3 Time-Saving Tips for Content Creators

I would say the majority of content creators start their content creation journey on the side of a full-time job or a big-time commitment - so saving time is crucial when trying to balance it all. Today, I want to share with you my top 3 time-saving tips - let’s get into it!

Cut down and prioritize

Starting with the most obvious time-saving approach, and that is cutting down on creation and projects and prioritizing what’s truly important. A couple of episodes ago I talked about creating a strong work/life balance and I talked about the 4 quadrant method to determine your priorities. Just as a recap - you will draw yourself 4 quadrants on a piece of paper. Once you have done this, label them as follows.

Quadrant 1: Urgent and important
Quadrant 2: Not urgent yet important
Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important
Quadrant 4: Not urgent and not important

Then you will place all of the various actions you take in your content creator business into these categories - which will hopefully help you determine what exactly you can cut out of your strategy.

Referencing another podcast, last week I talked about the well-known phrase “quality over quantity”. Though you might hear from a lot of “social media gurus” that you need to post 5+ times per week to grow - that’s just not true. You are more likely to grow a strong community if you post fewer, but high-quality posts - versus 5, rushed low-quality posts. So, when it comes to saving time - if you lower the number of posts, but make sure they are high-quality and high-value, it shouldn’t really affect your growth

You get the idea here - you really have to think about each action you take in your business and ask yourself if it’s truly worth your time right now. If not, put it in a “maybe later” list and prioritize the important, needle-moving actions.

Batch your content

You had to know I would talk about content batching, right? Batching your content is one of the easiest ways to save time in your content creation business. Now, there are some pros and cons when it comes to batching content. There are a lot of pros and cons to batching content, but the one that matters the most when it comes to saving time is how efficient batching content can be. By lumping your various content creation steps together, you're able to focus your creative energy without jumping from task to task, and can plan content weeks in advance — creating a more cohesive (and stress-free) approach to your social media strategy.

There are many different ways you can approach batching your content - you can batch week by week or month by month - whatever works best for you.

If you want a deep dive into content batching, I go into tons of details about this in Module 4 of my Instagram Road Map course, I will have the course linked in the show notes.

Task stacking and multi-tasking

Another great time-saving tip is to stack your tasks. Here is the best way to do this. Make a list of ALL of the tasks you need to complete each week for your content creation business. Then start finding the tasks that can be lumped together. This is the same idea as “batching” - you are trying to lump together similar tasks, so that you aren’t jumping around from task to task, but instead keeping your mind focused on similar tasks all at once.

Say you have a YouTube Channel and Instagram/TikTok. One way to task stack would be to film all videos the same day. So, once you are done filming your YouTube video for next week, go ahead and film the 2-3 vertical videos you need to film too. You’re already in the “filming” mindset, you most likely already have your equipment out and ready to go, and you’re probably already “film ready” as far as makeup, hair, or whatever your preference is when it comes to filming. Similarly, if you are scripting your video or podcast, this could be a good time to also write a few captions. Lumping together the same type of tasks can save you a lot of time.

You can also multi-task when you’re able. For example, when I am editing my podcast because it’s more or less just listening to the audio, I can put in some headphones, listen to the episode for errors, and use my free hands to work on another task. Sometimes that might be some admin tasks on the computer or even tidying up my office area. If you are able to combine tasks this can help save you lots of time.

Hopefully, these time-saving tips were helpful! Again, if you want some more details on content batching and other help with your Instagram, check out the Instagram Road Map Course in the show notes.