Episode 115: The Number One Content Batching Mistake |

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Content Batching Time Management?

Yes, the two go hand in hand, and content batching time management is incredibly important for consistency.

“You work with A LOT of different people. What is the one mistake you see the most, that if not made, would help with content batching?”
This was a question I got during my most recent annual survey, and the answer is easy – not prioritizing your batch week. This is the number one most common mistake I see made when it comes to batching, and frankly, the most detrimental one to a batch week.
In today’s episode I’m sharing not only the importance of prioritizing your batch week, but also 3 common obstacles that can impede a batch week and how you can work around them.
You’re listening to episode 115 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host – Amanda Warfield. Let’s dive in.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Watch the Basics of Content Marketing Lesson
This week’s action step: Pull out your yearly calendar and cross out batch week for every single month for the rest of the year. Go into your scheduling tool and remove your availability on batch weeks.
This week’s book recommendation: Deep Work by Cal Newport
Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield

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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.

You work with a lot of different people. What is the one mistake you see the most that if not made, would help with content batching? So this was a question that I got asked during my most recent annual survey. And honestly, the answer is easy. It’s not prioritizing your batch week. This is the number one most common mistake that I see made when it comes to batching.

And frankly, the most detrimental one to a batch week. In today’s episode, I’m sharing not only the importance of prioritizing your batch week, but also three common obstacles that can impede a batch week and how you can work around them. You’re listening to episode 115 of the Chasing Simple Podcast and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield.

Let’s dive in.

When it comes to content batching, the number one mistake that I see with my students with non-students even the number one issue that I bought up against in my own content batching is not being intentional about your time for batching. Here’s the thing. Sometimes life happens. I get that. I get it a hundred percent for this current batch week.

I am struggling with time because I forced myself into a not so ideal situation. It is March as I am recording this. And last week I launched. My website for my second business on Friday. And then on Tuesday, I launched doors opening for registration for my summit Chasing Simple, the Summit on Tuesday, three or four days later.

on top of that,

which in and of itself is crazy. Right. I get it. I know. This was not a good plan on my part in my defense. I did know that I was putting myself in a terrible situation. When I made the plan, there was just no other way around it, because if I didn’t get the website launched this month in March, it wasn’t going to be able to get launched until may because of the summit.

And that just wasn’t going to fly. So not ideal, but I knew what I was getting myself into. But on top of that on top of two major launches for two different businesses within a week of each other, It was also March, which means that my time is very much taken up by client work this month. So the way that my one-to-one content marketing strategy works currently is I have two packages.

One package is monthly clients, clients that want a ton of planning and strategy and handholding. And then I also have quarterly clients who we only meet once a quarter instead of monthly. So we don’t meet as often. I give them a general strategic plan and then they really take that and run with it as they create their own content.

Here’s the thing that means that the last month of every quarter, March being one of those is very full. My Mondays are top to bottom full of just client meetings. So on top of that, I’m also having to do all of my client work for both businesses outside of Monday. Normally all of my client work for the most part happens on Mondays the last month of the quarter, that’s not possible.

I usually have to have two client days a week because of it. So all that being said this month was crazy. Oh. And on top of that, I am attempting to batch two months of content instead of just one within my batch week for both businesses. So yeah, I get it. Sometimes life happens. Sometimes you are forced into a, not so ideal situation.

And occasionally get thrown off of your batch week. If that’s you, if you occasionally have a rough batch week, I am not speaking to you in this episode, stay tuned. You might still be able to learn something right, but who I’m really preaching to right now, are those of you that are consistently skipping your batch week because you just don’t have time batch week rolls around .

And you’re like, Ooh, I don’t have time this month to do it so next month. And then it happens over and over and over again. You’re finding that every single time, every single time batch week rolls around that you just don’t have time. And here’s the hard truth. Your batch week has to become a priority period.

My goal is always to help you fit your marketing into your business so that it doesn’t take over your business, but on some level, marketing your business in a timely and consistent manner, it does need to become a priority batching makes it so that it’s not an all-consuming priority, but it still needs to become a priority.

Batching just doesn’t magically make your marketing disappear. It’s a system that helps you do it easier, but it still has to be a priority. And I get it. Batch week is not fun. And it’s not exciting after you do the first few, but because it makes so many other aspects of your business flow easier, it does need to be a priority each and every month.

It’s kind of like if you have any household routines, for example, I have three different tasks that I do after I get ready for the day. And before I start work each and every morning, three different tasks, I make the bed, I scoop the cat litter box and then I empty the dishwasher or at least check it.

We don’t run it every single night because there’s only two of us, but I at least check the dishwasher. And if it was run the night, yeah. I empty it is this fun and exciting? No, but what doing this? Does this routine allows it so that anytime we use a dish, it can automatically be put rinsed off and put in the dishwasher.

So we don’t have dishes pile up in the sink so that the kitchen doesn’t become crazy. I know for a fact that right now, because I’m thrown off of that routine as well. We have dishes, pilot all along the counter, and that feels overwhelming. Every time I walk in there, I get frustrated because there’s another thing I need to do.

My life flows easier. If I’m sticking to that routine, it’s not fun. It’s not exciting, but every other part of life feels smoother when we don’t have dishes piling up. And the same is true for batch week. So there are three things that tend to get in the way, three reasons I hear for why people don’t have time for batch week.

The first is that they have too much client work and I get it, clients are the number one priority in any given business? Right? My clients and my students are my number one priority. Yes. Batch weekend marketing as a priority, but it’s a priority that is definitely secondary to the clients and students I already have.

So some months what I’ll do is I will block off client availability during batch week. If It’s the first or second month in a quarter. I won’t have as many client meetings that I need to hold. So I can mark off that Monday as Nope. Can’t take clients that week. Sometimes I’ll do that so that I have the full week just to myself for batch week.

Sometimes that’s not possible like this month. It’s not possible for me to mark off a full Monday to not have any client calls.

So if you’re there, if you can’t mark off client time, Or if you are, for example, working a full 30 to 40 hours a week solely on client work, which if that is you, it’s time to think about restructuring, AKA raising your prices and taking on less people. But as the conversation for another episode, if you’re at that place where you just cannot not take client work, if you don’t have the capability of being more flexible with your client time, what you need to do.

Is get real about how much time you can devote to batch week. So if that means you can only do two hours, let’s say you’re like, okay, I’m going to get up and do two hours a day, Monday through Friday during batch week. And so I have 10 hours and that’s all I can give to batch week. That’s okay. I have a student who runs her blog, her batch week and five hours of her batch week..

Her main concern. Her main priority is homeschooling her son. So she only has about five hours a week to work on our blogs. So she gets her bachelor done in five hours a week. The key to this is creating less content than you think you need to scale back how much you’re putting out so that you can create all of it within just 10 hours.

So that’s how either block off time for your clients or have a very small batch week and create less content that’s okay. Because remember the goal is consistency, not constantly, and it’s better to show up less often consistently than it is to try to just always be putting out content. The other thing that tends to get in the way is projects with deadlines.

And frankly, this just comes down to project management. If there is a project you’re working on and the deadline falls during batch week, or right after batch week, even before. You’re not going to have back tweaked to work on it. You need to manage your time and your resources so that it’s done before batch week begins.

So if you’re the one giving yourself this deadline, give yourself smaller, shorter window, a different deadline before batch week begins. If someone else has given you this deadline, let’s say you’re part of a collaboration. And they say, Hey, I need this by this date. And that date falls right before, right after your batch week.

Make a note to yourself that it’s actually due the Friday before batch week so that you get it to them before you even begin batch week so that they have it on time. But you’re also not stressed about trying to do it during batch week set a new deadline for yourself. And then the third thing that can inevitably happen and get in the way of batch week is.

Random life happenings. If your kid gets sick, if you get sick, whatever the case may be, there are 1,000,001 different unexpected things that can fall into this category. These kinds of things will not be the norm, but if it does happen, you do as much as you can. If you get sick and you miss your whole batch week.

That’s okay. If your kid gets sick and you miss two days of your batch week and you only have three days work with the time you have and get as much done as you possibly can. Then what I do on those months is I will set aside one hour of my Thursday or your Friday, whatever the last day of your work week is I set aside one hour and on that one hour, I continue to finish and schedule as much batch work as possible.

So I, I play catch up essentially. So during my however many days, I had however much time I had during batch week. I got as far as I could, during that one hour of each Thursday, each whatever your Friday is. I’m continuing to work on content just for that one hour, that’s it. And I’m just getting as much done in scheduled as I can usually that’ll end up most typically looking like, okay, I’ve got everything.

I spent that hour finalizing and scheduling everything for next week. If I have extra time, I’ll work ahead. But that’s usually what that tends to look like.

This could mean putting out less than you intended to for the upcoming month and that’s okay. That’s fine. You are doing the best you can with the time that you were allotted by life. There are some things you cannot plan for and plan around, right? So you do this for that entire, those next three weeks, one hour a week.

So for the next three weeks is what you do one hour a week getting as much content finished as you can. And then when your next batch week rolls around, you just jump right back into it and get back on track. The only way this works, though, the only way all of this works. Is if you set aside the time for batch week, your action step right now is to pull out your yearly calendar and cross out batch week for every single month for the rest of the year.

Go into your scheduling tool right now and remove your availability for calls, client meetings, whatever on batch weeks, if you can. And then that gives you the ability to prioritize batch week. It gives you the ability to decide. How much time you can work around your clients with that gives you the ability to set better deadlines and manage your projects a little bit better, a little bit easier and simpler.

And it also gives you the ability to, if you have a rough batch week jumped back into it the next month without getting behind and staying behind. So this week’s book recommendation is Deep Work by Cal Newport. Now. As with every Cal Newport book that I read, I do think some of his ideas are pretty extreme, but the underlying message is good.

And so I, once again, recommend this one is a great read. I am 100%, 110% behind the idea of deep work on. I’ve said this in a couple different podcasts, but every Tuesday, that is my time for deep project work for this business. Every Wednesday is my time for deep project work on the other business.

Mondays are for clients. Thursdays are for admin in meetings. That allows me to do this deep work and every single day, the first hour I start work at eight, but my client hours don’t start until nine. So I have an hour every single morning as well to do deep work before I’m interrupted by email, social media clients.

Anything else? Highly highly recommend this book again, as always a caveat with his books there, it, he is a bit extreme in some of his ideas. I like to find a little bit more balanced with the things that I’m doing in the way I’m implementing these things. But I think it’s definitely worth the read. So I will link to that in the show notes, go check it out.

And until next time I hope that you go out and Uncomplicate your life and biz.