Write, write, write. There is never enough time to write!!! Do you ever feel that way? It kinda sucks, doesn’t it, when you *know* that you should be pushing out a regular stream of content but your schedule already feels chock full and you can’t figure out when you are going to write, write, write. 

We asked our favourite master of productivity, Melanie Knights, to share her expertise on how to bump your productivity with her favourite approach to content batching. 

: : : : 

Maybe you’ve heard about the elusive content batching on a podcast or read about it in a blog (like this one!), but it always seems overwhelming. 

Or, perhaps you’ve tried to batch your content, but then you fall out of routine, writer’s block shows up and content batching goes out of the window. 

I’ve been batching my content for over a year, and I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way — so that you don’t have to.  

Like many content creators, I tried to batch too much content too quickly. I also tried to go from doing everything on-the-fly each day, to batching a month ahead… Nope, it doesn’t work like that. 

Now that I’ve introduced you to some of my mistakes — let’s look at my 5 top tips for content batching!

Plan Your Content 

You can’t batch your content if you don’t know what you will be sharing or when you will share it. So it’s super important that you plan out your content themes before you start writing or batching. 
 
After I’ve planned my content themes for a full 12-months, I then refine my themes in 90-day blocks. 

Create Your Batching Schedule

Content batching is not something I recommend my clients randomly start one day on the fly, so after you’ve planned your content themes from step 1, create your schedule. 
 
This schedule doesn’t need to be rigid, but it should help you decide which pieces of content you will work on each day. 
 
For example, on Monday’s you might spend 2-hours batching blog posts, Tuesdays could be social media posts — you get the idea. 
 
This helps you to stay focused on that piece of content instead of switching between tasks. When you focus on one thing at a time you are able to stay in that creative space.

Start with Your Daily Tasks

So I shared with you earlier that, like many other content creators, I tried to go from doing things on-the-day to once a month. 
 
It was a disaster. 
 
Instead, put your business tasks into buckets; daily, weekly and monthly. Start by batching your daily tasks, so that they become weekly tasks. Perhaps you write all your social media content once a week and pop it into a scheduling app (I love Later.com or Smarter Q), this is now a weekly task — and you won’t be trying to come up with something to say at 9:00pm. 
 
(Again, I can’t stress how important step one is because if you don’t know what you want to say or what your audience want to hear — it will be impossible to batch content)

Batch Your Time

Once you know what to say, and you’ve set your content batching schedule, use time blocking to create a distraction-free writing environment. 
 
You’ve likely heard of the Pomodoro technique, this is the process of working on one thing for 25-minutes, and then taking a 5-minute break. Once the break is finished, reset your timer and repeat the same process. Repeat this process a maximum of 4 times (2-hours) and then take a 30-minute break. 
 
The Pomodoro technique is a great tool to keep you focused because you cannot complete ½ a Pomodoro, if you get distracted, reset your timer and start again.

Use Templates

If you’re creating social content, the likelihood is that you are also creating images for your content. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or your blog — planning these images and creating a master template for each post saves time. 
 
Inside Canva create an image template, label it and then copy it at the start of each month. Decide on the style of images you want to share and put these into your template, download and start creating your posts. 

If you’re tired of spending hours each week thinking of ideas for your content and rushing to create your posts, a batching system will streamline this entire process. Once you get the hang of it, it’ll get easier and easier. 

Melanie is a Business Strategist & Productivity Expert based in the UK who helps female entrepreneurs around the world get their sh*t together so they can be more in their business. This post originally appeared on Melanie’s blog earlier this year. If you dig what she’s saying, pop on over to her site and learn about how she can help you become more organized in your business.