As if being an entrepreneur isn’t tough enough already, along comes having to cook up with ideas for Tiktok videos week after week, having to design passably-professional post after post for LinkedIn and having to set up, manage and maintain sales funnels and campaigns that ACTUALLY work.
In this day of easy-to-access, albeit saturated marketing platforms, constantly staying abreast of fresh ideas and ways to keep your audience engaged can be exhausting!
You need to inspire, educate, promote, sell, and, and, and…
When I first founded Fizzin, an affordable digital marketing company focused on providing startups and established SMEs with day-to-day, on-the-ground marketing and design support, the most time-consuming activity in my schedule was creating, curating and optimising my company’s marketing.
Just because I was in the marketing game did not make filming reel after reel and designing post after post for campaigns and newsletters any easier. I did it all myself in the very beginning, and boy did it take its toll! Instead of focusing all of my time, energy and creativity on my clients and their strategies, I was having to spend late nights and weekends churning out content.
You see, in the marketing game, once the strategy is dreamt up, you actually need to run it. And it’s the running it that gets you.
The challenge of executing marketing strategies
A marketing strategy in and of itself can require a massive initial time investment – particularly if you’re doing it yourself for the first time and you lack experience and tried-and-tested templates – but that isn’t even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sheer volume of work it requires to actually deploy it.
For example, we recently put together an awesome marketing campaign with a partner of ours in order to generate leads. The strategy itself is simple enough – we wanted to pop a lead magnet onto social media with an ad spend behind it so as to generate leads. In and of itself, this sounds easy. Surely this could all be up and running in an hour, right?
Well… the collateral for this campaign included creating a must-have downloadable that would pique our target audience’s interest. Typing up and researching this 20-page workbook’s copy in Word took long enough, but hours went into the graphic design of the stunning completed lead magnet.
Next up was putting together the graphics, videos and copy for the landing pages involved in the campaign. Then came the copy for the 4 email automations that would follow up with the potential client, not to mention the included testimonials and portfolio pieces of our work…
The point is that one simple campaign – which has been thought out and aims to be effective – takes hours and hours of time to implement.
As soon as we could afford it as a company, I handed over Fizzin’s routine marketing to Fizzin which was very soon thanks to how affordable we are 😉 This meant that instead of me slaving away on social media, creating graphics, posting and engaging, I could spend time on the bigger goals and visions a founder should be focusing on!
That constant need to be active, to be posting on social media, to have new ideas, to build a community and to just have a successful online business is not easy in any way, shape or form.
5 strategies to beating content creation overwhelm
If you’re looking to get rid of some of the content creation overwhelm you’re experiencing, here are some tips to follow:
1. Think differently
Accept that your content doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect. Yes, your content needs to be attractive to your audience and spell-checked but if you’re constantly chasing perfection you’re going to burn out very quickly.
2. Set aside time
Block out a few hours every week or near the end of every month where creating content is your only focus. This is known as batching. Dedicating time to properly researching and planning your content, not to mention actually creating it, can rid you of unnecessary anxiety and can ensure the stuff you’re putting out there on health of your brand is error-free and the best you can produce.
3. Create a content calendar
Go into that specific day or time slot that you set aside for content creation with a plan. Know what you are creating. Is it a simple graphic for Linkedin, or a myriad of carousel-type tips and tricks for Instagram, or a Youtube Video?
Know what kind of content pillar you are creating your content under. Are you creating two educational type posts and three reels for next week?
Planning what days is for what type of content or platform will help to make the content creation process more manageable and strategic.
4. Reuse content
Did you maybe have a photoshoot that you salvaged multiple great pictures from? Do you have dozens of templates that you can put information into? Reuse or repurpose and tweak what you can in order to save yourself time. You don’t always need something brand new.
5. Get someone else to do it
It’s ironic, but if I didn’t have Fizzin to delegate my day-to-day content creation and deployment to, there would be no Fizzin. I would be a stressed-out Red Bull addict in need of a serious nap! Whether you want to keep an eye on your marketing strategy yourself but just need someone to do the dirty work or you want to outsource the whole darn thing, we’re the perfect solution.
Hen House Coop is thrilled to have both Sarah and Leesa as members. Leesa is also a board member of the Coop.