1. Plan Ahead with a Content Calendar
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to use a content calendar to plan your content out in advance. With a content calendar, you can physically see what your content is going to look like for the upcoming weeks or months. This tool makes it so much easier to stay consistent with your content marketing.
No longer will you be stressed out trying to come up with a post last minute. Even if you don’t have the content created and the copy written, you can still have the basic idea down, which will save you time and prevent you from having to scramble for concepts.
Steps to Create a Content Calendar:
- Identify Content Pillars: Use content pillars to easily categorize your content. For example, if you’re a consultant you could do thought leadership, success stories, education, and brand pillars.
- Set a Schedule: Decide how often you want to post (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, etc). Be realistic about how often you can actually post because it’s more important to be consistent than to post a bunch.
- Brainstorm Content Ideas: Go through your calendar and fill out your different content pillars with tangible ideas. This can be a simple start you’ll return to later or a fully fledged-out idea. We suggest including the most amount of information possible because your future self will thank you. 🙂
- Assign Dates: If you didn’t already, after coming up with all of your content ideas, place them on the calendar. A pro tip is to use color coding or labels to indicate what stage of completion the content is at.
In terms of how to keep the content calendar, you can use different calendar tools such as Trello, Notion, or even a simple Excel spreadsheet. These can help you keep track of your content schedule in an easy-to-use place. Content calendars are a proactive approach that reduces stress and helps you stay on track during busy periods.
Benefits of a Content Calendar:
- Enhanced Organization: It brings structure to your content creation process, making it easier to manage and create content.
- Improved Content Quality: It’s easier to plan content in advance, allowing more time for higher-quality work to be created.
- Consistency: If you stick with a content calendar, then you will consistently have new content and ensure that you’re never panicking about a post last minute.
- Balanced Content Mix: By organizing your calendar with content pillars, you can differentiate your content and make sure you have a good balance while catering to different audience preferences.
2. Repurpose Existing Content
Another way to keep your content consistent is to repurpose it. What we mean by this is, to take an existing piece of content and turn it into something new. For example, you can take a blog and break it down into various pieces of content. On a smaller scale, let’s say you have a thought leadership video that has really good information. You can take that video and turn it into an in-depth carousel post, a graphic that shares an important quote, and a chart that breaks down a concept.
Always taking time to create brand new content is going to take way too long, especially for a busy solopreneur. Repurposing existing content is a great way to save time while maintaining consistency.
Ideas for Repurposing Content:
- Blog to Video: You can easily turn a blog post into a video or a series of short clips. For example, break down important points made in the blog through talking videos.
- Webinar to Blog Series: After a webinar, mine important topics and turn those into blog posts. Each blog can focus on a specific topic covered in the webinar, providing a more detailed explanation.
- Podcast to Short Videos: Create short videos highlighting key points from a podcast episode. Bite-sized visual content is easily shareable and can attract a wider audience.
- Social Media Posts: Take quotes, tips, or statistics from longer content pieces (like all the ones we already mentioned) for social media. Short, to-the-point posts can drive traffic back to the original content.
Benefits of Repurposing Content:
- Extended Reach: Different formats appeal to different target audiences. By repurposing content, you can reach a broader audience.
- SEO Benefits: Multiple pieces of content around the same topic can optimize your search engine rankings by having consistent content surrounding it.
- Efficiency: Repurposing content is an amazing hack for saving time and effort while still producing high-quality, effective content.
- Increased Value: Repurposing allows you to get the most out of each topic and piece of content, making sure you provide the maximum value to your audience.
3. Batch Content Creation
Similar to repurposing content, batching content is another time and effort saver. Batch content creation involves producing multiple pieces of content at once rather than creating them one at a time. This method can significantly improve your efficiency and ensure you always have content ready to publish.
With batching you would set aside a block of time to fledge out a range of content that fits within a certain topic or content type. So if you wanted to film a bunch of video content at once, you would dedicate that time to filming videos on a range of topics. The same applies to if you were writing blogs, making graphics, etc.
Batching content isn’t limited to any one type or topic, just follow a process that is the most effective for you. You can also batch-edit content as well. So if you do film a bunch of videos you can do a separate session where you edit all of them routinely and uniformly to save time.
Steps for Batch Content Creation:
- Set Aside Dedicated Time: Set aside a block of time so you can focus on creating content. This could be on a needed basis or a certain time every week or month depending on your content load.
- Choose a Focus: Before starting, choose what you’re going to focus on. Is it video content, a certain topic, graphics, editing, or something else? Decide on the type of content you’ll create during each session to maintain a consistent workflow.
- Prepare in Advance: Another pre-batch task is to gather any research, outlines, or materials you’ll need beforehand. Having everything ready before you start can save time and keep you focused.
- Minimize Distractions: Finally, when it’s time to begin, find a quiet space and eliminate any distractions. The more focused you are, the more efficient your batch session will be.
Benefits of Batch Content Creation:
- Efficiency: Batching allows you to get into a creative flow, reducing the time spent on task-switching.
- Consistency: With a batch of content ready to go, you can maintain a regular posting schedule even during busy business periods.
- Quality: Focusing on one type of content at a time can improve the quality of your work, as you can devote more attention and creativity to each piece.
- Stress Reduction: Knowing you have content prepared in advance can reduce stress and free up time for other important aspects of your business.
4. Leverage Automation Tools
Automation tools can be a huge help for anyone posting content, but especially for busy solopreneurs. Automation tools allow you to schedule your content in advance so you never have to worry about things being posted. Depending on the system, you can schedule your content months in advance.
Imagine batch-creating content, getting everything ready to post, and then taking time to schedule months of content. You wouldn’t have to worry about content, let alone consistently posting content, for weeks. It would be a task off your plate.
As we mentioned, automation tools make managing consistency easy. You don’t have to remember to manually post every other day. Instead, you can work in advance and get everything taken care of as far into the future as you like.
Popular Automation Tools:
- Social Media Scheduling: There are countless automation tools to choose from such as Buffer, Hootsuite, or Later. These allow you to schedule posts across multiple social media platforms in advance.
- Email Marketing: Platforms like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign can automate email campaigns and newsletters. Just another way to make sure you’re consistently sending out emails.
- Content Management: Use tools like WordPress or Squarespace to schedule and publish blog posts automatically. This ensures your content goes live at optimal times, even if you’re busy with other tasks.
Benefits of Automation Tools:
- Time Savings: Automation tools save time overall because you can schedule all your content in one sitting, saving time within your daily life.
- Consistency: Automated scheduling ensures that your content is published consistently. Never miss a prime posting time again because of your busy schedule.
- Accuracy: They minimize the risk of human error like forgetting to post, ensuring that your content is published as planned.
- Analytics and Insights: Many automation tools provide analytics and performance insights outside of the basics provided on social media platforms.
5. Outsource When Necessary
While being a solopreneur means you wear many hats, it doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself. It can be very difficult to keep consistency in your content marketing strategy when you’re handling every aspect of it by yourself. A way to make this process easier is to outsource tasks so that you can stay consistent without overwhelming yourself.
Now the way you outsource is entirely based on your specific needs. You can do a subtle outsource and hire freelancers to make content for you, schedule content, or write blogs. This would be a good option for someone who has the time to handle their marketing but needs some extra hands here and there.
If you need a more intense approach, AKA you need all the help you can get because you’re too busy doing everything else for your business, then a marketing team might be the answer you’re looking for. You can hire a subscription-based marketing team (like us here at Breezy) that will handle anything you need them to. Plus with a team, you’ll get a more uniform outcome as they’re sourced from the same place, unlike freelancers.
Tasks to Consider Outsourcing:
- Content Writing: Hire freelance writers or a content team to produce blog posts, articles, or social media copy. Writing can be very time-consuming which is not ideal for busy solopreneurs.
- Graphic Design: Similarly, you can hire graphic designers or content teams who can create visuals for your content. High-quality graphics can enhance your content’s authority and make your brand look better overall.
- Video Editing: Find freelancers or marketing teams who can edit and produce high-quality videos for your brand. If you’re taking the time to film the videos, it can be hard to have time to edit them as well.
Benefits of Outsourcing:
- Expertise: Outsourcing allows you to work with experts who specialize in content marketing. Not only will your content be consistent, but it will be a higher quality.
- Time Management: By handing off certain tasks, you can focus on the core tasks of your business, instead of stressing over what to post on social media.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Outsourcing can be more cost-effective than hiring full-time internal employees, especially for tasks that don’t require constant attention.
- Flexibility: With a subscription-based team, you can scale your outsourcing efforts up or down based on your needs and budget.
