The graveyard of organisational communications is full of ideas that never got made.
This lesson is about building a production process that actually gets content to completion.
Remember, you are new at this, it won’t look like the content being put out by professional content creators. They’ve been doing this for years, full time. We’re doing this for the first time, on top of our full time work. So lets be kind to ourselves here.
The four stages of content production
1. Pre-production Everything that happens before you start making. Brief, concept approval, asset gathering, scheduling, logistics.
2. Production The actual making. Writing, filming, designing, recording.
3. Post-production Editing, refining, approving. A fresh set of eyes before publication catches errors and weaknesses that the maker can’t see.
4. Distribution Publishing, scheduling, sharing. Distribution is not the end of the process – it’s the beginning of the content’s life.
The minimum viable production workflow
- Brief (even a one-paragraph version)
- Make the thing
- Review it 24 hours later with fresh eyes
- Publish
- Note what you’d do differently
Batching as a production strategy
Creating content one piece at a time is inefficient. Batching – creating multiple pieces of content in a single session – is dramatically more efficient. Set aside 2-3 hours, get into the zone, and produce a week or two of content in one go.
Exercise
Plan a content batching session for this week. What will you make? How much time will you set aside? What do you need to prepare in advance to make the session productive?