Time-Saving Hacks For Creating Better Content
These days there are so many different platforms that content creators can join and so many different places to build a community online.
Today I am active on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter and my blog. It sounds like a lot, and it is!
Because if you’re on all of these different platforms, how are you creating content for all of them? How do you keep up and stay consistent?
I'm so glad you're here because in today's blog post, I'm going to be sharing my nine top content creation hacks that helped me save time, create better quality content, and grow all of my social media channels organically.
The hacks I’ll be sharing today have really helped me create content that helps attract my dream followers and subscribers to my social media platforms, many of whom convert to become customers of my consulting services, my digital products and so much more.
I want to group these hacks into three different categories to make it easy for you to streamline all of the different parts of your content process from planning, to creation to distribution.
Content Planning
1. Create content on searchable platforms
(If you just create on Instagram or TikTok content right now, don’t leave yet! I promise the rest of my hacks will be relevant to you.)
I would strongly consider starting to create content on a searchable platform like a blog or a YouTube channel if you're not already.
Here's why: creating content on searchable platforms allows you to create evergreen content and be discovered over and over and over again. By creating content on a searchable platform, you're creating content that will work for you even if you choose to step away.
Case in point: I actually stopped publishing new content to my blog for four months in 2021 (I took an accidental four month blogging break to focus on some other platforms) and what happened was rather than the traffic plummeting when I stopped publishing new content, it actually stayed totally level.
Before I took that break, I made sure that I was writing search engine optimized blog posts that could still bring in new traffic and attract new organic visitors to my site even when I wasn't publishing new content.
YouTube works in a similar way—if someone lands on my video and they’re not subscribed to my channel there’s a good chance they found me by searching for something or from a suggested section of their homepage on YouTube.
There are videos that I've created on YouTube from two or three years ago, that's still bringing new viewers and subscribers every single day, plus you can monetize with ads.
If you haven't yet tried a searchable platform like YouTube, or a blog, or even Pinterest to share your content, too, I would highly suggest getting on that.
2. Create what people actually want to see
You can do this by validating the topics that you want to create content around. So you can actually do this for both trending topic ideas and for evergreen content ideas.
To validate a trending topic you can use Google Trends and you can also use Pinterest Trends. So you can go to Google Trends and see what's displaying on the home screen as what people are searching for on Google right now.
You can also type in a keyword that you're interested in seeing how it's performing in comparison to other keywords too.
Similarly, if I take a look at Pinterest Trends, and I'm interested in creating some fashion and beauty content for my platforms, I can see that there are things like spring outfits, braided hairstyles, and more so it's a great way to validate a trending topic and make sure that people are actually interested in the type of content you’re hoping to create.
If you're interested in validating evergreen topics before you write a blog post or create a YouTube video, I highly suggest using a tool called Keywords Everywhere.
You can use Keywords Everywhere to figure out the monthly search volume of a keyword. And if you're a smaller YouTube channel or blog, I recommend targeting keywords between zero and 1000 monthly searches so you have a higher chance of ranking high up in Google or showing up early in the search results on YouTube.
3. Create serial content
People love familiarity and knowing what to expect from creators so one idea to stay consistent with content creation is to start your own series!
You could do a weekly series of Tuesday Tips or Wednesday Wardrobe or anything along those lines so that people know when they can expect that content from you and they’ll find content that they keep wanting to come back to and that they keep wanting more of.
For me as a creator, this helps take the pressure off of brainstorming a million unique content ideas and gives me something workshop and revisit time and time again in a fresh way.
I highly recommend thinking about your content pillars, kind of the main categories that you post content about and deriving a series from that so that it's true to your brand.
Think bout something your audience already likes that you can develop into a series to keep them engaged and keep them coming back for more.
Content creation
4. Time blocking and batching content
I think it is so helpful to block off time on your calendar each week or each month—however frequently you're able to do it—to sit down and create a bunch of content all at once.
I personally find that this is the most effective way for me to create content, because in most cases, I am sitting down to film something like a YouTube video, and the actual setup and preparation for all of that where I have to have my camera on the tripod, put my ring light up and I make sure my room doesn't have random laundry on the bed or anything distracting takes time! As a result, doing all of that multiple times throughout the week is all that extra effort.
I’ll usually try to film multiple videos at once so that I save myself time when I'm setting up and then breaking down my filming area. One other thing I’ll do is change my tops and dresses so that it looks like I'm filming a bunch of different content on different days and it feels fresh and new for my audience.
I also find that this is the best way to shoot lifestyle photography. I like to shoot a lot of fashion street style and typically what I'll do is either go out just with myself and my tripod, or I will hire one of my photographer friends for the day and ask them to shoot a few different looks with me. That's a great way to get all of my content that I can then distribute throughout the month, all in one fell swoop.
Also since I do beauty and fashion content, I personally do my hair and makeup before I sit down to film a video and so if I have one designated day where I'm shooting all of my content, I only have to do that once versus spending an hour every single day to get that done.
Some days are for filming and creating, but I have days where I just sit with my glasses on my laptop and get ish done. Once you get into the rhythm of batching, it's honestly life changing.
5. Write down your process for creating content
This will help you stay organized and have something to refer back to you that's actually written out.
When I go to create a YouTube video, I have a couple of different documents on my Google Drive that help streamline my process. I’ll have one document with my script and bullet points for talking and another with SEO keyword research for that video.
Also on YouTube I can change my default upload settings so that I have a template for my description box.
This saves me time so I can simply plug and play a new intro, keywords or anything I mention in that video but the rest of my social links, my FTC disclaimer and similar content is already there.
It’s helpful to have documents and a record of the process of how you actually create things just for you to ever refer back to if you want them and the sooner you record everything now it also gives you the ability to potentially outsource.
If you ever expand because at that point, if you're ready to hire, help or outsource any part of your content creation, imagine the beauty of just being able to hand off instructions for any tasks you do in your business to someone that you’ve already made.
From a business mindset, it also made me feel Really Official to have it written down on paper. I think that sometimes, as content creators, it's hard to view ourselves as a business, but that's what we are.
Creating documents to refer back to will legitimize your content creation process and sets you up for a really easy transfer if and when you're ever able to outsource or grow your team.
Growth hack: Use searchable platforms
“By creating content on a searchable platform, you're creating content that will work for you even if you choose to step away.”
6. Create templates
If you know anything about me, you know I love Canva. Canva is where I have created templates for, well, pretty much everything I do that involves graphic design.
I have Canva templates for Instagram stories, Pinterest pins, for ebooks and guides that I create and more.
When I hired a graphic designer to overhaul my branding, one of the things that she did that I loved was she provided me with a bunch of Canva templates, so I can easily create content that’s on brand for me.
I use Canva Pro (click here for a free 30 day trial) but there is also so much you can do with the free version of Canva. It's so easy to find templates for everything you could possibly want.
Now if I ever want to create an Instagram story, graphic, or pin something to Pinterest, I'm not sitting there trying to scroll through a million templates or choose colors. All I need to do is swap in text or a new photo, save the image, and I'm ready to go.
Content distribution
7. Repurpose your content
In most cases, we are creating content with one primary platform in mind.
For example, when I film a horizontal long-form video, I know that is going on my YouTube channel. But there might be other ways I can repurpose that content and one thing I like to do is save a 30 second trim of each video and upload it to my Instagram stories when my video goes live.
I could even crop the video to a 9:16 vertical ratio and share a clip to TikTok or Instagram reels.
I also always like to repurpose the thumbnails of my YouTube video and create a few different images that I can share to Pinterest that link back to that content (that’s where my Canva templates come in handy!)
My biggest tip here is when you’re repurposing content, try to tailor it as much as you can to the platform you're sharing it to. You don't have to go out of your way and drive yourself nuts but I think that being thoughtful about little things where you can make sure that the size is optimized for the platforms and that you're adding captions if you need them can go a long way.
8. Schedule content in advance
You know what happens when you create content and you don’t share it? No one gets to see it and benefit from it.
To me the worst feeling is creating a great piece of content and thinking, “I'm going to upload this to Instagram later” and then five o'clock comes and goes and I realize I didn't post anything.
As you probably all know, my favorite platform for scheduling content is Later. I actually have an entire video on my YouTube channel where I show you from start to finish my process for how I use Later to schedule a month's worth of content in just one hour.
Scheduling content is a game changer because you can set aside an hour at the beginning of the month to schedule out all of your content across different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. Your new motto? “Set it and forget it.”
I love that I can post every day to a platform like Pinterest, but I'm not actually sitting there and uploading the content every single day. It's one of the biggest things that can help you stay consistent because it runs like clockwork and you don’t get distracted by your day-to-day tasks.
9. Consider outsourcing elements of content creation
And yes, before you ask I certainly need to take my own advice here.
You can hire people to do things like your YouTube video editing, create thumbnails or graphics for you, you can even hire a virtual assistant to do all of the scheduling that I mentioned in the previous hack.
Of course, it will cost you to do this, but it might be worth it in terms of the time you will end up saving because it'll free up space in your brain to do what you do best and be creative and create the content.
Make a list of things you don’t enjoy doing or that get you hung up when you’re creating content and try outsourcing them, even if you just try it for a month and see how it goes.
I know a ton of my friends who have done this, you can look on things like Upwork and Fiverr and The Freelancing Females Facebook group has been a great resource for me as well.
I hope you loved these content hacks. Have you tried any of these? Do you have a favorite hack that helps you with your content creation? Leave a comment down below and let me know!
yours,
Austen
Photographs by Jessie Alcheh