Sa-wing, batcher, batcher!
Want to hit your social media presence out of the park but can’t remember to post or just don’t know what to post?
Swing for success
We’re writers, so creating a quippy or pithy post on Facebook is relatively easy - just like playing teeball when you were a kid. Or maybe it was Wiffle ball with the fat-barreled bat. Instagram posts and TikTok reels, however, are a different ball game because they’re so heavily visual. That kind of content takes some real effort.
Just like a baseball player won’t skip spring training - much as he might want to - before playing in a Major League game, preparation is key for managing your social media accounts.
What is batch processing?
Creating social media content in batches allows you to focus your time and energy. Once and done. It’s like playing one game each month and winning every time.
It’s no secret that I have ADHD and autism. I’m easily distracted, but I get amped up when I have a new project. Maybe you’re like that too, so batch processing might be ideal for you. By restricting social media content creation to one day a month (or two weeks or whatever periodic cycle you’ve decided), you need to start the process only once, rather than once a day or so. Batch processing also allows you to plan campaigns that will run over a multitude of days or weeks. You can see everything at a glance, make it all work cohesively, set up a scheduler, and you’re done for however long.
Begin your warmup
If your goal next week is to produce a boatload of social media content, your homework this week is the following:
Find and follow authors/readers who write/review your genre or appeal to your target audience.
Bookmark/save the posts and reels that have the most interaction.
Start a record of the hashtags used on those posts - put them in a document titled "promo hashtags" or something easily identifiable.
Gather images, videos, and stock photos (licensed for commercial use! or make your own) resembling those from the bookmarked content
In a spreadsheet, make a list of quotes from your book and add a column for the file names of the images you plan to use with each.
Move into the on-deck circle
Determine what colors and fonts you want your author brand to be associated with if you haven't already. If you have a logo but no colors, Canva has a color picker that will identify the colors in your logo and allow you to set them as part of your brand kit. If you don’t have a logo, Canva can help you create one. Or you could try one of the sites mentioned in this article.
Step up to the plate
On game day, you'll use a service like Canva to assemble all your content.
Create at least two templates for static images using the fonts and colors you identified in 6 above, and somewhat mimicking what you found in 2 above.
Re-save each new file with a different name before you make changes to the template, then drop an image into the placeholder and paste a quote into the text box.
In your spreadsheet/list of quotes, note the file name and image you used for each quote so you can easily find it again to rerun or rework it.
You might also add a date column so you can record when the post went live. And if you’re particularly meticulous, you can indicate which posts had the best and worst responses so you can run as-is, adjust before running later, or scrap entirely.
Write captions to go with each post. Here’s a list of tips for writing good captions.
Use your document of hashtags to choose up to 30 to run with each post. Fewer is sometimes better. Make sure you verify the hashtags you use. I’m a spinner of yarn, but #Spinning gives me a mixture of stationary cyclists and fiber artists.
Include an image description in the body of your post for users who are visually impaired.
When you have your files ready, you can use Canva or a program like Later to schedule your posts.
Do something similar for reels. You can also play with adding music or speech. Make sure you include captions for social media users who have difficulty hearing or visit social media with their device’s sound turned off.
In my next post, I’ll discuss how to hit a home run with social media.
