Kate McKibbin walks through batching 12 podcast or video episodes in six to seven hours across a few days. Plan ideas first, flesh out bullets for each episode, record six at a time, keep content evergreen without dates, then hand off to your team for editing and scheduling.
Questions this episode answers
12 episodes (three months' worth).
About six to seven hours across a few days (roughly one hour planning + ~45 minutes per episode to flesh bullets + up to two hours to record six episodes).
Zencastr.
Foreign.
Hello guys, it is Kate here from hello Funnels, and welcome back to the Doing It Online podcast. Now today I have a question for you. Who listening to this podcast or watching this podcast actually likes and looks forward to creating the marketing every single week. And by creating a content marketing, I mean creating your podcast, creating a YouTube video, creating whatever it is that is in your particular marketing schedule. I can't hear anyone saying yes. So today's episode, I am going to be walking you through the process that we decided implementing here at hello Funnels that allows me to actually batch create an entire three months worth of content in six, seven hours. I mean, that might seem like a lot, but it's not even a full day and you only have to do it four times a year. So to me, amazing, super freeing. I'm really excited and let's dive right on in.
Okay, guys, as I kind of alluded to in the intro, creating content is really not one of my favorite things. And that's kind of funny, given that growing up I always wanted to be a writer and a journalist, and I was a journalist. But I think somewhere along the line, somewhere along creating the literally thousands and thousands of pieces of content, I would have created this stage. It became a job, it became less fun and less exciting. But it's still something that is really important and it's still something that I care about and I want to make sure that what's going out is good and is useful and valuable and people are liking. But when it comes to creating it, I tend to procrastinate on it like nothing else. Throw into the mix that usually, like, ever since we've decided with this podcast, we're going to do the videos as well. Now suddenly I have to look presentable and have clean hair and not be just back from the gym, which I normally am. So, you know, it, it kind of throws a whole other element into it. And I was talking to a friend about this the other day and I said, look, I would love to, to be able to batch. I was doing a sort of a monthly batch and I was like, I would love to just be able to do a bigger one. Like, I'm pretty sure I could do six to eight episodes in a couple hours. So do that over like two days. That would be three months worth, all in one go. And then I wouldn't have to think about it again for three months. But the big thing that was stopping me was like, but we normally try and, you know, make sure our content is matching whatever we are talking about. Like Maybe we are running some kind of cool free event and we want to make sure the content is related. We want to tell people in the podcast about this event that we're running. But you know, realistically, even though, you know, we do have these plans out well in advance of when these will be, things change. Like we were supposed to be running an event for inside our community, and then I realized I'd booked it on my son's birthday, so we had to change the date of that because, like, we have a rule in our family where nobody works on their birthday or goes to school or daycare. Like, I had to move that around. If I'd had included that in content, I would have had to have recorded that content again and it would have just been a bit of a pain and a nightmare. Also, things like we might have a workshop coming up and then two weeks out, I'm like, oh, this would be a way better name for that workshop. I want to change it. But I've said the name in the podcast, so it just seemed like I'd be setting myself up for more work, not less. And then my friend was just like, you've heard of pre roll ads, right? Like, why don't you just record your content to be completely evergreen? Don't have a episode number at the start. You notice we don't do that anymore. Don't talk about the date and don't actually mention the promos within the episode anymore. Then you can add the pre and post roll ads which have the details for when you're going to be doing that promotion. Or if you have an event or something you invite people to, they can have the latest and most updated details. You can shuffle around the order of the episodes if you need to, and that way you can batch. And I was just like, oh my goodness, why didn't I think of that? This is why I love going and having coffee with my business girlfriends. They help you to sort of look at things and give you a different perspective. So literally the day after we had that coffee, I'm like, right, that's it, we're batched. I'm sitting down, I'm coming up with, let's see if I can come up with three months worth of content to start with. And if we can, I'm locking it in and I'm getting it batched. And I did. And this is actually the final episode of that 12 episode batch. So let me take you through the process. If my excitement has worn off on you, if I've convinced you that you know this could be potentially something you could do as well. As I mentioned, I decided, and I really think it should be up to you how many you think realistically you can both come up with the ideas for and also sit down and actually physically record. Our episodes are pretty short, so it's not a big deal for me. As I said, we could do six to eight in a day. The one thing that I am aware of is that my voice does tend to wear out after a bit of time. And maybe you start with monthly and then you go every two months and then you extend it out. If you want to kind of do it that way, then the structure that I then took and that has worked really well and I'm going to continue with was I'd spent a couple of hours on what I'm gonna call day one, even though that was actually last week, and I sat down and I went through all the content ideas that I had and I filled in any gaps and I basically mapped out what the 12 episodes were going to be. I just wrote the titles and the like, any, like, brief details around the idea just so that I could have them there. Then I came back on what is day two, and which is a recording day when I had clean hair for that first hour. I took the first six episodes and I fleshed them out. I wrote out the bullet points of the things that I wanted to cover. I played with the titles a bit. I sort of updated some of them. Like, I always think it's, particularly when it's something that you're doing in bulk, it's good to have a bit of time and space to come back and then review, just in case you thought of a better version of that idea or something. Just isn't sort of holding up with a second set of eyes. So I went through that, fleshed them out, and then I sat down and I did. First day, I did four episodes before lunch, had a bit of break, did the second two after. I noticed that my voice was getting a little bit strained. So I didn't go for the eight on the first day. So instead what we've ended up doing is six and then six. But it literally that I said about an hour to map out the content, then probably another 45 minutes each day to actually flesh out each of the episode like the main bullets I wanted for each episode, and then no more than two hours on top of that to record the batch of six episodes. So with a little break in between, as I said, just to give my voice a break and to go and you know, have some lunch, have a drink, that kind of thing. So it really was all up about seven hours over three days. I don't think I could do it all in one day, that's for sure. And I really think it has been helpful to have all the ideas planned first and then, you know, come back to it. But you know, when you think about it, that's one hour, you know, somewhere within your week and then two mornings and that's all the content done. So when I say all the content done, like this is part of the micro marketing plan that we teach inside our program is that you create a piece of pillar content. Like as the business owner, you're in charge of creating a really good, high value piece of pillar content each week. And then you can either yourself repurpose that and use it for your emails and socials and whatnot, or you can hand it over to team. And that's what I do, I hand it over to my team. So the team's process is they now have basically once I've recorded all of these, I use zencastr to record everything, even though we're not doing interviews. And then I just download the audio and the video, pop them in Google Drive, I number them to match the episode number and then the team just comes in once a week, usually about three weeks in advance. They grab the episode that they need, then the audio gets edited, the videos get edited, snippets get taken out, the blog posts and show notes get created, and anything for social, that kind of thing all gets kind of done in one batch. They get given to me about two weeks before they're scheduled so I can sort of review and make any notes and then they all get scheduled away. So my weekly time that kind of gets taken up with this process once I've done this batch is maybe another hour to just review everything and you know, give that feedback and then that's it. Content marketing done across multiple channels, multiple pieces of content. For someone, as I said, who really, really was dreading their content creation, the fact that I now do not need to think about this for months feels really freeing. And it also, I find when you have this bit of like a break in between, you tend to come up with more ideas and things. So I'm already in the habit of when I have like a random idea, it's normally like when I'm out for a walk, I always make a note of it. I actually have a Slack channel, that's my own Slack channel that no one else is in, that I just put all my ideas in there and then that way when again, it's planning time, I can come back and review everything. And I think that's pretty much so. Would love to know if this has inspired you to go and batch either your content or something else in your business to help to free up that, you know, that mental load, free up that capacity. If these tips have been useful, please let me know. Comment below the video if you're watching. Or shoot us a DM at HelloFunnels over on Instagram. We would love, love, love to hear from you. It would mean so much to us if you could share this episode. Help us to reach a many people as possible. Help us to help as many as people as possible. Until next week, which will be a whole new batch. Keep doing what you do. Have an amazing week and I will see you all then.
