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Let’s talk about your business content and time. 

One of the things that we often see is that people talk about social media and marketing and creating content, as a resource that doesn’t cost a lot of money.  If you’re not outsourcing it, if you’re not paying someone to do your edits, if you’re not looking for ways to pay for design or recordings, or even if you’re doing brand photos. 

Whatever the case, if you’re doing it all yourself, you may think that content doesn’t cost a lot of money. 

What we don’t account for is how much time content takes. And I think we do a real disservice whenever people are talking about creating content, or marketing, or even when they are talking about how to market yourself offline so you’re not just on social media- I talk about that a lot. 

But that usually means that you’re going to be in person somewhere or that you’re networking or that you’re recording a podcast episode on someone’s podcast, or you’re creating your own podcast, it’s still going to take time. And if we do not recognize that time has value, that our time has value, then it’s going to be really hard to feel like A; we’re seeing results for the content that we’re creating because we’re going to feel like we’re putting in so much time and not seeing the instant gratification that we’re expecting, or B; we’re going to be following along what other people are doing and assuming that they’re creating so much content more than we are, and it’s just taking us too much time. 

We get stuck because sometimes we’re overthinking. 

I talk about this in my free webinar: 8 Social Media Mistakes Small Business Owners are Making and How to Fix them

And one of the things I talk about is the fact that we are creating too much content and we’re comparing ourselves to others too much.

We are looking at influencers and seeing how much they are outputting and we are thinking we’re not doing enough. 

But that is part of their business model. 

That is part of their job, is to output like that, is to create like that.

Most of us who are solopreneurs, most of us who do not have a team, or do not invest in outsourcing, we do not have the time to spend constantly on the apps creating content. Even to record podcasts or to write a blog post, we do not have the time for it. And so what we have to do is look at time differently.

It is a valuable commodity. It is not just a free resource. 

But whenever we start to make a plan for that time, we can find ways that are easier to incorporate what I call triaging. 

Prioritizing what’s important: Creating Anchor Content

Here’s how to look at it: what are the high priority needs right now, what will have the maximum effort, and that’s what you focus on. You don’t need to focus on the things that you’re going to have little to no effort or no results because at the end of the day that’s not going to move things for you.

This is why having anchor content makes content creation easier. Anchor content is long-form content that reinforces your messaging and positioning. If you have an anchor content such as your podcast episode that’s every week, your newsletter that goes out every week, a blog that goes up every second week, those pieces of content work hard for you all the time. 

The newsletter sits in an email, which is a little more instant than a blog or podcast with SEO, yes, but people search their email, they are still opening it differently. It’s not just showing up in their feed and disappearing.

Invest your time on that anchor content and then the leftover time you have, you can do it on your short form content. It’s usually quicker because you are pulling from your anchor content and repurposing.

You don’t have to necessarily create from scratch.

So if you’re triaging like that all the time, if you’re going : “this is the week I have, what are the things that have to be shared this week? What are the things that people need to know about in my content this week?”

And that’s where you start to prioritize. Think about what the priority status of every piece of content might be.

The caution I have is that this content takes time. 

If you’re going to research what’s trending, decide what type post post to creat, if you’re thinking about what reel to post and what music to select, and what copy  to put in there, what B Roll to use, and B Roll being what background video you’re going to use, or if you’re going to talk to the camera and record that,  that all takes time.

Sure, there are hacks for shortcuts but it’s still going to take time.

The frustration of content creation and the time it takes

It becomes easier when you know who your audience is or what you want to put out there, that week or that month ahead, and know that you need to have certain talking points shared. But it’s still going to take time. 

I know that there are ways to create content in an hour. I know that people are going to use generative AI or quick images or whatever the case is, I get. But there is a lie we are being sold that content can take no time at all. The best content will still need work to be done on messaging, voice and more to really connect.

Some of us, like myself, just can’t work at a speed that we are being told is ‘normal’. Instead, we are left feeling like “this is taking me so long”. 

A couple things: it will get easier the more you do it. Secondly, sometimes the app is just picky. 

You’re manoeuvring text, you’re lining it up, you’re picking a song, you’re researching a song. 

It takes time. 

That’s valuable time and it will feel like it’s not, because we’re told to produce and go and create, more, and more, and more, so reframe how you’re approaching this content. value your time but also accept that it will take time. 

Reframing how you are spending your time on content

There are ways to have shortcuts, you can have templates, those little folders as ready-to-go inspiration will help, you can keep a notes app, or a google doc, wherever you’re comfortable, with caption ideas, hook ideas that you see. There are people that have “Free Hook Templates” and “free Hook Downloads” that you can kind of find those. Social Cat media has a social media club where I believe she sends out trending reel media ideas and will help you figure out what the trends and trending music ideas are. 

So you can kind of take that decision making fatigue off your plate. It is an investment, yes, one way that you can get around doing it without outsourcing the whole thing. But if you want to do it yourself, just remind yourself that it takes time, that you’re investing your time, that it has value, that is your investment in your marketing. 

And that’s okay. 

But if you don’t remind yourselves of that then it will feel overwhelming and you’ll just circle yourselves over and over and over again.

 It becomes easier. 

We are going to overthink it at times and sometimes we just need to get the post out, but before you do that, think about the intentionality.

 It doesn’t have to be posted. 

Maybe you take the extra two days because you need the time to come up with the right thing. So coming up with your method, with your process, don’t post zero, but finding ways that you’re going to be satisfied with a goal oriented message driven strategic post, with feel better and do better for you than just posting for the sake of posting and hating it and just ditching it because you’ll just stop doing it. 

So remember that time has value.

And look at social media and content creation as an investment in your marketing and your business, and you will need to carve out some time for it. 

Want to go deeper and look at how you are spending your time on content? Let’s chat.