How Karli Bitner Implements Content Batching as a Food Blogger | The Food Blogger Pro Podcast

So it seems like you're somebody who likes systems, likes processes, has kind of developed those. As an example of that is the way that you approach content, which kind of kind of hinted at that at the beginning. But can you talk about your content creation process? It sounds like you have really leaned into batch producing content. You're really strategic about your time, how you use your time, and have optimized around producing a lot of content in a relatively short period of time compared to how most people produce content, I would assume. What does that look like? I'm so curious.

So this is actually a perfect time to talk about this because I, like I mentioned, I just had a baby seven months ago when I found out I was pregnant. And I know this is my last baby, so I was like, I really want to just enjoy babyhood totally. So I. From last July to last December, like a year ago, ish. I shot all the content for this full year. So I am not having to shoot a ton. I do, like, once a week just because, like, sure, I love it and I miss it.

Yeah, yeah.

But I shot everything, so I didn't have to focus on creating content at all this year. I have all my recipes done. The photos are done. I've got all of the recipes written. And my writer is just, you know, she's still going through and writing every week because she's just going through and writing them.

Yeah.

But that is really important to me to be able to take time off. Because when I very first started blogging, we go way back to the beginning. I felt this need to have all the content on my site, like, right now. And so I was publishing one post a day for like, six or seven.

Months, because a lot.

It is a ton of content. And it's exactly like you were saying. You wake up and you're just like, okay, yeah, it's got to go up today. I don't know what it is, but something's got to go up today. And I'm guilty, you know, back then of walking through the aisles of the grocery store, like, hoping that an ingredient would just, like, jump out at me.

Just inspire you.

Yeah, inspiration. And that is stressful. I did not want to do that anymore. And it was. My kids were going back to school or. Yeah, my kids were going back to school. And I decided I did not want to work at all when they were off on Thanksgiving break or Christmas break.

Sure.

I just wanted to be able to take that time, be with my family, not have to stress about posting things. And so I just scheduled it out and made it so that I wouldn't have to. So what I did was I first scheduled what I wanted to post onto my Google calendar. So ahead of time, just post.

Where are you pulling, where are you pulling that from? Like, do you have a bank? Was there a pre step to that step where you're brainstorming ideas, you're thinking about things that you could create or how solidified are the recipes, like when you're dropping those in or the content if it's not recipes where you're saying like great, December 1st, here's what I'm gonna post this specific recipe or is it like this general thing?

So, so it's a specific recipe and I have a list on trello that's just, you know, recipe ideas that is like 5 million miles long.

And it's always you saying like, hey, this could be cool. I'm going to add this year day to day. It's kind of a catch all.

Like for example, I have a donut recipe but I don't have a separate like donut glaze recipe which would go really well hand in hand to link together. I have a cinnamon roll icing recipe that does really well. So I could link that with the glaze because they're similar. And so like that's just something that I was like, I should put that on my website. So I just go and jot it down. And so I have a list really long of that. And then I'll also go into Semrush and kind of look to see what I'm ranking for or what I'm almost ranking for to see if I can make some like supporting content for it to try and kind of boost it up a little bit. And then I just make that list. And so that's where I will kind of schedule those recipes from.

Yeah. So the beginning, the beginning part is scheduling. And I suppose it depends on the season. You could do it for the entire year as you did in this case. But for other people who want to take a different kind of approach to this, maybe it's quarter based. So you have a couple weeks and you kind of are setting that time aside to batch and you, and first step you, your case would be scheduling that out. How many posts a week did you land on for that season?

So the first time I did it, I was doing, I was publishing three new posts a week. So Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then this last year when I did it, I just, I went down to two. And then I've been updating old content so Yep.

And how often will you update old content?

I'm.

Is that like once a week where you're doing that?

Yeah, once a week. Yeah. And so it's kind of shifting now to where I need to update a little bit more and, you know, everything's kind of balancing out. But so that was the first step is just kind of getting it on the calendar. And then from there I would organize my shoot days. And my shoot days were always Tuesdays and Thursdays because that's when my daughter was at preschool and my daughter was napping. So I'd have like time by myself. So obviously this can work for whatever schedule you have. This is just like that was my schedule. And then once you have a lot of content planned out and scheduled on the calendar, I would go and look for similarities in recipes so I could schedule my shoot days to be smart. So, like, for example, if I was publishing a chocolate chip muffin recipe and a blueberry muffin recipe, even though they're being published three weeks apart, I'm going to make those on the same day because they are pretty much the exact same thing. Yeah, you can, you know, and so it just takes a lot of the extra work out. And I mentioned this on in the Tastemakers conference and somebody's not very happy with me, but I'll mention it again. Also, you use shortcuts if you can.

Sure, sure.

So like chicken pot pie. Right. I have a pie crust recipe on my site. Awesome.

Yep.

Just use the store bought pie crust.

Sure.

Make your life a little bit easier and translate with my, my, my readers, they prefer the shortcuts. So it obviously, if your thing is all homemade, then don't do it.

But. Right, right.

And I'm very, you know, apparent and transparent with my readers of saying, like, you can use a store bought pie crust. I use a store bought pie crust. But if you want, here's one that you could do. Homemade. Here's the link to my homemade one.

The point being, if it takes an additional two hours to make a crust, you need to be strategic about how you're thinking about your content.

Saying, like, exactly.

Technically, I only have two hours to do this for the photograph. Is that kind of what you're getting at? Like, for the photograph?

Just for the pictures difference?

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, just for the pictures. So. And then another thing that I'll do too is look at the timing of recipes. So if I know something is going to need to be in the oven for 45 minutes, then I'm going to intentionally, like, schedule a recipe that's super short, like Rice Krispies or something similar to that, that I can do the entire thing while the one recipe is in the oven. So that I'm just scheduling my shoot days. And I, like, physically put in my calendar the exact recipe titles on my shoot day, so I know exactly what will be going. And I organize those shoot days in. And then I'm able to. As long as you're shooting more than you're publishing, you're going to get ahead. So I would try and do like three recipes on every shoot day. And it's. It's pretty easy once you're able to, you know, schedule out your time and what recipes you're doing and just kind of get it figured out in your brain. Yeah, it's easy to get them done in a couple of hours, depending on the recipe, obviously.

And so if you have two shoot days and you're doing six recipes, then, you know, that's two recipes a week. So you're essentially in a week getting three weeks of content. More or less content. Yeah. And how much of that is how much of your time? This is maybe hard to do on a percentage basis, but one of the things that I think a lot about as a creator is, you know, they talk about if you have eight hours to chop a tree down, spend six hours sharpening the ax. And I think if you have eight hours to produce content, spend at least three planning. Like, it's not. The analogy is not exactly the same, but that's one of the takeaways that I hear when I hear you talking is like, part of the work isn't the actual doing, like, the actual work itself. It's planning for the work. Would you have an idea of how much time you spend thinking about planning about scheduling versus, hey, I'm in. In the kitchen producing content and taking pictures and developing recipes.

So it is a fraction, just like a teeny bit of the plan.

Yeah.

And it makes your life so much easier, honestly, that the one day that I scheduled out for the entire year basically was I sat at the computer. It was a long day. I sat at the computer for like maybe six hours, but it's six hours for an entire year. That's like, yeah, that's nothing. And so worth just the peace of mind and not having to have like, all of that stuff in your brain all day.

So in that day, your brain, you said, great, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to get my drink of choice, my favorite drink. I'm going to set it next to Me put headphones in and I'm going to plan out all of. In that case, was it 2021? Is it essentially planning out the entire year? And so you're going and you're saying, great, January. Let's look at that. What's going to be seasonal content in January? Two posts a week. Here's what I'm going to post them, here's what they're going to be. Were you also picking the content that you were going to update and bring to the front of your blog? It's essentially two to three pieces of content, two new content, pieces of content, one old one that you're picking and saying, here's the one that I'm going to update. And so it takes, in that case, let's say half an hour per month to say, here's what January looks like, here's what February looks like. And so you get to that point, then what? It's all on the calendar. You're able to step back at the end of the day and being awesome. I've planned out the entire year. Where do you take it from there?

So then you just start your shoot days. And the thing that is really important is just to stay on top of your content. So you like I would be shooting three a day. I don't want those pictures to get piled up on my cart.

Yeah.

You know, so when you say, you.

Mean like editing, organizing, importing, things like that?

Yeah, I. I just have to stay on top of that or else you will just get buried really, really fast. So every night it was either I tried to do it that night, but if it didn't happen the night of my shoot, it was the next day during the day to make sure I got all of the pictures edited and then all of those trello cards updated and over to my writer's board. So all of that was done. And it's. I'm very organized with my folders on my hard drive, so I know exactly where everything is. You know, each. Each recipe has its own folder. It's titled where the recipe is. You know, all of the images are in there. I make the PIN images and I just have all of that content ready. So when my writer is done with it, I know exactly where to find the photos. All I have to do is go in, add the photos, add the recipe card.

Yep. So that's awesome. The. Can you talk about this Is getting into like, kind of nerdy details of folder organization. But I think it's helpful for people who maybe aren't people who are Naturally organized or like, you know, these would be the people where I used to work at a nonprofit and would do kind of IT stuff as a part of the job. And whenever I would sit down at a computer, I would say 50% of the time people would say, like, don't judge. Like before you get in, just don't judge my computer. And inevitably it would be like the smallest possible icon size on their desktop. And it would just be like, like the icon desktop equivalent of somebody shooting a shotgun like 17 times. Just everywhere, random, not organized. So there are some people who are super organizational, organizationally minded. Everything is structured really well. And then there's the people who are that version of organization. For the people who would maybe skew towards not being naturally organized. Can you talk about your process for how you structure your folders?

Sure.

And maybe why you do it that way.

So I have just. So my blogs, Cooking with Carly. I just have a Cooking with Carly folder. And inside of that folder I have a few different ones. I have recipe photos. That's obviously where all my recipe photos go. I have logos. I've got headshots. Got sponsored work, where I keep all of like sponsored work contracts. And inside that sponsored work one has different folders for each sponsored work.

Sure.

Like project. I've got like employee information and contracts and things like that. I think those are pretty much my top ones. Top inside of my main folder. But inside of my recipe folder I have a folder per year. And then inside that I just have all of the rest.

The recipe names.

Recipe names. So there's a folder for each recipe name. And I'm crazy. And I keep all of the raws. The raw. Sure. Inside of. I just presumably I can't. I can't delete them. So I keep all of that in that folder as well as edited jpegs and my pin. Anything that goes with that post is in there. And I always make sure when I export from Lightroom to rename. So this is good for SEO too. You know that. To rename the pictures.

Sure.

Images. You know what the image actually is.

So as opposed to like image_548, you'll rename it like Instant Pot Mac and Cheese, Right? Yeah. Whatever the image is, you use that as a file name.

Right. And so then that way too, if for some reason it ever does get lost, like it doesn't export into the right folder and you're like, ah, where'd that go? It's really easily searchable.

Yeah.

You know, you can just search it.

Totally do you use a PC or Mac or.

I use a Mac, yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, you do Spotlight, which is like the search tool, and you just type in the name and you'd be able to find it really easily. Same with folder. I use it. A search tool. That's awesome. It's like a. It's like a launch. Launch app. I think it's technically called. And this would be a note for anybody listening if you want to geek out and stuff. It's called Alfred, which is just like the best thing ever. It's like Spotlight on steroids, which would be a good thing to check out. And then the question that I would have for you that maybe a lot of people are thinking is like, wait, what about space? Like, do you just have a huge hard drive? If you're keeping all your raw files, what does that look like? Any comments on that? For people to be like, how do you do that from a space consideration?

My husband is, like the tech.

Tech guy guy. Yeah.

In fact, he's, like, so stoked today because it's the Apple event and he like, yeah, totally.

It's like the super bowl for tech people.

Yeah, he's been, like, counting down the days.

Will he watch it live or go kind of radio silent and then watch it at the end of the day?

He's. He'll watch it tonight just because he's in surgery and stuff. But. But like, back in the day, I made an Apple shirt for him that he'd wear on these event days.

That's awesome.

Not even kidding. And we were the crazies that would sleep out at the AT&T store overnight.

To get a new iPhone. All right, good for you guys. Love that.

We're big into the tech watch and my husband is. I just go along with it. But totally. So whenever my hard drive says, you're running out of storage, I say, hey, I'm running out of storage. He's like, okay, I'll take care of it. But we have. We have big, big hard drives.

External hard drives.

Yeah, external hard drives that have transfer stuff over and.

Yeah, you know, one of the things that. That we've two things that for anybody listening who would maybe be interested in it, if you have Apple PC, you might have a comparable thing, but you have the ability to, like, intelligently offload to the cloud. And with icloud storage, maybe you're doing that, maybe not. But that would be worth noting for anybody who uses macOS where, like, yeah, maybe, maybe not. But it's like, if you get too much space that's being taken up on your computer, you can store and it's relatively affordable. It's like three bucks for 200 terabytes. So that would be worth noting for anybody. And then another thing worth noting for anybody who's listening is we actually use Google Drive. We have shared drives because we have a team we're working with. So we store actually all of our video footage and our photos for all the different sites on Google Drive and then we back it up with backupify. But what's nice about that is like, you know, we have. Gosh, I forget what it is. It's like 30 terabytes, which is pretty significant between videos and photos and Food Blogger Pro content. But it's all stored in the cloud and accessible and relatively affordable to share that there. So I know not your. Not the thing that you get most excited about would be all the nitty gritty details on the tech side. But it's one of the things that I love and worth noting, especially as you start getting more and more of the storage consideration as you get more content, like, it just. It never will become less content. It only becomes more. So these are the problems that you have to solve. Yeah, eventually. So one of the questions that I have about the batching of content is. And Lindsay talks about this. So Lindsay does most of the content production for Pinch of Yam, kind of the sister site to Food Blogger Pro, and she talks about it in regards to inspiration and like, if something sits too long, feeling the potential, feeling that it could be uninspired if she comes back to it at a certain point. And I'm curious to know, and I don't think that exists for everybody. It just is. I think there's personal preferences around content creation. Do you have any thoughts around, like, content as it relates to the season you're in and feeling like separated from that season if you're producing it too early. For instance, writing about Christmas in September, you know, or August, whatever, it might be June. And I know for you, you have a writer that you work with, so it's a little bit different, but even creating the recipe could potentially feel. Feel different. Has that been something where you've felt like any friction there or is it just is what it is?

No, it kind of is what it is. Name of the game, kind of. My neighbors all understand that they're going to get Christmas recipes.

Christmas cookies in July.

Yeah, Christmas cookies in July. They're going to get my leftovers. But it just kind of is what it is. And I will say too That I definitely have, and I always will all of a sudden, just, like, pull a recipe out and be like, nope, I. I want this one. I'm sticking it in there, and I'm shooting it today, and I'm.

Yeah.

Tomorrow. Just because I want to, you know?

Yeah.

So it's more of just like having.

It's not rigid. You have just.

Yeah, it's done. And if. If it is what it is and I don't do anything else with it, it's great. But I, you know, constantly. I can shift stuff around whenever I.

Want, you know, and if you're feeling inspired, you can follow that and produce that content.

Yeah.

And if not, you don't have to force it because you have this thing that you've done the work on, it's.

Available, and you can publish it. There's sometimes too, where I get to shooting a recipe, and I'm just like, I do not feel like that anymore. I don't. I'm not vibing with that at all. And so think of something else and say, I'd rather do this instead. And, yeah, yeah, do that.

And then do it.

So that's, you know, the glory of being your own boss. Nobody tells you what to do. You get to call the shots, and you can change things when you want and pivot when you need to.

And I think what's great about that combination is it allows you. For me, it seems like you'd have a more healthy relationship with your work in that you don't feel as you own the work, as opposed to the work owning you. Meaning you have control over it. You've crafted it in a way where you don't feel like at the beginning of the week, shoot, I need to show up and do this. You've already done it. But if you feel inspired, you have something you're excited about, you can go ahead and create that content. Yeah.

It's really freeing.

Yes. Totally.

Be able to be in control of it instead of letting it run your life, because, yeah, it can. And that's how I was feeling, you know, that first year before I started really scheduling things out. It was just my life was dictated by creating content, and it. I was being pulled in between, like, yeah, I want to go to the pool with my kids, but also, I really need to get this shot right.

And that's not. That doesn't feel great to be.

No.

And one of the things that's. That's hard. It's. It's. It's two sides of the coin. It's like. Or It's. It's the sun and the sun and the darkness of what we do is you have autonomy. So you could do that, which is like this great gift to be able to go to the pool with your kids in the middle of the day because you're not having to work traditional nine to five, but you are your own boss. And so if you are deciding to work, it's you saying, I'm not going to go to the pool because I'm deciding to work. And that feels different than if you just have a schedule because you're not having to make that decision in the same way. And what this does is it maybe allows for some flexibility in those moments where you are feeling that the strongest. Or if it's not kids for anybody who's, you know, doesn't have kids or is maybe single, like, it's your friend calls and they want to go for lunch, it's your parents and you want to go back and visit them, whatever it might be. To have the ability to kind of shift in a way where you don't feel like you are sacrificing the growth of your business because you've done the work in a different period of time, to allow you to have that kind of fallback just seems super wise.