How to Realistically Batch Content Creation as a Teacher Business Owner

Batching content, creating several weeks worth of content at a time, is a highly touted productivity strategy. But as teachers, we can’t block out full days to write blog posts or record podcasts or video episodes. Let’s take a look at some things you can realistically do as a teacher to batch your content.

Batching is a hot buzzword right now, and for good reason. It works! But it’s not very realistic for teachers – or anyone else with a full-time job – to manage.

Batching is the practice of focusing on a single task for a designated block of time in order to be more productive. In essence, it’s the opposite of multitasking. In terms of content creation, batching often looks like blocking off an entire day (or 2) to create several weeks worth of blog posts, podcast or video episodes.

Lots of big names in productivity, like Michael Hyatt, and business, like Amy Porterfield, talk about how batching changes lives and give tips on how to do it.

But, let’s be real. You’re a working professional. You can’t block off entire days of your week or month just to work on creating content.

So let’s talk about how you can make the idea of batching work within your already packed schedule.

Batching content creation during the school year

Teachers sort of have 2 lives; school year life, and summer life. And school year life is crazy as hell. But batching your content is still possible, with some serious modification.

First, look at your content creation process and divide it into steps. In my course, Content Made Simple, I teach you the 3 steps of planning, crafting, and distributing your content. You can devise your own system if you wish.

Set out a number of days you’re going to spend on the first step of your content creation process. In my case, I give myself 3-4 days to focus on the planning phase. This is when I come up with the topics I’m going to share about, write the post/episode titles, and write my promise for each post/episode.

After that, I give myself a day “off” (read: to work on other stuff) before I move on to step 2, crafting.

This is the time I actually write my blog post, or record my podcast or video episode. This step takes a little longer because you have to craft the complete content, graphics, and your social posts. For batching, you’re going to want to identify 6-10 days in which you’re going to spend on just this step, depending on how much you need to do, how quickly you write, and what else you have going on in school and life.

The last step of the process is distribution and I choose to “batch” this step every Sunday afternoon. As someone who posts multiple times across many platforms, this weekly process takes me about an hour. If you’re just getting started and are only posting to 1-2 platforms, you can likely do it in less time.

In order to batch your distribution and save yourself the time and trouble of live posting, I suggest using a program like CinchShare (that’s what I use).

Batching content creation during the summer

Of course summer vacation doesn’t mean teachers have nothing to do, but most of us have more free time than we do while school is in session. That said, if you’re a teacher who works full-time through the summer months, you can continue to batch as discussed above, and treat summer just like the rest of the year.

If you are able to take the summer “off” and find yourself with much more freedom in your days, you can use this time to not only batch your content in the more traditional sense, but also to get ahead.

On her show, Amy Porterfield tells listeners that she batches 6 podcast episodes at a time, so she records 6 weeks worth of shows over a couple days. This is something you could do during summer vacation easily.

Here’s what it would look like:

Friday morning, plan your content; writing titles and promises, and do your research.

Monday and Tuesday write your posts or record your episodes, create graphics, and write your social posts. If you need additional time for editing, add it to those days or another day, if needed.

Of course, adjust the days as necessary because everyone’s topics and content are different. And also… life.

The big difference for teachers on summer vacation is that you can use the batching method to create TONS of content that you can distribute during the school year. If you create 3 pieces of content a week for 8 weeks of summer break, that’s almost 6 months worth of posts or episodes! That can take a lot of pressure off during back to school time, parent conferences, or when a family emergency pops up.

Batching can make a big difference for your content creation process and your business. As a teacher, if you’re anything like I was, when you hear someone talking about the idea you just roll your eyes and mutter something under your breath.

It may not look like everyone else’s batching, but it can be done!