3 Easy Ways to Simplify Your Content Creation Process

Hey hey to all my amazing listeners! I’m finally feeling like the launch dust is settling. Even though I was in total flow throughout the entire launch of the podcast, I still needed some time to find my groove after the fact and to slow down a bit. 

Craig and I went camping with friends right after, and it was so nice to get out of the city. I’ve been craving travel lately. It’s medicine for my soul. So I’ve been looking at different places we can jet off to in the near future.

I could talk about travel all day, but we’re here today to chat about a very hot topic amongst small business owners, how to simplify the content creation process.

The top questions or comments I get asked are:

• Why is content creation so hard, and is there a way to make it easier?
• What should I say, how should I say it, and how often should I communicate with my audience? Are that 2 emails a month or 1, how many social media posts should I do per week?

And lately, I’ve heard from small business owners that they don’t always feel inspired or motivated to create content because it takes so long for them to go from start to finish. Meaning, to think about what to say and how, finding the right photo, to writing the social media caption or email, to finding hashtags, to posting or scheduling content.

Hours creating Instagram reels or refilming their stories 5, 6, or 20 times, or creating an email and sending it. 

What weighs small business owners down, even more, is when they don’t get the engagement they expected. So all this work that goes into content creation feels hard most of the time. 

And I totally understand. I remember when we owned the brick and mortar there were days I didn’t have time to post, let alone think about what to post and how to say it. So it just didn’t happen. 

So I sympathize with small business owners trying to simplify their content creation process. I also know how important it is for growing and scaling your business.

It’s also why my responses, like many I give, are unconventional, meaning I could give you 3 easy ways or steps right off the bat to simplify your content creation process. But I’ve learned to listen to my clients and audience on a deeper level. And I’ve asked a tone of clarifying questions to get to the root of why small business owners are struggling with content creation.

And what I’ve found is a few different types of small business owners and how they are operating when it comes to marketing and content creation.

One type is the small business owner who is winging it when it comes to content creation. This looks like creating content such as social media posts, stories, reels, or emails without a bigger picture messaging strategy and plan in place. It’s done at the moment, usually rushed or out of pressure to post something that day, it’s very spontaneous and doesn’t fit into a cohesive brand message. These people often feel scattered, and not that organized. These are my creatives and content creation is seen as more of an art that is led through inspiration, not structure. In fact, these small business owners hate structure. So winging it and going with the flow is how they’ve always operated. They aren’t short of ideas but they find content creation hard or that it takes up so much time out of their day. They struggle because they aren’t sure what their audience likes or doesn’t like aka they are winging it.

The other type is the small business owner who doesn’t know what to say or how to say it. So content creation always feels forced because they spend so much time thinking about it. These small business owners can get caught up with scrolling on social media looking for inspiration. Their content creation process is a mish-mash of other people's ideas made on their own, and it’s sporadic because when they don’t know what to post they get overwhelmed and avoid it. Before you know it days, maybe even weeks have gone by.

And the other type of small business owner operates the business and basically every aspect of it. So TIME is a major factor. They are burnt out and content creation is the last thing they want to think of but they feel guilty not posting on social media or emailing their audience. They have a to-list a mile long, and if they find time to eat lunch during the day that’s a bonus. So content creation is an afterthought...

You can also be a hybrid of all three, which is totally normal too. 

I lived within that all three while I owned my brick and mortar small business and I knew better with the marketing and communication experience I had. 

That is why I want to offer some perspective on how to simplify your content creation process so that you enjoy it, it’s not something you hate. But more importantly, so that you can connect with the most aligned clients.

So the first step to simplifying your content creation process...

Create your unique brand message

What is a unique brand message?

This is what you do, why you do it, and how you’re different

In the second episode, I talked about the three pillars all entrepreneurs need to attract more clients with the first pillar being embodying your truth. The reason embodying your truth is so important is it’s hard to connect to your why, and how you’re different if you’re emulating what everyone else is doing. But also what you’re doing might not actually be the thing you’re meant to do at your core.

I shared the story of my brick and mortar and how that was an escape move, not an aligned move. 

Once you know your unique brand message, you’ll stop questioning what to say and how to say it because you’ll have a clear strategy for what you’re here to talk about. It also helps the winging it small business owner with their content creation because you’ll have a cohesive brand message to help guide your inspiration without feeling restricted or too structured. 

The second way to simplify your content creation is through re-purposing or batching. So what does this mean, it means picking a parent piece of content. Content is a blog post, email, social media content, podcasting. From that parent piece of content, you can repurpose it for the remainder of your communication channels.

For example, podcasting is my parent piece of content. I publish a new episode every Tuesday. Then I share it on social media, I email my community, I share it in my stories, instead of creating original content for every platform or method of communication. That is what exhausts most small business owners when it comes to content creation. We make the process so much harder than it needs to be. Prior to podcasting, my blog was my parent content. I’d write that once a week and then share it via my communication channels. For the creatives, that’s also me, I don’t limit myself to creating just this content. If I feel inspired I allow myself to play and show up in that light. So, it can be a content creation process super structured or less structured. Trust your creative flow. 

The third way to simplify your content creation process is to find silence, take time away, pause. Something I wasn’t very good at when I ran my brick-and-mortar business. And for the longest time, I believed I needed to do all the things or my business would crumble. This is not true. In fact, you can’t create from a place of burnout. So if TIME or lack thereof is your reason for not marketing your small business or having no energy to think, then it’s time to step away, take a break, and pause. Also, your role as the CEO and founder is to focus heavily on the revenue-generating tasks. Being visible and reaching your potential customers through content creation is vital, so saying you don’t have time for it is like saying you don’t want to grow your business. But as I mentioned you can’t create from a place of burnout. This step has been my biggest learning over the last 10 years.