There are 168 hours in a week, and although that’s not an insignificant amount, we often feel we’re in a chronic time deficit.
For some of us that may be due to having too much on our plates. Prioritizing what’s important and discarding what’s not makes a huge difference in regaining control of our schedules. But even after we’ve eliminated unnecessary busywork, we need to ensure we’re not hemorrhaging precious time.
That’s where the creation of smart processes and workflows comes in. Zoetica Media founder Kami Huyse is a big proponent of streamlining social media and making it work for your specific business.
Below is her process for reducing the time you spend creating social media content while maintaining high quality standards.
📍 Create a 3-month social media content plan
One of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to create content in real time. Unfortunately that increases the chances of one of two things happening, neither of which are good.
When you’re under pressure to create something on the fly, you risk releasing mediocre or even sub-par material. Alternatively, if you spend an inordinate amount of time coming up with quality content that reflects your capabilities and expertise, you sacrifice time you originally earmarked for other important areas that also need your attention.
To get around this ensure you always have a list of topic ideas in front of you that you’ve already vetted. This way you avoid a last-minute scramble and guarantee that you’ll create content your audience finds interesting and compelling.
📍 Cut your content idea creation down to 1 hour a week
We’ve all experienced how some days can get away from us when we’re preoccupied with ”urgent” instead of important work. What we should do instead is schedule specific time each week focused solely on content creation.
Kami recommends allotting dedicated time to idea creation. She suggests focusing on 4-5 broad categories and then coming up with 10 ideas within each one. (Check out this blog post to see what the process looks like in practice.)
Enter all of the ideas on a spreadsheet and pull from them when it’s time to create a particular week’s social media content, whether that’s a Facebook post, a Tweet, an Instagram reel, or a TikTok video!
📍 Bank your content and use it over and over again on social media
It’s also useful to take advantage of the stellar content you’ve created by finding as many ways as possible to repurpose it. Focus on valuable evergreen content rather than the “latest and greatest news” that has a short shelf life.
Repurposing entails using core information and repackaging it in different ways for your various social media channels and main website. You can do this regardless of whether your initial content piece is in written, video, or audio format.
Kami, for example, records a livestream every week. This video is then used as the foundation for the creation of a blog post, visually enticing social media images shared on numerous social media platforms, and her agency’s newsletter.
Decide once and for all to stop losing time and commit to implementing a process that keeps you moving forward! Watch Kami’s recent livestream for all the details on creating a social media plan that puts you back in charge.
An added benefit is that once you adopt this approach you’ll be able to use all of the saved time to focus on other important areas of business growth.