Welcome to our latest video blog! If your social media is either “all in” for two weeks or completely silent for six months, this one is for you. In this short talk, our CEO Celene Hoag shares the exact batching system we use to run our clients’ social media, and how your business can use it to stay visible online without giving up your evenings.
Sound Familiar?
You start the year strong. You’re going to post every day, do stories, show up consistently. It works for a week, maybe two. Then client work takes over, you post twice the next month, and before you know it your most recent post still says Merry Christmas 2023.
If you’re the one doing the marketing on top of delivering the service, keeping the books and closing the sales, you’re not lazy. You’re running a business. The problem isn’t your discipline. It’s that you’re trying to create content one day at a time.
“We Don’t Get Leads From Social Media Anyway”
Celene hears this all the time, and she agrees. Unless you have a huge following (think 100,000 followers, or millions on TikTok), social media probably isn’t your main lead source. But that’s not the job it’s doing for you. Social media:
- Works as a search engine. People actively search social platforms for services, and for some buyers it is the first place they look.
- Keeps you in touch with hundreds of people at once. You can’t make 200 phone calls a week or book 200 lunches a quarter. Posting keeps you top of mind with every contact you’ve met at an event, one to 200, one to 1,000 or one to 10,000.
- Builds trust before the first call. Ten businesses in your area offer the same services you do. Your social media shows your personality, how you work and what you value, which is often what tips a buyer toward you.
In short: social media isn’t for generating leads. It’s for nurturing them so they think of you when they’re ready, and closing them by tipping the balance in your favour.
How to Batch Social Media Content in 4 Steps
1. Know who you’re talking to
Before you brainstorm, get clear on your audience: who they are, what they want from you and what you want to showcase. People like, share and save content that is entertaining, engaging, informative or genuinely useful. Sketch a simple map of the types of content that fit your business.
2. Brainstorm once a quarter
Set aside time once a quarter (or whenever you run dry) to build a bank of ideas. Celene’s tip: you can brainstorm 200 ideas in five minutes with ChatGPT and cross off the roughly 98% that don’t fit. The goal is to never sit down to create and wonder, “What should I post today?” As a business owner you already face enough decision fatigue.
3. Block one morning a month to create
Instead of creating every night, block two to four hours once or twice a month and get it done in one go. You’ll get faster with practice. Celene records four to six reels in about 30 minutes: a different shirt, a different room, hair flipped to the other side, a different shade of lipstick, back to back to back. Then she edits (with AI help these days), writes the captions and schedules everything at once.
4. Schedule everything in one sitting
A scheduling tool lets you post once and publish everywhere: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn (company and personal) and your Google Business Profile. We use Metricool, which has a free plan, and some tools will even suggest posting times based on your engagement. One morning, and your whole month is done.
Where AI Helps, and Where It Hurts
AI is great for brainstorming and editing. It is not a shortcut to a month of finished posts. Generic AI content is everywhere now, and your audience can spot it instantly and scroll right past. It doesn’t show your personality, your core values or why your business is different, because it’s designed to sound like everyone else. Use AI to speed up the work around your content, not to replace your voice.
Make It a Habit, Not a Resolution
Batching is a lower-intensity habit, which makes it easier to keep, but you still have to do it. Put a recurring block in your calendar (maybe the third Wednesday of every month, not the always-busy first Monday) and protect it like a client meeting. Social media doesn’t have to be a choice between burning out and disappearing. You just don’t want to be a ghost online.
Your Questions, Answered (From the Q&A)
Does posting through a scheduler hurt your reach compared to posting natively?
Algorithm tests go back and forth, and any difference is small. Posting at all makes the biggest difference. We’ve A/B tested it for clients, one month scheduled manually in each app and one month through a scheduler, and haven’t seen a difference. If a scheduler makes your life easier, use it.
How do you build momentum when you’re just starting out?
Early engagement tells the platform people like your content, so it shows it to more people. You can’t fake that, but you can build a “hype team,” such as a networking group that genuinely likes and shares each other’s posts (and you return the favour). If your following is still small, running ads at the start can help you reach the point where the algorithm takes over. Celene sees 1,000 and 10,000 followers as milestones where things noticeably pick up. And stay consistent: if you drop off for a while, you lose your place in people’s feeds.
How often should you post?
Studies may say three times a day, but almost no business owner has time for that. More is better, but pick a cadence you can actually sustain, whether that’s twice a month, once a week or three times a week.
Should you pay to promote posts?
If you’re already getting the visibility and engagement you want, you don’t need to. If you do boost or run ads, keep control: don’t use the platform’s suggested audience, and skip Meta’s Advantage+ placements. Celene’s analogy: imagine buying billboard space and getting back alleys and empty industrial parks instead of the highway. Build your own audiences and choose your own placements.
What This Looks Like for a Law Firm or Professional Practice
The same system works for law firms, accounting practices and other professional services firms, where trust is the whole sale. A prospective client comparing firms may well check your social profiles before booking a consultation. Batching lets your firm show up consistently with plain-language explainers, team introductions and community involvement, all planned in one monthly session instead of squeezed between billable hours. Just run your content plan past your marketing rules first: law firms should check their law society or Bar Association advertising guidelines before publishing.
Want the Templates and Resources That Go With This Talk?
This video is the short version. Our free Spend Less Time on Social Media masterclass goes deeper into content pillars, content calendars and batch creating content for your business. And if you’d rather hand off the planning, filming and scheduling altogether, our team runs social media for businesses across Canada and the US.
Book a free discovery call to talk about your social media, or explore more on the blog.
Transcript
Lightly edited for readability: filler words and caption errors removed; meaning unchanged.
0:00 Celene: Before I start, just a little bit about me and what I do. I’m the CEO of Chops Consulting and, without getting too much into it, we basically take businesses that are doing just fine and make them fantastic. [Applause] Maybe you’re trying to get healthy. You might go to a gym, you might eat a salad once in a while. But let’s say you really want to nail it. Maybe you have an ex you want to make super jealous. You’re going to hire a trainer, a nutritionist, maybe a professional chef. That’s kind of what we do for businesses. We’re the full team that comes in, takes what you’re doing right now and streamlines it, elevates it, introduces technology, makes sure your processes are working with you and not against you, and basically helps you make more money, which is ultimately what we’re in business to do.
0:54 Tonight I’m doing something a little more geared toward smaller businesses. Who here has a social media manager, or somebody else who does the marketing for them, like a little fairy? Who here is that little fairy, on top of being the service delivery person, the bookkeeper, the salesperson and everything else in your business? And who here flip-flops? You think you’re going to do a really good job, like a New Year’s resolution: “I’m going to post every day, I’m going to do stories, I’m going to do this and that.” It’s good for a week, maybe two, and then you’re burnt out. Maybe the next month you post two posts, and suddenly all this time has gone by and your last post was “Merry Christmas 2023.” [Laughter]
1:42 So I’m going to share a strategy we actually use when we run our clients’ social media, one you can implement so you’re not chained to the social media machine all the time.
1:53 Before I get into it, a little bit about why social media matters, because a lot of small businesses say, “I don’t get leads from social media. I don’t need it anyway.” And that’s true. Unless you have 100,000 followers, or 3 million on TikTok, you’re probably not getting leads from social media. But it’s actually a really good search engine. People are searching for services. I know somebody who bought a $300,000 steel structure on Facebook Marketplace, because that’s where they search for things.
2:25 The other reason social media is important is that it lets you build a relationship, not just one to one, but one to 200, one to 500, one to 1,000, one to 10,000, however many followers you have. You go to all these events and meet all these great people, but you’re not going to call them up every week. You can’t make 200 phone calls a week or have 200 lunches a quarter to keep in touch. So it’s a great way to keep in touch. I can’t tell you how many times I go to events and people are like, “Oh, Celene!” and they’re best buds with me, and I haven’t talked to them in two years. But they see me online, so they think, “Oh yeah, we’re friends.” It nurtures that relationship.
3:04 The other thing it does is build trust and rapport. It shows who you are, how you do what you do, how you operate your business and your core values. Maybe there are 10 landscaping companies out there. They all do the same thing you do. They all mow lawns. From the website, you all have your standard services. People search on Google. Your social media shows your personality, your character: why should somebody choose your landscaping business over the 10 others in your area?
3:33 So it is important. It’s not important for generating leads for small businesses. It’s important for nurturing leads, so that when people are ready to buy, they think of you. And it’s important for closing leads, so it tips the balance toward working with you.
3:54 But you don’t need to be doom-scrolling Instagram for inspiration every night after your kids go to bed and your shop’s closed up, watching 10 videos of dogs juggling until you’re burnt out and haven’t posted anything. What I do, and what I recommend for all small business owners, is batching your content. It’s a really easy strategy.
4:12 The first thing you need to do is figure out your social profile. Who is your audience? What do they want to see from you? What do you want to showcase? People like, share and save things that are entertaining, engaging, informative and useful: “Oh, I want to save this for later,” or “This is so helpful, I’m going to share it with somebody.” So build out a little map of the type of content you want to do, and brainstorm. You can do this once a quarter. You can brainstorm 200 ideas in five minutes with ChatGPT and cross off about 98% of them that are garbage. But you build that bank of ideas so you’re not sitting there every single time you create content, tapping your foot, thinking, “What should I create today?” That’s exhausting. You have decision fatigue as a business owner. You have to make so many decisions a day. You don’t have time to constantly reinvent the wheel. So the first step is brainstorm. Do it once a quarter, and whenever you run out of ideas, brainstorm more.
5:13 On a monthly basis, you should be creating content once, maybe twice a month, and not more. You have your brainstorm, you pick your ideas, and you block time once or twice a month for maybe two to four hours. As you get more efficient, you can spend less time. Everybody can take a morning a month to do social. You can’t do it every single night, but you can block off a morning a month, and you just bang it out.
5:41 The 90-minute version of this talk has a lot more detail, and if any of you are interested, I have templates, resources and slides that go along with it that I can send you, so connect with me after.
5:50 I can record four to six reels in 30 minutes. I put on a different shirt, I stand in a different room, I flip my hair to the other side so it doesn’t look like they were all recorded at the same time. I know you’re laughing, but I actually do that. I’ll put on a different shade of lipstick, and I record them back to back to back. Now I have AI edit them, then I write the captions and schedule it all at once. So in one morning a month, I have scheduled absolutely all of my social media posts for the whole month.
6:27 If you haven’t used a scheduling tool before, there are lots of great ones out there. We use Metricool because it has a free plan, and we have an agency plan for all of our clients. You post once and it goes on all your accounts: Google Business Profile, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, your LinkedIn company page and your personal LinkedIn, with just one post. It will even optimize the posting times based on your engagement. It’s a really easy way to do it all at once. It’s like putting away laundry: you wait three weeks for it to pile up into a mountain and then… just kidding, that one you should do as you go.
7:05 The only other thing I’ll say is be careful with AI. I’m sure you’ve all seen, and are burnt out on, all the ChatGPT posts and ChatGPT content with em dashes. There are models that do it a bit better, and you can train them on your voice a little, but don’t be generic, because people clock that instantly and scroll right past. That’s one place you don’t want to take a shortcut. A lot of people think, “ChatGPT can create a whole month’s worth of content in 30 seconds and post it.” But your audience isn’t going to resonate with it, because it’s not your personality. It doesn’t showcase your core values or why you’re different, because it literally looks like everybody else’s. It’s pretty much designed to. So that’s one place you don’t want to cut corners.
7:50 And then, keep it consistent. Batching is one way not to burn out, but you still have to remember to do it. What I recommend is literally scheduling a recurring task in your calendar. Probably not the first Monday of every month, that’s a busy Monday, but maybe the third Wednesday of every month, or whenever works. Block it in your calendar and have it repeat, because like any habit, it takes consistency to build it and keep it going. This is a lower-intensity habit, so it’s easier to continue, but you still have to do it.
8:29 And that’s pretty much my talk. Social media doesn’t need to be a choice between all in and burning out, or nothing at all, because you don’t want to be a complete ghost online. Before I hand this mic off, does anybody have any questions?
8:58 Audience member: Does posting from a third-party tool like that yield the same results as actually going on each app and posting natively?
9:08 Celene: There’s been a lot of testing around the algorithm. Sometimes it shows it makes a very slight difference; sometimes it makes no difference at all. What I will say is that posting at all is going to make the biggest difference. Maybe you’ll get 3% more reach if you go on all those platforms and spend all that time on it, but how much money could you have made doing other work in all the time you spent posting on those platforms every day? For most business owners, it’s not a noticeable difference. For our clients, we’ve actually A/B tested it: we’ve done a month manually scheduling and a month in a scheduler, and we haven’t seen a difference. If it’s going to make your life easier when everything is chaos, go ahead and schedule it.
9:51 Audience member: Are there strategies for keeping it going? When you first started out, there was a lot of hype and buzz around your account. How do you keep that going?
10:04 Celene: There are different ways of doing it, and I could do a whole talk on this. The algorithm feeds itself. The more engagement you get early on, the more Meta, or whichever platform it is, thinks, “Wow, people really like this, I’m going to show it to more people.” Then it gets engagement there, and it shows it to even more people. That’s a really good way to build it. You can’t really fake that. You have to have engaged followers who are liking, saving, commenting and sharing. What you can do is have a hype team. Maybe you send it to your friends, without annoying them too much, or you have a networking group where you always like and share each other’s posts. You want to be reciprocating; you don’t want to say, “Always like and share my posts,” and not give back. That’s a really good way to fuel the algorithm a little.
10:46 If you don’t have many followers yet, it’s going to be really hard to get traction. You don’t want to spend eight hours choreographing a dance and editing a video for three views. I don’t recommend dancing anyway. But you can run ads initially to build your following enough that it starts feeding the algorithm, because it will gain momentum. There are a few milestones: 1,000 followers is a milestone, and 10,000 followers is a milestone where you get a noticeable pickup. If some of your reels start trending or going viral, the next ones will also be shown to more people. So consistency is key. If you drop off for a while, you kill the algorithm. All the people whose stories and feeds you showed up in, you’re lost to them, because their feeds have been filled with new things. Consistency is probably the best, easiest thing you can do.
11:43 Audience member: What does consistency look like? What’s the optimal number of posts?
11:51 Celene: The absolute optimal is living on social, like those influencers who post 100 stories of putting on makeup, cooking and taking their kids to daycare. That’s not realistic for small business owners. I’d say choose a cadence that’s realistic for you, whether that’s twice a month, once a week or three times a week. More is better, but you have to be realistic, because you don’t want to burn yourself out. There are algorithm studies that say posting three times a day is best, but nobody here has time to post three times a day. So do whatever you can.
12:26 Audience member: I do!
12:30 Celene: You do, because you are the superhero we all wish we could be. [Laughter]
12:44 Audience member: On Instagram, on your business account, you can hit “promote” and pay to get promoted. Is that necessary, or not if you create enough volume?
13:00 Celene: If you have enough followers that you’re getting the visibility and engagement you want without it, you don’t need it. The only caveat: when you promote, it’s just like any other Facebook ad. There are two things you don’t want to do. Don’t let them use their suggested audience, and don’t use Advantage+ placements. I heard a really good analogy about Advantage+ placements a while ago. Imagine you’re buying billboards. Everybody’s buying billboards on the main highway; those are really expensive and everyone gets lots of visibility. Now imagine you’re selling billboard space, but you also have back alleys and industrial parks that are ghost towns, so nobody sees them. That’s kind of what Advantage+ does. It’s Meta’s way of filling the back alleys and industrial parks where nobody really goes or engages, so you’re wasting money. It sounds easier, like “I’ll let Meta figure out who my audience is and do the hard work,” but that’s throwing away money. So always create your own audiences and always choose your own placements.
14:00 But if you don’t have a lot of followers or engagement, because your following is small or you haven’t posted in a while, go ahead and boost it or run ads. It’s kind of the same thing. Just make sure you’re in control and you’re not letting Meta sell you garbage ad placements. Anything else? Okay, awesome. Thank you! [Applause]
