Time, they say is the most valuable resource when it comes to content creation. You need a lot of it to think, write, create, edit and publish your content.
Even post-publishing activities such as engaging with your target audience can be time-consuming. Thus, time is your best friend as a creative.
We often find that it isn’t enough though. Due to reasons, we can find ourselves working under pressure to finish content within a specified time limit or missing a deadline, and having to reschedule our content creation for later times. The problems result in content that is not properly done or wasted time–time that can never be returned. So saving time is key to anything one is involved in.
As a creative, managing time has insurmountable benefits. It improves your quality of content by allowing you to relax and make what you need to make. Your quality of life is improved as you are more organized. And most of all, you have time to keep track of your growth.
In this article, we would be discussing ways in which you can cut your content creation time up to half of what it currently is. These tips are simple and easy to implement and would greatly improve your content creation.
1. Create A Content Plan
Creating content without a plan is a futile effort. A content plan briefly describes the organization and documentation of all the ideas involved in making your content.
By carving a content plan before creating content, you have taken control of the content creation process. Surprises, distractions, or problems that may arise during content creation would be foreseen, or easier to deal with when you have a plan in place.
2. Develop A Process You Can Repeat
Since you would be creating content regularly, it is only wise to have a simple process that you can repeat.
This process should be as simple as ever. Why? Because you want to get used to the simplest aspects of your content creation so you can form a habit of it earlier.
It would be easier to launch more complex activities that will improve the quality of your content when you are used to the simple process in the early stages.
When you have a process you can repeat, it would be easier to document it and teach any assistants you may employ to help you create this content.
Simple processes also allow for more creative expression and will not tire you out.
3. Employ Time-Saving Tools
It is the digital age. Get used to tools that improve your productivity. They are worth every penny.
Tools that save you time will actually save you if you need them too. If you have your content creation process documented, it would be easier to incorporate tools into them.
For every step, you could identify the activities involved and find tools that would help you document or achieve these tasks in a much shorter time.
This way, you would have enough creative energy left over which you can divert to other aspects of your content creation. Tools like Google Sheets, Trello, and Canva would provide you with resources that would shave minutes off your creation time.
4. Keep Writing and Editing Times Separate
We want our piece of content to be perfect.
While creating content, we want to get to the end of it where it is good so we can publish it and watch it work. As content creators, nothing gives us that rush more than finishing the work we set out to do and doing it perfectly.
One thing we should understand is that there is a thing called ‘the first draft’, and any time we stop to perfect something about it, we lose creative momentum. This is obviously bad for any creator.
Editing while you create is a bad habit that you have to stop as you would waste time by switching from one stage of the content creation process to the other.
Apart from the loss of time and momentum, editing while you work often derails your thought process and would destroy your simple linear content creation process. The imperfections you are reacting to at the moment would still appear at the latter stage of editing your content. Thus, correcting them during the creation state is a waste of time.
Focus on writing/recording your content at the time you have set on it.
Having a separate time for editing allows you to look at the content with fresher eyes and generally decreases any pressure if you were editing the content while writing.
5. Repurpose Published Content
This tip is one of the most underrated pieces of advice as content creators do not consider it an option.
Too often, we try too hard to thrill our audience with something new, when they would prefer something familiar more often than not.
We can recycle our content, adding value to it to take advantage of the familiarity of the content, and at the same time, deliver a surprise to our audience.
Working with what we have already made before would grant more speed to the creation process.
Recycling content is not only time-saving and increases audience engagement, but it also enables us to employ more of our creativity as we have to look for new ways to do what we have already done before.
Conclusion
Content Creation, like any other activity, can be tasking and time-consuming. And while creating content may spark joy since the process is more often time than not, enjoyable, spending less time on it helps us conserve our strength and decreases the chances of us burning out too quickly. We can also put out more content on time. We can achieve our goals quicker this way.
