The planning part of content creation is a place a LOT of people get stuck.

But if you think strategically, and use some time-saving tactics, it gets a TON easier!
Let’s continue to the last two parts of the simple 5-step system I use myself and teach to all my clients!

So, today I unpack the actual scheduling & creation problems & how to approach this for yourself…
And also REPURPOSING!!

We’re talking about how to make this system work for you, your brain, your style, your schedule…
And wring sooooo much more out of your content!

This is all about getting your nurturing content to do more FOR you! ‘Cuz it’s supposed to lead to conversions.

Listen in and make these small shifts!
Resources discussed today: https://www.jenliddy.com/batch

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Full Transcript

Hey. Welcome to today's episode of Content Creation Made Easy. I'm your host, Jen Liddy, and I'm here talking about content as usual. The last time I was on with you, I gave you the first three steps in my five-step system. It's a system I use every month when I create content.

It's all about nurturing my audience, and in case you didn't listen to it, the three steps— but I do highly recommend you go back because I went in pretty deep with it — the first three steps when you're trying to create regular nurturing content are

First: ask your “why”. Why am I creating this content in the first place? What's it going to do for me?

You have to think strategically about what's going on in your business. What do you want that content to actually perform?

Step two is: “Where am I going to put it?!” If I know why I'm doing it, where do I have to be?

We talked last week a lot about not trying to be everywhere and choose platforms that are strategic based on your strengths and where your audience is.

The third step — which I went into a lot of detail about— the third question you ask is: “What should I say?”

So I know why I'm doing it, I know where I am. What should I say?

And I really went deep on that. So go check out that last episode in case you missed the first three steps of how to recreate, stop recreating the wheel and actually just get more out of your content is what we're doing.

So let's dive in today to step four, which is a seemingly easy step, but for some reason..

(Well, I know the reasons!)

It's the hardest step.

Step four: The question is, ‘When am I supposed to be creating this content?”

So let's talk about this a little bit, because it's way harder than just putting it on your calendar and getting it done. Because if you could do that, you would do that!

Why aren't you getting the actual content created?

One of the things I hear from people all the time about content creation is how long it takes them.

And the second thing I hear is how it doesn't work for them. Like they don't get any return on investment of their time or energy.

So let's talk about when you should be putting your content on your calendar and why you're not.

If you have been repeatedly spending hours fussing with some kind of big piece of content, your home base content is what I call it, the place that you show up the most.

Then you repurpose from there.

You've spent hours and hours and hours, and you pour your heart into something and you tweak it and you perfect it, and you're afraid to put it out there.

There's all of this angst and this energy around getting it out there. Of course this is not something you're going to want to see on your calendar!

Of course this isn't something that is going to excite you to get done!

So when you're thinking about your content, that homebase piece of content, that's the “Where is it going?”

Before I repurpose it, think about what you want to say in a way that your audience can absorb it.

The last time that we talked, I talked about breaking your topics up into smaller subtopics so that they're digestible and consumable for your audience. So imagine if you were to say like, I'm going to show up.

I have this content creation on my calendar. I'm going to show up, and I'm going to write a very long blog post because I love to sit and I love to create.

And I'm going to put maybe two or 3 hours into it knowing that you are then going to take that blog post and repurpose it in a lot of different ways, or slice it up into a lot of different ways to get more mileage out of it over several weeks versus it being very deep and dense!

Imagine how it would feel to say, “I know what I'm saying, but I need to get it on the calendar. And then once I get it on the calendar, I just dive in and say it and then I can repurpose it later.”

So there's really only one time for creation this month that might work for your brain, and you might resist that a lot less because you don't have to show up week after week diving in and spending three or 4 hours.

Now, I'm not going to blow sunshine up your butt. It is a time-consuming thing to create good content!

But my question is, can you make that content go further for you? I'm not saying like stop the research or stop the crafting. And I'm not pretending like in an hour, you can get the thing done.

Even for me, I love writing. Writing is easy for me. But it takes me probably 2 hours to really craft a blog or a podcast script or even an email. Like whatever I want to do.

It takes me about 2 hours probably. But then my goal is to reuse it and ring the hell out of it so that it can go farther for myself.

Let me give you an example. Last week I did a podcast episode on the first three steps of my five step system. Could I have given you all three steps in one?

I mean all five steps in one? Of course!

But I decided to break it up. Why? Well, because those first three steps, you really have to dig in and think about them and learn about them. These next two steps are different and easier.

So I just broke them up into two.

That is one juicy piece of content that I broke up into two different podcasts and then we will probably repurpose this into shorter videos. It'll be transcribed and put on our blog.

I'll talk about repurposing in a minute, but you have stuff to say. Just stop thinking you need to say it all in one deep piece.

Now, the calendaring thing, maybe you're a person who's like, I like doing this every week. I feel really connected to my audience when I get up and I do this once a week. And maybe like, you're an Instagram person.

You're just like, I'm going to do five short reels all on Monday. I'm going to bash that out like that.

That's absolutely fantastic. That's another way to get it on your calendar. Know that you get five done. Maybe it takes you an hour and then you're done for the week, right?

But partly we have to decide how does your brain work, how does your calendar work, how does your energy work, and what kind of content are you creating?

So if you keep waiting for content creation to happen and you're trying to put it in the nooks and crannies of your business or your life, it's never going to get done.

And that's probably a little bit of what you've experienced before. Maybe you're like, “Oh, I'm feeding, I'm making dinner, and I'm going to do an Instagram post.”

And that's the kind of thing that depletes your energy, but it's also not strategic in terms of your content. It's just putting it out there for putting it out there's sake.

So when do you have time and energy in your calendar?

My content creation gets put in my calendar on a weird day. I always wind up doing it on Friday afternoons when most of the world is like, crawling over the finish line. But for some reason, I have energy on Friday afternoons for content creation and Sunday afternoons when almost everybody in my house is not bothering me and nothing's really going on in my life.

Those are the two times that I feel energetically and time-wise ready to create content.

I'm a piece of luggage in the evening, so I can't create content in the evening. And my mornings tend to be busy. And so I don't often get my content creation done in the mornings. So that's just what I know about myself. And I put it on the calendar.

And if something has to change because we're going somewhere on a weekend and they can't do Sunday afternoon, well, then I move it around. My content creation is a really important part of my business, obviously, so I have to make time for it.

So when you're thinking about calendaring, your content creation, where do you have time, where do you have energy, where do you have space, where do you have creativity? And what's the mindset you're bringing to that calendar?

Are you thinking, “This is going to suck and I hate doing it”? Well, of course you're never going to want to get it done!

It's like looking at a gynecologist appointment on your calendar. You're not excited about that.

So what can you do to get excited about it now? Maybe your brain does not work in huge chunks of time. Mine prefers that.

Maybe you're like, “You know what feels really good to me? To put three half hour sessions on my calendar every week. And I know that the first session I'm going to work on this. The second session, I'm going to tweak it. The third session, I'm going to polish it.”

Right?

So just give yourself a break in terms of how you quote unquote, should be doing content creation. It doesn't need to be perfect and it doesn't need to be like anybody else's way. So that's step four. When are you going to get it done? It's really kind of a hard step, but once you find your groove, it's so, so much easier.

Let's move into step five, which is everybody's favorite topic, repurposing.

Back in the old days, I think people thought repurposing was all about taking what you've done and splattering it in other places. Now we are going to talk about putting it in other places.

But every different platform you choose to be on has a different vibe, a different feel. Maybe the audience purpose is a little bit shifted.

For example, you couldn't necessarily just take a tik tok video that you've done and simply repurpose it to LinkedIn, for example. Those two things are kind of different animals, right? The way that you write a blog, which might be very deep and rich and filled with SEO, would be a really different version on email, because your email subscribers might be looking to scan more versus like a blog audience, which is looking to get those rich keywords in there and the SEO. So when you think about repurposing, here's what I want you to do. Go back to that home base content.

That's the step two. Where do you create content for, first? And then how can we pull out the gems?

How can we repurpose it, massage it, whittle it down? Right?

And sometimes what you're taking is something that you've said and then expanding it. Maybe you have more to say on it. Maybe you become something bigger and you can use it later.

The goal is to take what you have and get more mileage out of it. So the way that we do this in our business is I record my podcast and then sometimes it's written out and outlined, and then sometimes I'm just doing it off the top of my head because I know what I want to talk about with just bullet points.

And that just depends on what my topic is; sometimes they’re interviews, of course.

And I take that piece of content, the podcast, that's my most meaty piece, and we sometimes turn it into a blog. What does that look like? It usually looks like uploading the transcript and cleaning the transcript up, which is the whole thing in and of itself.

The transcript is a gift, but it does take time to weave it in because you're going to find when you transcribe your words, the way that you talk is more chatty and a little more verbose than the way you might write if it were a blog.

So it needs to be massaged.

I then usually take it and whittle it way down to some kind of email that's going to go to my list. Sometimes the email will be just an email. Sometimes it will be directing people back to the podcast or to something else. But it's the same topic of information.

I'm not creating different information for all the places that I am every week.

Then what happens with our socials? Well, we pull out the gems from them. Is there a great quotation we can pull out? Are there a couple of sentences or a paragraph that can stand on its own?

When you start to look at your work with a more critical eye in that way, you can really start to see like, “Oh, this could just stand on its own and I could just put that out there as a social post.”

Sometimes people's quotes are really great. Pull them out.

A great sentence that you absolutely loved from the thing, an important point that you wanted to make.

You can repurpose these things because remember, even people who love you and want to sop up everything that you have to say with a biscuit do not see everything.

They don't see every REEL, they don't see every post, they don't see every email.

Sometimes maybe they can listen to all the podcasts, but they might miss something from you.

So please don't feel like you're going to bore your audience. The information I give my clients is you have to manage your boredom of your own content before your audience gets bored with you.

Repurposing doesn't have to be more complicated.

Get practicing. And if you don't have a team behind you, I recommend you do no more than two or three other platforms than your main one.

I would love to see if you had an assistant, maybe that person could help you take your main piece and put it into three or four places.

But if it's just you, you're going to feel pretty maxed out. It would just be amazing enough if you got a blog out and sent an email about that.

“Hooray for you! That's amazing.”

Or maybe if you had an email and you turned it into a couple of social posts, that's amazing.

Please stop feeling like you have to serve everybody something different on the platforms that you're on.

Everybody's in the same dining room, they can all get the same meal, and they will take what they need and leave what they don't.

Those are the last two pieces of the five-step system to batch and repurpose your content.

Now, if you really want to see how I do this & look over my shoulder as I create my own content, as I repurpose content and  give you tons of examples, I actually have a digital product that you can buy and it's very fast to go through.

This isn't something that has nine modules in it. There's some bonuses, there's great bonuses, like the Infinite Content Bank.

So you'll never run out of ideas and you have a place to harness those ideas and just like good stuff, but it's not meant to overwhelm you. Go grab that for $37 at https://www.jenliddy.com/batch. It is a quick program that will get you a fast result and you can just reuse it every time you want to create content.

That’s at https://www.jenliddy.com/batch.

Please start talking to your audience regularly using the system as you see fit.

That's the thing about this system.

It's there for you to tweak and make your own.

How can you use or adapt that system? That five-step system.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this, so please let me know what you think. You can always email me at [email protected] and please leave a review or share this let me get that out.

Please leave a review or share this podcast with somebody that you know, who struggles with content and complains about content all the time. Because it really can be much, much easier. I will see you next week. I hope you found this useful. Bye.