You’ve found the perfect photo. You’ve researched the perfect times to post. But let’s be honest, there’s a small bit of anxiety that creeps in when it’s finally time to plan out your content. One of the easiest ways to master your content is by batching.
Batching is a fancy word for grouping. Essentially, the goal is to allow a certain amount of time to a specific desired task. Whether it’s batching email newsletters, follow up emails, client projects or scheduling your social media; making time and space to focus on one specific task will help improve your time management, content development and give you some peace of mind.
Batching Social Media
We tell our clients this all the time, and have adopted this same concept. Each week or month, set aside a few hours and map out your social media. Think of your content bucks (promotions/deals, behind-the-scenes, testimonials/client reviews — whatever it may be) and then do the following:
Brain dump all your social media copy — include caption, hashtags, accounts to tag.
Look at your current feed — what’s the last thing you posted? What’s next?
Review timelines and marketing deadlines. What’s coming up? What’s in the queue?
Check your analytics and let the data tell your story. Analytics is such a crucial part in helping content creators and entrepreneurs with finding ways to not reinvent the wheel and make things more complicated for themselves
Batching Client Work
For us, we use specific days to focus on client work. Mondays are normally our days to catch up on client projects, send out updates and check-ins. Pending what your workload is like, and what responsibilities you have, make each day of the week a day you focus on something. Maybe Wednesdays are your admin days (emails, accounting, reviewing invoices, etc.). Or maybe your Friday mornings are for client intake calls only. Separate your work out throughout the week so you don’t feel overwhelmed later or let things pile up.
Batching Admin Work, Not-so-Fun Things
As we stated before, you want to make sure that on a weekly or monthly basis you’re setting time to focus on the things for your business and not only the clients you have. Systems are important and as you work to systematize your work flows, this will become incredibly important.
Some advice — trust us, we’re learning too!
Over the next few weeks, spend time each night or each morning writing down all the tasks, work, and tedious things you do so that at the end of the month you’re able to look back and track where you can automate workflows, learn more about what’s working (or not) and make improvements! Don’t worry, we’re working on this too!
