Batching Content Without Burning Out: The Real Cost of "30 Minutes of Content"

If you've ever tried batching your content and hated it, I promise it's not you, it's how you were taught to do it. This week I'm having an honest conversation about content batching, the version that actually works and the version that burns you out in one weekend.

I take you behind the scenes of a real batching session where I made 72 pieces of content in eight hours, and I break down exactly what that time actually cost me. We talk about why batching by task changes everything, why filming and editing need separate energy, and why effective batching is downstream of effective planning, not a replacement for it.

I'm also pulling back the curtain on those "I made a month of content in 30 minutes with AI" posts you've probably seen on Instagram. That might be true. But it's not the whole story, and I want you to have the full picture before you compare your process to a highlight reel.

If batching is new to you, or your last attempt left a bad taste in your mouth, I'll walk you through two ways to start that actually fit real capacity.

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@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie (00:00.44)

To the Consistency Corner podcast. Today we are gonna talk about batching. And the funny thing is, as I record this episode earlier today, I batched planned, meaning like outline, scripted, made notes for four podcast episodes. And I was gonna then batch record the four podcast episodes. I'm on my third episode and I'm already like wiped. So

Stick with me. I hope this is a good episode. It's gonna be a good episode, I promise. But I'm just like sharing the real behind the scenes is that like batching takes energy. And we're gonna talk about that today, right? So another scenario with batching where I'm gonna take you behind the scenes and give you like the real scoop is earlier this year, I was in a really heavy content period. I was launching something, I had a an aggressive amount of social media content planned, and I had

Did a batch where I mapped out the concepts for all the cot the content. Then I was like, okay, I have a weekend, I have some open time on the calendar. I'm gonna just like work through this on the couch. I ended up spending eight hours writing captions, creating graphics in Canva, and scheduling content. Now it was like 72 pieces of content, okay, but I spent eight hours. And

After those eight hours were over, like I was exhausted because it's a lot, and it's the kind of tired where like you can't even remember your own name, let alone your content pillars, and you're like, but I thought batching was supposed to be helpful. So here's the other side of that coin. Somewhere on Instagram, you have probably seen someone tell you.

That they created an entire month of content in just 30 minutes and they're AI agents. Listen, that might be true, but there's more to it than that. I'm telling you the whole truth, and I'm not saying that they're wrong, but again, they're not telling you the whole truth. So today we're having an honest conversation about batching. Because I talk to mom founders all the time who have capacity constraints, and it's like, yeah, I know I should batch, or like,

Ruthie (02:19.618)

I tried batching and like it just it didn't work for me. And it doesn't work for everybody. Like let's say that up front. It doesn't work for everybody. One of the top voices on Instagram who I follow, Shannon McKinstry, doesn't batch her content. She batch plans, but she then creates in the moment each day. So we're gonna talk about some different versions of what batching could look like. So batching, yay or nay.

If you're saying, yay, batching is for me, but I know that I could do it more efficiently, more effectively, keep listening. If you're saying, like, no, batching is not for me, keep listening. Cause maybe I can convince you that a little bit of batching might make your life easier. But there's a style of batching that you might not be thinking about. When I say batching, it doesn't necessarily mean like I'm gonna sit down.

And I'm going to batch podcasts, which means I'm going to outline the podcast. I'm going to script the podcast. I'm going to record the podcast. And then go back to the beginning and do that for episode two. Go back to the beginning and do that for episode three. No, I'm going to outline three episodes in a row. Then I'm going to script three episodes in a row. Then I'm going to record three episodes in a row. Should be four on the recording. I did plan four episodes, but I don't think I'm going to be able to record the fourth one today. I'm going to have to come back for that.

My voice is getting tired. Anyway, that's not the point here. The point is it's production style. It's not, it's like a way of organizing your work, and it's a way of helping your brain be more effective and not have to transition so much. So the useful questions are not necessarily like, do I batch or do I not batch? But it's what do you batch? When do you batch? How much do you batch?

And every single one of those answers has to fit inside your real capacity. If you did last week's assignment, you know what that floor is and how much capacity you truly have in a calm week, in a crazy week, in a normal week, and what your floor is for the amount of content that you want to put out in those crazy weeks and how, so now we know how much time we have, we know what our minimum is gonna be.

Ruthie (04:45.294)

So how can we use batching to fill that floor, right? So.

Ruthie (04:53.516)

When people tell me that they tried batching and they were like, I I couldn't do it, I hated it, it's often because they again like sat down and tried to create 10 posts and tried to go from start to finish on one, then start to finish on two, start to finish on three. And they got tired because their brain is constantly task-switching. So instead of doing it that way, we're gonna figure out.

And to be how to be more effective and batch by task. So I'm gonna plan the 10 posts. Now I'm gonna write captions for the 10 posts. Now I'm gonna open Canva and create graphics for the 10 posts or select photos to go with the 10 posts. I'm gonna do reels in a separate batch batching version or a work session because it's different thinking for video content. Each work session is one mode of thinking.

So your brain gets to stay in it because we talked about the like context switching tax. That's real from when you're switching context from mom to business owner to marketer to team member to boss to wife, all those things. It's also true when you're task switching between different marketing tacks, tax tasks. So once you see it that way, the like menu of decisions kind of opens up. Do you want to?

Batch your tasks monthly or weekly? Are we batching the planning? Do we batch the copywriting? Do we batch the design? If we're talking about video content, are we batching scripting, then filming, then editing? Because those are all different workflows. Filming and editing are not the same energy. Filming needs you camera ready on. Editing can happen in your pajamas with cold coffee. And if you

Batch video content, you want to account for that. Separate days, separate sessions, separate energy. And again, we talk a little bit here about if you have content support, why all of this still matters. Because if your team needs video from you, you've got to figure out how you can most effectively batch capturing that video to send it to them to help them be efficient with their batching in their content creation. And I'm saying a lot about email about social here, but

Ruthie (07:18.242)

We're talking about all types of content. This can be podcast episodes, blog posts, emails, every type of content can be batched, but it's a little different for each type of content because each type of content takes different types of thinking. But the principle holds the same. The same kind of work should be grouped together, which is one of the things that will help lighten the mental load of marketing, because then your brain isn't having to switch.

Every 10 minutes. So, why does batching fail for some people? Because they often like completely underestimate how long it's gonna take, even with the batch. And here we're gonna go back to that time when I made 72 hours of content or 72 pieces of content in eight hours. When I sat down and I did all the math and I was like, okay, how much time did I spend planning?

How much time did I spend writing captions? How much time did I spend in Canva? How much time did I spend schedule spend scheduling? Total. I don't remember what the number was. Okay, but I did this. And this final number sticks out to me, sticks in my brain. Well total. Now, what was the number of total pieces of content that I created, 72 or whatever it was, divide the total time.

By the total number of pieces of content, I spent about 11 minutes per piece of content. If I had sat down to create each one of those posts individually, one at a time, it would definitely have taken me longer than 11 minutes. So batching does save me time, but the cost of that savings is that we have to bucket the time up front. And so when we tell ourselves, I'm gonna batch.

Next month's content in two hours, we're setting ourselves up to fail. I mean, even me, like I I put two hours on my calendar today to record two podcast episodes or four podcast episodes. I put four hours total on the calendar to script the podcast episodes and to record the podcast episodes. And guess what? I've spent about five, and I'm not gonna get to the fourth episode because I underestimate how long it's gonna take, even when batching. So

Ruthie (09:44.215)

You're like, okay, okay, I'll just use AI. It'll help me. I can do it faster. You're right. But if we haven't spent the time thinking about the process, thinking about the strategy behind the content, feeding that context to AI, you're gonna spend a lot of your time arguing with or editing AI.

Which is why then your content starts to feel super reactive because you made it in bulk, but you were not making it from an intentional plan. It wasn't that batching failed, it was that the planning wasn't there to set the batching up for success. And you didn't give yourself enough time to actually even execute the batch. Effective batching is downstream of effective planning.

When I sit down to batch, a whole stack of decisions have already been made. Weeks or months earlier. The strategy exists. The campaign calendar for the entire year has been penciled out. The channels are chosen. We know what each one's job is. And the capacity math of how much content I actually can produce has been massaged and worked through. So the batching session is never like, well, what should we say this week? What type of post should I put up?

It's, hey, here's the recipe. Help me fill in the ingredients and then cook the dinner for this week's content. That was a good analogy. You guys know I love an analogy. So the cornerstone thread is the work we did up front is setting us up for success throughout executing our marketing strategy and creating our content throughout the year because the thinking happened upstream.

And I'm not here to pitch you the cornerstone strategy. I mean, I strongly believe that this is an incredible tool to set you up for success, but I just want you to understand that a batch of content is only as good as the plan behind the batch. Proactive content can be batched. Reactive content can be batched, but is it gonna do what you want your content to do? Maybe, maybe not.

Ruthie (11:59.033)

So let me walk you through my process a little bit because I think seeing the complete system will make this more concrete. And yours is gonna look different. That's allowed. And like I said, when I work with clients, we create the system to work for them. But here's mine. So you can kind of see it from start to finish in the seasons where my energy and rhythm are like kind of at their standard capacity. So mid-month, I sit down and plan podcast topics for the next.

four to eight weeks. Sometimes I do a whole month, sometimes I do two months, sometimes it's six weeks. It depends on the season and what's coming and kind of where we are in the campaign calendar. But the minimum is always to try to plan at least the next month. So then we've planned the four episodes. We know what we want to talk about. We kind of know the theme, the intent of each episode. Then the episodes get outlined and scripted and then they get recorded. And

Then the machine starts feeding itself. We can take the recorded transcripts, hand them to AI, and ask it to write sales emails from what I actually said. Whether those are sales emails, nurture emails, blog posts, either way, we're repurposing the content into other long-form content. And also, we can then take social content and fill our floor.

From the podcast. So I know that every single week I'm gonna have two reels that were clips from the podcast and at least one carousel that was something that I talked about on the podcast. So minimum, I've got three pieces of social media content going out from something I already did. And that's batching that is sustainable for me. Now, when I look at the like ideal, ideally I'm posting a little bit more on social. I'm posting

you know, three times on the personal brand, three times on the company brand on Instagram, plus we're creating LinkedIn specific content.

Ruthie (14:03.816)

After we have planned and recorded the podcast and have that kind of raw content, then I'm gonna create the calendar for social content for the month for the ideal. Planning out the topics, planning out again, intent of posts, whether it's a top of funnel, middle of funnel, or bottom of funnel post, what are the themes? And I'm just penciling that at in. Well, I'm putting it in clickup, it's not in pencil, but you know, I'm batch planning the entire month.

But then I'm batch creating a week or two at a time. If I have the capacity when I sit down to batch to go a third week, I'll go ahead and do it and get it done if I'm in the rhythm of creating content, right? But at least I'll batch that one week and have it ready to go. And ideally, because the podcast has already been done, I'm gonna hit my floor.

No matter what, because we're repurposing that piece of content. So the rhythm can kind of bend and I can batch in different quantities based upon my capacity, but it all still works. So we've talked a little bit about my reality for content creation. And I'm, you know, I've been transparent here on the podcast. There are seasons that like I did not have this this.

system in place. And I went like six weeks without posting anything on Instagram. And I beat myself up over it. But then I was like, nope, we're not gonna look at the past. We're not gonna feel shame over this. We're just gonna move on. We're gonna figure out how to do it differently. And that's a podcast for another day. It's a some mindset shifts that I had to make. But I want to go back to the batching and I want to go back to that person that is telling you on Instagram that they

created thirty minutes of content with AI and their life is so easy and they like live on a, you know, tropical island and run their business with eight agents and they never work. And you know who I'm talking about. You see those people.

Ruthie (16:17.87)

Take that with a grain of salt. Take it with like a teaspoon of salt. Because number one, it doesn't mean the content is good. It doesn't. Even if the content you're looking at from them is good, you don't know that that's the content that their AI created. You don't. Volume was not the hard part, especially for AI. It can pump out the volume. It's also gonna sound like everybody else's content, where it's not gonna quite land the plane or quite get the point.

The other side of that, salt helping, is even if the content is good and it was all created by AI, you have no idea how much work sits behind that 30-minute batching session. Training the AI, building the agents, creating the skills, the systems, the processes, the projects, the connectors, the co-work setups, clawed code.

Processes, documented brand guides, brand strategy, messaging strategy, content strategy, brand voice, all of those things, hours and hours and hours of invisible setup so that one Tuesday could look like magic on Instagram. And because you're seeing the highlight reel. And the highlight reel is real, but you're not seeing the iceberg under it.

There is no easy button. There's no microwave magic bullet that you press, and one thing you magically have a month of content. And I say this as someone who uses AI every single day and genuinely loves what it can do for my batching and speed. And it accelerates a well-documented brand. And it does make batching dramatically faster. But again, without that documentation, it makes.

Mediocre content at best. It makes it faster, but it doesn't make it better. And you spend saved time correcting it, editing for it. The setup work is the price of the speed. And anyone who skipped the setup is paying in quality, or they're paying in time because they, again, they have to do it on the back end because they didn't invest it in the front end, which is what that influencer is not telling you.

Ruthie (18:42.85)

Well, what they are telling you is buy my course, buy my prompt, buy my thing, buy my agents, I'll do it for you. That's another thing to remember. And somebody is trying to tell you something on Instagram, what are they trying to sell you? And I'm not saying that what they sell you isn't good. Like I bought a pack of Claude skills from a very talented marketer who I admire and trust and learn from because she had built them. And I was like, well, I can spend 20 hours building these myself or I can just buy hers. So I bought hers.

But again, like when you're seeing and you're having the FOMO that I know I experience, the post is not the whole dang story. All right, so back to actually batching and not just the AI influencers that we're spilling the tea on over here. Where do you start if batching is new or if your last attempt maybe left a bad taste in your mouth? Number one, your option is do an evergreen bank of content.

So evergreen content is anything that is not time-dependent. Conversion content about your offers, testimonials, personal brand pieces that are true in any month of the year. You batch a handful of these at a time and then they go into a content bank. Some standby inventory that you can pull from during a busy week. Because when capacity dips, you've already built that safety net or that bank.

And this is the strategy I would try first if you've never batched before, or you're like, my gosh, I don't know. I I tried batching and it just it didn't really work for me. Instead of putting the pressure on yourself of filling two weeks of content or a month of content, sit down and say, I'm gonna write five posts that are about how I help my IDO client. I like I'm like making up ideas here, or I'm gonna sit down and do

Three reels that answer an objective, an objection that somebody might have about working with me. And just do some little batches here and there and start to build up that bank. None of that content is gonna expire. You can use it at any time. And even a batch of three, four pieces of content is a win that is helping you flex that muscle of batching by task, right?

Ruthie (21:11.544)

So door number two or option two of how you're gonna get into batching is probably for someone who's already batched in the past. And that is batching for a launch. If you have a campaign coming, a launch that's planned, a promotion or seasonal push, batching that content before the window opens is one of the highest payoff moves you can do in all of marketing. Because launch content has a

Specific job. It is taking your buyer on a journey and the messaging has to build in a sequence. And so when you create launch content in real time, day by day, mid launch, sometimes you kind of miss the plot and the sequence falls apart and the journey gets holes in it. And batching in advance is how you make sure the message needs to land and that it actually does land. The launch window piece of content.

Batching though, it's it's a lift. It really is. It's higher stakes, there's more of it. And if it's your first ever batch, you might be like, my god, I never want to batch again. That was exhausting. Hello, going back to my 72 pieces of content that took me eight plus hours.

If you're going into a launch window, I would say at least batch the planning. Map out what the content is going to be instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall. I remember a business coach of mine talking about launch windows and making sure that you block your calendar during your launch windows or campaign windows. And I think that's true because you do want to protect your energy during a hard, a heavier push, a sales campaign, a specific messaging campaign.

But for me, what I realized is I needed to actually block on my calendar and look at my calendar about the window before the campaign, because before the campaign is live, I'm doing all the work to get ready for the campaign. And so that's why like when we do campaign calendars, we we think about launches and the projects that need to be done and the increase in volume of content and making sure that those are put on the calendar during a time that you have max capacity, right?

Ruthie (23:24.318)

Next week we're gonna talk more about launching. I have thoughts. so come back for that episode. We'll we'll get into launching in a little bit more detail there.

But this week we have talked about, or this month we have talked about your summer debrief. And then we kind of talked last week about your capacity and your floor. And this week I want you to think about how you can create one batch of content. It might be three slides that you can share in stories here and there about your offer. It could be.

Four emails that you're gonna write for the month. So you've got your emails all mapped out. Listen, emails, let me tell you, the best tool is Whisperflow. I've talked about this before. I need to get an affiliate code for it. it's a voice messaging tool that you can dictate into that does a great job of formatting. So you do a whisper flow, a brain dump, you talk about what you want the email to say, and then again, AI, which we have set up with our

Brand strategy documents helps you write those emails. It makes the batch faster, but you still had to do the thinking ahead of time of what you want the email's job to be, what you want it to do, what you want to say. And you can braind dump Messi into AI and it can help you, but you still have to do the thinking ahead of it, or the marketing director in your corner can do the thinking. but I want you today to do today.

is put some time on your calendar for one batching session. And again, that batching session doesn't have to be a marathon like I did today of planning, scripting, and recording a month's worth of podcasts. It can be I'm gonna batch out two emails. I'm gonna batch out four posts. I'm gonna film three reels, whatever it is, put time on your calendar, send me a DM, tell me when you're gonna do it.

Ruthie (25:29.804)

And I'll circle back with you and hold you accountable because let me tell you, that's the secret sauce. When you tell somebody else, it's like the body doubling thing, but it's like, I'm gonna make this promise to myself, but it's on my calendar and I know I can move it. I know I cannot do it. And then you're like, gosh, why didn't I do that before? We gotta build the muscle of batching the content. And you're gonna get started by doing it with me and I'll be your accountability buddy. So send me a DM. Tell me what you're gonna batch and when you're gonna do it. And I'll check in with you.

Ruthie (26:02.58)

Everything that we talked about today is a system. And systems ultimately don't look the same for everyone, right? I gave you examples for what I do. When I build a cornerstone strategy for a client, part of what I'm designing for is the way she likes to capture content. And the way we need to get that from her without draining her. For one client, that might be voice notes and Slack.

For another, it might be a monthly content interview. For another, it's sending her a list of questions via email and she writes the answers back. But there are pieces that I still need from you. Which is why when I am the marketing director in your corner, we're collaborating together. I am lightening the mental load for you. I am making it as easy as possible, but it still needs your voice. It still needs your brain because you in your content, your thoughts in your content.

is what is going to truly connect with your community and your audience. And make sure we're not churning out AI junk that could be for any person in your industry. Or even worse, the AI content that sounds like generis generic business coach garbage. Ugh, I hate that. Anyway, same principle, completely different rhythms. We are finding processes that help keep you consistent at the capacity you actually have.

And next or this week in no, next week. What is today? Today is August 11th, if you're listening to this on the day it published. Next week in our marketing mixer on August 20th, we're gonna have these conversations. We're gonna talk with other founders about batching. I mean, you learned from me today, but you'll learn from other women. We can call, you know, brainstorm and problem solve together around batching. I'm sure there's gonna be women in there that have ideas that will work for you that I haven't thought of, that I haven't tried.

You don't just have to listen to my advice. We we can be better together. We can help each other and cheer each other on and collaborate and problem solve like the smart women that we are. So come to the next marketing mixer, August 20th. We we do them quarterly. So if you're listening to this after the fact, make sure you get signed up for the next one. The link is in the show notes. or you can go to the consistencycorner.com/slash mixer, and I'll see you there.