Transcription
So let me guess, you feel like you are stuck on this never-ending loop of having to create content all the time? Maybe you decide to batch and get a couple of days ahead, and then once those posts go out, you realize you have nothing else scheduled to go out on social media for the next couple weeks, and the last thing you feel like doing is creating a single Instagram post.
I would argue that the hardest part of content creation is actually maintaining consistency on the platforms you decide to show up on. And maintaining consistency doesn't require you to have this crazy mindset shift or spend all this money on expensive software or a tool or some very expensive coach or program. It's all about building a sustainable content creation workflow for your small business, and a workflow that works best for you.
Before we dive into building your content creation workflow, first we need to talk about what a content workflow is, and I want to give you a little background information. Simply put, a content workflow is the journey that a piece of content takes from ideation all the way through to publishing. So, it's the steps and the process that you take, and all those small little nitty-gritty details in how you create content. And believe it or not, it can look very, very different from person to person. You might find certain parts easier, while somebody else finds those parts very difficult. Your workflow might be three steps in total, whereas somebody like me, I have other people involved in my content creation workflow, involves quite a few more steps. And there's no right or wrong answer, and there's no right or wrong content creation workflow. There's just the workflow that works best for you.
Okay, to really get you to understand the concept of why creating a content workflow is important, I want to run you through two different scenarios here. So, in scenario one, you want to sit down and create a piece of content every single day of the week, Monday through Friday. So, five posts. Let's just say they're Instagram Reels, and let's say you sit down to create each one of those posts every single morning. An hour can go by, and all you've done is maybe scrolled through Instagram for some inspiration. You've brainstormed your idea, maybe you've planned out the script or what you want to say in the video. Maybe you've set up your lighting and your camera or your phone and your tripod. And again, an hour has already gone by. And if you're anything like me, and you like to get a little bit camera-ready, that could take another 30 minutes. And then after you're done actually recording the video, you have to edit the video, and maybe create a cover to go along with it. You have to write the caption, and then you either have to schedule it or post it. By the time all of that is said and done, you could be taking up to two hours a day just to create that one Instagram Reel. And if you multiply that by five, you're spending 10 hours a week on content creation, just posting five videos on Instagram.
Now, if we jump into scenario two here, we're going to follow the same exact posting schedule. So, Monday through Friday, a post per day. Again, we'll use Instagram Reels, but this time, we're going to use batching and a workflow. So, instead of showing up each morning to brainstorm, find inspiration, and plan your content, we're going to do that at the beginning of the week. And the thing about this is that brainstorm and ideation might take a little bit longer than in scenario one. But the thing is, once you get into the kind of practice of brainstorming an idea, planning, like once you get one good idea, it kind of steamrolls, and it's easier to come up with the next idea, and the next idea, and the next idea. This is batching all of that together. So, maybe on Monday mornings, you're scrolling for inspiration, you're finding your trending audios, you're planning out the content for all the posts for the week. So, then maybe on Tuesday, you get ready, hair and makeup done one time, you set up your equipment one time, and you sit down and record all of those videos at one time. And then maybe on Wednesday, you're sitting down and creating the additional visuals, like if you need covers or graphics, or maybe you're editing that video a bit more, you're writing the caption, and you're scheduling those posts to go out for the next week.
Now, you see how I broke that down into a couple of different days, grouping like tasks together? That is creating your content creation workflow. You could approach this all in one day. That's something that I like to do with my YouTube videos specifically. You know, maybe you could tackle all this on a Monday morning, or you could break these tasks out into a couple of different days. But the big kicker here is that this type of process now took you just over two hours, but you have all five posts on. And while this might be very new to you and feel a little overwhelming at first, building a content workflow and kind of creating a content creation process is what's going to actually help you avoid burnout. And it might take you a bit of time to figure out what works best for you. Play around, experiment, try different things until you have a workflow that feels good to you and your energy.
And to give you a quick breakdown of how complicated a content creation workflow can look, I want to dive into what mine looks like. So, a very basic version of how I approach content creation looks something like this. I actually sit down for 12 weeks at a time. So, once a quarter, I sit down to brainstorm all of my long-form content. So, that's my YouTube video and my podcast episodes. I like to take a look at my content calendar, any big events coming up, brand collaborations, sales campaigns, anything like that that I see coming up in the next 12 weeks, so that I can plan my content accordingly. Then, from there, each month, I sit down to batch create that long-form content. I typically like to record all of my YouTube videos in one setting because that's my hero piece of content, meaning I about to record all my YouTube videos once a month, and then I kind of formulate all of my shorter-form content around those YouTube videos. Then I like to sit down and record any supplemental podcast episodes that I might need on that same day as well. And then each week, my content manager sits down to edit all of that long-form content, and we're working typically a week or two ahead of schedule. So, she will sit down and edit my YouTube videos, she'll sit down and edit my podcast episodes, so that on each Wednesday, I can sit down to review all of the content that she has created, and I can send her anything supplemental that she might need for that long-form content, and I can sit down to create any short-form content for the following week. And then on Thursday or Friday, she gets to sit down and schedule all of that out for me.
So, again, you can see my content creation workflow takes place over a quarter, then month, then week, then day. And the way that I've set this up works best for me. It has taken me 10 years to work up to how much content that I'm creating. And also, remember, I do have a content manager. But for you, this could just look like a weekly process for you. You could sit down on Sunday evenings and kind of work through some of the content process that you need to get done for the week ahead. There's no one-size-fits-all approach here.
So, now let's dive into actually creating your content workflow. And this might feel a little bit counterintuitive at first, but I promise, if you dive into this activity, you can start to identify how your workflow is going to come together. So, jump into Canva and open up a new whiteboard design, and let's get into this activity together.
Okay, so open up a design, and we're going to open up a whiteboard. And this doesn't need to be pretty. This is simply to get your thoughts down onto digital paper here. Um, so basically, I want you to, the next time you go to create a piece of content, or you can even just start thinking about it right now, even if you're not in the content creation process, I want you to note every single little step that you take to create that piece of content. That includes going to Instagram and scrolling for inspiration. That includes going back and looking at old content for inspiration. It might include setting, setting up your equipment, or getting your hair and makeup done. Like, whatever that looks like, I want you to note every single part of that process. And how we're going to do this in Canva is you're just going to click on the 'S' button, and it's going to bring in a sticky note. And so, every single little step of the process, I want you to make a sticky note. So, maybe the first part of your process is scroll through, let's say, TikTok for trending audio. Um, from there, you're like, okay, I've got all my trending audio for the week. You want to brainstorm, um, the messages that go with the trending audio. And then after you've done that, maybe you go and, let's say, change clothes, get outfits ready, and do hair and makeup. Okay. Then after that part of the process, you like to set up tripod and ring light, or wait for, you know, the light to look good. After that, you kind of get the idea. You, let's say, you record three videos. Whatever that looks like, you're to continue this process until you have a nice long list.
Okay, so once all is said and done, and you kind of have all of the parts of your content creation process mapped out here, I want you to highlight everything, and you're going to click on this sort button, and we're going to sort by topic. Now, this might take a couple seconds depending upon what version of Canva you have, and, you know, just it's a newer feature. But you can see that it has grouped like tasks together. So, then what I like to do is kind of see how it grouped these things, and basically, we have content research and planning. Okay, so scroll through TikTok for trending audio, brainstorm. Perfect. I think that makes sense together, and that's typically the first step of the process. Then content creation, editing. Okay, yeah, we're recording, we're editing. And then, yeah, perfect. Okay, actually, we need to do preparation and setup. Yep, that all makes sense together. So, that's a part of the workflow. Cool. So, we'll do that here. Um, let's do this. Perfect. And you see how like, this workflow has started to kind of formulate itself. And then what we'll do is go here, the next part of the process, kind of once you have this all in a nice neat little line here, or something that makes sense, what you can start doing is you can come in here and you say, "Okay, content research and planning." Maybe this is something I want to do Monday mornings. Um, and you can start to just make notes for yourself. You can do this however you want. Then this, you know, you are going to do, um, Monday afternoon, that's when you have, or Monday evening, or something. Then you know you're going to sit down and actually, what we're going to want to do is probably move this part of the process into here. Yeah, I think that makes a little bit more sense. Okay. Yeah, so this actually, let's turn this into preparation, setup, and recording. See how like, we can kind of batch these together, these like tasks, and figure out what makes sense for you. This is the way my brain works. Um, so then what we'll do is we'll turn this into video editing because for me, something that works well is I can record on one day and edit and create on another day. I don't like doing editing and creation all in the same day. But hey, if you like to record and then edit right away, by all means, do that. So, yeah, we'll do more of like this video editing, and this will be done on Tuesday. So, again, these are all things that you are doing now. This is something where I want you to start thinking of the tasks that you hate doing, things that you might potentially get rid of or outsource, or things like that. So, maybe you hate caption writing. Can you outsource that to a VA? Maybe you hate doing like the change of clothes, getting ready. Can we eliminate part of that process? For me, I have three outfits that I record in, and I know I always record in those because it's like, I don't want to have to like think about this all the time. Can you figure out ways to streamline and make things more efficient? And then maybe this last thing, this is something, you know, like, okay, you know that you need to download this video, post it on Instagram, maybe add some of them to Google Drive. Can you outsource this? And it doesn't necessarily need to be to a VA or a person, but maybe you have a software that you find that'll do this part of the process for you so you're not doing it manually. So, maybe something like this would, uh, use a tool like repurpose.io. So, you can see that now you have certain elements of your content creation workflow coming together. You know the steps that you need to take, you also know what you need to do. You can figure out, hey, somebody else needs to be doing this, or I need a tool to help me do this.
So, now we need to talk about content batching. I've already alluded to it quite a bit in this video, but we need to sit down and define it, talk about what batching is, what it isn't, and how we can make it sustainable. And I'm not talking about one of those ridiculous processes it's like, "Use ChatGPT to create 100 posts in the next 30 seconds so that you can get off Insta." Like, whatever clickbait you've heard, this is going to be a different approach to content batching.
The first thing that you need to acknowledge, and how this kind of all comes into your content creation workflow, is you have to know your energy levels around creating content. Personally, I have ADHD, and I cannot sit down to create content every single day. I do not have the energy for that. My energy levels fluctuate. I cannot be consistent on Instagram Stories, whereas there are so many of my peers that can show up every single day and create content and jump on stories and jump on trends and things like that. So, for me, when I know my energy is going to be at its highest, that's when I sit down and batch create my hardest type of content.
So, to kind of define what content batching is, you saw it visually in that Canva whiteboard exercise we just did, is that we are grouping like tasks together when it makes sense, where it makes sense. And again, this is going to vary from you to me, from person to person, but just trying to streamline that process so they aren't jumping from task to task. And you know, trying to create all of your content on one day, and also, you know, let's say it takes you five days to work on one piece. We don't want that either. We want something kind of in between.
So, for me, my batching process looks something like this: Quarterly, I am doing big picture planning. I sit down and batch brainstorm and research search all of my long-form pieces of content, and that's what I do once a quarter. So, then monthly, I am batch recording all of my long-form content. So, I like to sit down one day a month and batch record, show up on camera, have all my equipment set up. I do it once a month, and I'm creating between four to five different YouTube videos, supplemental podcast episodes, sometimes some short-form content, and making sure I'm taking pictures and selfies and things like that that I need for the next month. So, that week, I get to sit down one day a week and batch create all of my short-form content for the following week.
So, as you can see, this is a batching process that works really, really well for me, starting with very, very big picture. I do that every so often, moving into some of that harder content that I do once a month, and then each week I get to focus on those smaller little details and those smaller pieces of content. This is something that works really well for me. But for you, maybe you like sitting down and creating your podcast episodes once a week, having a guest, sit down on Mondays, and you do a Zoom recording with them so that it goes out next Monday. You just got to figure out what works best for you.
And maybe we can go back to those scenarios from earlier. You're a service provider, and you just need to get out five Instagram posts per week. Can you sit down on Sunday, brainstorm, ideate? Monday, you sit down and create them. Tuesday, you sit down and write the captions and schedule them, and you're done for the next week. Maybe you're a side hustler, and you do have a 9 to 5, so all of your content creation efforts need to be done on the weekend. How can you prioritize Saturday and Sunday mornings to kind of get your content done? Or maybe you're somebody that absolutely hates recording videos like this and you prefer writing. Okay, can we implement a writing practice every Monday and Friday so that you are ready to go with content creation for the next week? The key is finding your rhythm and what works best for you, the way that you create content, and the content that you honestly like creating.
So, now we need to talk about making your workflow sustainable. Because you could have the perfect formula and workflow on paper, in that Canva whiteboard, wherever, but if you can't actually execute on it, then it's not going to be helpful at all. That perfect workflow can lead you into burnout, and that's what we are trying to avoid. And just know that your workflow isn't some prison sentence that you have to abide by. We can restructure it and keep it as flexible as it needs to be until you find out what works best for you.
So, as you're going through the process of figuring out your workflow and refining it, there are a few signs that I want you to kind of be aware of that if you start to face these, you might need to kind of adjust your workflow. So, if you find yourself starting to dread your content creation days or the days that you're batching content, if you find yourself finding excuses to get out of it, or over and over again you're like, "I'll just do that tomorrow." What is kind of causing that hesitation? You need to sit with yourself and say, like, "Hey, is it just too difficult? Is this something I can outsource? Is this something that I don't need to be doing?"
So, for me, for a long time, that looked like my YouTube videos. I would dread those days, and I would like think to myself, "I don't want to sit down and batch record my YouTube videos today." And I was like, "Okay, where's that coming from?" And what I realized is that I was making things way too overcomplicated. I was trying to like create these really intense YouTube videos that I just don't think were necessary. And I'm like, "You know what? Let me just sit down, talk to the camera, maybe have a couple screen shares, and we're just going to move on with it." I was trying to find the latest and greatest and best idea, where I was just like, "I need to show up and give my audience what they've been asking for, help them with their pain points and their problems," instead of trying to be some crazy big YouTuber.
If you're starting to feel like your content feels inauthentic, or you're feeling like, "This doesn't align with me, my message, my business," again, let's shift away from that. So, for me, what this would often look like, I would sit down to create short-form content, and I absolutely dreaded creating Instagram carousels and, uh, posts for Twitter, and I was just like, I would always push them off, or I did eventually try to outsource them to my content manager, like, "Hey, can you help me brainstorm these things?" And I'm like, "I just was like, I don't like creating these things. Why am I still creating them? Why am I still showing up in this way?" And so, I decided to adjust my workflow, and I'm like, "I'm just not going to create that content anymore. How can I pivot? How can I restructure and maybe provide value in other ways?" And for me, that was through video. I would much rather show up on video than give you some 10-slide Instagram Carousel. I gave up on Twitter, deleted my Twitter account. It was just not worth it for me.
And also, if you find yourself missing deadlines that you have set for yourself, we might need to adjust your content creation workflow. It often means that you are doing too much. While we do need to prioritize our content creation, and you do need to set those standards and those practices around dedicating time to content creation because it's just as important as any other business task. If you have too many strict deadlines that you seem to not be able to abide by, we need to start cutting out some of those deadlines. Why is it so strict? Why is it so rigid? Why can't it fit in your content calendar?
So, for me, what this looked like is I used to approach YouTube content creation each and every week. I would sit down on Monday and record, and then edit on Wednesday, and this, that, and the other. And I couldn't maintain that. So, for me, what I did is I took a step back and I was like, "I want to batch record these videos, and then I want to outsource the editing because I cannot adhere to these deadlines that I've set for myself." And I was fortunate enough that I was in a place to be able to do that. But this can work for any part of your content creation workflow. If you cannot adhere to those deadlines, kind of figure out why, and can we adjust them? Can we get rid of them?
Okay, so I'm hoping that after today, you can walk away with a very solid content creation workflow, or at least some tips to get you started. Now, a content creation workflow is only the first part of building a sustainable and functional content system that you can use to market your small business online every single day. And if you're wanting to learn more about building a content system and a structure and approach for creating content in a lot less time, I want you to check out my signature program at the link in the description below called The Content System. And make sure you drop any questions that you have about creating your content workflow in the comments below. Otherwise, I will see you guys next week.