Friends, please tell me I’m not the only one who doesn’t love the process of content creation for my biz?! 🙋‍♀️

After 10 years in business, you’d think I’d learn to at least enjoy it, right?

And I know I’m not alone in this—one of the most common pain points I hear about from fellow creatives revolves around the task of content creation. We all know how important it is to have strong marketing content out there, but who the heck has time to keep up with all the trends and different social platforms?!

Let me ask you—are you currently stuck in an endless cycle of feeling the pressure to create, but feeling uninspired at the same time? Only to realize you have to create something right now in order to get it done on time? And the content you do create is not anything you’re proud of, because it was made in a rush and just doesn’t live up to what you know you could do with some more time?

I’ve felt this way too, friend.

But since this is such an important part of marketing my business (regardless of how much I enjoy it or not!), I’ve invested my time and energy into building a content creation system that allows me to batch like a boss. And I have a hunch this method could help you too, friend!

So today, I’m sharing my method for creating content for an ENTIRE quarter in just 4 simple steps. Keep on scrolling for all the juicy details!

HOW TO BATCH CONTENT CREATION ON A QUARTERLY BASIS

Friend, there are probably an infinite number of ways you can break down content planning. And ultimately, the only “right” way is whatever truly works best for YOU! Today I’ll be walking you through my own process, but please, take this as your official permission slip to adjust this method as much as needed to fit your life and business best.

Personally, I most prefer to tackle content creation on a quarterly basis. If I try to tackle content planning day by day (or even week by week!), I find myself quickly falling behind. So every quarter, my team and I go through each of the following steps—assessing our goals, adding dates to our calendar, planning our content topics and the ways we’ll use it across multiple platforms, and finally, creating our content. Keep reading for details on how we tackle each of these tasks!

STEP 1: ASSESS YOUR GOALS

Around here, we do all things with intentionality. So the first step is always to assess your goals, and understand how your content fits into the big picture for your life and biz!

If you’ve created an annual plan for your business, then you know what big dreams you’re chasing after this year. And you might even understand how they break down on a quarterly level! But if you haven’t taken a look at your goals and broken them down to a quarterly basis, I highly recommend making that happen first.

Begin by understanding what you’re chasing after—what projects are in the works, which launches are upcoming, and what your sales need to look like in order to hit your long-term goals. Once you have a strong vision for the long-term of your life and business, you’ll be better able to see how your content can play a role in getting you to those heartfelt new heights.

For example, if you’re entering Q3 but haven’t gotten halfway to your sales goal on your signature service for the year, you can amp up the amount of content you’re creating to share that service with your audience! Share more behind the scenes of that service, answer more common questions about the process, and truly show the value of the results you create. This way, your content can directly help you hit your big picture goals! Isn’t that better than creating content that feels like it’s aimlessly shouting into a void?

Assess your goals—where do you want to go and how can your content help you get there?

STEP 2: ADD DATES TO YOUR CALENDAR

My second step is to map out the quarter by putting important dates onto the calendar. This includes any launches, partnered promotions, sales, or other time-sensitive things that will require content (and real estate on your social media and/or blog). By putting these key dates on the calendar first, I’m able to ensure I don’t miss anything big or accidentally create conflicting or overlapping pieces of content!

Personally, my team uses Asana to track everything from our annual goals to our daily client work to—you guessed it!—our editorial calendar. Having everything in one space like this is so helpful to make sure we don’t miss anything important, and to ensure that all of our team members have access to our plans and schedule at all times. As soon as we schedule something like a launch or partnership that will require online promotion, we get those dates into Asana so they’re all ready for us when it comes time for our quarterly content creation! And this goes both ways—if I’m offered something like a speaking role at a Summit, I can easily check our existing calendar to see if those dates conflict with any big projects we already have planned.

Add key dates to your calendar to ensure you’re planning for each & every piece of content you’ll need—and not accidentally overlapping big promotional dates!

STEP 3: PLAN THE CONTENT TOPICS (AND MAKE ‘EM WORK ACROSS PLATFORMS!)

Now it’s time to get down business and plan the content!

Every quarter, my team and I put our heads together to map out the next few months of content. To begin, I first determine which topics I want to discuss with my audience. What will serve them well, while also guiding them toward the offers that best support my current goals?

Once I’ve chosen my topics for the quarter, I figure out how to stretch them out into multiple pieces of content, to be used across different platforms. Whether you use Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, email marketing, or something else entirely, it’s important to understand how you can take one single topic and use it to create content for every single platform.

For example, I start by planning all of my blog and podcast topics for a quarter, as well as the dates on which I’ll share about them. Next, I know that I’ll share about each blog post and podcast episode on both Instagram and Facebook. I could even create multiple pieces of content around one topic—for example, an Instagram reel, a static Instagram post, some stories, and a Facebook post. I’ll also share a small collection of graphics to Pinterest, which will link back to the original post or podcast episode. I’ll even include my blog and podcast content in my email newsletters!

All that content will come from one single topic idea. How incredible?! And the best news? Every piece of content I share, right down to my daily Instagram stories, will be intentionally created to serve my audience well, and to drive them to the funnels I need them to be in at that time.

Assess what topics to discuss on a quarterly basis, and plan to stretch those topics across all your platforms.

STEP 4. CREATE THE CONTENT!

After I’ve planned out all my ideas for the upcoming quarter, it’s time to actually CREATE the content! And let me tell you—the actual process of content creation becomes a whole lot easier (and more sustainable!) when you’ve done all the intentional work to get to this point. It’s way better than creating random posts on the fly each and every day—trust me 😉

Because the heart of all my content typically comes from my blog posts and podcast episodes, I typically begin by outlining the posts themselves. This helps me brainstorm enough to also plan out social posts, and then I can go back and write the blog posts or record the podcast episodes in full after that.

Start with an outline of your main topics. Then, use that outline to create shorter-form content (such as social posts) and to build out your longer-form content (such as blog posts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and so on).

BONUS TIP

If you struggle with writing, I’d encourage you to try recording voice notes instead!

Perhaps you can turn your ideas for blog posts into podcast episodes? Or a YouTube video? Or even TikToks or Reels? If you still need written content but don’t excel at writing, you could always send voice notes to a team member or virtual assistant, and have them turn your verbally communicated thoughts into written words.

Like I said at the beginning, the only “right” way to create your content is the way that works best for YOU. If there’s an area of content creation that always gets you stuck or frustrated, get creative! Find ways to adjust the process so that it works better for your life and business. Your content will be more authentic that way, and I promise, your audience will thank you 🙂

LOOKING FOR MORE ACTIONABLE TIPS TO UPLEVEL YOUR BIZ?

Friend, I hope this post helps you take intentional steps toward achieving your goals and building the life-giving business of your dreams ❤️

If you’re looking for more actionable tips that you can apply to your life & biz every week, then I’d love for you to join my newsletter! I’ll reach out 2-4 times per month with heartfelt encouragement and advice that has been tried and tested over my decade-long career. I hope to see you there!