Marc's Blog

Many content creators look around for strategies they can use to crank out more content in a shorter amount of time.

The more content you can produce, the more assets you have for your brand.

It’s no wonder some creatives get as close as they can to daily content on multiple platforms.

During an interview with John Lee Dumas, he discussed how he batches his content production back when he produced daily episodes. Basically, he does all 30 interviews for his podcast over a 2-day period and gets interviewed on 20 podcasts on one day. This approach gives him 27 days to focus on other tasks for his content brand.

Ever since JLD mentioned the content batching method, I’ve noticed more and more people mention it. This is similar to when you buy a new car model and suddenly notice many of those car models on the road (there’s even a name for this phenomena. It’s called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon in case you’re in the mood for a new trivia question).

All you may know about content batching is that JLD does it, but it’s the secret to consistently creating valuable content with ease. Notice how JLD only spends two days each month interviewing people for his EOFire episodes. He also only spends one day getting interviewed for other podcasts.

While he takes on the herculean mission to consistently publishing one new episode every day, he’s only working towards this herculean mission for two days each month. If you could grind for two days and then have all of your content completed and scheduled for that month, would you do it? And since most people don’t publish daily podcast episodes or daily content in general, the content batching process is easier for most of us.

If you write one blog post every other week and choose two days of the month to write 10 blog posts per day, you’ve got content scheduled for almost the entire year (I only recommend this approach if you have a solid promotional calendar in place, and even then you should leave some holes so you can insert new blog posts in case there’s breaking news in your industry. For some niches, every day presents big news).

To get started with your content batching plan, choose a day of the week you’ll conduct your content batching. For instance, you can choose Tuesdays to batch your content. You can also choose to exclusively batch your content on the first Tuesday of the month. The options available for your content batching are dependent on your schedule and the time you can commit to crafting valuable content.

This is a small section from my book Content Marketing Secrets. If you want to learn how to create, promote, and optimize, your content for growth and revenue, you’ll want to grab your copy.

Get your copy of Content Marketing Secrets

If you look in any dictionary, you’ll see that preparation precedes success. The same holds true for each episode, and on a deeper level, anything you do that is worth pursuing. Your preparation style will change as you do more episodes and get a better feel for your format. However, I want to offer you some pointers to help you get started.

#1: Write The Guest’s Bio: The first step to prepare for each episode is to write the guest’s bio. You can easily find most people’s bios on their blogs’ About Me pages and use what’s there. As you write the bio, replace any references to the guest’s name as “Today’s guest.” When you introduce your guest, you don’t want to mention the guest’s name until the very end to build suspense. Yes, people can see who’s the guest based on each episode’s title, but you’ll build a level of excitement by building up to the moment you introduce the guest by name.

#2: Come Up With A Topic: Once you write the guest’s bio, it’s easier to come up with a topic since you know a lot about the guest. Once you come up with the topic, it is then easier to write questions.

#3: Come Up With Just Enough Questions: You don’t want to write too many questions. It’s better to let the conversation flow and ask follow-up questions to fill in the gaps. If you write too many questions, it’s tempting to ask all of those questions instead of the questions you should really be asking. Let the conversation change direction if it will provide more value to your listeners. You’ll get better at asking follow-up questions as you conduct more interviews, but by writing fewer questions, you spend less time preparing for each episode. It also helps to have a set of evergreen questions that you can ask anyone who comes on your podcast (i.e. What is one big challenge you faced on your journey and a powerful lesson you learned during that challenge?). Eventually, you may not want to come with any advance questions at all. Now I ask the first question that comes to mind and actively listen to each guest. It’s easier to lose focus when you know what question you’re asking next based on your list of questions.

#4: Read The Bio Out Loud Before The Interview: You don’t have to read the bio out loud with the same enthusiasm you’ll have when you’re recording. However, it helps to read it before the guest calls in. The brief minute rehearsal will help you deliver the intro more effectively during the recording.

#5: Recording The Interview: The Skype Call Recorder and Zoom both get the job done. Whichever option you prefer, test it out with someone else before a guest calls in. This preparation step primarily applies to new podcasters and seasoned podcasters who want to try out a new tool.

This is a small excerpt from my book Podcast Domination. If you want to learn how to launch, grow, and monetize your podcast, make sure you get your copy of the book.

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