Speaker 1: Fun fact. I currently create and share content across two YouTube channels, two Instagram channels, TikTok and an email newsletter. Now you might be thinking, my gosh this girl must spend every waking moment of every single day creating content and you would be surprised to find out that that is not the case. In fact, I spend on average about four hours per week creating content and that includes everything from ideation, prepping my content, filming my content, all the way through to my content being scheduled and ready to be published. Now if you're thinking, absolute cap, there's no way that she manages to get that much content created in such a short space of time, I would not be mad at you for not believing me. But the truth is, I batch my content and that is how I'm able to create so much content in a short period of time and that is how I'm able to remain consistent across multiple social media channels. So, if you would like to learn how to achieve something similar, stick with me because this is my updated complete guide to batching your social media content. Also, this video is brought to you by HubSpot, more on them later. Alright, first rule of batching is that we need to start small. A common mistake that I see a lot of people make is they hear me talk about batching because let's be real, I don't, I don't ever shut up about it. They hear me talk about batching and they're like, Jade, I tried to batch three months worth of content and it was too hard and it didn't work and I'm like, my love, you tried to batch too much at once. We can't go from never batching content and creating content on a fly, so literally being like selfie, caption, post, we can't go from that life to batching months worth of content like that. I like to think of it like a muscle, like you have to really train it and exercise it before we get to the point where we're batching like months of content in advance. So, with that in mind, we want to start small. For most people, I recommend you start by batching one weeks of content in advance, so that is your first goal. You're going to try to come up with ideas, plan, create and schedule one week's worth of content on your respective social media channel in advance. Speaking of social media channels, this whole process that I'm taking you through works across every single social media channel. However, if you are just starting out with batching, then I do recommend we focus on one social channel at a time because again, if I'm telling you to batch one week's of content in advance but you're across every social media channel known to man, that is still going to be a lot of content that you need to create. So let's do one social media channel at a time and one week of content in advance just to start off with. Some of you might want to stick with just one week in advance because maybe that works really well for you and for others you might want to increase the amount of content that you're batching so actually you have a month's worth of content in advance. It's completely up to you and you'll figure out what type of creator you are and which works best for you once you get in a good habit of batching your content. Okay, so next we're gonna schedule our batching sessions. Now, I know I keep on calling out common mistakes but the reason why is because I've spent a lot of time working with a lot of creators so I really feel like I understand the mistakes that a lot of creators make and I just want to call them out so that you don't make the same mistake. So when it comes to this section, the mistake that people often make is that they don't schedule time to batch every single part of the content creation process. So what normally happens is that someone says, okay I'm gonna batch a week's worth of content in advance, I'm gonna set aside four hours on Sunday to create all of the content. The mistake is that we've not isolated all of the tasks that are required in order for you to create that amount of content. It's not as simple as just sitting down for four hours because we've got to come up with the ideas, we've got to plan the content out, we've got to film it and we've got to edit it and if you try to do all of that in just that four hour sitting, you're either going to be burnt out, you're going to be tired or you're just not going to get everything done. You'll end up completing the session feeling like you've not accomplished anything and you'll feel more frustrated than anything else, right? You'll feel like batching doesn't work for you. So what we're going to do instead is we're going to isolate the different things you need to do as part of content creation and batching and we're going to schedule periods of time to do each of those things. So the first thing that you might want to schedule is time for ideation. Now in a moment I'm going to talk to you about ideation in more detail because I actually don't think it makes sense to sit down for an hour to come up with ideas because actually it's quite hard to be creative when you're doing it that way but in case that works for you, you might want to set some time aside for ideation. You then want to set some time aside for planning. Usually if you're creating one week's worth of content you need like an hour at least to plan that content. So you've got your ideas but now we need to break them down into actual plans. You then need to schedule some time for production, so that's creating the content, then editing and then of course scheduling and I'll break down all of these elements in a lot more detail in just a moment. Like one of the biggest reasons why isolating this task is just going to really really work for you is because it's going to allow you to benefit from something called flow state. Now flow state is essentially when you're in a state of flow. Do you know what? I hate when I do that. I do this all the time, I say a word and then to explain what the word means I just say the word again, like with a different infliction. Come on Jade, do better. Essentially what it's describing is when you're in like the zone, when you're doing one specific task and one task only and all distractions are eliminated and you're really in that zone, you're usually able to create your best work and be super efficient with that work. So when you're scheduling these periods of time to complete all of those tasks, make sure that your environment is distraction free, there's no notifications popping off, you're not like in a really busy cafe or something unless that also works for you. You know what I mean though, you want to benefit from really getting into that flow state. Okay let's talk about ideation though because this is a super important part of batching your content. You need to be able to draw upon great ideas for your content on a regular basis, especially when you're ready to sit down and batch some content. The last thing you want to happen is to set yourself up to sit down and start planning all your content out and realize that you actually don't have any good ideas. We've all been there, okay. So how do you ensure that you have got a constant stream of ideas running to you ready to go the second you're ready to put them to good use? Well the trick to ideation is that it is continuous. So this is actually more of a habitual thing than like a sit down and focus on it type of thing. And what I mean by that is you might have noticed that the best ideas come to you at the most inconvenient times, like in the shower, going for a walk, on the treadmill, like I mean please let me know in the comments if you can relate because those are when my ideas come for me right. And there's actually been a study to say that you come up with the best most creative ideas when you're not focusing on coming up with ideas because your brain is more relaxed and therefore more creative. Don't quote me on that because that's not the scientific reason but I'm pretty sure I heard someone say that once. So with that in mind what you need to do is get in the habit of having something accessible where you can add your ideas whilst you're on the go. So if you are like an iPhone, Apple kind of person then you'll be able to use your notes app and it will integrate from your laptop to your phone to your iPad and you'll be able to add to your notes whilst you're on the go. You can do the same thing with like Google Drive and various other note applications as well. The most important thing is that it's accessible whilst you're on the go. Like I can't stress this enough, you don't want to have a great idea and then be like let me just wait until I go home and fire up my computer. We need to be able to add it whilst we're out and about okay. So we need a running list of ideas that you want to be adding to as a habit moving forward. If you're someone who's like great but these ideas aren't coming to me at any point in my day, I want you to practice the habit of putting yourself in your audience's shoes. Even when you're scrolling through social media mindlessly, every now and then stop and think to yourself if I was my target audience right, what would I want to be seeing on social media? How would I react to this YouTube video? How would I react to this TikTok or this Reel? The more you get in the habit of putting yourself in your audience's shoes, the easier it will be for you to come up with content ideas that your audience will love. Okay let's move on to planning and I'm excited for this section because I have a free resource that you're going to love and that is going to be super super useful for you. This resource is brought to you by HubSpot. You know how much I love to bring you free resources courtesy of HubSpot and it's essentially a content calendar. So I told you it'd be relevant right? Now for the planning section of your batching process, essentially what we're doing is we're taking some of those ideas that you've written down and we're breaking those out so that we know when we want them to go live and we have a greater idea of what that content is going to actually involve. Which is why a content calendar brought to you by HubSpot is going to be super super useful for you. Now planning your content in advance using HubSpot's calendar is going to allow you to do a few different things. It will make it easier for you to coordinate campaigns, it will make it easier for you to grow your audience, extend your reach, it will also make it easier for you to scale your social media marketing and it will of course boost your productivity. Now this template is useful for everyone, especially anyone who's on more than one social media channel or if you're ever planning to be on more than one social media channel. Essentially when you've got multiple channels you're juggling a bunch of different balls in the air and speaking from personal experience that's hard, like have you guys tried juggling? Am I just like not coordinated? No because I used to dance. I'm not going to put myself in the uncoordinated bucket, I'm coordinated. Juggling is difficult though. So this template is fully customizable and allows you to organize all your social media content in advance across multiple different channels. It's available in excel format, it's super easy to use and it even gives you some useful tips along the way as you plan your social content. I recommend once you download this calendar you bookmark it so it's super easy for you to find and you share it with your team if you have other people who help with your social media presence. Of course the link to download this calendar is available in my description, it is completely free, brought to you by HubSpot so make sure you grab it. So now that you've got your content calendar provided by HubSpot and you're planning out all of your content, what you now need to do as part of the planning process is actually to take each individual content idea and break it out and make sure you've got everything you need before you go into the next stage which is all about production. So for example, if you're creating any form of video content, whether it's a YouTube video, whether it's a TikTok, a Reel, whatever it might be, you want to make sure that in addition to having the idea for the video, you've also broken down what the video is going to include. So if you're going to talk about a certain subject, make sure you've done your research and you've written down the prompts for your video. If you're doing a vlog, make sure you've already identified the purpose of the vlog or what the most entertaining element or valuable element of your vlog is going to be and make sure you've put some thought behind how you're going to bring that to life. You've thought about the different scenes that you're going to capture, right? Put some work into planning the actual video because your future self will thank you so that you don't sit down, turn on your camera and then you're like... right? We've all been there. We want to avoid that so by planning your content in a bit more detail, you'll be able to avoid that and this also is relevant for when you're creating like graphics or photos for example. If you know you're going to go out and do a photo shoot, then make sure you've figured out where you're going to go. What are you going to take photos of? Do you need to bring additional lighting with you? If you're a fashion creator, are you going to bring different outfits so you can get changed? Like all of that stuff. With your graphics, let's say you're going to create some graphics for Instagram. Okay, well what are those graphics going to say? Yes, you have the idea for the carousel, but have you actually written what each carousel was going to say yet? So really plan everything out to the most detail that you possibly can because as I said, your future self will thank you. All right, so let's move on to the fun part, production. This is where we're actually creating the content and this is usually what people think the whole batching session is. They're like, oh I'm just gonna sit down with my camera. When actually as I've just demonstrated, there are multiple things we need to do before we even get to this point. So now that we're here, what we want to focus on is actually producing the content and the beauty of you spending time planning out all the content is that hopefully this section is really fun and easy for you and you can kind of just relax a bit and let your personality flow. Now even if you don't want to do the other steps that I've just broken down, which I really recommend that you do, even if you don't want to do those, batching your content in terms of the production schedule is one of the most efficient things that you can do and let me tell you why. If you're like me, you need to get ready and let me tell you, film ready is not the same as day-to-day life ready for me. So me getting ready to film is a bit of an effort and I want to only do it once and film a bunch of videos in one go. The same goes for my setup and you might have a similar situation. I've got lighting, I put blackout blinds up, which is not an easy thing for me to do. I've got to stand on my chair, my chair has a wobbly leg, I always think I'm going to fall and break my leg. It's like a whole ordeal. I don't want to do that every day. I want to do that once a week or once a month and just get it done in one batch, right? There's also a lot to say for your mindset. So when you're in a position where you actually feel like showing up on camera, because I know for a fact that most of us don't feel like being on camera all the time. The people who do are usually very successful creators, but for most of us we actually need to be in the right frame of mind. So when you are in that frame of mind, make the most of it. Batch a couple videos in one go and really make the most of this energy that you're bringing. For example, today this is my second YouTube video that I filmed and I'm about to film another one immediately after this because I'm feeling good, the energy is flowing, I've had a coffee and I'm making the most of it. The same goes for when you're creating graphics, right? So when you're creating graphics, because you've already written out all the stuff that you might want to put on this carousel or graphic you're producing, you also want to batch your time that you spend actually designing that graphic. So you want to spend an hour, a week or a month getting your canva up and taking all the text that you've already prepped and written down during the planning phase and actually putting that into a template, designing it so that that's ready to go in batches too. So the batching is relevant to all content formats, not just video. All right, so the next stage is editing, which this part is more specific to video creators and I just need to put a huge caveat here. I have a video editor and I've never pretended otherwise, okay? I'm not going to sit here and be like, oh yeah, I just, I just edit in five minutes and then it's ready to go. I don't. Most of my content is edited by my video editor. The only editing that I do nowadays is if it's very like, light touch editing for like, I don't know, a program that I run or something, or if I'm editing like a reel. I tend to do a lot of my reels that aren't cut downs of my YouTube videos by myself now, so I do that editing on my TikTok, I do that editing myself, but everything else is done by my video editor. Shout out to you, Jamie. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't know anything about editing, because I did used to edit my own videos for about eight months whilst I was working a full-time job and whilst I was doing a bunch of other businesses as well. So the thing that used to really help me was, you guessed it, editing in batches. So setting aside a period of time, and granted this chunk is probably the longest chunk that you need to set time aside for, especially if it's like a long YouTube video, but setting aside a period of time where you've got no distractions and you are just in the editing flow. This especially helps if you're new to editing and you're trying to get used to things like the shortcuts on the different programs that you use. You can really immerse yourself in the process of editing when you give yourself a set period of time to actually do that, right? A final tip that really helped me, and this is going to be great for any of you lot who have slow laptops, because when I first started this channel, my old laptop was old. It used to sound like it was like taking flight every time I tried to edit a video on it. Export your videos overnight, because exporting your content when you're editing it, using something like iMovie or, you know, just some kind of video editor, it can really make your laptop have a mental breakdown and it can make editing any other videos almost impossible. So save them and then export them overnight. Last but not least, scheduling. This is another step that I feel like is missed quite often. It is unfortunately not enough just to create your content and edit it and have it saved in a folder good to go. A lot of us actually need to schedule our content ahead of time, because when we schedule our content ahead of time, our content goes out without us having to do anything, and that is usually what we need in order to remain consistent. So my social media content, for example, let's take The Creator Project. This is my second channel that I launched about two months ago, right? With The Creator Project's Instagram channel, all of my content is scheduled out in advance. I use a program called Later. It's literally scheduled a minimum of one month out in advance, and it goes out automatically without me having to lift a finger. The only exception is my Friday posts, which are the story of the week, which obviously I can't batch because it depends on what the story of the week is, but everything else is scheduled good to go well in advance. I'll put a link to the tool that I use below in case you want to check it out to schedule your content. Now, pro tip for this one before we wrap up is captions, right? If we really, really want to get good at this batching thing, and we really want to get good at scheduling our content, don't leave anything to chance. Schedule every single part of your content, including your captions. On Instagram, write your captions down already so they're good to go. On YouTube, write all your descriptions down. On TikTok, create a draft, already write your caption, and already add the cover photo so that when it comes time for your content to go live, you do not have to think about a thing. It either goes out automatically or you press publish yourself, but you don't have to come up with a caption on the fly because if you do have to do that, let me tell you right now, you will not post the content as frequently because it will become a barrier. You'll be like, oh, I've got to write a caption. Oh, I've got something else to do, and then you just won't post it. So all of that prep, all of that batching that we're doing ends up going to waste. All right, my loves, that is my updated guide to batching. Please give this video a like and also maybe leave me a comment if you found this useful. If you feel like hanging around, I recommend watching this video. It's all about my favorite tools that I use for social media content creation. Some of these are super unknown and it feels illegal to share them, but you are going to find so much value from them. Do not forget to grab your free social media content calendar template brought to you by HubSpot, available via the link in my description. Thank you so much for watching as always. I'll see you in my next video.