If you caught my last post on a content calendar system – you may have spotted that every Friday I have YouTube Video in there. In this post I’m sharing how I plan this content.
There’s no surprises here, because I’m an Excel geek I made a Google Sheet for this, maybe one day I’ll try Notion but 🤷 for now Sheets is what I’m used to.
Once it’s published, I’ll add the video URL and then also make the quick blog post to go out the following Thursday (remember, I’m slowing down with content publication)
I’ll also update the status to published. Simple enough. Quickly running through each column I have at the moment (I’ve added an extra one since the screenshot)
- Video number – just so I can quickly refer to it in blogs “this is my 10th video” etc.
- The title / working title – gives me an idea what I have coming up, I’m flexible here so I can mix it up if I feel like doing a video on something else
- Status – is it an idea, have I planned it onto a calendar, have I scripted it? Is it ready for editing?
- Date published – what it says on the tin. When did this go out, and how much content do I have lined up if I publish once a week?
- Blog URL – if I’m doing a video which I’ve already done a blog about, I can link in the video description about
- Subscribers *new* – How many subscribers my YouTube channel has at the time each video is published. I may want to write things like “it took me z videos and y weeks to get to xxx subscribers“.
- Video URL – I pop in the video URL too. One thing I may do is go back and edit the blog post to have the video embedded. Some videos don’t have their own blog post though.
Other columns you could add depending on your channel
- Playlist – what “series” is this piece of content going to fit into
- Sponsor – have you agreed a sponsorship for this video
- Editor – who is editing the content
Seems overkill?
For just me, yeah it’s a bit OTT but I like getting into habits, I was losing track of notes with the odd video idea in here and there. In the above setup I can put the ideas all in one place and I know just where to find it.
The future
Setting it up this way, will allow me to have additional statuses, like “editing” if I decide to outsource the editing. I’ve also seen systems like this being used for tracking things like video sponsorships in the future too.
If you’re planning on creating regular YouTube content I’d highly recommend following a setup like this as it keeps it structured, can still be flexible and is a foolproof system you can start following today.
Bonus: Video’s don’t create themselves.
Videos won’t record themselves though, there’s still the time & effort needed to be put into making a video and here’s some tips I’ve found work well for keeping up with your planned schedule
- Batch the videos. This is even more important than batching writing. Videos take a bit of time to setup the camera angle, lighting, audio and make sure you’ve combed any hair you have.
- Batch the other bits. Adding a description, ending cards, links in the video to other videos, thumbnails all takes time and a different set of tools. Do this after the videos have been shot.
- Find a quiet time. Often I have a toddler running around the house, so having a quiet time set aside to record new videos is a challenge. For me, I’ll try and do this first thing (or, towards the end of my day).
Bonus: Video is super hard.
Unless you’re a natural, recording video content is HARD. I’m not a movie start, I mumble I can mess up my words. I also don’t look great on camera and don’t enjoy the sound of my own voice. It doesn’t mean others think the same though. If you have valuable content worth sharing – people will listen.
The key is consistency, and iteration of both content and your post production schedule.
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