this week's email newsletter. You have the mental capacity to see a trend and think Oh, I know how I could turn this into something and then create it and post it in the moment.

Yes, that makes so much sense. I'm loving your analogy today. It's it's good. I love a good analogy. It makes things really stick. So thank you for that. And yeah, I love that you touched on that that like personal connection point because I do think that that is something that people either do like a lot of or they really stay away from and they only do the educational content, which obviously I think is super important. But adding in those little details. Because of, of your personal life, things that you like things that you just like, they definitely does add to like you as a brand. And it does help to build that connection so much. And I think, especially on like Instagram stories that's super easy to do here and there throughout the day or throughout the week. Yeah. Now, I'm curious, sorry, did you want to say something?

Well, I was just gonna say we buy from people that we know, and that we feel like, we know, we buy from people we like we buy from people we trust. And the best way to build that connection is through personal connections. That's why networking is so important, right? Because you go out and you meet someone, and you have that personal connection. And that's what that personality content can do as well. It makes people go, Oh, we have this connection to USC. Or, Oh, I'm also a crazy cat lady, or Oh, my gosh, I also love Taylor Swift. You know, you build these connections with people, and they're more likely to buy from you.

Yep, yeah, that's like how they remember you. And when there comes a time where they need something that you have, you're going to be that person that they think of? Absolutely. So I am curious, if you don't mind me asking, when you do your content planning, like say you're at the start of the year, you're planning out the weeks that you're going to do your batching? Do you also plan out the topics that you're going to cover each month? Or do you kind of take that piece, month by month.

So when it comes time to plan out the next year, the first thing I do has nothing to do with content, actually, it has everything to do with the calendar. And so I will take all of our dates, both work wise, whether it's a conference I've committed to or some other thing that I know is coming up in the next year, but also our personal calendar. So I take weddings, I know we're going to or my husband's work schedule. If we had kids, I would look at the back of the school schedule for the year, right. And I add all of those dates personal and work into one calendar, so that I have a really clear view of how busy different months are so that I don't put a launch in a really busy month. Once I have that all figured out, then I will look at okay, what are my goals? What and this is probably way more than you really asked for. But I'll love it.

I love hearing people's planning process. I always think it's so interesting.

So I'll take my goals and go, Okay, what's the revenue goal for the year? And what's my projected revenue? What are my offers, and I list them all out. And then beside each offer, I look at what I made with it last year, and what I can then project for this coming year. And then look at the difference between, okay, this is what's projected, this is where I want to be, how do I fill the gap in and from there, I figure out what launches I need to have. And because the calendar is already mapped out, I can easily slot things into months that aren't so busy. So that kind of maps my calendar out for me. And then I will just go in and decide, okay, well, if this is the launch we're working towards I need to create pre launch content leading up to this specific topic.

Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that I do a similar thing. I think putting getting those personal dates first is so smart to do. And I work with a lot of people who serve teachers. And so getting like that back to school schedule on there, and the seasonal type of topics that you might need to cover is always a good place to start. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Amanda, thank you so much. I feel like we've covered a lot. Is there anything else that you were hoping to touch on that we haven't gotten to

know. But I would just want to reiterate the permission slip to put out less content. And that that is enough that you don't have to show up the best practices. You don't need to have the most perfect content out there in order to have a really successful business. Yes, I

love that create your own best practices for your business. Yeah. Well, where can people find you online, if they want to connect with you after this,

the best place is probably my podcast chasing simple. It's all about simplifying your marketing and simplifying your business. And you know, you might even find an interview from Sarah over there as well. And we've mentioned my book here a few times in this episode. So if you wanted to check that out, you can go to Amazon and search for chasing simple marketing or search my name Amanda Warfield, and it'll pop right up for you.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. We will be sure to include all those links in the show notes. So you guys can just click and head on over there to grab her book. Thank you again, Amanda.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.