What would it mean for your business if you could wake up tomorrow morning not having to worry about what you are going to post on social media? Or maybe never having to worry about if you forgot a national holiday and get to post your own content rather than sharing others. What would it mean to your business if you were batching content?
If you are spending days on end living in Canva trying to keep up with your social media needs, it sounds like batching content is exactly what you need to be doing.
I know, the idea of batching content may be intimidating and sound pretty hard. But with direction and discipline, you will see the results you are hoping for. Today I am sharing with you tips on how to batch content for the next 4 weeks, in just 60 minutes. Holidays are among us, and your time is special. Learn how to put marketing on autopilot so you can focus on your business rather than being in it.
Biggest Takeaways:
- 5:20 Be disciplined
- 11:55 Figure out consistency
- 15:25 Interact
- 23:30 BMWB
Recommendations:
Batching content is the key to lowering stress within your business and leveraging what you already have in front of you, using it to its best capacity. Allowing you to spend your time growing your relationships instead of living in Canva creating. Doors are open for 2023 Better Marketing With Bella, and I am here batching content so you don’t have to. You will learn what to post, up-to-date tips of social media platforms, and professional custom graphics, with group and personal coaching. Now is the time to invest in your business, yourself and your time. Batching content will relieve the stress of “what to post” and make room for growth within your business.
Links:
Better Marketing With Bella
Bella Vasta Instagram
Mastermind Group
Transcript
This is episode 314 of Bella in Your Business. Hi there, I’m Bella Vasta from Jump Consulting. You might know me from CBS, NBC, Fox, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, or maybe you’ve seen me speak on stage or read my book, The Four Dogs That Every Business Owner Needs. In any case, get ready because you’re about to get your hashtag Bella Butt Kickin’ in this next episode of Bella in Your Business.
So what do you say? Let’s get ready and jump. Welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta and I want you to imagine something with me today. Imagine waking up never having to worry about what you need to post that day. Or if you remembered an important national holiday, imagine never having that stress because you scheduled your content a few weeks ago.
I know so many of you because I’ve heard it. Leia, before she was in the Better Marketing with Bella program, used to literally spend an hour a day creating Canva stuff. And it was the creativity that was just getting sucked out of her, eliminating creativity for other areas of her life, like playing with her kids or what’s for dinner or whatever. You have to understand that social media is creative. You have to be creative with it. And that takes a certain amount of energy — and that energy you only have so much of.
But not just that, it’s your mental health, you guys. It’s your mental health, the feeling, the addition of, “I’m not good enough,” or “I don’t know what I should be doing,” or “my gosh, it was National Hug Your Dog Day and I didn’t put anything out. I really should be putting something out. I’m a pet business.” All of these feelings — we have this in every other area of our business at some point or another, because we’re all human. The “I’m not good enough” or “I’m not doing enough,” right? I know that you’re listening right now and this is resonating with you because no one’s immune to it.
But there’s something that you can do when it comes to social media marketing — not advertising, social media marketing — that you can put it on autopilot for the next four weeks in just 60 minutes.
The only thing that would be left for social media when I’m done with you in this podcast is that you’d have to do a simple “share to story” click and maybe some engagement or maybe some outreach, which we’ve talked about in other episodes. Imagine what it would mean for your business if you just spent an hour a month and then really figured out your content and scheduled it. What would that look like for you?
Batching content is the key to lowering stress within the social media aspect of your business and leveraging what you’ve already got in front of you and using it to its best capacity. You have to kind of think like a journalist. And when you know what your stories are, a.k.a. your buckets that we’ve also talked about, it makes things a lot easier.
If you’re struggling over your buckets, then your buckets aren’t good. Your buckets need a little bit of a realignment. But how can you put your marketing on autopilot for the next four weeks just by spending one hour a month?
You guys, it is at the time of this recording, it’s October 24th. Before I continue, this just came into my head. I really want to give a big shout-out to Randa Clark from Tail Chasers and Nikki and Steph from Dog Dogs, both of them — and I’m sure there are many of you others out there. But this week in the Mastermind, because they’re both Mastermind members, they both mentioned that they have listened to every single podcast.
And I love when I get the feedback because it helps me know what direction to go with you guys. But they loved the Joey Coleman episodes, and they also love it when I just start preaching. And someone also told me — and I’m going to keep their anonymity, but it might’ve been one of these ladies, might not have been — but one of them has been working in their business and also for someone else for quite some time. And they’ve been wanting to quit their day job, so to speak, so they can go full time with their pet company, even though it’s already six figures.
She says that listening to these podcasts helps give her that motivation to do that and gives her the excitement to go ahead and do it. Not to mention Leia, who I just also talked about — Wonder Pups in Florida, what’s up! She listens with her boys. You guys might’ve heard me talk about this before. I love it because every single time the podcast comes out, she’s always posting on Instagram stories and I get to repost it. But it’s super cute. I guess they were doing ninja kicks for the Bella Butt Kicking.
So I’m calling all of you kids that are listening — let’s see those ninja kicks if you’re doing your Bella Butt Kickings while mom and dad listen to the podcast! Thanks for giving them the couple of minutes to sit here and be here with me. And thank you for being here too.
All right, so not to mention, if you are a kid listening to this, you’re definitely getting a whole social media education. I’m just going to tell you that now.
All right, so we’re going to move on to the actual action topics. The very first thing that you’re going to need to do is be disciplined. That’s hard and you’re going to fail and you’re going to be horrible at it at the beginning because anything new that you start, you’re going to be miserable at. It is very seldom times when you’re going to start something new and it’s going to be so easy. So expect to stink at it, all right?
But this kind of discipline is going to be able to teach you about other areas of your life if you let it. What do I mean? Well, guys, we’re on episode 314. And I’ve been doing this since I was in the hospital in NICU. That’s when I started. We have definitely come a long way since then, and we’ve stayed consistent every single Thursday, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year’s.
And look at what it’s done. It’s created a relationship between you and I. And it’s created a place where I can just rant and rave, which I love because I have a lot to say to you guys. But being disciplined is something that when you’re disciplined, it means that your consistency will show, which means that the chances that you’re going to be successful in what you’re doing is going to increase.
Because let’s say if it’s weekly, like the podcast, you get a weekly opportunity to get better at things. But you have to be disciplined in order to have that consistency. So when I say discipline, batching might seem hard or tough work, and it might be just at first. But just as with working out, you’ll be sore at the beginning and it will be tough on you, but you’ll get stronger and stronger and it becomes easier.
And sometimes, I don’t know, I’ve been on this workout kick lately — and you know that if you’ve been following my Instagram — you know, I am a person who likes to work out right now. It’s not, dare I say, something that I am. I go through stages of my life where I like to do it. And trust you me, I know that it takes discipline. It takes showing up and doing things when you don’t want to do it. And it hurts sometimes.
But the hurt is literally that saying, the pain leaving the body. That means I’m getting stronger. And when you’re batching content, you’re sitting there and you’re doing it, in the beginning you might struggle over it. You’re like, “Why am I doing this?” It’s going to get easier and easier for you because you’re going to make those adjustments as if you were working out.
You might adjust your feet. You might adjust your hips or your back or your knees or spread out your legs a little bit more. When you’re doing a squat, it won’t hurt as bad. You’ll protect your knees. When you’re doing batching and you start adjusting your topics and then you go about your day and you start seeing your topics in your everyday life, it gets easier and easier. But you have to be disciplined to show up each time.
And so being disciplined enough to do it now, you will see the results and you will see how much easier it becomes.
We’ve got about 70 to 90 companies that every single month—and you probably don’t even know this—that every single month we are giving marketing assets to between the pet sitting and dog walking companies and between the house cleaning companies that we just launched into a few months ago. There are 70 to 90 companies we are supporting every single month and giving them assets between 10 to 23 assets a month. That is a lot.
I mean, just do the math. Like 23 times—just do 70, like lowball it. I’m going to do that on my calculator right now and tell you that is a lot. And there’s no way that we could be trying to jam all of that in every single month. That is something that we need to batch. And that’s 1,610 pieces of marketing assets. That’s insane. When I really think of it that way, that’s insane.
But that’s not all. We also have all of the marketing. And when I say marketing materials, I mean the concept, and then—and I talked about this a couple of episodes ago—the concept and then the copy and then the creative design. You know, that could be a video, could be a graphic, could be a picture, a whole bunch of different stuff—an infographic.
And so we’ve got 1,610 pieces for all these companies that we support. And then we’ve got everything for our Facebook and Instagram. And then we’ve got everything for the Mastermind. That’s a lot of content. So if there’s anybody that is qualified in this industry to explain to you what it takes to batch, it’s me.
If there’s anybody in this industry that is ever going to be able to deliver it to you on time, never, ever, ever late—we’ve never been late in the five years we’ve had Better Marketing with Bella—it’s me. So I know a thing or two about this, and I encourage you to open your mind.
Now, you’re not going to be producing 1,610 pieces of content plus, plus, plus. So I’m telling you, this is possible. And so if you want to turn your marketing on autopilot for the next four weeks in just 60 minutes, the very first thing you’re going to have to do is be disciplined with your batching.
And then you’re going to have to figure out the consistency. The one thing is, nobody is here to tell you that you must post once a day, every day, or three times a day, Monday through Friday. It is completely up to you how little or how much you want to post.
And when you first start out, I would honestly suggest posting only twice a week—your own content. Now, if you’re in Better Marketing with Bella, we know that we fill in the gaps there for you. And if you do twice a week and combine with ours, that just about covers you in marketing in some aspect Monday through Friday, almost for the whole month.
But you get to figure out the consistency. So maybe you’re only doing eight posts a month yourself. That means figuring out the creative. It means figuring out the asset. It means figuring out the copy. It means getting your team rallied up around to help create that. But whatever the consistency is, you figure that out.
How often will you show up on social media? Are you going to commit to daily postings or multiple times a day? You set the expectation and break it down. You don’t have to announce it. Don’t say, “Okay, we’re going to post on Tuesday, Thursday, so we’re going to do Motivational Monday.” Please don’t do that. Nobody cares. You can do that behind the scenes, but you don’t have to announce it.
If you’re looking to do this, create a plan. Maybe twice a week is too much for you. Maybe you just want to start off with once a week. But make that content really amazing. Saying a post takes seven minutes to create—you just did your month’s worth of content in 56 minutes if you’re going to do eight.
So let’s see—this is how this works. And I’m going to do this in less than seven minutes because I’m going to talk it out. You have templates already on Canva that you’ve already picked out that you like. You know that one of your buckets is behind the scenes.
So here’s how this works: I just got off the phone. This lady just called. She needed a cat sitter because her grandmother died and she has to fly to the other side of the United States. She’s frantic because she never leaves this cat alone or her sister usually does it, but her sister’s going to the funeral.
So I talked to her, I understood what her problem was or her concerns were, I addressed them, she signed up with us, we have a consultation, everything’s going to be great. Wow. Okay, well, I could take a picture of this cat and I can talk about this story.
Or I could put a quote up there, something like some sort of trustworthy quote. Or I could do an actual story or video and say, “Hi, I’m Bella. I just got off the phone. I want to tell you about this lady that I just got off the phone with. It’s so terrible. She had a death in her family. Her mom died and her sister usually watches her cat. But now, you know, we’re going to step in because her sister needs to go back to the funeral with her. And we’re so happy to provide her with this peace of mind, trust, and security,” which by the way, ding ding ding, is what you guys are selling.
It’ll take you literally two minutes to do that video. That’s it. And you can put it in your arsenal to batch it, right? And post it at another time. Maybe you don’t want to do it right now because you feel like it’d be insensitive, but you can put it in your folder of like, you know, the bucket for “Who do we help?” “Clients we help,” “Problems we solve,” or “Stories about pets.”
That could go into a whole bunch of different buckets. If your buckets are on point, the batching is going to be easy. And guys, it’s important for you to do this stuff, but it’s also important for you to have professional branding, to have professional graphics. Some of you are hitting it. Some of you are not.
Okay, we’re going to keep going. So the first one was being disciplined. Second one is figuring out consistency. And lastly is interact. And I did a whole entire podcast episode on this, so I am not going to go too deep into this. But you have to talk to people.
And I’m going to keep saying this to you guys—imagine if you walked into a networking group, a networking meeting, and you just walked into the room and you stood in the middle of the floor and you just did not say a damn word. Awkward.
When we talk about social awkwardness—“But I’m an introvert.” I don’t care, it’s still awkward. You don’t make eye contact with people. You don’t ask them anything about them. But you expect, for some reason, everyone to walk up to you and just like fall over themselves and sign up with you.
Because that’s what a lot of people expect on social media. And that’s so wrong on so many levels.
The first thing that it’s wrong on is that nobody cares about you until you make them care about you. And what have you done to break the ice, to start the conversation, to show that you care about them? “Hi, how are you doing?”
When I used to go to networking meetings—and some of you guys know this—I never put “Hello, my name is Bella.” I would always put, “Hello, my name is what’s your pet’s name?”
And I am not kidding you, I would be talking to someone and I would have someone else like waiting in the wings to come up and tell me all about their pet because I was like this haven in this mecca of salesy stuff that nobody really likes to be at.
I mean, there are some of us extroverts that thrive off of that, but the majority of people do not like talking to strangers and starting up conversations and talking about themselves. It just feels weird. And I get it.
So I used to change it that way to try to start their conversation. That’s exactly what you should be doing on social media marketing. It’s not advertising. It’s not “Come let us walk your dog.” It’s not “Call 555-243-5428 and we’ll walk your dog.”
It’s not posting your website on social media. Please don’t do that, you guys. They know where to go to get your website. It’s called your profile. It’s there. And please, for the love of God, while I’m on this tangent, please make your profile picture your logo. Don’t have it as your face. That looks like you’re a fly-by-night kid.
But interact.
My third point is interact. Instead of worrying about what to post daily, because you have done all this batching in an hour, now you have the opportunity to grow relationships by interacting daily with those who have engaged or commented on your posts.
Maybe someone just put a like on your Instagram story. Maybe someone participated in the poll. You can very quickly respond back: “Hey, Susie, thanks so much for your vote on our poll yesterday. How’s Fluffy doing?”
It’s that simple, you guys.
They might not always respond to you and that’s okay, because it’s not about everyone always responding. Oh my gosh, I’ll tell you something. I’m going to leave you with this story. And I hope this person’s listening.
We have been doing, and you guys know this, I’ve told you before—and when I say we, it is we, because it’s physically impossible for me to do all of it—but we have videos and pictures and an opening line because I really want to talk to as many of you as possible. That’s just really what it is. I want as many of you who are at the point where you want to start scaling your business to sign up for a 20-minute phone call.
And I want to talk to you on the phone. I want to break the ice. I want to know what makes you tick. I want to know what makes you lay awake at night and not go to sleep. So how do we do this? We talk to you. What a concept!
Me and a member of my team, we go into Instagram, we find out who’s active, we find out who’s doing stuff, we interact with you, we comment on your pictures, we come back another time, we might like more of them or whatever you’re asking for engagement, might do that, start a conversation with you. We’ll go into the DMs, we’ll slide into there, “Hey, what’s going on? My name’s Bella. If I give you a magic wand, what’s the one thing you’d fix with your business?”
And I got this response this week, and I’m telling you about this because I understand where this girl’s coming from. Because I understand a lot of people who have nothing to do with you are just trying to sell you and they’re like, “Hey, what’s up?” You know me—I’m like, I’m not trying to sell you on Instagram.
I don’t mean to sound elitist, but I am not in the place of my business where I need to do that. I could care less whether or not you buy a downloadable thing or you join the Mastermind or not. It’s not going to make or break me. It might make or break you, but it’s not going to make or break me. I truly want to break the ice with as many people as I possibly can.
And so I also invite you to slide into my DMs while I’m telling you this. But anyway, so I said this thing and this girl didn’t respond. So a couple of weeks later, I was like, “Hey, what’s up? Did you get my message?” And she’s like, “Yeah, I got your message. I don’t want a business coach.”
I’m like, “Yeah, no problem. I wasn’t asking to be your business coach.” And in the back of my head, I had kind of had to hold back because I was like, in the back of my head, “I don’t know you well enough to want to be your coach because I don’t work with like everybody.”
And your success is my success. If you have a crappy mindset, like I can’t work with you. I don’t really… My model isn’t time for dollar. And if you were just to go get like a one-hour session with me, it’s $995. And it’s that for a few reasons, which I won’t go into right now. But I was like, I’m not trying to sell you anything.
I’m literally just trying to say hi, see where you’re at, like how your business is going post-pandemic. What are you working on? What are you struggling with? How can I know how to help you guys if the only people I ever talk to are in the Mastermind or Better Marketing with Bella, honestly?
And so it was interesting because, you know, her defenses were up, which I totally get. And then we ended up having a good conversation and she was like, “So you really aren’t selling me anything?” I’m like, “No, I could care less if you buy something. I truly am doing this.”
What a novel concept. And I think a lot of you guys are going to also relate to this. I do this because I truly love it. I coach, and I’m sitting here at 7:15 AM in my pajamas on a Monday morning recording this podcast for Thursday because I want to. I like doing this.
This is my life’s work. It is Monday morning at 7:15 where I do not for a second forget that many people are in jail right now—aka their car in traffic—listening to some mundane regular radio, already dreading the fact that it’s Monday and they’ve got five more days until they can set themselves free.
Not my listeners, of course. You guys are entrepreneurs who love your business. Mondays are exciting to me. Anything can happen. It’s like a clean slate. We can paint whatever picture we want.
But guys, in order to put your marketing on autopilot for the next four weeks and 60 minutes, you have to be disciplined, figure out your consistency, and also that’ll free you up to be able to interact. Nobody can actually do all this outbound marketing and start interacting if they’re spending an hour a day in Canva trying to figure out what kind of posts they’re going to create for today or this week.
It’s absolutely exhausting, and you only have so much creator energy in you. You guys, if any of this has resonated with you, or if you are interested in Better Marketing with Bella, our doors are only open for the next couple of days, then they’re closed until 2023.
Our sign-up rate yet again has been through the roof. I am so proud of everyone. And I love that we just get to keep consistently working with the brands. During our one-on-one coaching sessions, we get to do strategy—high-level strategy. In fact, in two hours, I’m spending an hour talking with a gal about her 10-year anniversary, and we are mapping out every single thing she’s going to do every single month for 2023. Exciting. It’s so fun.
And in the group sessions, I get to tell everyone what things are changing—like Instagram having 10 to 14 changes the past two months, every single month. Things happen quickly. It’s why the program is never the same every single semester.
So I want you guys to go to jumpconsulting.net/marketing. I want you to understand that even if you have a social media marketing person, you still need us. You do, because there’s nobody else that is uniquely positioned in the pet industry and also in social media that knows your business like I do. There just isn’t.
I am so uniquely qualified. I’m not some person peddling this from outside the industry. I’ve had a pet business. I’ve been on social media marketing stages talking about it. I have grown my own business to half a million. I have grown multiple other businesses. I know it works and I can guide you and motivate you through it.
My goal is actually to have you in the program and then grow you out of it because it means I’ve done my job. Because I can show you—and I have shown people—exactly how to get their entire staff on board, to have them buy in and have it become an internal operation that just kicks butt.
And it is so authentic. And they’re never sitting there wondering, “My God, what do I write today?” because they are in abundance of social media marketing assets.
Go to jumpconsulting.net/marketing. You guys have two options this year. One is the Chihuahua, where you can get eight to ten graphics, I think it is—don’t quote me, go look at the website—and they’re just graphics, just like what you guys already repost from some of the national organizations, yet they are not as cheesy-looking.
And then you also could do the Golden Retriever package, which is our traditional package where you get graphics, videos, cover photos, emails, blog outlines, reel outlines, group coaching calls, individual coaching call—and I’m probably missing something because there’s so much.
You guys, I’d really love to see you inside Better Marketing with Bella. And if you want to have a phone call with me about it too, do that too. Slide on into my Instagram and go to the link in my bio and you can sign up for a 20-minute call with me and let’s get on it. Or you can email me, [email protected]
.
I am not hard to get a hold of and it comes directly to me. There’s no filter. I do this because I love to do it. I want to see you succeed.
So you guys, let’s put your marketing on autopilot for the next four weeks. And then let’s talk about how we can strategize to get your business doing this itself and get buy-in from everyone that works for you. Again, jumpconsulting.net/marketing.
You guys, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Give me a shout-out. Let me know what part stood out the most to you or some action items that you might do. And I will be back with you next week on another episode of Bella in Your Business. Bye now.
So what did you think? Did you love this episode? I sure hope you did because I put a lot of love into this for you. And the best way you can show me that is by going to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcast and go ahead and leave a review.
I just might read it on the next episode. I also want to remind you that when life gets you down, remember to always keep jumping. Thanks for listening.