About a month ago, we were feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of content we had to create each week. Our business depends on showing all of you what you can do with our stock and sharing the 1,000+ images we have so that you don't have to dig through our library to see what's new. So for us, fresh new content is a MUST.

But it started to feel like we were putting fires out every day. The priority for each day became creating content for that day and then suddenly kids are home from school and we've hardly moved the needle for our business. Been there? Well we hope this strategy helps you as much as it did us.

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One day we had a team meeting and wrote down every single piece of content we were creating AND the content we hired out. We thought... this will take 5 minutes and result in the 5 pieces of content we need to focus on each week. But take a look.

In our minds, content looked as simple as our next post on Instagram. But every resource you offer is content.

For example, you've just recorded a new podcast episode. Content could look like: the research you put into the interview, the resources you mention during the interview, IG story deck, IG quote designed for feed, newsletter announcing the episode, behind the scenes, etc. That's for one episode!

Another example, you're a shop owner and a new product just came out. Content could look like: photos of the product, video of the product, IG story deck, IG photo, reposting IG stories, newsletter announcing new product, Pin cover designed, etc.

Holy. Hell.

So of course we were overwhelmed! And of course you're feeling overwhelmed! But over the next few weeks we're going to take you through a few simple steps we took to get to a place where all of this comes EASY now.

STEP ONE

This week grab a giant poster or white board - it just needs to be big. Let it be messy. You'll never post it on your blog. Haha.

Write down what we're calling "the pillars of content" for YOUR business. The outlets that you actively create content for every single week.

For us that looked like: Newsletter, Blog, Instagram, Instagram Stories (yes, they are separate), Pinterest, and Paid or Outsourced Content

STEP TWO

Under each category, write down every single type of content you create.

Example - for our IG Stories our content looked like: templates, freebies, announcing newsletter/blog posts/new collections, tips, inspiration, reviews, reposts, sneak peeks, decks for new releases, and occasional behind the scenes

STEP THREE

Eliminate 90% of the content that 1) you yourself are creating and 2) cannot be recycled. That's right, if you cannot recycle your content it is NOT worth your time. If we couldn't share this blog post in our newsletter, on IG, and on Pinterest - it wouldn't be worth our time. Especially since most content, unless it's on a search engine like Pinterest or Youtube, will die after just a few hours or if you're lucky - a few days. Your time is valuable so treat it accordingly.

Using our previous example, we'll show you how we cut out anything that wasn't a *weekly, nonnegotiable must* for us.

We narrowed IG Stories down to: templates, announcing newsletter/blog posts/new collections, tips, inspiration, reposts

Keep a record of the other things you occasionally create, because it's important to see your entire business clearly, but these 5 things are now our priority for IG Stories each week. We have to do them and have to make time for them.

NEXT STEPS

Next week we'll talk about what this realization resulted in: HINT Batch Work. And we'll never, ever go back!

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