Batching work is one of the secrets to efficiency. And the funny thing is, it had never occurred to me before that it doesn’t occur to everybody to batch stuff together.
The basic theory is if you do something, for example, like write an email using your auto responder, a weekly email to your list, to your followers.
You need to get yourself into the mood, you need to get writing, you’re not just going to hit it straight out of the park and start writing and keep writing. You have to get into the swing of things.
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Now at the end, you’ll edit it and go back and then send it off or do whatever you do with it. And then you upload it to your auto responder, set everything, the images and that’s it. Then you turn it off and then you do something else.
However what I suggest is that you are then in the swing of it. You are in the groove. You get into the groove, so my suggestion is, that you do them, say two three four at a time.
And you do them like this, and this isn’t just emails.
How to Batch Things Together
Let’s take emails for an example. So before you start, come up with 4 titles. Now work on the titles, do the titles together. Then write them. Write them one after another. Then create the images.
Create all the images one after another. Then upload all four and schedule them one after another. Then you’re done. And you have just done 4 weeks work.
And I can guarantee the amount of the time it would have taken you to do those 4 together will be almost half the amount of time it would take to do them all individually.
And doing them individually, you are going to hit deadlines, you’ve got to be ready. By batching you can do things in advance, you can get them ready.
My Secret for Podcasting
Now here’s my secret to my podcast. I do podcast every single workday so that’s Monday, Tuesday, obviously Wednesday is the expert interview series which is indoors, interviewing someone, but then there’s Thursday and Friday.
Generally when I record those, I don’t have to drop everything I am doing then be in a place every single day to record them. I will do four, five or six at a time. And the funny thing is for anyone, I think I’ve mentioned this before.
But generally, apart when I am on ski slope, generally I take out a bag of clothing and I will actually take off my shirt and put another shirt on and then change the angle and come over here and get a different angle and make it look like it’s a different day.
And quite often it’s in exactly the same place, just different angle, just a few yards this way and that. Different shirt, different subject, scruff my hair up and that’s it.
But that makes it so much more efficient. Now my work in recording one of these takes 10 minutes and so 10 minutes and if you think another 5 minutes between to get changed and check out the next title that I’d prewritten.
My camera is already set up — it’s on the tripod ready, I just hit it again, hit record. Remember this is an iPhone with a microphone hanging off it.
At the moment by the way, this is on, one easy little Gorilla pod. One of these wrap around little tripods stuck on the edge of a button lift. I don’t know what this is.
On the edge of the button lift that is closed at the end of the day and stuck out in the middle of nowhere. That’s all it takes. So it’s going to take me 15 minutes per one.
Say 10 minutes to do it, 5 minutes to prep. 15 minutes, four of those that’s an hour and that is my work done.
When I get back to a computer, I upload those to dropbox, to a folder, and then they are edited by Harvey, my son, who does that for me. But that’s one way of batching.
Writing Out Auto Responders
Another way is writing auto responders, now I’ve said before, the longer you auto respond it, the better it is.
So instead of just thinking once a week, get out and write an auto responder, why not once a week, or once every couple of weeks, write three in one go.
And if you do this every two weeks and write three of them. You start to get ahead and ahead. After first one, two weeks, you’ve done 3 weeks work, you’d do another 3 and then you are way ahead.
And then you can have a holiday or vacation. And you can go skiing and everything carries on. Why you’re not doing anything.
Again this is 10 minutes of my day, it’s really no big deal and I enjoy it doing them from different areas of the world. So think of what you can make in batches.
Batching Social Media
Think of Instagram images, think of tweets, you can actually prewrite tweets and schedule them with a tool like Buffer. Buffer is free. You have to be using Buffer.
If you are more advanced, use Edgar. Edgar has a library system. But buffer is free or $10 a month, Edgar is $50 per month.
And by the way, if you do want to know a bit about Edgar, this week on Wednesday is Laura Roeder who is our expert interview, and she devised the whole Edgar thing.
Fantastic, absolutely fantastic woman. I’ve modeled lots of what I do on what she does. Except this offer I think, she is our expert interview series tomorrow. So be ready for that.
But think of other images. Images for posts, images in Canva, images for quotations, you can put up in Facebook. Very easy.
You can use tools like Post Planner, you can use. And you can batch work with that. You can do everything, you can actually prepare a week’s worth of Instagram images on a Monday.
Your entire week and then just have someone upload them or because they are not easy to schedule with Instagram, it can be done, but not so easy. but have them ready so they just need to be bum, uploaded.
Think of what you can batch, think of the time you can save, you can think what else in work you can do if you’re preparing things.
How About Blogging?
If you are writing a blog post, don’t just write one, write more than one. Think of everything else that you do and do more, don’t think I’ve got to do one of those a week.
Every time you do one, do two or three. And then get ahead. Get time and this is the secret to having a life where you can have, enjoy time with your kids and have more freedom, while work carries on.
And it doesn’t matter what your business is. I am just talking about internet marketing methods. It doesn’t matter what you do. Everything except answering live customer calls and things like that can be done in batches.
Even if you are visiting customers. Why not try and get them all on one day, or two days a week so you don’t have to drive out and drive further.
Tuesday Toolbox Tip
Now one tool that does help you batch, because its Tuesday, so it’s a toolbox tip Tuesday is Pocket. And I can’t believe, I am sure I haven’t told you about pocket before. Pocket is free. It’s one of those tools that once you use, you think, ‘how did I not know about that before?’ But you can get it from www.GetPocket.com. It integrates with 1500 apps. It is used, at the last time I counted, by 22 million people. This is not a fluke. This is something you just have to use. And what it does is it saves stuff for later. So if you want to share posts or share pictures or you want to take swipes of things, swipe fast to keep you think, ‘Oh that’s a good idea, I’d love to decorate a room light there that’s fantastic.’ You can just save it in pocket. You just click, like I said it integrates with everything and so once you got a pocket account, it will pop up everywhere. You can just click and you just save it for later. I mean that’s effectively it. The great thing is as well is it does not need an internet connection. You can save it, it will upload to their pocket service when you get online later. But it will save it locally. So you can save anything, you can take photos, save them, you can do that with documents, blog posts to read later. If you want to read blog posts and things and read them on a train journey tomorrow, put them in your pocket. Clever eh.
Be Sure to Check out the Free Marketing Course
Have you tried the free marketing course? Because this discuses things like batching, how to use tools such as, it doesn’t mention pocket but other tools to help make your social media more efficient. Click here to instantly download our FREE Book “The 71 Ultimate Marketing Tools”
So try it. Simply go to www.FreeMarketingCourse.co simple as that. www.FreeMarketingCourse.co, you will love it.
It’s a piece of cake, it’s delivered to your inbox for 12 days. Teaches you everything I know about how to do this online and how to make your life easier.
And remember Laura Roeder’s interview will be tomorrow, expert interview series. Fabulous woman. I’ll be back on video on Thursday.
