Streamline your processes to consistently create & share content - even when you're short on time!

We would all love to be one of those magical people who never struggles to find share-worthy content or think of a blog topic, right? They're consistently sharing content that's on-trend and interesting. They seem to be on top of everything and never miss a beat or drop the ball. 

But it's not magic. It's a streamlined creative process! They've created a plan, established a routine and stuck to it consistently. Did you know it takes 66 days on average to build a new habit? So, start streamlining your content process today, and in two months, you could have the process down.

If you're not sure how to streamline your process, let me break it down for you. Because the more you can quickly and easily create your content, the more likely you'll be to keep up with sharing content consistently!

Keep a list of topics and ideas handy 

In the notes section of my phone, I have a list of topics of potential blogs and social posts that I've jotted down when inspiration strikes me. I use my notes section because it syncs with my phone, laptop and iMac but use any platform that works for you. 

By keeping a list, you'll quickly have generated a list of random but valuable content ideas all safely stored away for you to access. Note down any ideas that come to mind, even if they seem tenuously linked to your work or insignificant. You can always develop a simple idea later! 

You'll soon have a bank of topic and content ideas to choose from, which will help you loads when creating a content calendar!

Create a Content Calendar

Every content creator needs a regular, reliable and structured plan to help them create consistent posts. Content isn’t just blogs, it's blog posts, social media posts, videos, and even podcasts. Here's where you'll use your ideas bank. A simple spreadsheet is enough to keep track; I just use excel. 

Create columns for:

• Topic/Theme
• When you want to publish
• What channel it'll be going on
• Any notes or reminders 

And then rows with days of the week, or if you don't want to go into that much detail, and would prefer an overview, then a week commencing date will work here too. 

Start to plot out your ideas against your calendar, deciding what you'll be posting each week. Whilst I have a content calendar laid out for a year, with top-line info showing, I generally only plot three or so months in advance just because you never know what's going to happen, and this keeps some flexibility. Plus, if you write a blog on a topic, share that same topic across your socials etc. By repurposing content, you'll save yourself loads of time and effort! 

Don't overcomplicate it; if you're just starting, aim to post one new thing per week before attempting to post 2–3 items each time. After you establish a habit of weekly posting, you can move on to adding additional content. By this time, you'll have the consistency down. 

If you’re looking to create SEO or optimised content, then I use Google’s Keyword Planner and I love Answer the Public for topics and ideas that speaks directly to the audience’s needs and interests.  

Fight back against blank page syndrome

Do you get blank page syndrome? Where a blank page leaves you shaking and feeling sick? You're staring at a page, and you just.can't.write.anything?? Don't worry, it happens to the best of us. 

It'll help if you're creating or crafting content that you're already familiar with, like if you know a topic well. But when you're struggling to write, it helps if you have a written outline. 

A written outline is your key to creativity and can be anything from two sentences to a whole essay - just make sure there's some sort of structure in place! You might find that after going through the steps above, outlining will become second nature. 

If I'm writing an outline, I'll start by outlining the subheadings or talking points. This gets the creative juices going as you begin to see your work take shape. These headlines are rarely my final ones, but they'll be a handy guide. 

Talking about getting going, if you find that you spend ages trying to craft the perfect intro, then start somewhere else. Start by writing your first subheading instead, and then work your way down. This takes the pressure off a bit, helps you warm up and get into the topic. Then you can go back to your intro once you've got all the inspiration and magic flowing. 

Batch Create Content

Batch creating is when you plan ahead and prep content creation so that it's available in advance. I particularly like to batch my social media posts, sitting down to write a week or so of captions or prepping the visuals at a time. I find it easier to keep going once I'm in the zone. Plus, it keeps them all in the same tone, and I'm writing about the same topic, it keeps it cohesive. 

If you're ever short of time, then you're going to be grateful that you've batch created content! Especially since we all have those days where we are too busy or tired to do anything so by pre-creating, we're making sure that we consistently have content to share. 

It gives the rest of your week a lot more space and breathing room so you can focus on other things like marketing or customer support. Plus, it means when you're hit by one of those days where everything goes wrong, you've still got content to post!

Use Social Schedulers (or any kind of automation really)

Automation is all about making our processes effortless, so similar to scheduling your content to go live or an email to send; social scheduling tools save you lots of time. By scheduling your posts, you'll be streamlining the process on your own time and ensuring you're consistently sharing content. If you're interested, I use Buffer because it's straightforward and covers all the social channels I use. But there are tons out there! 

Simply fill and set your schedule to launch the content whenever your audience is the most active. Then in your audience's eyes, it will look like you're posting consistently and, most importantly, that you're active! 

Creating content consistently is hard work, but there are ways to streamline the process and stay on top of it. The main things you can do to become a more efficient and creative content creator include keeping track of ideas, creating a calendar with your list of posts for every month or week in advance, batching your content, and using schedulers to help automate when posts go out on social media. 

However, if you really don't have enough time to create consistent content, why not drop me a message? Whether you'd like a content calendar filled with engaging and exciting ideas for the next quarter or the next year, or write your weekly blog posts, I can help! Take a look at my services here or drop me a message.