It can be daunting to try to increase the amount of content you are able to publish as a content creator. We all know that the more high quality content we can publish, the more chances of ranking on Google and reaching more ideal readers! Luckily there are some tricks you can use to make creating more content easier for you. In today’s episode I’m sharing a ton of tips and tricks you can use to publish more high quality content this year.
There are so many ways that you can create more content, faster.
In this episode I will share tips for ways you can save time in all areas of blogging: planning, recipe development, and photography.
#1 Make the old new again
This might be obvious to a lot of you, but it’s important here so I’m going to say it anyway. Republishing or simply updating old blog posts will help you to create new, search-worthy content without a lot of new work when it comes to recipe development.
You can either update photos, update the text or both. (Here’s your reminder to always check your traffic and rankings before making major changes.)
Looking at your old content with an SEO eye is a great way to revisit them and make them fresher. You can add new sections like how to freeze, how to reheat, how to substitute a special ingredient or tips for making the recipe vegetarian, keto, gluten-free, dairy-free, etc.
You can also look at old comments from readers and see if you can answer their questions in the text.
Time yourself and see how long an update usually takes you. I bet you could squeeze in two to four of these in the time it takes you to develop, photograph and write a brand new recipe.
#2 Work through your backlog
We all have posts that we have tested, photographed and just haven’t published yet. A great way to cut down on the things you have to do is put new content on hold while you whittle down that backlog.
It will feel really good to take a break from recipe development and photography and get some posts done. The snowball effect of knocking these out will also help you build your motivation to get more done.
You could also do it concurrently with new content. For example, you could still post one new post a week and then publish one from the backlog until you finish them all. Wouldn’t that feel amazing?
#3 Look for “hidden treasures” — recipes you already have
One way to create more content quickly is to search your site for what I call hidden treasures.
Look at content you already have and see what supporting recipes you can create around them without doing a ton of other work.
For example, let’s say you have a taco recipe. In that recipe, you might have directions for making your own taco seasoning. Or maybe you have cake recipe that includes a unique frosting recipe.
Think about it: These are recipes you already have tested and photographed. You can likely even use the same images, or it would be easy to just snap a few more next time you make tacos or that particular cake.
Go through your posts and see if there are any “hidden” recipes within them that you could turn into whole posts.
Add these to your content calendar and space them out so that a few times a month you are planning to publish a post that will take less work.
#4 Write supporting posts that don’t need recipe development
As you audit your content, one of the first things to look for is gaps in your content. You’re looking for both recipes AND non-recipes.
These posts could be supporting information, but you can also take entire sections of one post and expound upon it in another post.
For example, you might have a post about steak and in one section or in the FAQ, you might describe how to reheat it properly in a section or in the FAQ.
So you could take it one step further and write a whole post about how to reheat leftover steak in the oven, microwave or on the stovetop. And I bet you could write a round up of recipes that use leftover steak.
If you have a baking blog, you might discover the need for a post on how to make your own cake flour substitute. For a cooking site, it might be posts like “how to cook rice perfectly.”
For a grilling section on your site, you might write an FAQ on common grilling problems or a roundup of the best grilling tools.
Another way to think about these posts are the ones that you could link to in all the posts of that category that will help you become the “expert” on a certain topic.
Related Episode: Strategies to Uplevel Your Food Blog as a Resource
#5 Double up on recipes
When you are developing recipes and photographing them, group like-things together.
This will save you so much time (and money) at the grocery store, not to mention time prepping ingredients, making the recipes and photographing them.
You can do this a couple different ways. One way is to make things that go together in one dish. Here are a few ideas:
You can not only write about a finished cake recipe, but you can also write posts about the frosting and filling you use.
You can not only write about a delicious chicken dish, but you can also write whole posts about the rub or marinade you use as well as a recipe that uses the leftovers, like a soup, salad or tacos.
You can not only write about spaghetti and meatballs, but you can also write additional posts about how to make perfect spaghetti, how to make marinara sauce and how to make meatballs.
All of these examples break down elements of the same recipe to create more posts. You would probably have to snap a few extra process shots, but that’s much easier than creating all of these on different days.
Another way to get more posts out of a recipe shoot are about sharing ingredients. This helps you to cut costs and waste less. So that might look like:
- Making three cocktails using cranberry juice in the same recipe shoot.
- Making tacos, taco casserole and taco soup with the same toppings.
- Making a few variations on chocolate chip cookies with the same base recipe.
This method also helps you to only get out similar ingredients and props, and can even cut down on time washing the dishes.
All of this is a form of batching, and if it is intriguing to you we have a whole episode on batching content. Go back to episode 109 to hear more about how batch working can save time!
#6 Turn off distractions.
And now let’s talk about ways you can actually write faster.
Try the pomodoro method, which is named for those cute little tomato timers. Here’s a fun fact and a flashback to the time I studied abroad in Italy — ”pomodoro” means “tomato” in Italian.)
The pomodoro method is one I’ve used for years. Here’s what you do: You decide to focus on one task for 20 minutes, then take a short break, before picking up the same task or starting another for another 20 minutes.
You can adjust the time to 15 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever makes sense, but the point is to turn off distractions so you can focus on the task at hand.
Set up Focus Modes on your phone so that you can get into a zen place without extra distractions, too.
When you are able to completely focus on the task at hand, you will be surprised at how much more quickly you can get things done.
#7 Double up on writing
This one is a similar mindset to making recipes that are similar. In this case you will write posts that are similar.
Let’s say you’re writing that cake recipe. Go ahead and write the full post for the entire cake, frosting and filling. Then in the same sitting, you take pieces of that post to build the posts for the frosting and filling.
You don’t necessarily want to copy them, but you can rephrase elements of the post and make sure you are answering all of a reader’s questions in each one.
This helps you to get in a flow state so that you are only thinking about that cake recipe and not writing the parts of the whole at different times. If you try this, I bet you can write all three of these posts much faster than if you did them at separate times.
#8 Reuse parts of your content.
When you are writing about the same content over and over, you can save time by banking your content.
Start a document that has snippets you can reuse and rewrite across many posts.
Maybe it’s descriptions of specialty ingredients you use a lot, like European butter or your favorite bourbon for mixing drinks with.
Or perhaps it’s a short list of your favorite brands of chocolate chips with affiliate links that you add to every chocolate chip cookie recipe.
It could also be a quick tip about how much salt to use when you salt the water for pasta.
Or even a little reminder about food safety when you are working with eggs or meat.
If you plan to tweak those elements in each post, then saving them in a document you can access on your computer quickly is great.
But another thing you can do is save these as Gutenberg blocks. Then every time you have a post about pasta, you can add in that tip about salting the water quickly and easily.
#9 Outsource, outsource, outsource.
Another way you can create more content is to… create less content. I know that sounds weird, but think of it this way.
If you could spend LESS time, say, editing videos, because you hired someone to do it for you, then you could spend MORE time doing something else, like writing or photography.
If you hired a VA to input your blog posts into WordPress and do the menial tasks like adding links, inserting photos and writing alt text, you could spend more time editing the TikTok video or scheduling social media.
Or you could invest in grocery delivery so that you save time driving to the store and doing the shopping. And instead you could spend that time preparing for your day of recipe development or a photo shoot.
There are lots of ways to outsource – we’ve covered a few back in episode 111 about unusual ways to outsource and episode 99 with Andrew Wilder about building your website team.
My biggest tip for figuring out what to outsource is to track your time. I know I know, if you’ve been listening for a while, I probably sound like a broken record.
But when you track every task you do, you can really see how little tasks add up. If you’re spending an hour every week pinning to Pinterest, that’s an hour you could get back if you hired it out.
If you spend four hours writing four posts each week, and it takes you four hours to shoot two recipes, you could double the amount of recipes you shoot if you hired someone to write posts for you.
Look for little things you spend time on that really add up in the big picture, and that will be a great thing to outsource.
Share your thoughts:
Which tip will you use first to help you create more content?
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Laura Arteaga says
Thanks a lot, this was really inspiring!