How to Save 10+ Hours a Week as a Content Creator #308

0:00Welcome to Influencer Confidential by Sidewalker Daily. My name is Nina Zeta and I will be your host. I love working with brands and influencers on all things business strategy. Are you ready to learn what it takes to work in this influencer industry and see behind the curtain? Well, let's jump in. As a content creator or influencer, chances are you're wearing all the hats. You're doing it all and you're trying to find a way to be efficient with your time and save time. And listen, I'm going to be the first person to level set and tell you that being a content creator is hard work. It requires busing your butt. It is a full time job or more. I always say it readers are people who will work 80 hours so that they don't have to work for you for someone else. Someone made that quote up. I did not, but it is a true statement. And I do like to level set and say that there is a lot of work to be done. However, however, we are all humans and we need to like put boundaries around work. I have very strong boundaries around work. And you know at the end of the day,

1:01you can decide what those boundaries look like, but there are ways to save time on mundane tasks, on things that just don't make sense to be investing your time in. So what I'm going to go over in today's video or if you're listening in the podcast are actual things creators in my community are doing. I asked them, I'm like, guys, how are you guys saving time? How are you guys not like so burnt out and draining time? And this is what they said. So the information you all are about to hear is from real creators, how they are saving time in their workflow to again, not work less, not think this is easy, but to actually be efficient with our time. So the first thing that I do want to share when it comes to time savings, I understand I teach pitching. Okay, everyone knows that about me. I'm the pitching to brands girl. I teach how to reach out to brands. I am also a human that understands that there is a lot of work involved in outreach, right? Putting your list together, emailing people, all of that. And I'm not going to shy away from that. However, not everyone want to be pitching as much as I may want them to be pitching.

2:02So my first time saving hack for you would be to find brands that have budget, that have applications, that have jobs, and start there. If you are able to do that versus just outbound pitching or cold pitching to the wind, I think it's a great place to start. Now, y'all know, and I'm not going to hide around the bushes here, I do have a job board. It is a creator job board I have set up. I am very passionate and excited about this job board. It's called the paid creator. And what the paid creator is going to be doing is sending these opportunities to your inbox. It is going to say, hey, UGC creator, $700 job, that we're looking for a pet one, or we're looking for trouble creators, or hey, we're looking for whatever. These are being sent to you. So what does that do? It cuts time from you having to research, pitch, and reach out, right, because the opportunities are being sent to you. So I would definitely recommend that y'all look at the paid creator newsletter we have set up. I will include a link below. There's a free version available,

3:04so you can start getting those opportunities and pitch them. Sometimes we don't even give a job, but we tell you about a product launch. Like this hotel just launched a renovation. Pitch them. Here's the contact. Or these gummy bears are launching a new flavor. That's interesting. Go pitch them. So sometimes it's not even jobs. It's launches or things that are happening so that you don't even have to think, and you can just go out and reach out to them. Today's podcast episode is sponsored by me, Sidewalker Daily. If you love what we do here, and you love listening to our programming, make sure you find out ways that you can work with us. We're here and happy to support you in all areas of your creator business. Need a media kit designed or a portfolio? We can do that. Looking to have a self-study program over 30 hours of examples and video to help you pitch brands, we got you. Need a one-on-one coach, someone who can jump into your business with you, hold your hand, and guide you with strategy and tips? I would love that opportunity. Go ahead and check out the links below in today's episode. We're gonna share with you all the different ways that we can support you, and we strongly suggest getting on a call with someone

4:04on our team who can point you in the right direction of what you need based on where you are in your business. So get on a call with our success manager, submit an inquiry to our design team or book a coaching with us. I can't wait to work with you. So the second thing that I think is gonna save you a lot of time is perfecting your pitch template. Now, I don't want you guys just copying pasting pitches out, right? That's not helpful. You obviously need to put love into your pitches and make them smart. However, your opening can always be the same. Your ending can always be the same. And then there's parts in the middle that you tweak. Now, one of the strategies that I mention and go really in depth in my pitching program is the idea of pitching per category. So what does that mean? If I wanted to pitch, I don't know, sunscreen companies but I also wanted to pitch suitcases. Instead of having your brain be like, pitch a sunscreen and then pitch a suitcase. No, this week we're gonna pitch 50 sunscreen companies. Then we're writing one pitch, right? That's very similar in category and we're kind of swapping out the names. That is going to help you save time

5:06if you are efficient in your outreach, right? And once you've tested a pitch and you know that it converts, it brands respond to it. As strong opens, the email subject line is good. Then you can scale that pitch. So for me, I have a pitch that I send that I got about a 50, 50 yes on that pitch. When I send it out, I get brands on calls. This isn't happened because it's a magical pitch. This happens because I refined it, I've tested it and now that I know it works, I put it into my this works pile, right? So figuring out your solid pitch template is worth the time because it will be time up front but it will save you a lot of time in the end when you are in flow and outreaching to brands. You're gonna see it's gonna save you considerable amounts of time is marking the pitches that got you yes or no's, throwing up the ones that didn't work, scaling on the ones that did. It's also very similar you guys to like how ads are run, right? Like given ad flops, we throw it out. If it adds as well, we put more money behind it. Very similar thought process here.

6:06I kind of tied this into the second tip. We talk about batch content creating, right? Well, batch pitching is also a thing. If you just set time and time block your calendar and say this is my two hour deep focus block to outreach to pitch, to do whatever you need to do to hit your goal of reaching out to 10 to 20 brands this week, this again, the time blocking, it's more effective if you do things in blocks of time. Doing things 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there, 30 minutes there, it's just not as effective as a time block. So blocking out time for certain tasks in your business, market on the calendar, have it as a red block, have it scheduled in so that you can use your time efficiently and it's like set out for you to do it. One thing I am very straightforward about y'all, you guys know I'm not like content creator extraordinaire, I don't teach content, I teach brand deals and pitching, but I will say as a business owner, I need to make content and the thing that just works for me is having my idea bank. I am not fancy when it comes to this. I just have it on my phone in notes and I have content ideas.

7:07And right now, if you were to go through, I probably have like 30. Anytime I see a hook online that I wanna replicate, anytime I hear someone say something interesting, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna make a video on that. I'm gonna make a video on that. Having my idea bank filled out, when it comes to my content day, I'm not like setting aside time to idea generate or look for things. Now I do have to script, that takes me time, but at least my ideas are there and content is something that you're gonna be doing weekly, right, daily for some of us. So you want to have some sort of idea bank or something that you can just quickly have it available to you. That's why I do it in the notes app because I think if I had to like go to notion or write it down, I wouldn't personally. I wanna set myself up to succeed. So having a system that allows you to just write it, I love notes because it also ties into my laptop so I can either use it on desktop or mobile and I can just put that idea there and it saves it. Similarly, you can be doing this on Instagram or TikTok like saving videos, creating collections, creating boards because again, once it comes to create

8:08the content, you already have those ideas there and you're just gonna move faster. Now something you may wanna consider if you're a more advanced creator is looking into like a repurpose tool, you could either look into tools like repurposed.io or a scheduler, a Metrucool, something that's gonna help your content live further. I think a lot of time is wasted like manually posting content on all the platforms. There's technology out there that can support you in this. So if you literally just posted the video on Instagram and you want it to go on TikTok and Pinterest and LinkedIn and all the places, use a repurpose tool. I know that repurposed.io, some of our creators in our community use it, they love it, they're able to reshare. I also have people that are scheduling their content because that just works for them. And as they have a scheduler, they're able to say where they want it to live. Again, it creates work on the front end because you have to schedule stuff. But then you're not working on the daily grind of like going and posting it on six or seven sites, right? It just is automatically doing it. Another tip that I love, especially if you guys use Gmail is their saved templates.

9:10You guys want to have saved canned responses for certain things in your business. For example, your follow up email, have it as a canned response inside of Gmail. The way it actually works is I wanted to go to my Gmail settings. You hit the little three buttons, you hit template, and then under template, you can insert your template, you can save a new one, you can delete them. And again, you're not using this to send out emails, but like that way it can just be there. Your follow ups, you know, your standard follow up email, right? Or if you're always getting the same questions, having that, same thing setting up like an auto responder. You know, if you are going to have people email you all the time, maybe you have something that auto responds, hey, thanks so much for reaching out. If you're a brand like here's a quick form, you can fill out or if you're a follower and you want to share some love, like we take 24 to 48 hours to get back to you. Auto responder or some sort of something could be really helpful as well. Depending on the email that you use, I know Gmail makes it really simple to do that. Same thing with the templates, same thing with scheduling out emails. If you are in flow and you are like in pitching flow,

10:13you can schedule emails to get sent, you can schedule your follow ups to get sent, so you don't have to think about it, right? And sometimes creators like, it's the mundane tasks of doing them again and again versus just scheduling it up front. Boom, you're going to save time on the back end because you don't have to come back and follow up, that follow up with scheduled and it went out. Now there's obviously risks because like what if the brand responds to you, right? So using some sort of follow up tool like a boomerang or you know, mail tracking tools that can help you make sure that follow up only get sent out if the email is not responded to. You can definitely set those up. They exist, like I said, mailtrack.io or boomerang, they have those available as well. When it comes to setting up time and saving time, I think a lot of creators have told us that they lose a lot of time, like doom scrolling or just being online, we have to figure that out. Y'all, whether it's setting up time limits yourself on your iPhones, putting your phone in a drawer, buying the little brick tool and blocking your screen time

11:14limits because here's the thing, you guys know, these tools are meant to make us addicted and it's just part of the beast, right? And as long as we're aware and we can mitigate, like okay, I need to make sure I am productive today, I cannot have TikTok during these sort of hours. I actually do it the other way. I do social media during working hours and then personal time with my family, I have it blocked. So from like six to 10 p.m., it is blocked. I cannot access it because I do not want to be scrolling when I'm with my family. I'm happy to scroll at work because I work on social media. So you know, you could also figure out what works best for you with your efficiency and what you want to do. But setting up those restrictions is also going to bring you back your time and give you back your time. Lastly, I will mention something that inner circle, my private membership community does. And if you're curious about it, you can always just like message us that you want to learn more about inner circle. But one thing that we have set up is weekly co-working sessions. So every week we have a co-working session where creators come together and get worked on. They all share what they're working on and then they share if they achieved it. And people have said that this has ramped up

12:16their productivity like threefold. They're actually finishing things because they have like a group of people that their body doubling with. So whether you want to do it with us or you want to find your own core working group or your own accountability group, body doubling, having someone that sits there with you and helps you, it's a great way to save your time back because you're actually focused in the deep work. You're getting it done. And then you're actually being more productive. So I find that that definitely saves you time in the long run. Like I said, if you are a creator that wants to join our inner circle community, it's something I am very passionate about. So go ahead and comment inner circle below and someone on our team will reach out and share with you how we can get you into our community. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, make sure to rate, review, and subscribe to our show and visit sidewalkerdaley.com for more resources on all things influence or marketing and social media. Until next time.