Why batching LinkedIn content creation is the best way to learn and grow
A friend recently asked me why she should batch her LinkedIn content. I'm a professional life science LinkedIn ghostwriter. I've been posting consistently on LinkedIn for over a year and a half and I mentor people who want to create better content. One of the things that has made the biggest difference in my personal journey, in my professional ghostwriting, and in my mentees is batching content.
In the context of this blog, batching content refers to the act of sitting down and writing multiple posts in one go and then scheduling them instead of writing them one by one off the cuff and posting them. I usually recommend people sit down and write 5-10 posts at least.
And there are exactly three reasons why you should batch content:
1. Because it lets you see the strategy behind a group of posts.
2. Because it saves you time
3. Because the quality of the posts increases as you keep reading them and it allows you to learn more in one sitting
There is also a side effect of batching your posts: If you batch content, you will always have things to talk about. Let's cover how batching helps you with all of the above.
Strategy
When I started posting I barely had a strategy. The overarching ideas were lost as new cool thoughts came in and I wrote about them, only to realize they did not fit the strategy at all. It was only when I started to ghostwrite that I sat myself down for 5,6 or even 8+ hours, creating a bunch of posts, that I saw the big difference that it made to strategy.
When you write five or ten posts in one sitting, this is what happens:
You create a content ecosystem instead of random posts. If you want to talk about three different things and you sit down to write one post, you cram everything in there, and the post flops. But if you sit down and write ten posts, you can write three or four posts about each of the things. Each post having a different job or speaking to a different audience and then each post focusing only on one thing. The content will be more comprehensible and have a unifying thread that makes you recognisable when people read you because you will be speaking about the same things.
Batching allows each post to have a different job. I'm a big advocate for writing for different audiences and for different goals. Some posts should target visibility, speaking about broader topics, news, explaining your philosophy and opinions, or show deeper expertise.If you decide to write on a topic, for example AI, and you write a general post first with a piece of news, that could be considered a visibility piece of content. If you use AI, you can then write a second post exploring how you use it in ways others don’t. You could even then write a third post speaking about exactly why you are an expert & your track record.Now you have three posts on the same topic but with different levels of expertise and different goals for your readers. Doing this with disconnected posts is much much harder.
Lastly, a lot of people write one post and they get discouraged when it doesn't work. When you batch your content, you can schedule it and then take a look after two or three weeks at what is performing well and what isn’t. Being able to write several posts in a row and analyse the data from multiple posts is a much better way to learn what kind of content resonates with the audience, is valuable and which formats the algorithm is rewarding.
Saving time
I hear a lot of people who tell me that they just don't have time to post on LinkedIn. Batching content is a great way of saving time.
Some people spend three or four hours on a single post just writing but when you batch content you get in the flow of it. When you start writing one post, you get an idea for the next. If you struggle with posts that end up being too complicated, you can break them down into several. You can explore one topic you're already thinking about in depth.
Because of this, if writing one post takes you half an hour, writing ten posts is not going to take you five hours. It might take you two and a half. You save up 50% of the time you spend writing posts and you can write twice as many posts.
It's also much easier to schedule. I do create quite a lot of content but I recommend my clients stick to two posts a week as the sweet spot.
If you are a professional with a full-time job that does not involve LinkedIn at all, you can basically sit down once a month for two or three hours, write your ten posts, and be done with it. This is much more sustainable than having to squeeze half an hour here and there in a rush and end up with something mediocre. Which leads us to…
Quality
This is my favorite topic because when you write one post, you're usually in a rush. You're thinking of a million things. You just had that great idea but the post sometimes does not reflect the quality of your thoughts.
When you sit down to write a bunch of posts, it is much easier to get into the flow of it, to follow a structure and to follow a predetermined way of writing and format. Because of this the first post that you write might be the most mediocre but as you get more into it, the second, the third, fourth, the eighth post will all be better because you are focusing on the one task at hand. In fact I will often revisit my first or second post and rewrite them or even scrap them completely.
Unless you are an absolute expert at creating content or you really try writing short-of-the-cuff posts, I promise you that the quality of your posts is going to increase if you batch them.
Why batching helps you have ideas
Our brain is a fickle thing and starting with a habit is often the hardest part.
People constantly ask me or tell me that they don't have ideas on what to post about, so it might seem very daunting to sit down and write ten posts in one go.
But this is what nearly everyone who tries it realizes: when you do the larger effort and you sit down and you write your ten posts and you schedule them for the next four weeks:
You've now told your brain, "Hey this is worth it and it's also worth it enough that I'm gonna sit down for three hours to do this but I'm only going to do it once a month."
You become more invested.
You get in the mood of writing for a long time and you will feel more rewarded for it.
You have 4 weeks without any pressure, where you don’t have to think about what to post for the next month.
That also means that your brain has four weeks to gather ideas for the next thing to write. I assure you if you spend eight hours working every day, that is 40 hours a week, 160 hours in four weeks. If you cannot come up with one idea for a post every 16 hours, I will be extremely surprised because when you batch your content, you also post on different topics, use different formats, etc. Your brain will be more receptive to new ideas for the next few weeks.
When your content runs out, I promise you you will have a bank of ideas to write your next batch.
That leads me to the most important part of this blog and the one that might be most helpful for you if I've convinced you that batching posts is a good idea.
How I batch my content and recommend others to do it
I'm not the biggest capitalism fan but Ford was definitely into something. Writing posts may be a creative task but if you fall into the habit of doing it, whether you want to or not, the best thing you can do is have an airtight process that separates the different parts of the job. This is how I look at it.
Idea generation.
I have been creating a lot of content for over a year and a half so I don't really struggle with idea generation but if you do, this is what I recommend: carry a notes app or have a separate chat on an AI model. Every time an idea strikes just add a short voice note that you can transcribe later on, or write the idea down quickly.
I used to do this although my technique now is a little bit different. I just sit down and pour ideas into a voice note. I then separate them into ideas that are worth a separate post and I do this in one sitting every one or two weeks.
Regardless, both ways are much faster than having an idea, writing a post, having an idea, writing a post, etc.
Flesh out your ideas
Don’t write the posts yet! First, explore the ideas. What I recommend you do is use a voice-to-speech-to-text app or AI function to speak about each of the topics you want to write about in length. If you use AI I really recommend that you use a prompt where you tell the AI to output your words “verbatim”. I don't recommend that you let AI filter your ideas but for me it is a great tool to organise content creation. I have also used voice notes and other forms of transcripts.
Now your job is much easier. You should have the equivalent of a one- or two-minute talk about each topic and, using your language and your words, you can write a post in any format you want: shorter or longer, with one structure or the other, or that fits the type of media or the other if you already have that in mind.
Write, write, write!
I now sit down and write all of my posts. 5, 10, 20… doesn’t matter. I finish each post before moving on to the next, spending some extra time to check the hook and make sure that the content is as short as I can make it while having the right nuance and ideas in it. I then often add media suggestions that I can add later.
If you are starting out with LinkedIn, you don't actually need to add much media. There is nothing wrong with text-only posts but I'm just being completely upfront about how I approach the process.
Order and strategy
Now you have a bunch of posts, but how should a person read them? Order the posts in a content calendar or a Word document or whatever way you want to.
You don't necessarily need to say which day you are going to post each but if you've spent the time to write 10 posts, you want to make sure they come out in a coherent order. If you have several posts about the same topic, you want to start first with the lightest, easier-to-understand, and broader posts. If you want to have a strategy to find clients, you want to start with posts that will give you visibility, then authority, then sell. If you're writing about multiple topics, you might want to schedule them in ways that you are not always talking about the same topic over and over for two weeks and then about a different topic for two weeks. Instead make them match them so that it's more interesting for your readers.
Create media & schedule
My last task is easy: Create or attach any media I need, and schedule the posts.
Parting words
Writing content this way has a great benefit as well, which is that you can leave at any point in between steps. You can easily sit down on a Monday morning, write down all of your ideas for the next ten posts, draft the posts on Wednesday and organise them, create the media and schedule them on Friday. Because you're always going to leave something written down and always follow a similar process, this becomes easier and easier over time.
So there you have it. Try batching your posts if you don't already or consider the steps that I suggest in creating content in case it might help you do so faster and better.
Need more help?
I write about LinkedIn content creation, strategy, and my process quite a lot. You can find more free info & help by reading Helixa Communication’s blog, The Last Codon, or downloading my Master Guide to LinkedIn.I also offer help with 1-on-1 consulting and ghostwriting should you rather have someone do this for you. You can check my LinkedIn offers and my philosophy at The LinkedIn Lab.
