If we’ve said it before, we’ve said it a thousand times, so excuse the repetition from the Social Puffin camp folks but, y’know, this is an important point!
Because time and time again we see social media work (especially content creation) draining hours and hours of clients’ time unnecessarily.
It’s all well-intentioned of course – the hours spent curating, researching and editing content, not to mention copywriting, hashtag researching, editing and posting (and that’s even before the engagement starts) are not without purpose – but honestly, you really need to ask whether all this time is giving you the ROI you deserve.
If not, you need to do 2 things – #1 improve your social media success (easier than said than done, but there’s more than a few tips on this blog!) and #2 cut down the amount of time you plough into social.
Now, just to make it clear, we’re not saying cut down the amount you do when it comes to social output, just the time involved.
In other words, work smarter not harder!
And in this mini-series we’re running over the next few weeks, we’re going to teach you exactly how to do that when it comes to your social media content creation.
With key efficiency strategies and techniques you can easily adopt, these blog posts (and our accompanying IGTV videos) are going to have you working more effectively and productively in next to no time.
So let’s jump straight in with the first tip now – how to start batching tasks and streamlining your workflow process!
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- 9 Ways to Save Time on Social Media
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- How To Create a Simple Social Media Marketing Strategy
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What is Batching Tasks?
So we’re going to start with defining exactly what we’re talking about.
After all, we’re quite aware that “batching tasks” and “streamlining workflow processes” might sound like complete jargon to you!
And fair enough too!
But we’re certainly not about the jargon here at Social Puffin, just about terms that work for us and our clients, so let’s begin by clearing up any confusion.
First up “batching tasks” is just the simple process of doing tasks of a similar nature at a similar time.
Instead of editing 1 single photo each day for example, batching this task might look like editing 7 photos at once, in one block of time, so that you’re doing the whole week’s worth of editing in a single sitting.
And batching tasks doesn’t just refer to editing images, it also refers to any number of tasks that you might perform when it comes to social media, such as hashtag research, finding images, creating captions or designing story templates.
Whatever the task, if you do the same thing multiple times in say a week or a month, then combining all the time you’d separately spend doing this one job, into one block period of time and smashing through the lot, would be batch tasking.
Why Batch Tasks?
But why would you want to batch tasks?
A very valid question and one with a very simple answer really.
The number one reason to batch tasks is because it saves time.
Using the example of editing say, 7 photos, in one sitting, we can see how it’s much more time-effective than editing 7 photos singularly at 7 different times.
That’s because when you’re doing it all at one time, you have the tools you need already open, the equipment already to hand and your mind already focused on the job.
And that’s not to mention any other task-specific time-saving strategies you might be able to put into place too – such as using the same edits on multiple images, not having to recreate the effect each time from scratch etc.
Anyway, you get our drift.
Batching tasks is a more efficient use of time and can be a great way to slim down the time you spend on your social media work, in particular content creation.
In effect therefore, when you are batching tasks, you are actually streamlining your workflow process – i.e. you are thinning down on the operational faff it takes to get the work done.
Yup, that’s what streamlining your workflow process basically means – it’s all about not only cutting down the time it takes to do the work, but also about becoming more efficient when it comes to the process of getting that work done!
Hopefully that makes sense and clears up any jargon confusion!
What Social Media Tasks Can I Batch?
Well the first and most obvious way to batch tasks when it comes to social media is to batch the whole content creation process – yup the whole freaking thing!
Sorry, we got a bit carried away there – we just get really excited about saving time!
Uh-hum, so yeah, anyway, when we say batching the whole content creation process, we mean, quite simply, doing all your social media for say that week, or better that month, at one time!
This involves, but is not limited to, selecting the images, editing the images, writing the captions, researching the hashtags, collating everything into one place and then scheduling it all in one go.
But, hang on a minute, don’t freak out, this really isn’t as overwhelming as it sounds.
For a start, you’re likely doing this process already, except you’re probably doing it one post at a time.
What we’re talking about here, however, is doing all of it together, at one time, for either every post you plan to schedule that week or that month.
And while this may seem like a lot, as we’ve outlined already in the introduction, batching tasks will actually save you time, so what initially might seem like a load of work, is actually not!
But How Do I Batch a Month’s Worth of Social Content?
So now that we’re bringing you around to the idea of setting aside a chunk of time to batch your months’ worth of social media content in one creation process, it’s natural that you might feel slightly confused about how to do this.
As if you’re looking at a huge blank page and wondering where on earth to start.
Well let us stop you right there, because it absolutely doesn’t need to be, in fact it shouldn’t be, a blank white page situation you’re starting off with here.
Let us take you back a few weeks to the posts we wrote about marketing plans, social media schedules and content calendars.
If you’ve followed our advice in these areas, then you’ll already have a basic outline of what sort of content you are delivering, when you are posting (in terms of days and time slots), as well as on which platforms this will all appear.
Therefore, when it comes to batching your whole month’s content, you’ve already got the blueprint schedule.
All you need to do leading on from this, is find the specific content pieces (and by that we mean images) to fit into these slots, based around the pre-determined social media platforms and pre-determined content themes you have.
Then, once you have the images selected and edited, you can then craft the copy around the image (and when we say copy, we mean text i.e. caption) and then select the hashtags based on that.
Then you simply collate everything together into a social media script, save it all in a well-organised digital filing system, upload it to your scheduler and away you go.
Ok, we may have got a bit ahead of ourselves here, as we’ll be covering social media scripts and scheduler software in the coming weeks, but loosely-speaking we wanted to outline the overall process for you here!
Because really, it’s quite simple – you just use your already mapped social media schedule and content calendar tools to plan out your month’s worth of content in super-fast time.
And honestly, it’s not that much content anyway.
If you’re posting 3 times a week to Instagram, this is just likely to involve 12 posts.
And then, if you’re also sharing these 12 posts to Facebook (meaning it’s 24 content pieces in total), you’re still only creating 12 pieces of initial content.
And if you’re also sharing these 12 posts to Twitter (meaning it’s 36 content pieces in total), you’re still only creating 12 pieces of initial content!
Ohhh see what we did there, just threw in another sneaky workflow streamlining tip!
But let’s not get carried away – there’s a whole load more to come next week, so stay tuned folks.
And if, in the meantime, you need to run anything by us, don’t hesitate to get in touch – [email protected]
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