Does the thought of marketing on multiple digital outlets overwhelm you?
There is a way to make it all easier, I swear!
Last week, we broke down your other options for digital marketing beyond social media.
Today, I’m going to walk you through how to put that plan into action the easiest way possible by batching your content and breaking it up into multiple pieces.
There’s no reason for you to be asking yourself on a daily basis what you’re going to talk about. In fact, if you follow this method, you can get your entire month’s marketing done in just a few hours in one shot instead of a few hours every week or even an hour a day.
1. Decide on Your Long-Form Content
The first thing you have to do is decide what your long-form content is going to be and what those topics will be.
What’s long-form content? Think a blog post, podcast, or YouTube video. Something a bit more substantial than a simple social media post.
When you start with a long-form piece of content, it makes it very easy to break up that one piece of content into multiple. We’ll dig into that in a minute.
You’ll want to decide what’s easiest for you AND what your audience likes. Do you love to write? Write a blog! Is talking easier? Make a video or a podcast episode! Whatever you choose to make your main piece, just start with and stick to it.
The great thing here is that you can actually take a video and turn just the audio into a podcast and then get a transcription and turn that into a blog post. You could also use a blog post as a script to turn that into a podcast or a video. Just because you choose to have one main piece doesn’t mean you can’t easily have the others.
Remember – not everyone is going to see everything you publish. It’s completely OK for you to publish the same thing in a different format on different channels.
2. Plan Out the Schedule
Now that you have the type of content you’re going to create, I want you to do some research. What are the most frequently asked questions you get from your customers? On social media? In your inbox?
Head to a Facebook group where your ideal client is spending their time. What kinds of questions are they asking? What seem to be their biggest problems and struggles?
I want you to take those exact issues and turn them into your blog posts, videos, or podcast episodes!
You see, when you’re answering a problem or question your audience has with a piece of long-form content, you’re not only helping your SEO and discoverability, but you’re building trust with your prospective buyer.
Write out a few topics that come to mind with your research and then get out either a printed calendar or a calendar app. Group topics together that might make sense to lead into each other, pick a theme for a month, or just plop those topics down on a date.
I’d recommend that you “release” your long-form content on the same day every week. My blogs, for instance, get published on Monday mornings. Whatever makes the most sense for you and your own workflow.
You can plan out as many weekly topics as you’d like. Personally, I plan out an entire quarter’s of long-form content in one go. That doesn’t mean that I don’t change things out when I get there or to cover something more timely, but it will help you to do more than less, I promise.
3. Plan the Break Up
How does having several weeks’ of big topics feel? Probably pretty good right?
Well, now it’s time to break it up!
You see, one blog post can easily be turned into:
- A YouTube video
- Podcast episode
- Three to four social media posts
- Multiple social media stories
- Email blast
Similarly, a long-form video can be turned into:
- A blog post
- Podcast episode
- Couple of clips for social media
- Three or four social posts
- Social media stories
- Email blast
Once you’ve written or created that long-form piece of content, you can take pieces of it to use in smaller capacities. Cover just part of the overall topic or give away one of the quick wins. You can always direct them to go to the larger piece of content itself or give them enough in that one piece that they don’t need to find the larger article.
I, personally, also spread them out. If I have a blog post go out one week, I create a couple of social media posts around it, but I might also post something about it on social media a couple of weeks later. It doesn’t have to be done all at the same time.
Get that calendar back out and start planning out those broken-up pieces. Choose which channel you’ll post on and what day you’ll be sharing. This helps you to fill in the gaps, keep a theme consistent, and it helps extend your reach on a long-form piece of content since not everyone will see it the first time.
4. Source Images
One of the things that stops a lot of people are the images. Where do you find them?
Depending on your business, you may want to show your face as much as possible. Especially if you are your brand, don’t be afraid to smile on camera! While a tripod and the selfie time on your iPhone can work, I highly recommend scheduling a photoshoot with a local photographer. Plan out several poses and styles and some outfit changes. It’ll help you have images for months without al the effort!
When you need to, it’s 100% OK to use stock photography, too! You want your ideal customer to visualize themselves in what you’re writing or talking about and they can’t do that if they’re only seeing your face.
If you can pay, a good stock photo library might cost you $20-50/month, but there’s lots of amazing resources that offer free photos like Unsplash and Pexels. Just make sure you double check whether or not you need to attribute the image so you’re not violating copyright law! And never, ever just pull something from Google Images.
5. Use Scheduling Tools to Make it Easy
This step is the piece that makes all of this worth it! When you plan everything out, suddenly your marketing gets easier. But when you batch it? SO much time saved!
By batching I mean creating multiple pieces of your long-form content at once and same with your other marketing channels.
For example, I write an entire month’s blog articles in one morning. It’s easier to go to the next blog when I’m already in the “writing zone” and with WordPress’s scheduling tools, I just have to choose which day they go live and I’m done!
I then use Later’s scheduling tool to set up my week’s social media (including stories) so I don’t have to think about it every day. Typically, I do just one week’s of social media at a time because things can change pretty fast in the digital marketing world; I want a bit of flexibility in case something crazy happens. But I know many business owners that are successful with planning and scheduling out a month’s or more!
Batching Makes Marketing Easier
When you create a lot of your marketing content all at once and in bigger pieces, it helps you to build up your digital marketing at a fraction of the effort you were using before.
If you didn’t grab it last week, grab my free Digital Marketing Plan Walkthrough guide below. It’ll help you think through everything you need to to create an effective strategy and even gives you 3 months of calendars so you can schedule it all.
It’s a fillable PDF to make it even easier!
