How to Stay Consistent on Social Media (without feeling overwhelmed)

How to stay consistent on Instagram (without feeling overwhelmed)?

It’s no secret that posting resonating content, is a sure fire way to grow and build trust between you and your audience.

But what if you’re only posting once a week?

You can’t only post when you feel like it because your audience needs to become familiar with both you and your brand’s narrative. In order to achieve this, you’re going to have to be prepared to post your content on a consistent schedule.

You should always remind yourself that humans have a very short attention span, and if your audience isn’t reminded exactly who you are by posting consistently - they’re going to forget about you all together.

You might be asking yourself,

“how is it possible to create high quality content, whilst posting regularly”

In this post, I’m breaking down the strategy to ensure a consistent posting schedule for social media (even when you have no time)!

Batch your content

The biggest secret in the social media world, is that the content that your favourite influencer just posted is at least a week old, and that’s because they’ve batched their content in order to post consistently. Very rarely do content creators post exactly what’s happening on the day of posting, simply because of the pressure it puts on them.

Content batching helps you save time, post consistently, and repurpose your ideas seamlessly across platforms.

While this may sound like more work, it’s actually the opposite.

With content batching, you’re able to have one day to focus all your creative energy without jumping to another task. For example, if you’re creating reels and then start answering emails, it takes you out of the “flow”. It’s better to choose 1 day per task.

Planning your content weeks in advance will create a more cohesive (and stress-free) approach to your social media strategy. I cover this more in-depth in my online program, Art Of Influence.

How I would organise this is by setting aside a couple days per month to batch all your content. However, in order to batch your content you need to have all your ideas ready to go. Here’s how your process should look:

So how should you batch your content? The process should go a little something like this…

1. Brainstorm new ideas. Write down everything you’re want to shoot in terms of photos and videos. Make sure you’re including some trends and original content. I often write a big braindump in my notes app – listing inspo sources, video ideas, sounds I want to use, etc.

2. Plan everything ahead of time. Plan out exactly which photos and videos you’re going to shoot from your brainstorming. Ensure they fit into one of your content pillars too. Write them on a to-do list so you can tick them off.
   
   For example:
   
   Reel idea: 4 spring outfit ideas [list items you need]
   Content pillar: Fashion
   Sound: [URL]
   Inspo: [URL]
   On-screen text: _____
   

3. Block out a time to shoot. Think about what works best for your workflow and schedule. Is it 2 hours per week? 4 hours per fortnight? Or maybe 1 whole day per month? Whatever it might be, block out a time to shoot your photos and then videos.
   
   It could look something like one hour shooting photos, one hour shooting videos and then the last hour to edit. Perhaps you might prefer to dedicate one day to each content type.
   

4. Draft your posts. This means drafting the post in the Instagram app, writing the caption and saving it so it’s ready to go. I can’t explain to your how calming it is when I look into my drafted folder, and see a weeks worth of content ready to post. That way, all you have to do when the time comes, is hit ‘publish’ (unless you prefer to schedule your posts – which you can do inside the IG app too).
   
   Being able to manage yourself on each and every step of the content creation process is more important than the actual post. This can be difficult to get used to, and can easily fall into procrastination and laziness towards posting.
   

5. Plan your feed. You don’t need a curated feed to be successful on Instagram, but you do need some cohesion. Upload all your content into a feed planning app (I love InPreview) and plan out the next 1-2 weeks so theres a good flow of content from different content pillars (e.g. educational, relatable and inspiring content). This will also allow you to determine what you’re going to post and when.

Preparing a weeks worth of content can be daunting, but being able to prepare your posts as you go will help make that a lot goal less scary.

Set realistic content goals

In the beginning it’s easy to shoot for the stars and think that you’re going to posting every single day, when in reality life can easily get in the way of those ideas. You need to be able to set a realistic goal for you to achieve. Instead of trying to post daily, aim for 3 times a week.

When you set up to achieve the impossible you’re essentially setting yourself up for failure, and as soon as that feeling of disheartenment starts, it can eventually lead to resentment toward your work.

If you’re interested in taking your content creation seriously, join my free masterclass on how you can get started as a social media influencer/content creator.

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