Intro to Batching Content: a Q&A with Karina Patel

Posts, reels, stories, pages, groups … it’s a lot to keep up with.

And if you’re trying to create all this social media content on-the-fly, you’re wasting time and energy, you’re probably not getting great engagement, and you may be making yourself a bit crazy as you try to keep up with all the todos.

There’s a better way: batching.

In advance of our upcoming coaching session on batching content (for social media), I chatted with my collaborator and Lab marketing coach Karina Patel about the what it means to batch, the benefits of batching content and how to batch content across different channels.

Cat Johnson: For people new to the concept, what does it mean to batch social media content?

Karina Patel: Most people mistake content creation as posting creative assets to a social channel. But content creation requires strategy, asset creation or sourcing, copywriting, hashtag research, scheduling, publishing, and measurement tracking. Batching content simply means creating more than one piece of content in a block of time.

What’s the benefit of batching?

It becomes an efficient use of your time once you have your strategy mapped out. Rather than spending time every day or every few days for content creation, you can block out batching sessions once or twice a month, leaving you time for strategy and measurement tracking.

Posting content to social channels is just one part of the process. You have to continuously build campaigns based on your data. Once the content creation process becomes fluid, you’ll reduce your overall time spent on it, enabling you to allocate time to other areas of your marketing plan.

What type of content works best with batching?

Copywriting, asset creation or sourcing, and scheduling. I’ll break all of this down in the group coaching session, but writing captions isn’t as challenging as most people find. Once you have the template, you spend less time thinking about what to write, and more time on asset creation. Asset creation includes sourcing photos, filming video content, and designing graphics.

How do you recommend people batch social media and stay current with trends and hot topics?

Time blocking. Block your time for strategy and campaign building (1x/quarter), block time for content planning, filming videos, photo shoots, block time for design, copywriting, scheduling, measurement tracking, etc. Once you make these recurring events in your calendar, you’ll form a habit of completing steps in the content creation process and meeting deadlines in a paced out format.

Similar to batching content, you need to block time for your own professional development. Whether that is attending workshops, reading blog posts, browsing forums, or being a member of an online group, you need to block time and make it a recurring event.

There are several sources that you can opt-into as a member (paid and free), that compile the trends and learning in one place. For marketing purposes, the Lab is the place for the latest trends, topics, and tools within our industry. Find a community or online group that brings knowledge and resources to you all in one place rather than scouring several resources yourself. Work smarter, not harder.

What are some of your favorite tools for batching?

Airtable, Canva, Planoly, Buffer, iMovie, Media Encoder, Kapwing, Unsplash, and my iPhone.

Do you batch and share the same content across social media platforms?

No. I will create different content based on the channel. For example, if I have a blog post to share, I will publish different captions for Linkedin and Facebook and schedule it at different times and days (based on insights for those channels). For Instagram, I’ll create an asset or two that I can share as a post and as a story, while Twitter would have different copy to match the audience there.

I may use the same video, photo, or graphic across all channels, but I will draft different copies, use different hashtags (where appropriate), etc. All of this is managed in a single batching session, however.

Essentially, I batch content weekly—each session alternates from asset sourcing, writing, and scheduling—so, I know ahead of time what I need to complete for each batching session. I’ll dive into how I know what to accomplish each batch session during the group coaching session.

For busy space operators, what’s a key point you’ll make to help them create (and batch) engaging posts?

Once you have the formula to content creation, batching is a walk in the park! I have five easy steps to batching content, which you’ll use to confirm you are creating engaging, on-brand content.

👉 Register for the coaching session: How to Batch Content (for Social Media)