Social media Content Creation is the name of the game today, but wow—does it drain your time and energy. It’s no surprise it often comes with a side of headaches and a dose of social media stress..
On the one hand, it offers endless opportunities to connect with your audiences, position your brand, and build relationships that ultimately contribute to your revenue/business turnover.
But at the same time, social media content creation can be stressful and daunting, because it takes organization, consistency, and it is terribly time-consuming.
Results come over time and require adjustments and adaptability. Content creation burns through resources, so that businesses often abandon social media after running the first mile—even though doing so means missing out on huge opportunities.
So the question is: How can they get back on track? How can we survive social media stress and run our channels effectively, especially as a small company?
Here are 7 tips to make your social media life easier—and trust me, even fun!
1. Strategy is boring, but key
I hate to sound dull, but I love going back to basics when I can. And here we are: Knowing why you’re on social media, what goals you’re pursuing, and who you’re trying to influence is non-negotiable.
Without a strategy, you’ll be chasing your tail—reacting to things instead of managing them. Most importantly, you’ll struggle with the basics: like figuring out what to post in the first place.
Long story short, without a clear strategy, managing social media will stress you out. Period. No proper building stands without solid foundations, and your strategy is the bedrock.
Having a strategy doesn’t mean you need a multi-million-dollar marketing plan that looks like it was drafted by a global corporation. It’s about getting the basics right:
- Who are your audiences?
- What value can you bring to them?
- What key messages will resonate?
Now, this article isn’t about building a social media strategy and approaching content ideas. I have written another piece about that, feel free to check it out when you’re ready.
Please keep this in mind. Once your homework is done, we can move to the next step!
2. Brainstorming is still a good starting point
I love examples. Let’s take a real-life case to make things clearer.
Let’s say you run a barbershop. After doing your strategy homework, you realize:
- Your primary audience is male youth aged 14–30;
- You plan to offer fashionable, affordable haircuts;
- You need to show you’re in touch with youth culture, keep up with trends, provide professional services, and maintain a welcoming vibe.
With this groundwork done, it’s time to start the fun and to… brainstorm!
Step into your audience’s shoes. What would you want to see if you followed a barbershop on social media? What content would be relevant for them?
Keep it simple. Throw all your ideas on paper: showing haircuts, explaining trends, sharing hair-dye tips. At this stage, don’t judge yourself—just write. Then shut your notebook, go for a walk (or a drink), and pat yourself on the back. You’re done for now.
3. Find patterns, spot repetition, check templates
Allow a few days to pass before revisiting your list and, with eyes, go over your work again. Assess it as though you’re stepping into the shoes of your customer. Does the content still resonate with you?
Feel free to discard any ideas that no longer feel relevant, and don’t hesitate to add new ones or expand on your initial thoughts.
As you review your list, you’ll likely notice patterns and repetitions. You may find that certain ideas naturally group together, almost as if they belong to the same category. Using the barber’s shop analogy, for instance, you might organize ideas into logical clusters.
- Haircut style suggestions.
- Tips for hair care at home.
- Product recommendations.
- Fun facts about historical hairstyles.
- Meet-the-team posts.
- Shop vibe videos.
Group and label your ideas. An Excel sheet can be your best friend here—use columns, colors, and whatever helps you stay organized. Once everything’s sorted, you’re ready for the next step.
4. Content Creation: give shape to your ideas
By now, you should have a shortlist of selected ideas, complete with internal references and links. Ideas are valuable, but if they’re too general, they’re not very useful—on their own, they aren’t yet posts or videos.
Now it’s time to put in some real effort: go through each item on your list and dig deeper. Ask yourself what social media content you could create from each idea. Here are some questions to help guide you through the process:
- What’s the best channel to promote this? Is it more suited for a funny TikTok scene or an informative IG post?
- What solution works best? A static post, an animated graphic, or a longer piece with engaging copy?
- How will the content unfold? What key points should I cover? What wording do I need? What visuals—photos or video—are essential?
- What do I need to create this? Will I use stock images, or do I need original content? Do I need to rent a location or use professional equipment?
As you see, this is the real core of organizing your social media life. Focusing on the actual content production helps you move from intuition to a concrete draft of your social media content.
Keep in mind: at this stage, this list is meant to serve as a guide, not a final product—it doesn’t need to be perfect. Still, it’s important not to be shy and to describe in detail what you picture doing, as if you were explaining the process to your mum.
Going back to the barber shop, let’s take one idea from the list in the previous paragraph and let’s turn it into a draft content:
- Haircut style suggestions (original suggestion)
→ I’ll create a short video, filmed with my phone at the shop. I’ll move around my client, showing them entering with their old haircut, the work in progress, and the final result. There won’t be any speaking in the video; instead, I’ll add subtitles that highlight the desired cut and showcase some of the techniques I use. I’ll choose trending music to accompany the video, making sure it matches the vibe of my barbershop.
As you can see, this is where your content starts coming to life. Also, this process will help you further categorize your Social media publications as you will notice that different ideas will follow reusable patterns or structures.
This relates to the concept of social media format. To illustrate the point with the barber shop’s analogy, this might imply creating a common template for posting about haircut style suggestions:
- Every haircut gets at least one video.
- Every video starts with a catchy title within the first 3 seconds.
- All videos show the before-and-after looks.
- Each video lasts a maximum of 15 seconds.
- All videos use your brand colors, and only your brand colors.
- Every video includes trending music.
- All videos are shot at your shop, ideally in the same seat.
Content formats are crucial for two main reasons. First, they’re key to identity and branding: using consistent features in your content helps customers recognize you, set your videos apart from competitors, and build a clear understanding of who you are and what you do. Second, formats save you time when creating content: practice makes perfect, and once you’ve mastered a content type, creating future posts becomes much quicker compared to starting from scratch every time.
Enough work for now. You should now have a more refined list of ideas, each with additional details on what you want to say and how you want to say it. Additionally, you should have defined some formats, such as single-image posts with long captions, short videos with music, carousels with infographics, and more.
A lot of the hard work is behind you now. The real fun is just ahead!
5. Field testing: learn and refine
It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Let’s say you’ve identified 5 different formats/templates:
- Short videos for haircuts
- Photos of hair care products
- Pictures introducing your team
- Infographics with tips on how to care for hair at home
- Short videos showing your shop, showcasing your good vibes
Time to create some content, how to do this? Easy: start from scratch and create one content for each type. If you did your homework right, you should just go back to your draft instructions and try.
Boy, these are always interesting times: while jumping from theory to practice, you will learn a lot and start seeing things from a new perspective.
Sometimes, ideas you thought were great turn out to be harder to execute than expected, while others come together much more smoothly. You might find that the location you planned to shoot in is too dark, and that another corner of your shop works better.
Very often, the content you create may look just like you imagined, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. You’ll feel like the message isn’t coming across as you intended, and it doesn’t resonate as it should.
The point is, this is a fantastic time for learning. By producing a few posts for each format, you’ll improve your skills and refine your approach. Take note of what works, what doesn’t, and don’t be afraid to adapt, experiment, and correct along the way. Do add new ideas and formats if necessary.
Sometimes, what’s born on the battlefield turns out to be better than what was planned in the war camp!
Stop when you feel you’ve nailed each format. But remember, don’t aim for perfection—because it doesn’t exist. I’ve seen so many people overwork their content, trying to make their videos “Oscar-worthy.”
It’s just not worth it. I will explain better why in a bit—let’s move on to the next step!
6. Content Creation: work as an agency!
After conducting your first field tests, you should have a nearly final idea of what your content will look like.
Now, go back to your Excel/List/Table and fill in the gaps. With the lessons you’ve learned, transform each item into a real social media post: review text and images, write full captions and prepare scripts—describe every scene you want to film and the specific details you want to capture. As a consequence, this effort will result in a centralized document that summarizes your social media content.
The ultimate goal here is the following: to treat your content creation as if you were a small agency.
Think about movies. Imagine if a producer treated each movie scene independently: can you imagine the cost and effort of booking actors, locations, crews and accommodations to shoot for 5 minutes only, and then start the process anew?
The same applies to you. You can’t afford to wake up and create new videos every day. You need to run a business, you are not an influencer. Take the barber shop, for example: you need to cut hair every day. You can’t neglect your clients because you’re busy brainstorming the next Reel idea!
Most importantly, with your plan or Excel document in place, you’ll know exactly what you need in advance (and in detail!), so you can plan accordingly:
- Can’t shoot during normal workdays? Shoot on your days off—this is a typical solution for restaurants and shops; for example.
- Need a professional photographer? Book a day for shooting all the content you need, you can’t afford to hire a professional 24/7
- Need to design 10 posts using the same template? Book an empty morning and work in batches—you’ll have content ready for weeks.
- Shooting and editing are separate tasks. Set the stage, bring in the actors and crew, and film everything in one go. You can edit everything later.
These are just examples, but the goal is to scale your content production. A single day of shooting can provide enough material for a month’s worth of posts. Creating content in batches saves time by avoiding distractions like searching for files and reopening software.
The end is near: are you ready for the last step?
7. Test, Monitor, and Adjust
This short guide to humanely-sustainable social media creation is almost complete. As you can see, we’ve moved from simple brainstorming to content planning, which paves the way for more efficient, time-saving production sessions.
Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with one final thought. The goal of this guide is to streamline and speed up content creation, but that doesn’t guarantee your content will succeed. This article focuses on the process, not the outcome.
The only way to know if your content is working is to publish it. Monitor how your audience responds, and boost posts with ads to gather more feedback. Listen to your audience, read comments, and ask for suggestions. In fact, successful social media content creation is a constant cycle of testing and adjusting.
HOLD ON A SECOND: some of you might think I’m crazy for recommending producing content in batches before knowing whether it works. You might wonder, what’s the point of creating a lot of content that might not even succeed?
Here it is why: it’s impossible to know if a format will work after just two posts, or if your strategy is effective after only two weeks. You need time to consistently publish, use ads, and see if your content resonates. That’s why I recommend batch production early on.
I’ve seen clients shoot one video a week, expect immediate results, and then quit the idea after just a few days. Instead, you need a reasonable amount of time to let your content circulate and give your audience time to connect with you. Balance is key.
Then, if your content doesn’t work after a reasonable amount of time, it’s time to try new formats, adjust the tone, or change the setting.
Keep experimenting until you find what resonates with your audience. A big part of social media success is discovering the right formats for your business.
Your Content Creation conclusions
The article is now complete, but remember: content creation is an ongoing cycle, and social media constantly needs fresh content.
The good news is that this guide serves as a toolkit you can rely on every time you need to create new content. Just return to these 7 key steps:
- Keep your strategy and target in mind.
- Brainstorm and come up with new ideas.
- Select and organize your ideas.
- Start shaping your ideas into content.
- Field test: produce, learn, and refine.
- Batch production: save time and energy!
- Publish, monitor results, and improve.
To sum up: content creation will always take time and effort, but with strategy and planning, you can manage the stress and tame the process instead of being overwhelmed by it.
I hope you found this helpful. Now it’s time to put it into action. Have fun, I wish you the best of luck!
About me!
My name is Edoardo, but everybody calls me Edo.
I am a digital marketing specialist and a digital project manager, with extensive experience across different digital marketing projects.
Thank you for reading thus far, I appreciate! I hope you found the article useful.
Feel free to share any thoughts or doubts, drop me a line here: edo@edoardoghitti.com
Talk soon! 🙂