How to Batch Create Reels

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One of the most asked questions I received in 2021 was how I batch my reels. But I put off creating this episode because I was hesitant to make anyone feel like they NEED to be creating reels. I know that many of you listening aren’t ready, or aren’t interested in creating reels for their Instagram account. Some of you aren’t even on Instagram. All of which is okay. This episode was created to help those that are ready, or are already creating Reels. Please don’t feel like this is something that you need to be doing. However, I still encourage you to listen because you never know what might click for you about batching in general while you listen to my Reels batching process!

Today we’re diving into my exact step by step process for batching an entire month of reels. You’re listening to episode 098 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host – Amanda Warfield. Let’s dive in.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Grab the free lesson on the Basics of Content Marketing!
Snag a bluetooth keyboard for yourself: Here’s the one I use
This week’s action step: As you scroll reels this week, watch them with a strategic eye. If there’s something you can replicate – save that post!
This week’s book recommendation: It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield

“Ready to learn more about growing your business on social media? Check out my article How to Batch Create Instagram Reels in The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Business on Social Media from The Rising Tide Society & HoneyBook.”

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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!

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

One of the most asked questions I received in 2021 was how I batch my Reels. But I put off creating this episode because I was honestly hesitant than anyone felt like they needed to be creating Reels. I know that many of you listening, aren’t ready or aren’t interested in creating reels for their Instagram account.

Some of you aren’t even on Instagram, all of which is okay. This episode was created to help those that are ready or are already creating Reels. Please don’t feel like this is something that you need to be doing. However, I still encourage you to listen because you never know what might click for you about batching in general, while you listened to my Reels batching process. Today, we’re diving into my exact step-by-step process for batching an entire month of reels.

You’re listening to episode 98 of the Chasing Simple Podcast and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. Let’s dive in.

If you skip the intro to this episode, just a quick reminder that I am not encouraging to use Reels, unless it’s something that you feel is right for your business. I talk a lot more about that in the intro, and you can go back and listen to it if you did skip over it. But. Just in case there are those of you listening that skipped over it entirely.

I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to create and produce Reels in order to have a successful content marketing plan. But it’s not what I’m saying with this episode, but I got this question so many times in 2021 that I feel like I needed to make an episode about it.

So my pre-step to batching, my Reels is saving as I scroll. Here’s the thing you don’t have to come up with reels from scratch. The whole premise of Tik Tok and Reels is to replicate and put your own twist and spin on what other people are doing. That’s why, when you’re looking at Reels. And you’re scrolling Reels, you’re seeing similar things over and over and over again.

If you’re seeing something over and over and over again, or you’re hearing someone use the same sound over and over and over again, that’s a trend. So. The idea behind it is that you don’t have to come up with brand new things on your own. Some people do, and that’s great. That tends to be more advanced, but as I scroll, because I enjoy looking at Tik Tok and I enjoy looking at Reels as I’m scrolling on Instagram, and I am looking at Reels for fun.

I also in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, okay, how can I use this? Can I use this? Do I have something similar I can do? Can I put my own twist? And does it feel reasonable if there’s a crazy dance? I know that I’m probably not going to be able to replicate it. It’s not something that I’m going to be able to do.

So I’m, I’m asking myself these questions as I watch and anything that I feel like I might be able to replicate, even if it’s just a, I probably could, or maybe I could I save it so that I can find it again later when it’s time for step one. So step one of batching my Reels, when I create my plan for the month for my, all of my content, my entire content marketing plan, I decide when I’m going to be posting a Reel before I even know what the Reel is about or what sound I’m using or anything like that.

So I’ll go through when I’m creating my content, I’ll be writing out all the content I’ll decide when I’m posting on Instagram. And when I decide when I’m posting, I will also write down if it’s a. Reel, if it’s going to be a carousel, if it’s going to be a graphic, if it’s going to be a static image, if it’s going to show my face, if it’s not, I write that down before I decide anything else, because that helps me frame what I’m looking at.

It just gives me another step to go off of, instead of I could create anything. So I decide when I’m posting Reels before I decide what I’m posting about. Step two. Once I know when I’m going to post Reels, I’ll go into my saved posts, those posts that I have been saving as I scroll, and I’m going to see what jumps out at me.

I look at them and see if there’s anything that I’ve saved that I really feel like doing. And if I do then step three is to write down the sound because it can be hard to find it. Sometimes I write down the sound and the general topic or theme. Inside of my content calendar. So I’ve got on February 2nd that I’m going to post a Reel I’m making this up as I go.

Don’t go and look back and see what my real on February 2nd is. Cause I have no idea if that’s actually what I’m doing, I’m recording this in December. I decide on February 2nd that I’m going to post a re I don’t even know if that’s a day like a weekday. It could be Sunday. But I decided on February 2nd that I’m going to post the Reel, I go into my Instagram account.

I look at my saved ones, anything that pops out at me or that I think, Ooh, this goes with the general, not theme of the month, because I don’t like doing monthly themes, but this, I could create something similar to what I’m already talking about this month or in this time period of my business. This is a good sound to use.

I’m going to redo this one. Okay. Write down the sound, write down my general topic general theme. Then step four after I’ve got all of this sound and all of when I’m posting, what I’m posting, so on and so forth, then I will set up my tripod and I will record my reels for the upcoming month. I record all of them.

I don’t do anything else, but record them. Sometimes if it’s got a couple. Sections to it. I will go ahead and cut and paste in there, but that’s it. Get them recorded and then save as drafts to my account.

After I do that, step five is to go back and add text to all of the reels that I filmed. It’s very important to me that I am doing captions, closed captioning, all of that stuff. So I will add text all the Reels that I filmed. Pro-tip if you go in and you already have an image of your brand colors, you can copy and paste that into the Reel and then use that to make all the text, your brand colors.

Second pro tip for this, get a Bluetooth keyboard. I cannot recommend a Bluetooth keyboard enough, but if you’re going to be doing a lot of typing, whether it’s for Reels, for story text, whether it’s just for responding to DMS, having a Bluetooth keyboard is so, so, so helpful. I will link to one in the show notes for you.

It will be an Amazon affiliate link, but it’s a very cheap, I think it’s like $20, 15 to $20 and it has been amazing to help get texts onto Reels and all those other things.

Second tip, get a Bluetooth keyboard and make that a lot faster for yourself. Once you’ve got the text onto the Reels, you’re going to save as drafts, but you’re also going to save to your device. Here’s the thing. Anytime your Instagram account gets updated. Anytime you delete the app. At any point, your Reels drafts can disappear, which is why once it’s finished, you want to make sure you’re saving it to your device, whether you’re recording on your phone, whether you’re a tablet, you’re recording on whatever that looks like,

You’re going to want to make sure that you have it saved to your device, just in case things go wrong. Step six is to write all of the captions, create all of the graphics. If you use them, if you use a graphic for the cover image, if not, that’s totally fine. And to gather your hashtags list. So write your captions for each of them, create all the graphics, do all of the outside of the app stuff, gather all of that together.

And then step seven is to email yourself reminders and the information that you’ll need for your Reels. what I do is I open up my email and in the subject line I write Reel and then I put whatever the sound name is, and then I’ll put the date or for which business it’s for. So Reel, sound, date, whatever, put that in the subject line.

Then in the body of the email, I will copy and paste the caption that I’ve written and copy and paste the hashtags that I’ve gathered. Put all of that inside the body of the email. If I’ve created a graphic, I will. Attach it to that email. And then I will schedule, send this email for whatever date this Reel is supposed to go up.

So this allows you to be in a set it and forget it kind of mode, which is the whole premise of batching right? So even though you can’t schedule Reels, you can forget about them until you get that email the day of, and then once you get that email, you’re like, oh, okay, it’s a Reel day. Let me copy and paste the caption and a hashtag.

So a copy, all of that, save the image to my phone or my iPad, whichever I’ll go into Instagram, open up that draft. If it’s not there for whatever reason, I’ve got it backed up on my phone. Right. Open up that Reel, add the caption, add the cover, click post. And it’s that simple the day of, so you don’t have to think about it once you’ve already got it created and you just schedule send for the morning of, I typically set mine for like 7:00 AM. So that it’s at the top of my inbox when I opened up my stuff in the morning. So that’s it. Those are my seven steps. I’m going to run through them again. One more time. First. You’ve got your, I guess at eight steps. Cause you’ve got your pre-step, which is, as you’re watching Reels, if you see something, you know, you can replicate, save it.

Step one. When you create your plan for the month, decide when you’re going to post Reels how many Reels are you posting? When are you posting them? Step two, look at those saved Reels and decide which ones you’re going to do this month. And then step three, write down the sounds and the general topic or theme for each Reel inside of that content calendar that you’ve already been working on, right.

Step four record all of the Reels that you’ve just planned for. Save them as drafts. Step five, add text to all of the Reels that you found pro tip, have an image with your brand colors on it, so you can easily copy and paste that in and use it for all the texts on the real and pro tip number two, get a Bluetooth keyboard to make this a much, much, much faster.

Then save all of those, both as drafts and to your device. Step six, write all of the captions, create all of the graphics, gather your hashtags, all of those things that you need to do. Step seven, email yourself, reminders that will show up in your inbox the day it needs to be posted so that you don’t have to think about those Reels again, until it shows up in your inbox.

And then once it shows up in your inbox, you just hit post. So those are the eight steps. Now I actually have a bonus tip for you as well. A student once asked me about how I stay on top of trends. If I batch my reel so far in advance, I mentioned trends earlier. If you’re seeing the same thing over and over and over again, it’s because people are capitalizing on a trend right?

Here’s a shorter. I don’t, I don’t stay on top of trends. The longer answer is that if I decide that I want to hop on our particular trend and I really want to be timely with it, I’ll schedule that Reel for the beginning of the month. So if there’s a trend as I’m creating content that I know is live right now, that is really happening.

Really big people are getting a lot of views with it. I will put that as one of the very first Reels that are coming out in the next month. Here’s the thing though, batching doesn’t mean that you cannot create extra content. If there’s a trend that you really want to hop on, create that content and do it. You do not have to wait until your next batch week to do so.

Bashing your content is just a safety net. It’s not the end all be all. So I don’t really worry about trends, but if that’s something that’s important to you, and there is a trend that you really want to hop on, don’t feel like you can’t okay. Get in there, do the trend and post the extra content. It’s not that big of a deal

now this week’s action step. As you’re scrolling Reels this week, watch them with a strategic eye. If there is something that you can replicate, go ahead and save that post. I want you to go ahead and start getting into the mindset of, as you’re looking at Reels, as you’re looking at content, if there are things that inspire you, save it, come back to it for your next batch week.

And this week’s book recommendation is It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. This book was written so well, I don’t, I always want to tell you guys more than I should, because I love it, I’ll say this, there are two men in this woman’s life that she could potentially end up with, not at the same time, but that she could potentially end up with.

And you, cannot decide who you want to ship for a long time. There were so long where I was like, I want him to end up with her, but I also want them to end up with her. It was really well-written and I highly recommend it. If you are a fiction lover, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover.

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

Hey friend! Just a head’s up — this post may contain affiliate links!

Episode 098: My Step-By-Step Guide for Batching Reels

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