I'm guessing that you're not going to the effort of investing time and probably money into content creation, unless you have a purpose for being a creator. For most, this would be to commercialize your channel. By growing your audience, working with brands and maybe [00:02:00] even selling your own products. This is where the benefits of content batching comes in.

Planning out your content gives you freedom from the daily content creation grind. It gives you discoverability because you are regularly publishing content. It gives you productivity efficiency and you'll have well thought out Content that delivers on your own call to action, your own content pillars.

Let's jump in. Quite simply, content batching for influencers is the process of creating multiple pieces of content in one block of time. It's about setting aside dedicated time blocks. Understanding your content platforms, your content categories, planning your content calendar, which has your content frequency and the type of content that you're producing, as well as creating that content and publishing it.

it's a tool the OG creators, the bloggers of the world, have been using for 10 years, probably more. Like many established business principles, this concept really has just been reinvented for influencers, but it is a tried and tested principle. Right? So we're going to talk about setting aside dedicated time blocks.

You're probably thinking, Hmm, I'm not sure I'm on board for this. I get that social media is But don't worry, batching gives you freedom to be responsive to your audience because you're getting off that content creation hamster wheel. Setting aside dedicated time blocks means carving out a piece of time in your calendar to do the work you need to do.

If you have a team or a VA repurposing your content or helping you to create your [00:06:00] content, good for you. This means you can have a wider focus or distribution of your content across more platforms. You'll be able to loop your person in at any point for the content batching strategy that we're talking about today.

If you are like the vast many who create, publish and distribute your own content, you'll need to narrow the focus of what platforms will work best for you. Are you video first and you shine as soon as the camera is on you? Maybe you're a blogger. No, blogging's not dead. It continues to remain a strong strategy and looks to stay this way for some time yet, but I'm digressing.

For example, my content platforms are a weekly podcast, a weekly blog. And email marketing side note on email marketing. Listen in to episode three with Peter Sarris from Professional Babe on how to give good email. It's marketing gold. You'll also see a little bit of my content pop up on TikTok, but these aren't my primary focus.

Whether you listen to Rachel Pedersen, Gary Vee, Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, or whoever your favorite biz influencer is, every single one of them will tell you to build content on your own platforms and build an email list. So when you're thinking about your content platforms, I do strongly encourage you to have one in the mix that you are controlling.

You might be a little bit stumped on coming up with content categories, so I'm going to give you a list to use, or to inspire your own list. Here's some content categories for you. Hey, this is a really great piece of educational content. I'm teaching you how to batch your content and why it's important.

Engagement. This is content that's purely designed to pump up engagement on your channels. It might be a story, a poll, a contest, a giveaway. Seasonal content. Think Easter, Mother's Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Halloween, Christmas, school holidays, any niche dates that might appeal to your audience. seasonal content is gold.

Behind the scenes, BTS, show a day in the life of you, showing you how to make your product, what you do at work, how you work on a brand campaign. Give your audience a peek at what happens behind the scenes. A sixth content pillar or category could be humorous or feel good or entertaining. It could be a meme, a cartoon, a reel or something that brings a smile.

Fantastic. Trending content. If you're a creator that incorporates trending content, make a space for this in your content categories, or you can simply incorporate trends by grabbing a trending sound and applying this to other content that you're creating. Promotional content. This is a good one. I do encourage you to include this in your content mix, a discount code for one of your products, a freebie, a sign up for your course, sign up for your newsletter or buy your book or whatever it is that you've got.

So pencil that stuff in because you know you're going to nail those brand deals. You might come up with some other content pillars depending on what sort of business you have, but the above list should give you a great starting point. Next, we're moving into step number four, and that is content frequency.

Are you going to need to produce TikTok posts several times a day? An IG reel every day? YouTube shorts or pins daily? A blog once a week? An email once a week? What does your content frequency look like? Now step five, you're going to take All of these things that you've just thought about, or written about, or brainstormed to create your content calendar.

This is the bit where everything comes together. And how you create your content calendar will depend on how much you like technology, or how much you like to write. I like both. So I use a combination of resources. This is how I create my content calendar. I use an old school pen and paper with a printed monthly calendar.

or storyboards. I also use Trello to keep a list of ideas or content I can use in my content plan. So if I don't have all the ideas I need for that month, I look at what's already in Trello and think, Oh, great. I did this for Halloween last year. I can repurpose that content or reuse this content for Halloween this year.

based on the content concepts. Now, depending on the content you're producing, the next or previous step might be to shoot or record content. For example, I might have recorded a whole bunch of podcasts and I have that raw audio and transcripts I need to convert to blogs, newsletters, or other content.

Finally, I schedule the content. I've used a combination of paid, free and native tools. find something that works well for you. I'm currently really enjoying Meta Business Suite for, Facebook and Instagram scheduling. TikTok goes live when I post to TikTok, like it's just done there.

And then YouTube is scheduled. I like those native tools, but there are plenty of other tools that allow you to bulk schedule content. And you might prefer to use those. I've been content batching and planning for many years. So this system works really well for me. You might like to use something more simple when you are putting together your content plan.

Just create a system that works for you. Stick to it and evolve it. your processes when you feel confident and comfortable to do so. As you get to the end of this episode, I don't want you to feel overwhelmed or challenged. That process might have seemed like a lot. Batching the bulk of your content will truly give you more creativity because you have more space in your day, your week, your month.

And you'll find that batching your content is everything that it's cracked up to be. As always, you'll find the show notes and episode resources at thebusinessofinfluence.com/EP18. Now, if you want a little more support to build your career as a professional influencer, come on over and join our Facebook group. We really want to crank this up. So search Moots, that's M O O T S in Facebook groups, and you'll find us there.