…& Doing Image Production in Batches
I want you to be able to breathe easier and get back to creating whatever it is you do. Like, get back to your passion projects. Posting to social media and Pinterest shouldn’t be hard. Scheduling your posts ahead of time, while batching images and your work, will make things much easier for you.
Perhaps you’re a writer, artist, designer, blogger, or whatever. Whatever it is that you do best and when you’re in your element, that’s what I want you to be able to do more of. Scheduling posts in advance is part of that larger answer to better productivity.
You might even run a business and it’s your baby. You have to have it succeed – you’ve got kids to support, a mortgage payment to make, rent, utilities, and everything else that goes along with running a business (can I say payroll!?).
How to Batch Your Images
Batching images is basically creating and exporting a lot of images in a short period. The best way to do this is to get a Canva template set and insert your photos into each template and export them all at once. Using a variety of different layouts can help you repurpose your image content a multitude of different ways.
From there, you can write your Instagram, Pinterest, or other social media captions along with appropriate hashtags and schedule them out over time. That’s right – get comfy in your favorite working chair, because you’re going to be writing for a while. This actually is pretty easy when you couple it up with a bunch of content and headline ideas from the Email Marketing Resource Library.
Like I mentioned, this is a really easy task to do (batching images) when you’re using a full suite of templates. You can use a 200+ set multiple different times throughout the year, and at 1 or 2 images a day, you’ll only reuse each template once or twice.
Scheduling Your Posts Saves Time
Time is scarce. It’s our most sacred resource and we don’t want to waste it. We need to be online it seems – constantly. But we don’t have time to do all that. We can’t possibly be everywhere all the time. Or… can we?
What if we batched our content together, got it done faster, with intention and thought, and have it still be high-quality? What if we got branding set, decided, colors chosen, typography selected, and images chosen for an entire month’s worth of content… and then got it all done in one swoop?
That way, on a daily basis, you could be getting back to whatever it is that you do best, and STILL have a daily presence online, boosting your presence and increasing your subscribers. All while you’re focusing on your business or passion project!
Batching Images is Best Practice
Myself, I have to insist on batching my blog posts and images. It goes so much faster getting them all done in a matter of 8 hours instead of spreading them out on a daily basis. I actually save – trust me, I calculated – about 22 hours a month (that’s half a week!) of unnecessary work time a month by doing this.
Use that precious time and spend it writing or designing. I can’t tell you how much this has freed up my time with the kids, as well. It’s made a huge difference and I no longer have that daily pressure of trying to come up with something to write and looking for images – it’s already done, and already scheduled. The only thing I have to do, really, is log into Instagram and Pinterest to post the new articles to get them to go viral.
The trick to becoming efficient is to implement batching as much as you can across different platforms. That also means resizing the same images to work for other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, your blog, and YouTube. Resizing is pretty quick in Canva, and can be done in one big swoop.
Is Scheduling Posts a Lot of Work?
Now, I know this sounds like a lot of work upfront. Scheduling your posts may seem like it takes longer. But trust me, it’s SO worth it. The amount of time you spend on individual posts is actually a lot longer than if you were to batch. I usually take a Saturday or Sunday to get it all done.
During the week while running my business it’s just a little too much to take on and focus. So you’ll have to find some quiet time where you can focus and concentrate.
Writing articles in 20 minutes or less is your goal, but so is getting your quality images created. You can handle it. Believe me – I have 6 kids. SIX! Plus a husband. You got this. Try it out and let me know what a difference it’s made in your life, if you noticed a productivity change during the week. I know I sure did.
Bonuses of Scheduling Posts and Batching Images
There are some definite bonuses to planning posts in advance. These are a few that I’ve gained just from scheduling my posts months ahead of time.
Bonus 1 – more wine drinking time. Totally NOT an alcoholic, you’re just blurry. I absolutely love not having to worry about what to post that day. It’s too much mental work. So if, by chance, I dedicate one day out of the month to schedule the next month’s posts, I’m all set, and don’t have to worry about it anymore. Voila! More wine-forty-five time.
Bonus 2 – more design time. That’s right. Go create. So when you’re not having to spend time each and every day coming up with posts, you can dive right into your projects instead. This means more dedicated time towards writing, designing, and creating. I love this about pre-scheduling everything out.
I find that when you add more tasks to the day, it’s more likely that you’ll burn out without finishing everything and ‘feel good’ about the mild progress you did make. When, you could just spend one day a month doing everything in one swoop. That way, when you’re in design mode, you can crank out a lot of materials, and when you’re in writing mode, you can crank out more copy.
Bonus 3 – more time with the kids. Which is awesome. Go supermom! I found that scheduling my posts in advance freed up a lot of time for my kids, because even a half hour or hour extra in the day makes a big difference. That means extra one-on-one time, face time with them, more eye contact, and playtime. We’re able to go to the pool a lot more as a result during the summer, which is super fun for them as they are part fish.
I view my time with my kids as precious. So the less ‘work’ I have to do doing the day, the better. That also means the house stays cleaner, things get picked up, and I have more time to cook daily, too.
