Streamline Content Creation with Batching: How to Batch Your Content

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Women Conquer Business Show. I'm Jen McFarland joined by Shelley Carney. We're your go to small business marketing. Covering breaking marketing news. That affects you. Cool apps we've found and a, how to deep dive into a marketing topic with a side of motivation and inspiration.

[00:00:22] We'll also talk a little about our own entrepreneurial journeys as well. Are you ready? Let's get started.

[00:00:34] Oh, Hey, here we are. Are you ready ? Are you ready? New intro for the win? Yeah. So welcome to Women Conquer Business. Today. We're going to talk about streamlining your content creation with batching or content batching, how to batch your content. So who is this for? If you feel like you never have time to create content for your audience, we are gonna blow your mind.

[00:00:59] With, with content batching today, we're talking about how to streamline content creation with batching. Are you getting everything you can out of your content? I would say likely not. Maybe you feel too rushed to get everything done likely. Yes. You're overwhelmed with tasks. Learn how you can carve out time for content batching, which means setting aside specific time to create content, lots of content all at once.

[00:01:24] Including setting up a structure for creating batches of content all at once, repurposing and then how that can reduce stress and allow you to shine online. That sounds pretty fun. I. I wanna be. I wanna listen to this show. Well, good.

[00:01:40] You got your ears on so you'll hear it all. My ears on.

[00:01:44] How you doing Shelley?

[00:01:45] I'm doing really well. This week I attended. Last Saturday, my very first Renaissance fair and Toby. And I did that video for our New Mexico day trips. Oh yeah. YouTube channel that we just [00:02:00] started. And look for that online. If you're interested in. The Renaissance fair in New Mexico at Las Calandirus, which is a really cool place, cuz it's a property with buildings and things from the 1,617 hundreds.

[00:02:19] And, Adobe buildings and everything, and they've maintained it and they do tours there and it's a historic site and all of that. So it's a really cool place to have a Renaissance fair. And we did that on Saturday and today we are interviewing Heather Zeitzwolfe. She's a profit advisor, and she's going to help us to focus on how we move from being a content creator, to being a content entrepreneur who actually brings in money, which I'm pretty excited.

[00:02:47] She is great. Yeah, I was on Heather's show, season one. She lives here in Portland. She is kind of my neighbor. Like I could walk to her house. Cool. Actually did a retreat. At one point, we went to the Pacific and hung out and spent a whole day planning content. And then we both got busy, so I need to reach out to her and check in and see how she's doing so that the Heather Zeitzwolfe.

[00:03:10] That will be fun. You'll have a good time. Yeah. The Renaissance fair. I watched some of that last night. That was a good episode. I enjoyed that. I commented because there was a scene where you were driving and I was like, is Toby holding that camera?

[00:03:22] I was holding the guy, we were going

[00:03:23] like this. So that was kinda weird.

[00:03:26] Over, in, over in my world, I was on a podcast. Gosh, I think that Brent and I sat down for Talk Commerce. I put that in the chat. that was probably about a month ago, maybe three weeks ago. And it was awesome. He's like posting quotes and I'm, like I said, Wow. And a part of it is I don't really talk about I talk a lot about leadership.

[00:03:50] I talk a lot about like management stuff that's happened. In this episode, I talk a little bit about some of my previous experiences that led to me being an entrepreneur, which might be a little bit interesting for [00:04:00] some people. We don't really talk a lot about marketing. So if. If none of that is interesting to you just take a pass on listening, but it's actually a really great show and we've put that in and he has a lot of great episodes up there.

[00:04:13] He also interviewed my friend, Kate Bradley Churnis who leads lately.ai. And that was how I made that connection. And he loves dad jokes, which I love dad jokes. So it was, we had a super good time and he tells a dad joke at the beginning, which, and asked me if it was something that people could pay for or not.

[00:04:34] And of course I said, yes,

[00:04:35] I needed you on Saturday because there was this joke, the troll thing, you had to tell a joke to the troll in order to get across the bridge.

[00:04:45] so do you wanna hear the joke? Okay. I can tell the joke. Yeah. So what happens when two tectonic plates bump into each other? I don't know what one plate says to the other.

[00:04:56] It's not my. Oh, good one. Yeah. Which I mean that, that joke rocks. Wait.

[00:05:06] Yeah, it's a Groaner. That joke rocks. It's also very upper crest. Tectonic plate jokes. I could go on days. I will not. Cause that's not really what we're talking about here. That was a Groaner. That was maybe the sad trombone sound effect, like deserving for that. I could do it all day.

[00:05:24] Maybe I should have my own separate show. That's just dad joke.

[00:05:27] You should. You definitely should.

[00:05:30] So if you're interested in entrepreneurship, a couple dad jokes tune in to Talk Commerce with Brent Peterson and I was the guest entrepreneurial empathy with Jim McFarland. Are you ready for some breaking news

[00:05:44] already?

[00:05:44] Okay. Let's see. I am

[00:05:48] okay, go. So go. What up? So we have breaking news that TikTok grow. We've been reporting on [00:06:00] TikTok and some of these other platforms, how Facebook and all of this has slowed down. So TikTok's growth now may be slowing down. That doesn't mean that. People aren't on there. It just means they're attracting fewer new people.

[00:06:15] It also means it, the other interesting parts about this, there are that YouTube's view. Time is up. Not up as much as TikTok, but you have to realize YouTube is the most widely used social media channel out there. So they can only go up so far, kind of like TikTok can only go up so far and Instagram and Facebook watch time is continuing to fall.

[00:06:34] So that doesn't mean you can't be on Instagram and Facebook. It just means that fewer and fewer people are going there to say watch videos as they do on TikTok. It just depends on your audience, which is what we've been talking about again and again. So TikTok growth is slowing. We will only know if it's gonna level out if it's gonna get another bump, we just have to watch that.

[00:06:59] So tagging onto the fact that YouTube is continuing to grow and especially in the length of time that people watch. So I think the article said that people who are on TikTok watch an average of 94 minutes a day, which I'm just like, oh my gosh, how can

[00:07:16] 94 minutes down the toilet every day like that, you know, that time is limited resource

[00:07:22] people.

[00:07:23] So limited resource, and then they spend about like 73 minutes watching YouTube. Which, because I had some tech issues yesterday that Shelley and I were talking about before the show, I think I did spend my full 73 minutes of watch time on YouTube yesterday. And it didn't help all you YouTube creators.

[00:07:39] It did not solve my Rodecaster to Zoom and Google Chrome issue, but I figured it out and I may have to make a video about it myself. There you go.

[00:07:48] If there you go, find the video, tell you what to do, and you make the video to tell other what to

[00:07:53] do. And people love that stuff. So I figured that out. So in response to all of [00:08:00] TikTok, because it has become a really clearly a global.

[00:08:05] Social media force. YouTube is updating some of their payouts to creators and some of their policies to keep pace with TikTok. They're saying that it's a, YouTube is one-upping and saying take that TikTok. So we'll just see how it works. So they will start revenue shares on shorts, YouTube shorts.

[00:08:27] That is the short form videos on YouTube that are similar to TikTok. and creators can take 45% while YouTube pockets, 55%. This is a big deal because one of the things I think we've talked about in the past is the disconnect in terms of the algorithm between the long form videos and shorts. If you make a lot of shorts, it was always hard to see that boost and how many people were going to your channel overall.

[00:08:52] Hard to link make that link between shorts and your channel. YouTube seems to be closing that loop they've seen now that shorts are taking off. People love it. So they're starting to pay creators for it. So before, and this is something Shelley has talked about a lot on this show and I'm sure on her other shows and channels, creators needed a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on long form videos within a year.

[00:09:17] So now within 12 months,

[00:09:18] what? Within 12 months, it doesn't have to be a calendar

[00:09:21] year within a yes. Over a 12 month period. Thank you. Mm-hmm cause you I'm not an expert in this, but now creators are eligible with a thousand subscribers and 10 million views on shorts. Within 90 days. Sure. That's easy.

[00:09:34] Just get 10 million and that's super crazy. Yeah, I know. Right. Like that's super easy. And then it's viewed as a direct challenge to T TikTok. Doesn't mean it's easy, but it means at least they are rewarding people who are doing that.

[00:09:46] Yeah. There's a, at least a possibility of. Monetize getting some, yeah.

[00:09:51] Getting some money back from your YouTube shorts. If you are doing them nonstop 24 hours a day on

[00:09:57] YouTube, I don't know how you get like 10 [00:10:00] million. Like I saw the 10 million views and I was like, maybe there's something I don't know about YouTube shorts.

[00:10:04] You can do that on TikTok. If you're popular, they, you do get those numbers on TikTok to go that big

[00:10:10] And that fast I'm sure that like Mr.

[00:10:12] Beast, that all of the big YouTubers could do it too, but like for typical. Sales, small business owner making content. Yeah. It's unattainable. You have to be working more toward the long form video thing, I think. But then it shows like how it works on TikTok as well.

[00:10:28] Like how hard that is to get all that traction and to be a creator and to make money doing that. So all of which is to say there's a lot going on in video that does not mean that you have to do it. It just means that it's going on with.

[00:10:40] That's right. Unless you are purely a content creator wanting to be an influencer that is not really going to be of import to somebody who's got a business going and products and services,

[00:10:53] right?

[00:10:54] Yeah. We're still just covering it because what happens is these news stories bleed into. The small business world. Sure. And then people are like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna create all this content. And I'm just gonna make all this money on YouTube. And I'm just gonna do this is what I'm gonna do.

[00:11:08] Oh, TikTok is dead now. Cuz their growth is slowing. Like you can hear all of that stuff and it's no , that is not what is going on here. There's certain parameters that you have to meet to make money on YouTube. There's you TikTok, isn't dead. It's still something that you really have to think about because still most of the users aren't in the US.

[00:11:29] And many of them are under 30. So you have to really pay attention to these platforms. All of them, we cover these stories because they turn into kind of viral news stories. These are both, both of these stories are from Business Insiders. You know, that's gonna be like making the circuits all over social media.

[00:11:46] That's why we share it. That's

[00:11:48] correct. And I've seen the the YouTube creator pay program for shorts and other places besides business insider as well. So it is out there a lot this week. [00:12:00] Absolutely.

[00:12:01] Wow. Well, do you have any breaking news?

[00:12:04] No, I just helped you with yours. I support you.

[00:12:12] so are we ready for training?

[00:12:14] We are ready for training. Okay. So let me oh, it helps to actually share the screen some slides, BA BA BA. Yes. Streamline your content creation with batching, how to batch your content. So if you are thinking that this is some sort of super fancy advanced thing that you, in order to make it work, that's not true.

[00:12:38] We're gonna talk through have kind of three different scenarios. One of which is very advanced. One is the, how you get started. And then the tweak of the week today is actually how I batch content. So we're doing this in a little bit of a different, in a different order maybe than we normally would, but stick with me.

[00:12:55] It's definitely gonna be worth it. Okay. So what is content batching? It's concentrated time blocks for creating content that can be systematized and finished in one sitting. So for example, you could do. Blog posts, social media videos, podcasts, you can do all of this and it's a great way to repurpose and, but it means you have to have some automation.

[00:13:18] And we have, we do have slides. They will be included in the show notes and on the website. And we have a link because we have a related episode, which is social media automation. We've talked. This before in different ways. So we're taking all of these snippets of things that we've talked about a little bit here, a little bit there, and we're bringing them all into one place.

[00:13:39] So again, concentrated time blocks. So it means that you would set aside a whole day and you would just work on blog posts. right.

[00:13:50] yes. For example. Yeah. And that would be dedicated blog posts that perhaps are a pillar posts or something that's really [00:14:00] meaningful for you in your business supporting that you really want to focus on and get those out there and do them really well.

[00:14:08] Yeah. I got, I'm sorry, I got a little distracted. I got an error message about LinkedIn. So I don't know what to do about that. I will just carry on so yes, what Shelley said. But in order to do effective content batching, it requires a few things. Okay. So one, you need to have some effective planning upfront and that effective planning involves, knowing what you're gonna be talking about.

[00:14:34] It involves, so you wanna kinda scope out what are the topics that you're gonna cover? You want to have supportive systems. So once again, and we've talked about this, , when you have any sort of automation, automation can amplify the things that are broken or it can make things way easier.

[00:14:51] so you wanna have supportive systems, so you don't really wanna do content batching. Until you have a methodology for creating whatever it is you're creating that, works. So for example, Shelley and I go on stream yard every day or every day, every week. And then we know exactly how the audio is turned into a podcast and how it gets turned into a blog post.

[00:15:15] Like we have a supportive system for that. Shelley has checklists. I have checklists. We know exactly what's gonna happen. Content batching is only gonna work if you have things like that in place. So if you're still learning how you work effectively in say creating a blog or creating videos, don't start content batching, cuz I think it will really frustrate you.

[00:15:39] Yeah. I have a friend who is a content creator and he's a performer. So when he gets booked for things, he has to batch all of his content to get it ready for the time that he's not going to be at home. He's gonna be out on the road performing. And when he does have a live show, every Sunday, he has to tell the live audience I may or may not be here [00:16:00] on Sundays.

[00:16:00] It depends on my schedule for that day, and I'll try to, be live, but don't look for me for the next four weeks. I'm gonna be, doing something else. But he can do his other podcasts and his other content. He batches it. And he's been doing this for so long now. He just knows how to do that.

[00:16:16] He's got that system down, cuz it always, when I was first starting, I was very confused about how, oh my God, how do you do that? How do you create all this content in advance and what do you, how do you know what it's gonna be about? And. Yeah it's something that you grow into for sure.

[00:16:31] I think so. I think so. But I think that even if you were at the beginning of your content creation journey, for example, it is something that you can grow into and it is something that you are gonna want to grow into because it is way more efficient when you do it. Yeah. So if you think about it having a system, a structure, that's like the first thing that you wanna do anyway,

[00:16:51] right?

[00:16:51] Yeah. Cause like Jen was if she goes to a conference or Hawaii or something like that, we need to know in advance that she's got that plan so that we can create our content in advance. If we need to do that. I'm not going anywhere this year because I'm boring, but but we, we talked to each other about, Hey, what's coming up and what do we need to get done in advance?

[00:17:13] And this week I was going to have to do some things with my husband and then that fell through. So I'm able to be here live, but you need to, have that planning and that forethought about what's coming up for me. What do I need to, have in. So that it all comes together, and if you're working on a project, if it's okay, I'm gonna be working on a project for the next three weeks intensely.

[00:17:36] I don't have time to create content for, for my live show or for this podcast or whatever, how am I going to make that happen? So you need to think those things through.

[00:17:46] Absolutely. I think we've talked about how we have a spreadsheet that we work from that has titles and descriptions already done.

[00:17:52] We've done it for the rest of the year at this point. So we have some systems, whether or not they're always supportive and helpful. [00:18:00] Especially when I like change the intro and then it's not enough lead time and we have to reboot it so there's still rough spots. you just learn to smooth them out on the fly.

[00:18:08] But then next week we'll have a longer lead, like we'll be able to change it. So you wanna have a focused effort, whatever you're doing, you want it to be focused for a long time and clear yourself of distractions and meetings do not do content batching on a day that you have for meetings.

[00:18:23] It's not gonna work. You're gonna be very frustrated. We have talked about. Some of this stuff on my blog and in related episodes, like demystifying successful business projects, this talks about effective project planning. Focusing on those supportive systems, all of that kind of thing. So we're gonna be sure to get some links to that in the show notes and also on the videos everywhere.

[00:18:47] So demystifying successful business projects on the blog, it's content planning strategies and content parties, which is another way of doing this, where you get together with your colleagues and you all have focused work time, and then you can talk through stuff and problems as you go through. So, okay.

[00:19:06] We already talked about this too. Parties. Parties

[00:19:08] is kind of a misnomer. Oh, we're gonna have a party and we're all gonna work. Wait, no, that's a party.

[00:19:14] We gonna have

[00:19:15] not party parties. Fun.

[00:19:18] so we talked about this systems come first, content matching will be helpful if you haven't written it down or you don't have anything standardized.

[00:19:26] So make sure that you have that. Okay. So for the first example, and you'll notice that in, in our show flow notes, we have setting up a structure. We also have repurposing and we have talked about content repurposing. It's actually a link in, on another slide for how to do massive, like advanced content repurposing.

[00:19:48] But you'll notice that repurposing is in automatically baked into this workflow. And by repurposing, we mean you're writing a blog post. You'll have a related newsletter at a, a related [00:20:00] opt in for in this example. That's what we're doing. So you have something really tight where you're creating a tight system to attract people to your newsletter.

[00:20:07] You're gonna talk about it on your newsletter, right? You started smiling. Lot work flows

[00:20:13] are, are tight.

[00:20:17] it's just a Ryan George thing. Okay.

[00:20:20] Okay. So in terms of your pre-work, this is the stuff that you do the day before the week before, whatever you wanna outline your topics. So Shelley mentioned this before, so you have your blog topics and your promos outlined. So you plan out what am I gonna talk about this.

[00:20:36] You have two blogs a month, which is this example, you're gonna plan out what are my blog topics? What are my opt-ins that are gonna go with that blog topic? So if you talk about something and then you're like, Hey, you can download this guide and figure out how to do it yourself and then your newsletter.

[00:20:52] So you outline all that ahead of time. You block out one distraction free day on your calendar. Then you go through your to-do list. So you're just like I'm doing this, this, this, and this for one, for one day, this is what's gonna happen. And then the batching day is kinda like you write a blog, you take a break, you write another blog, you go to lunch, you create some opt-ins, you take a break, you draft two newsletters.

[00:21:14] And then in this case, I suggest sending them to. Proofread a friend. somebody, that's another set of eyes. And then that's the end of your day. You send it off and then it's a full day, but you've created a lot. Okay. . And then when you have fresh eyes, you go through and you do your final review. You create blog graphics, which are gonna be templated.

[00:21:38] And we're gonna talk about that during the tweak of the week, you have you've scheduled the blog posts on your blog. So you've written two blog posts. They don't need to go out within a minute of each other. They go out on different days. You schedule that out, you schedule your newsletters, which are also templated, meaning they have the same look and feel every time you send it out and then.

[00:21:57] Create a few social media graphics also [00:22:00] templated. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. And then you do some social media scheduling with whatever scheduler that you use in this case, this fresh set of eyes. If you have a marketing VA, they can handle most of this for you. You don't have to do all of this yourself.

[00:22:20] Okay. Also simplicity aids in consistency. So if you don't make everything brand new, every single time, you can have a really consistent look and feel, and it's very easy to mass produce your content. it also means that people, when they see it, they know that it's you like there, there's a reason it's not super boring to have the same look and feel every.

[00:22:46] Okay. So I know you're thinking I'm not getting all my content done in one day. No, but you're getting a lot done in one day and you're scheduling it at another time. Or you have a marketing VA, schedule it for you at another time. And then it's done for the month. and that's the whole thing instead of oh, I gotta post the thing.

[00:23:06] I gotta do the whatever. And the, if you also have events that month and things like that, then you add those things to your content batching, however you need to, but you've at least got that bare minimum going. And that's what Shelley talks about all the time is like getting that bare minimum out there.

[00:23:23] That's right. Gotta know your minimums. Gotta know your minimums. Okay. So the next example, which is really not next, we're gonna, I'm gonna say stay tuned. So we're gonna do we're gonna walk through a social media workflow. It's what I've been using for Epiphany Courses. I accidentally left an app off of here.

[00:23:46] It's Placid and air table. And then scheduling with Social Bee. And I will show you how that works because I figure a lot, almost everybody is doing social media. then finally, we're gonna go to an [00:24:00] advanced one. So we have a related episode that is about repurposing content. We talked about this exact advanced content batching workflow in our repurposed content episode.

[00:24:14] This is, was, it's been talked about by a lot of different people, but Brendan Bruchard talks about this. This is the Circular VIralosity method of doing it. It is taking a video or a live stream. And then, oh, thanks Canva. I don't want that. Okay. just taking a video or a live stream filming that. So what he does and he has a team, so don't be thinking this is super easy.

[00:24:40] You're just gonna go do this all by yourself. He records four videos uses the transcripts as blogs, opt-ins and newsletters for the. Takes the audio from the video makes it into four podcasts and then takes clips from the videos and the audio and quotes from the blog. And that's all of his social media.

[00:24:59] This is a very advanced content batching system. I would say, honestly, this is what I am working toward right now. It's what I want. I think it's what a lot of people want. It's not necessarily something that you can do by yourself, at least. Four. I think that would be really hard to do. We do it weekly.

[00:25:20] that way stay once a month instead of once a month. But the once a month thing does have some appeal for me. I don't know what. Is it to you or no,

[00:25:28] you love the live. I'm sorry, but I like to stay fresh. And I like to talk about what happened this week, every week. That's important to me. And if it's, if that's not important to you, if that's not something that you do in your content, if all you're doing is presenting knowledge that doesn't change, then this is perfect to do it once a month.

[00:25:45] But if like me, you like to be of the moment and say, this happened this week, this changed. So let's get on this. That's why I like to do it once a.

[00:25:53] In marketing, it changes every day. Yeah. The articles we shared at the beginning of this podcast, there's probably a new, [00:26:00] fresh take on it in the last hour.

[00:26:01] So it is interesting. I have certain topics that I think this would doing it. All it was would really work well, but you're right. If you want something fresh, this does not work. Yeah. So one day a week if you are super busy, it works really.

[00:26:16] Yeah. And if, like you said, like if you have a team member who is responsible for taking all of your video content and creating all of these different things from it even if you're doing the blog yourself because you want it to have your voice, then you know, that's still freeing up a lot of your time.

[00:26:33] If you have somebody taking care of all of your social media editing your videos Pulling the audio out and putting up your podcast for you that can save you a lot of time. If you're. If you have somebody who can do that for you. That's wonderful. It's a lot off your plate at that point.

[00:26:49] I, I love that stuff. I love doing that stuff. I love editing the videos. I love the, all the, that work. So I don't wanna hand that off cuz I like it.

[00:26:59] I don't know. Can I hire you?

[00:27:01] Yeah, yeah, let's do that.

[00:27:02] We, should we just, should we move into tweaks of the week then? Yeah, let's do

[00:27:07] that. I think we're ready. This

[00:27:08] was all the slides here, tweak of the week. Okay. So what we're actually going to do is go into hello example number two, which is how to do.

[00:27:21] How a workflow can work. Doing content batching specifically for social media. So let me get a couple things ready here, if all these screens open. So

[00:27:35] while we're waiting for Jen to get her things together, to share with you I just wanted to point out that on the scroll, we have the free marketing self assessment link sendfox.com/wcb.

[00:27:48] And we have the super valuable yet free content, consistency framework, and schedule framework.agkmedia.studio. That will also be in the description box. But if you're [00:28:00] watching the video, you can watch that as it scrolls by. And then go ahead and go there, check it out.

[00:28:07] Yeah. What Shelley said.

[00:28:12] And that free marketing self-assessment and the content consistency framework, those tools will help you figure some of this stuff out. Guaranteed. Yeah. It's really important to have some of this stuff.

[00:28:23] They're, they're really helpful tools to

[00:28:24] have. Yeah. Okay. So the tweak of the week, it, we usually cover one app.

[00:28:31] But since we're covering like a workflow and a system, I wanted to take you through the whole thing. Okay. So to do what I'm going to describe, I'm using three different tools. So this is the social media scheduler. It's called social B. You can go to socialbee.io and it is really made for small businesses.

[00:28:52] It's great. Cuz you can do Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, your Google business profile, which I recommend and TikTok. And it, it is an interesting platform in that and it works great for content batching because what it does is you create buckets and a schedule. So for example, I have all of these categories set up for Epiphany Courses.

[00:29:21] That's what EC means. And it is blog posts, articles. So my blog posts, articles that I find on the internet podcast appearances promotions for our products, quotes. And then you can see here, I have one that's also paused for She Podcasts Live, cuz I need to update that with the new dates and things like that.

[00:29:42] You can turn these on and off at any time. So that was really easy when she podcasts got when it was postponed, because then I was able to do that. So then what you do with and I'm explaining this, cuz it will make it make more sense. So then what you do is you create a schedule. So it will take [00:30:00] posts from the blog post bucket on Wednesdays and it'll take, quotes on Fridays and then as long as the bucket has something in it, as long as that category has content in it, it will take the new thing and it'll post it.

[00:30:13] Okay. So this is basically made for content batching for social media, because you just fill the buckets and you can go through and systematize filling these buckets as long as you. New blog posts and new quotes and things like that to share. So that's step one is figuring out your system for how you're going to share content on social media.

[00:30:35] It is Social Bee absolutely the only way. No, there's tons and tons and tons of social media schedules out there. But in terms of this specific workflow, It works really, really well. And I also like it because it's made for small business. So it's fairly affordable. I think it starts at like $19 a month.

[00:30:54] And you could just start scheduling things out this way. The second tool that I'm using that I think a lot of people have heard of it's called air table. It is kind of like Excel, Google sheets on steroids. because you can work and do a lot of automation off of. You can connect anything, but you do not have to be like a database designer developer in order to do it, you can connect a lot of things to it.

[00:31:21] And it's easy to organize your work and it integrates with just about anything. So you can be pulling things safe from like Google drive and all kinds of different places, stick it in your air table. And then other apps can grab things and create things. Okay. So that's app number.

[00:31:38] and then app number three is really it's really air table. And then this app, which is called Placid and that's placid.app is the third program. That's actually where that's actually where this program number three is where all of the magic happens. Okay. So what Placid does, is it [00:32:00] automatically generates creatives, so you can make images, videos, and PDFs

[00:32:06] automatically through automation using reusable templates. So remember before, when I said, you wanna have templates, you wanna have a template for your blog. You wanna have a template for your social media. You wanna have a template for your newsletter, an app like Placid can do that. Now you can do that in Canva.

[00:32:22] Okay. So this is not, I'm not banging on Canva. I use Canva all the time. This is so that you can like mass produce things. quickly like within seconds without having to go into each individual Canva and create and download. Okay. So this is how you make a lot in a very short period of time. Now, how does this look in the wild?

[00:32:47] So let me give you an example. So for example, on Epiphany Courses, we have a blog post that is Write an Effective Business Plan in 10 Steps. you'll notice that there is a picture here of a compass, no words on it. It's just the featured image. I also do the same thing on womenconquerbiz.com . If you go to the podcast episodes, there's a picture of Shelley and I no words on it.

[00:33:10] Okay. But if you go and you click share, it automatically has the title of the blog post with, and the image from the blog post with like a. Overlay on it. And then it says on the graphic, and effective business plan at 10 steps. That means that when people share it, they can see the graphic, they can see what the blog post is about.

[00:33:34] It tends to help draw people in. Okay. So that's one way that it gets done now, Placid does it automatically, there's an integration with WordPress, with ghost, with web flow from Placid that it just says, okay, is there a new blog post? Oh, okay. And it just makes it and puts it on my. and then when people go to share it, it looks like this with the words over it, the [00:34:00] workflow we're gonna be talking about.

[00:34:02] If you go to Epiphany Courses on Instagram. And I think if you go on LinkedIn too, you'll see it is using plastic to create a lot of different graphics in quote, unquote, different categories. So it's courses, blog posts, and inspirational quotes on Instagram. And then when I have time, I create videos and extra things.

[00:34:25] But this is just taking it and making it. Are you still with me? I see this everywhere.

[00:34:32] So we have

[00:34:33] like an automation for how

[00:34:35] I see Jen's things all over the place, all over the place they look amazing.

[00:34:39] So they look amazing. So what I have done is when you go into Placid, I have all of these projects, if you go into any one of these projects.

[00:34:53] So for example, if we go into looking at Epiphany Courses, quotes, you'll see in here, there is just a template and it looks almost exactly like Canva. And what it does is there's a space for the quote. There's a space for the person who said the quote. And then the branding at the bottom that has join our community EpiphanyCourses.com and that's all that it is each one of these fields just has like general information in it.

[00:35:23] But if you go over to air table, there's a table over here. Yeah. We're not gonna refresh the page. There's a table over here that has the quote in it, the person who said it, and then you'll see here, there's a graphic. there's a little tiny graphic that says what the quote is, and it's just automatically putting it in there.

[00:35:48] It wants me to refresh the page, which I'm not gonna do, cuz I logged out so that we could see the Airtable, homepage. And you'll see that it took anonymous, cuz that was who said it, it takes the quote. [00:36:00] Automation may be a good thing, but don't forget that it began with Frankenstein. I love that quote.

[00:36:04] It's so awesome about, automation's funny that I would click on that one and then, and. The quote. And then I put that in the bucket in Social Bee, and it knows when to go based on when it is scheduled to go and all of this happens automatically. So I have, if I go back, let's see, I can't do this without not looking at it.

[00:36:25] Okay. If I go back, there is a project in here that basically says, go get this air table. Hey, how you doing? Chief girl, Jody. Good to see you. And it's basically Placid is going out. It's looking at air table, it's saying, oh, Hey, Hey, there's a new line in this big spreadsheet. I should go out and make a new graphic.

[00:36:52] So all I have to do is add a new line to any spreadsheet and it will create it. You'll notice that there's all kinds of spreadsheets in here. One that I'm working on right now is one for the podcast where I have the name of the podcast who was on the show, a picture of the guest, or if you go down here to the bottom is Shelley and I on all of them.

[00:37:11] Eventually I'm gonna put a quote in there and then it's gonna generate featured images because in order to effectively share content, you need to share it over and over and over again. So even podcast episodes from. Three or four years ago, people are interested. They wanna see it. They wanna hear about it.

[00:37:29] They wanna know a quote. It's how you drive traffic back. So over here in Placid, there is a template that I haven't executed yet. We'll get back to it. That is exactly what those little podcast episodes are gonna look like. And so if you look here, it's cute. Little graphic with little kinda little.

[00:37:53] Almost looks like a little TV with a little play button and it'll have a little lib about who was on the show. It'll [00:38:00] have a picture of who the guest was and the title of the episode, and then have created a second one. That is the quote. So what you wanna do is you wanna take these things, this is templating it out.

[00:38:11] And then after you're done with that, you go into your project settings, you hit run and it just starts. Making it . And so in two minutes, you can have, the time is all in setting up a template and then once the template is set up and you have a, basically a spreadsheet that just says the quote and the picture of the person, for example, it will just go out, take it and put it in your template and make it in two minutes.

[00:38:39] And then you just take the quote, copy and paste the quote. Into social B copy and paste the image into social B. And then you're done. I did six months worth of content, social media posts for Epiphany Courses in one day using this method. Is it for everyone? Probably not. But once the templates are set up, it's really easy.

[00:39:05] That's.

[00:39:06] It's a lot of work. And, but once it's done, you don't have to think about it for another six months.

[00:39:14] well, you just have to have a plan. So my plan was, I'm gonna promote courses. I'm gonna promote, I'm gonna have some quotes to motivate people and I'm gonna promote my blog posts to share. And then everything else I do on top of that is.

[00:39:30] But I know that I'm always gonna have something out there. So people are always having that brand awareness. And then I create videos. We do, we do the podcast, we do all, all different kinds of things. And then that's extra. Like it's just about getting it out there. So you set up a and in Placid, they actually have templates already there.

[00:39:50] So you can just pick up a template, change the fonts, change the color. and then as long as you have a spreadsheet, which I don't know about you, but I track I find quotes that [00:40:00] I like, and I was putting him in a spreadsheet anyway. Mm. So I could do it. So I was already doing this. So then I was like, wait, something is just gonna grab the quote and the name of the person.

[00:40:10] And I don't have to make it in Canva. I was really nice. Very cool. So there's another program out there that does something similar. It's called banner. And it's a little more expensive. So if you go to banner bear.com it's more expensive than Placid at the time banner, when I tested banner bear, it was more difficult to figure out like Placid is very much like making one Canva image and then you just plug the things in there and it makes a lot of sense.

[00:40:40] Banner Bear was a little bit more complicated at the time. Banner Bear did videos and Placid did. Now Placid does videos. And I haven't figured out how to do that yet. That's why I haven't shared that, but I am thinking that I'm going to be working on that now, how you systematize like videos. So wouldn't it be cool on a graphic about the podcast to have just the video kind of a clip of the video playing like that would be really cool.

[00:41:08] There's all different kinds of things that you can do with this. It's super fun. And. It is a way that you can take all of that, like all of that perfectionism out of it, because you know that every single one is gonna look the same,

[00:41:23] which is good, because that gives you that brand recognition people see it and go, oh, that's Jen that's Epiphany Courses.

[00:41:30] Yeah.

[00:41:30] Yeah. You think you would ever do it or is it too complicated? This is why I've never shared it because I feel like a lot of people are like, oh, that seems like a lot of work.

[00:41:39] it's it's good to know in advance of starting. Like a podcast or a live stream or anything like that. It's good to know this is coming.

[00:41:47] So let me start grabbing those quotes. Let me start thinking about what pieces and parts I wanna include in social posts and then play with it for a couple of [00:42:00] months until you get something that you really like, that's standardized, and then you can move into the the workflow.

[00:42:08] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:09] Yeah. I mean, you have to follow exactly what Shelley just said, which we also talked about earlier in the show. You have to have it a structure in place, something that you like, and then mass produce.

[00:42:19] Yeah, but it's good to know in advance. Like you said, I, we do pull quotes out of every show. So we have that, and sometimes I do it on my other stuff and sometimes I don't have the time, if you know, going into it that I'm gonna look for a quote and then you're doing a live show and you go, ah, I just said something brilliant.

[00:42:36] I'm gonna, that's my quote for this week. You just right. You know, going into it, what you're looking for, it's that much easier to find.

[00:42:43] Well, and I still found it like my favorite quote from last week's show, you didn't pull for yourself. And I still found a way to, to incorporate it.

[00:42:51] What was that? Cause you had a moment where you were like, you gotta grab 'em by the feels and I

[00:42:58] and I loved it and I was like, ah, she didn't pick it. So then I like put it in the blog post anywhere anyway, cuz I just thought it was great. That's cute. It's really? Yeah. So a lot of this stuff, this is one way to like mass. Tons of social media graphics really quickly, but you're absolutely right.

[00:43:14] You have to have that setup in place that structure in place. And I think that is all that I have today. Yeah, I'm gonna let you like take all the rest

[00:43:25] of it. That was a lot of really great Infor information. And if you watched this show also listen to the podcast or watch it again, take notes and get those slides that Jen's going to include in the show notes so that you can go through those cuz there's some.

[00:43:42] Good information in there that people are gonna wanna grab. So now we're gonna move into our inspirational nugget today. We're gonna talk about how everyone has found themselves outmatched by the competition, frustrated by some skill or [00:44:00] attribute that they have, that we don't. And sometimes it's not just the competition, but it's somebody who's further ahead.

[00:44:07] Listening to Jen today, you might be going, oh my gosh, that's too much. I can't grasp that. That's so much technology and so much systems and and yeah, Jen has a master's in this, but doesn't mean you can't learn it, especially when you grab these slides and these extra. Extra things that Jen's offering you, you can get there, but it's going to take some time and you might need to scale up a little bit first, but how do we choose to respond to the struggle of, ah, this is so much, I don't think I'll ever get there, how we respond, tells us who we are.

[00:44:46] Are we the kind of person that sticks with something until we get it, like Jen and I, we worked on our technology and we played with those settings and we got frustrated and we still persevered until we figured it out because that's who we are. We are the kind of person who sticks with it.

[00:45:03] Are you the kind of person that sticks with it? Do we see it as a chance to learn and get stronger? Do we get frustrated and complain or do we call it off and find an easier thing to do? One that makes us feel good instead of feeling challenged. So do we say, you know what, I'm not gonna do podcasting.

[00:45:23] That's too hard. It's too much. I can't do it. So I'm gonna just go watch TV instead. I'll tell you the great people. They don't avoid the test of their abilities. They seek them out because they are not just the measured greatness. They are the pathway to it. How will today's difficulties show our character?

[00:45:44] We set our goals according to our values and our priorities. And if something is truly important to us, if we really have to have something we're gonna find a way to get it. There's there's excuses and then there's just doing it.

[00:45:58] I think that's a hundred [00:46:00] percent true, and I don't, I'm not a huge, I used to be pretty into Gary Vaynerchuk.

[00:46:05] I'm not as much anymore, although he is char starting to change his message a little to something. He talks more about empathy now, and I like that about him, but I watched a video. He spoke at think media's conference. And I thought that what he shared was so valuable and I think it's valuable for everybody listening and for what it is that you just talked about.

[00:46:31] And he said, all of you can succeed. You have to believe in yourself and you have to be yourself. You can't compare yourself to somebody else. You can't do what somebody else is doing, but you have to be willing to stick with it until you go from being good to great. And he says a lot of times people don't stick with it.

[00:46:54] They flip from thing to thing. Like one day they're doing marketing, then they're doing crypto. Then they're doing what, whatever that new thing is. Right. Mm-hmm mm-hmm . And I think that part of that is about that tenacity. That it takes and that belief in yourself that will keep you from comparing yourself to another and believing in yourself and that what you have is important and valuable to somebody else.

[00:47:23] And that you don't have to just jump to the next thing.

[00:47:25] I always remember this quote either. It's a quote or it's a saying that people often give up just before they were about to, hit it big get to where they needed to be, find the answer they give up just before that. So I always try to tell myself that whenever I feel like giving up, am I giving up just before I'm gonna actually, hit my goal.

[00:47:45] I that's something that I use a lot is, when I feel burned out, giving up, am I just one step away from actually hitting my goal and I'm quitting too soon. Yeah, it's a good thing to ask

[00:47:57] yourself. And a lot of times we are, and I think [00:48:00] sometimes it's because we play that comparison game and that's what I believe is so cool about what the inspirational nugget is today.

[00:48:08] It's about. Don't be outmatched by the competition. Don't be frustrated that somebody else has something that you don't yeah. Stick with what it is that you know, and what you have. And you'll just keep getting better through all of these tests. That's right.

[00:48:26] All right. Well, that's all we have for today. I think a great appreciate you guys being here and thank you.

[00:48:34] We'll be back again next week.

[00:48:39] Thank you for joining the Women Conquer Business podcast, hosted by Shelley Carney and Jen McFarland. Please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging content creation or business problem. Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support they need to expand their brand and share their message with the.

[00:49:00] Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.