Not long ago, I worked for (and later consulted) a Kanban portfolio management SaaS company. The entire company is built on the Agile and Kanban culture, and I learned a great deal about managing work and projects efficiently.

One of my favorite concepts is working on small batches of items (work), mainly categorized by type of work.

The beauty of working on small batches of items, categorized by types of work, is that it significantly reduces lead times for individual tasks. This, in turn, minimizes waiting times and delays, making it easier to spot and address workflow bottlenecks, thereby enhancing overall efficiency.

Today, I’ll show you how I adopted this concept and integrated it into my workflow of uploading more articles efficiently.

My Old Process of Publishing Content

Let me describe my old process of writing and publishing articles, which I suspect might resonate with you. 

It involved selecting a keyword, writing and editing the content, sourcing and adding images, inserting internal links, and finally hitting the publish button.

1. Choose a keyword
2. Write the content
3. Edit the content
4. Find images
5. Upload the article, add images, add internal links
6. Create the affiliate boxes
7. Insert the affiliate boxes
8. Hit publish

With this process, I could upload only one article per day or about five to seven articles per week.

This was never optimal for me. I knew that if I worked on small batches by type of work, I might speed up this process.

Eliminating context switching between the different aspects of creating an affiliate article or info posts will provide the main boost in efficiency.

Here Is How My New “Batch the Work” Process for Publishing Content Works

First, let’s categorize the types of work that need to be done.

You may think that the “Batch the Work” process is longer, but it’s not because we’ve just saved a ton of time by eliminating the waste of context switching. 

Let me explain.

1. Keyword research

You will save time by selecting one topic and finding all the related keywords in one search. This way, you can identify silos/clusters and choose ideally around 5-10 keywords, which you will process in one batch.

How batching keywords saves you time: Instead of searching ten times to find ten keywords, you will do one search to find hundreds of keywords and identify one entire silo/cluster of 5-10 keywords.

2. Write content

When you write content, you start with extensive research on a topic. It is more efficient to select 1-2 clusters, ideally connected, and use the topic research to write content in a single batch for all selected keywords.

Here is an example. Let’s say that you have done keyword research on the topic of the different cat breeds. You now have a cluster of keywords that consists of ten cat breeds. 

During the research, you will discover that many cat breeds are a mix of another two, which you have already covered and researched. Then, while you are on the same topic, write the articles for all ten cat breeds while the information in your brain is still fresh.

How batching content saves you time: Instead of reading and researching cat breeds ten times in 10 different days, you can read most the information once and produce ten articles in less time.

3. Edit content

Editing content in a single batch of 5-10 articles is my favorite part of the process. First, keyword research and content writing are the most daunting tasks in the process of content production. 

This is the best time for the brain to relax by working on more repetitive tasks, like formatting, adding lists and bullets, and breaking sentences and paragraphs into little chunks for better readability.

And since we are working on a silo/cluster, these articles will be internally linked. Thus, while editing the content, bold the keywords suitable for internal linking to the relevant articles that still need to be published.

This is the stage where I leave some editing notes, such as where to add in-content images.

How editing content in batches saves you time: First, it relaxes the mind and keeps your focus sharp (I often go in a flow state). And during this phase of the process, you save a ton of time by already bolding the best anchor texts for the entire silo and marking the spots for the in-content images. 

4. Find images

Another easy-on-the-mind task. It’s straightforward. How often, on a hunt to find a photo for a topic, do the image results suggest a very cool photo that you immediately know where to use for a future article?

I do it all the time, and I tell myself that I’ll search for it when the time comes to write that article. Then, that time comes, and I never seem to find exactly that image, so I get frustrated. 

How searching images in batches saves you time: Do one search for “your cluster topic” and download all the images you need. Then, tinyfy them in bulk and rename them according to the relevant articles and keywords. I usually use the name of the image as the alt text.

5. Upload and publish content

Once I’m done with editing, I’ll upload and publish all articles. Make sure that you stretch the published date range. You don’t want to publish ten articles in one day if that’s not your daily publishing cadence.

How uploading and publishing content in batches saves you time: Copy, paste, publish – only 3 actions, no context switching. Also, search engines can index this batch of articles quickly.

6. Upload images and add internal links

Now, before adding the internal links, I’ll first make sure that I’ve uploaded and added all featured images to the articles.

If you don’t have the time to upload and add images to all the articles in the batch, set the published date to an earlier period so they won’t appear on your home page or blog post page.

Otherwise, I’ll add featured images, in-content images, and internal links from the places I’ve already chosen by bolding the text in the editing phase.

How uploading images and adding internal links in batches saves you time: Again, this is the power of eliminating the waste of task switching. You only have two jobs: to add the internal links and images. Instead of clicking a button 30 times, you will click only once – upload multiple image files. 

7. Add affiliate boxes

This is the part that I dislike the most. However, I’ve found that if I know upfront that the only work for the day is creating affiliate boxes (I use Affliatable), then I’m focused on getting the job done faster.

How uploading affiliate boxes in batches saves you time: When you add products to related articles from similar categories, some products will be suitable for multiple articles. And since the process is done in a batch, you don’t have to waste time searching for product boxes to see which one you have already created.

That’s the concept behind the “Batch the Work” process for publishing content. It’s not perfect, and it will undergo further refinement, but this week, I’ve uploaded 17 articles – 6 info articles and 11 affiliate articles.

I feel like it’s important to stress again that it’s best to work on small batches of work items (articles). For you, this could mean 5, 10, or 15 articles, but definitely not 100 articles.

Let me know in the comments below what you think about my new process.