A blog post.
Facebook lives.
YouTube videos.
Emails to your email list.
Posts to your Facebook page.
Posts in your Facebook group.
Posts in other people’s Facebook groups.
Instagram posts.
Instagram stories.
Instagram lives.
Tweets.
Pins.
Whew! Just listing those out can get exhausting!
How exactly is a busy mama entrepreneur like yourself supposed to create all this content, you could well be wondering.
You can’t spend the entire week creating content! You’re lucky if you have a couple of hours for this stuff, right?
It’s no wonder then that the thought of content creation can get you down.
Lucky for you then, that one of my 3 key areas of expertise is SIMPLICITY. I am allergic to difficult. To unnecessarily complicated.
That’s why it is always my mission to find ways to make your life and business easier and simpler. You want to spend the majority of your working hours in your zone of genius, doing the money-making activities. And you want to spend ample time with your family, and – let’s be honest – some time for yourself would be good too, wouldn’t it?
So let’s talk about one of my Biz Mum Life Hacks…
Repurposing Your Content
I’m going to break this down into 5 simple (see, there’s that word again) steps that you can use to make creating your content a breeze each week.
5 Simple Steps
1. Hone in on your comfort zone
I am all for doing things that push you outside of your comfort zone.
But when it comes to getting into good content creation habits, now is not the time to make any leaps. Fear can lead to procrastination and what we want here it to build momentum. Leave testing the new format to a little way down the road when you’re in your stride.
So what is your natural inclination? Do you like to write? Prefer to talk? Love to illustrate? Create graphics? Take great photos?
The point here is to lean into what you are good at and what you enjoy so that you can make creating content fun and not a chore.
2. Plan what you need
See that long list of content at the start of this post?
Yeah, don’t do that.
Don’t get lured into thinking you have to be posting EVERYWHERE. It’s just too exhausting and unrealistic.
Focus on a couple of key places, get consistent and then build from there (if you must).
Make a plan of exactly what type of content you need and how much of it you need each week.
For example, you might decide you want to:
Send one email to your list per week
Post to your Facebook page daily
Post to two other Facebook groups, once a day each
Post once a week to your blog
Don’t worry if this seems like a lot already, you’re going to see how this can all be created very quickly in the next point…
3. Either Slice & Dice or Cobble Together – You Choose
If your preferred content creation method is writing then you could write one long(ish) blog post and then slice it up into several social media posts (e.g. condense the tips into a short list for one post, use the opening paragraph with a link to find out more for another… etc).
Or if you don’t like writing in one sitting, you could write say 5-7 short social media posts/captions, and cobble them together to make a single blog post. Of course, when I say cobble, I mean that you’ll have to use a little more finesse than that phrase suggests!
If you find talking or video easier, you could use software which takes voice and transcribes to text and then just tweak it to tidy it up. Or you could pay someone on Fiverr or the likes to transcribe it cheaply for you. Then use the same Slice & Dice / Cobble approach to break it down into smaller social media posts or blend into a single blog post.
4. Recycle
Once you’ve taken your big piece of content and broken it into smaller social media posts (or vice versa); it’s time to recycle.
So take Social Media Post A and post it to your Facebook page on Monday. Post it to one of the Facebook Groups on Tuesday. Post it again, this time in the other Facebook Group on Wednesday…. You get the idea.
And if you’re on Twitter, then you absolutely will want to embrace recycling. I mean posting the exact same tweak several times a week and even for several weeks. Twitter is so fast paced, this is not only acceptable, it’s one of the only ways you’ll keep up with optimum tweet frequencies!
But wait!
I haven’t forgotten about your email list. You need to send them an email, right?
Don’t write that from scratch!
Send your list a link to a video you created or a link to the blog post you wrote. Tell them what you’re sharing or what they’ll learn and pop in the link.
Done!
5. Re-use
So far I’ve talked about written or video content, but what about photos or graphics?
Facebook posts get more engagement when accompanied by a photo, did you know that?
Before you worry about starting to stage photo shoots on a weekly basis now, the following news should be a relief:
It’s fine to re-use the same photography again and again.
In fact, it could even be a good thing.
Note: this doesn’t apply to Instagram. You can get away with re-using a previously posted image if there is a significant time lapse in between, but largely, it’s all about fresh photography.
But on Facebook, particularly if you are marketing yourself organically in groups, using a handful of the same photographs (we’re talking about photos of you here) on a regular basis will actually help to reinforce your presence in those groups and your brand image.
So if you have, say 4 or 5 photos that you regularly pepper in amongst your other imagery (and totally rely on stock imagery for some of the remainder if you want to) then that’s great.
And there we have it. 5 simple steps to make content creation a breeze by repurposing.
Another of my Biz Mum Life Hacks.
I’d love to hear which of the tips you’re most excited to try. Head over to my Facebook Group – Self Made Mothers – and let me know!
If you would feel relieved to have a clear social media strategy, so you can take out the guess-work, together with 6 months of content planned out for you, check out my Social Media Simplified Intensives and let me show you the way to Social Media success.
