creating content for social media

Creating content for social media can feel seriously painful sometimes. It doesn’t matter if you have to write it or record it. When you’re blocked and can’t come up with a good idea to save your life, posting on social media rapidly descends to the bottom of your daily to-do list.

I get it.

I’ve been there.

A lot of days, I’m still there.

Let’s face it, if it’s up to us to create a post a day to stay relevant and top of mind with our audience all we’re going to feel is massive amounts of guilt and frustration if we’re not doing it. Most of the time we’re more focused on putting out fires in our businesses, dealing with things that come up day to day, and focusing on our clients rather than creating the perfect Instagram feed.

But, that is not setting us up for success. And honestly, it usually results in us feeling defeated before we’ve even left the starting gate.

But there is hope. You can have a beautiful, curated, engaging social media feed in just minutes a day.

Here’s the thing, you have to put in the work on the front end.

Sorry, I wish I had better news. The content creation process is kind of like losing weight in that there’s no way of getting around doing the work. BUT, there is one very significant difference -- and it’s very good news -- unlike working out, you don’t have to do the heavy lifting every day.

This gives you a massive amount of freedom in your day to day, while still allowing you to be active on social media by releasing consistent daily content for your audience.

How do you accomplish such an impossible feat?

By having a workflow and batching the content creation process.

Ughhhhh...I know, I know. I can hear you groaning already! You know this. You’ve heard this. But hear me out!

Here’s what happens if I don’t utilize my own content batching workflow:

Months. LITERAL MONTHS will go by without me posting anything. It’s embarrassing. (This is what I help my clients do, shouldn’t I have figured this out by now? The short answer: yes. BUT, I am in the trenches with you. I get it. I have found what works, but just like you I need to implement it--or it doesn’t work).
I agonize over all of the posts I should be creating.
I waste time and energy starting, stopping, and getting frustrated by my inability to put together the perfect piece of content.
I do nothing and my audience grows cold, forgets I exist, and I have to push even harder to start things up again when I finally get back to posting consistently.

I don’t think we fully recognize how draining that feeling is. We shame ourselves. We feel guilty.

We compare ourselves to the other people who can do it “perfectly” -- newsflash, that’s not a thing! We try to force ourselves to post (which is NEVER a good thing!), and a majority of the time we end up ditching what we’ve come up with and waste even more time in the “scroll hole” of social media. Rinse and repeat.

I’ve been there. I’ve done it. I’ve bought the t-shirt.

This is why I love implementing a workflow where I “batch create” my content. What this looks like for me is sitting down once a month (or week -- whatever works for you) and creating a month’s (or week’s) worth of content. I will record videos, write posts, curate images, and work through the content creation process for hours at a time so that all I have to do when the day comes is to hit “publish.”

The trick is to make your workflow simple enough to feel doable, while still being comprehensive enough to help you batch a significant amount of content at once. Even if you want the flexibility to post when the inspiration strikes in the moment, creating content to have on those days when the well has run dry will keep you in people’s newsfeeds even when you have nothing to say. The goal is to create a content bank that you can utilize when things get busy, or stuff comes up.

so what exactly does this look like?

Well first of all you, you have to have a content strategy. While this is something I go in depth about with my clients, I want to share a few questions to help you get started with creating a basic content strategy for your business.

Not having one is the biggest roadblock I see to the content creation process. I work with my clients to help them hone in on what’s unique about them, and their clients. And we use that information to create a strategy that will allow them to feel confident speaking directly to their audience. They know what they should be saying, and how to say it in a way that positions them as THE expert their audience has been looking for.

Your content strategy should be layered. What this means is that you start with YOU first. You are the most important part of this equation because if you’re not jazzed about what you’re saying, chances are people aren’t going to be jazzed to read it.

here’s a few questions you can ask yourself, and then do a brain dump on.

And by brain dump, I mean write down EVERYTHING that comes to mind when you think about each one. Even if you just write the answers in list form, getting your brain to start thinking about all of these things will help you establish a few “buckets'' of content you can pull from on a regular basis.

It will also start to train your brain to look for the answers to these questions in your everyday life. You’ll see evidence all around you that will help you create content that “answers” each one. And when you come across it, your job is to write it down somewhere (immediately, and in great detail).

Questions that will help you start to develop your own content strategy:

STEP 1: THINK ABOUT THINGS LIKE...

What do YOU want to talk about?
What are you excited about in your business?
What problem are you passionate about solving for your clients?
What past experiences have you had that you could share with your audience about?
What kind of work do you want to do more of?
What do you do better than anyone else?

STEP 2: THINK ABOUT YOUR CLIENT. ASK YOURSELF QUESTIONS LIKE:

What questions do I get asked a lot by my audience?
What does your audience want to learn more about? (Hint: if you don’t know, ask!)
What is one specific thing your audience is struggling with?
What is your audience afraid of happening to them if you don’t help them solve their problem?
What would be helpful for your audience to know prior to working with you? (i.e. What baseline knowledge should they have prior to starting the process of working together?)
What is your client hoping to achieve by working with you?

STEP 3: THINK ABOUT WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT YOU CAN CREATE:

Short and Sweet -- IG stories, Reels, TikToks, etc. -- Short video clips with quick tips, bite sized amounts of info, or entertaining/inspirational content.
- Examples of this might be:
  - Trending content -- think trending sounds and TikTok dances
  - Quick tips
  - Quotes
  - Q&A
  - FAQs
In-depth Info -- Instagram or Facebook posts, longer TikToks, IGTV, etc. -- This can be “lecture” type videos or posts, or stories that teach or entertain your audience. The goal is to give people information that is valuable to them in order to overcome the issue they’re struggling with.
- Examples of this might be:
  - Tutorials
  - Posts about your product or service -- what it is, how it works, etc.
  - Educational content -- teach them something!
  - Behind the scenes of your process
  - Stories about past clients that your audience can relate to, or aspire to be like

The goal with your content is to provide value to your audience. If it doesn’t apply to them, they don’t care. They won’t read or watch. And they certainly won’t engage or follow.

Here’s a few helpful tips to get people to stop scrolling, and pay attention to what you’re saying:

Hook them in the first three seconds of your video, or the first few lines of your post.
Use the word “YOU” at the beginning of your content to grab people’s attention.
Explain to people what’s at stake, why they care, or the benefit to them if they engage with your content.
Clearly state the point you are trying to make. Re-state it another way just to be sure people understand.
Include some kind of call to action in your content so that people can continue to engage with you if they like it.

gathering inspiration:

Once you have your content “buckets” created by answering the questions above, you’ll start the inspiration gathering process. For me this looks like a note in my phone where I write down quotes, questions or other ideas. I try to write down as much information as I can think of for each post. THIS IS KEY!

Tip for what NOT to do: Here’s what I used to do. This is an actual conversation I have had with myself...

Self: “Here’s a really good idea about branding you could create a post on! Gosh, this would be so cool. I could write all about X, Y, Z, and it’ll be so good!”

Self to self: “That’s a great idea. Write all that down.”

Self: “I will in a second! I just have to finish this one thing.”

...seconds later…

Self to self: “What was that great idea I just had? It was so good!”

Self: “Ugh. This is why I told you to write it down!”

Within seconds it would be gone if I didn’t write it down! Or if I did write it down, I wouldn’t include enough information to come up with a full post when it came down to actually writing it, despite bursting with inspiration when the idea originally came to me.

Even though I am only creating content once or twice a month, the process is in the back of my mind during the interim. When something comes to me, I write it down in detail in my phone notes. Then when I sit down and start the content creation process, I’ll pull up that note to spark my creativity and the post or video will just come out of me naturally.

workflow tips:

When it comes to my workflow, I typically dedicate one day to written posts, and one day to video posts.

WRITTEN POSTS:

Written posts start with the image gathering process. I use Planoly to organize all of my photos and make sure my grid looks exactly like I want it to in Instagram. Then I will start writing my posts using the notes in my phone.

I then schedule each post to go out on a specific day and time. I have all of my # lists saved in Planoly, so all I have to do is copy and paste when things go live. The same process can be used for Facebook or LinkedIn using whatever scheduling platform you want to use.

VIDEO POSTS:

Video posts are definitely batched because I don’t want to have to do my hair and makeup everyday! For this reason, I tend to get pretty once a month and record everything at one time.

I’ll outline the main points I want to make in my videos on a post-it so I have an idea of what I want to say. And then I sit down, post-it in hand, and do all of the recording at once.

When making TikToks stories I’ll add a caption, #’s, and a cover, and then save it to drafts so all I need to do is hit “publish” once I’m ready to release it. When it comes to IGTV, I’ll write my captions in a word doc and save all of my recordings to be uploaded at a later date.

my thoughts on cross-platform sharing…

My biggest--and maybe most controversial — opinion about content creation is that there are so many platforms, and within each platform there’s different ways to create and share content.

For that reason, I tell my clients to focus on creating content for ONE or two platforms. Then take that content and share it on other platforms if you’re trying to grow your audience. But even that step isn’t necessary if it’s overwhelming for you.

Now before you come for me, I know there is a theory that platforms tend to favor content that was created natively on that specific platform as opposed to uploading content created in another.

But if you don’t have a social media team behind you, it can be challenging to be in all of the places, all of the time. And most of the time if we try, we end up don’t nothing because we can’t sustain that kind of output.

So if using your TikToks in your reels--and vice versa--works for you, then do it! Because at the end of the day, it’s more about showing up than reinventing the wheel every time you want to share content. I would rather have you show up consistently on one platform than sporadically on 4.

in closing…

My ultimate goal is for you to find a platform that ignites your creativity and gets you excited about sharing about your business. This is one of my favorite parts of working with my clients.

I love being able to help them feel super confident about showing up on their chosen social platform because they have a plan of what to say and do. It’s important to me that they can fit the content creation process into their business in a way that works for them without draining them, exhausting them, or driving them crazy!

So remember, all you need to do to be successful on social media is to be yourself, show up regularly, create content that your audience finds valuable, and be willing to pour into your online community. Because when you do that from an authentic place, your audience will feel it and be attracted to you and what you have to say. And that is the ultimate goal!

MEET THE AUTHOR

Mollie, business coach and copywriter

Mollie is a Business Coach and Copywriter (which basically means she helps people figure out what to write on their website and social media platforms). She helps her clients either through coaching so they feel confident about the content they’re creating, or “done for you” copy if they don’t want to write the words for their marketing materials. Most people struggle to get the thoughts that are in their heads to make sense when they're written down, but Mollie has a knack for taking those ideas and turning them into a clear, consistent brand message and an effective content strategy for her clients. She loves helping entrepreneurs create systems and strategies to make creating content for their businesses easy and enjoyable. When she’s not working with clients, you can find her riding her horse, walking her two rescue pups, or baking homemade chocolate chip cookies.