5 Ways to Streamline Your Content Creation
By: Caroline Cherry
Tags: Scheduling, Productivity, Content Creation

5 Ways to Streamline Your Content Creation

I love being a content creator, such as I am. It’s not my job, not even more than a coffee-worth of income, but it is something I enjoy. However, as I branch out into more platforms and diversify my content I’ve discovered that I need to streamline my creative process.

Photo by Wahid Khene on Unsplash

So here are the methods I use to get the most productivity out of my limited content creation time, shared in the hopes that it may be helpful to you as well.

Focus on content that you can post a variant of to most, if not all, of your platforms. I mainly post to four platforms: Facebook, YouTube, this Medium blog and a personal niche fashion blog. Instagram is more of an afterthought for me, but it does exist. Of those platforms, Medium is the outlier — this is my “serious” blog. So my Medium content actually exists in a bit of a void, whereas for example if I shoot a YouTube video I can post selfies and previews to Facebook, then share the finished project there and also to my fashion blog if it’s relevant content wise. I’m a firm believer in not just posting copies to each platform (though you can do that!)but it’s always handy to focus your energies on something that will benefit multiple platforms. Talk about Platform B on Platform A and so on. There are two ways to apply this tip. The first is simple and practically goes without saying — if you post on a certain platform, you can share that on your other platforms. I’m not a fan of 100% duplicating content as I mentioned above, but things like linking your Instagram to post to you Facebook is an easy way to make a post do double duty. However, the way to take this a step further is something I only thought about when I stumbled upon Shelby Church here on Medium, and subsequently visited her YouTube channel. On YouTube she has made videos about writing on Medium — on Medium, she has articles about YouTube. Especially if your content skews more informative, you can easily use your experience on one platform to share on another. Related to that, regardless of what your content generally is about, meta posting is always easy, and tends to get views. This is mostly applicable to long-form platforms — think YouTube and blogging rather than Twitter or Instagram. The state of the platform and how to effectively use it is always useful. Of course, this cannot be the main focus of your platform unless that is your goal, but it makes for a good change or pace once in a while. After all, everyone has thoughts and opinions on the platforms that we use — why not share them? If possible, schedule your posting. Consistency is key but real life is anything but consistent so free up your mind from worry about posting at the correct intervals and let a computer take care of it. There are lots of options for this, from inbuilt scheduling features on most platforms to third-party programs. This leads me to my final point, which is… When you have time to create content, work in batches. Especially for those of us for whom content creation is a side hustle or just a hobby, there’s not much time so you need to make the most of it. Don’t try and do a little of everything regularly but batch it instead — film three videos back to back or take an hour to write a handful of articles. Especially if your content is more visually based, make sure you can maximise use of all the setup that’s required. I don’t do a photoshoot without getting at least one selfie I can post in advance of the proper photos, and usually a behind the scenes video as well.

These are the things that work for me to make use of my limited time, and enable me to make the most content I can without having to carve out extra time for it.