Posting consistently is crucial to attracting and retaining followers*, to showing off your skills, and demonstrating your professionalism. So how do you go about creating content consistently and in an efficient manner? I'd like to share my three top tips with you:
To get started, brainstorm or draw a mind map about what you would like to share with your audience. Start with broad categories like 'how to', 'behind the scenes', your products or services, and customer feedback. Then expand from there, generating as many ideas as you can. At this point, don't worry about fleshing out your ideas; just get as many of them as you can down on paper.
Here's an example from a brainstorming session I did for one of my clients, Trent Hamilton (YouTuber):
Building on your mindmap, the next step is to plan ahead - ideally a month at a time but if a week or a fortnight is all you can do, start with that. One reason to plan out your content is to save you time and stress, but it also gives you a chance to make sure you're covering a full range of topics, and evenly.
I highly recommend using a content calendar or a planning tool like Pallyy or Planoly, but even just having a plan in your head will put you one step ahead.
Now it's time to get to work writing your copy and creating your graphics. The key here is to create in batches. Select a topic or group of posts (e.g. inspirational quotes) and work on those, and only those. Again, this is going to save you time because you're not stopping and starting, and it will save you stress because you will have a bunch of posts ready to go! Most importantly, though, batching is another great way to ensure consistency - both in your tone of voice and in terms of your design!
And that is it - your pain-free plan for efficiently creating consistent content! But before you go, here's a bonus tip... You don't have to do this alone; ask your team (or friends, whānau, and audience) for ideas. This will take some pressure off you but it also means that your audience will see more of what they're interested in!