To the outside world, creating content may seem effortless and quick. Behind the scenes, it’s about finding the perfect image, writing a captivating caption, and finding strategic hashtags. According to Social Media Examiner, 64% of small businesses spend 6 hours or more per week creating content. Before you start creating content, it’s important to map out a plan or outline for your content.
Here are 5 Tips to Save Time on Content Creation:
Quality over Quantity
Small business owners wear many hats in the business, so it’s important that when they are spending time on marketing they are putting out high-quality content. Focus on posting valuable, and informative content 2 – 3 times a week rather than “posting for the sake of posting” 5 times a week. Releasing content every day for two weeks and then disappearing for a month is not the way to build your brand. Showing up consistently in your business will gain trust with your audience.
Plan your content using a calendar or scheduling tool
Mark out a few hours a month to sit down and plan your content for the month. It’s beneficial to have some sort of calendar that you can use to see your content at a glance. Rather than scrambling to find content every day, map out your content for the month and pre-schedule it so that you don’t have to think about when to post. Having a theme or topic for each month is a great way to create content. (Scheduling tools: Buffer, Hootsuite, Facebook Scheduling & more)
Welcome guest posters
Having a guest appear on your social media can save you time in creating content for that week. Guest blogs, interviews, webinars, or podcasts are some of the ways you can showcase a guest appearance. A benefit of having a guest is that it allows you to tap and be seen with their audience and therefore extending your brand awareness.
Hiring a social media manager
Small business owners are typically too small to build out a marketing department and may find it beneficial to outsource their marketing to save them time while running the business. Social media professionals can help business owners with email marketing, social media management, and campaigns, all of which can be very time consuming for business owners.
Use evergreen content
Evergreen content is timeless and is always relevant to its readers. When you are creating content, you don’t always have to come up with new ideas. It’s encouraged to look back at your evergreen content and re-use it in a different way. For example: If you are a professional organizer and wrote a blog about organizing your kitchen, you could turn this blog into a Facebook LIVE “How to” video.
Creating content can eat up a lot of business owners’ time, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, at Make It Happen Services we have created something new and exciting this month – our Content Creation Club!