LESSON 2: YOUR CONTENT CREATION STRATEGY SIGN UP FOR THE TRAINING HERE Welcome back, friend! I'm so happy to see you here for today's lesson! Just to recap, in the last session you created a new Youtube channel, you chose a new name for it, you created a banner and icon for your channel and wrote a great About section! Fantastic job! Now, Are you ready for today's training? If so, let's dive in! --- Alright! Now that you've created your channel it's time to start planning your content strategy! Youtube is a platform that values consistency and benefits those who post great content regularly. As such, it's important that you create enough content to post on your channel on a regular basis. Creating videos takes a lot of time and effort. That's why I recommend that you batch your video creation efforts. What does this mean? Batching means that you group similar tasks together to reduce the time it takes to focus on it and "get in the zone". It's said that it takes the brain 25 minutes to get in the zone and start focusing on one task. If you're jumping from one task to another, you'll never truly focus on any and you'll be wasting your time and your potential.
So, instead of working on videos 1 hour everyday, consider scheduling a whole day for this task. By focusing 5 hours on video creation exclusively, you will be maximizing your efforts and achieving better results. Plus, if you use equipment to record your videos, you won't need to spend time everyday setting it up whenever you need to record. You'll only need to do it the day you batch your video creation. Doing it this way will also allow you to schedule your videos in advance. So that you can spend the rest of the time doing other tasks like working on your art, studying for school, attending your day job, working on your side hustle... Decide when your batching sessions will be based on the type of videos you want to create and your current schedule. Now, to do this you will need to determine how often you want to post on your channel. But, remember that the main key is consistency! Do you want to post once a week? Twice a month? Once a month? How many videos will you need to create to fill your posting schedule for a month? How many videos can you create in each batching session? For example, if I wanted to post once a week, I'd need to create 4 videos in each batching session to plan the whole month ahead. If you want to post once a day, you'll need to create 30 videos per month and you may need to spend a whole week just recording and editing your videos. Find a balance. Don't overwork yourself but don't neglect your channel. Consistency is key. Okay! Now that you've chosen a schedule, it's time to come up with content ideas for your channel!
Here are some to get you started: Create speedpaints of your art to show people how you paint your artworks, you can choose to have music or talk over the video telling people about your life or about what inspired the artwork Create tutorials to show other artists how to draw and paint You could do animations of your artwork and add relaxing sounds of nature and music to help people relax while looking at your art Make compilations of your artworks in a slideshow format if you create a lot of pieces Now I want you to grab your favourite notebook or journal and write down what kind of video content you'd like to create. After that, start thinking of specific ideas for each video. Try to get as many ideas for videos as you can, so that when you need to batch your video creation, you won't have to waste time wondering what to create. You'll be able to pull ideas from your existing list. --- Good job so far! Now you'll need to decide what tools and equipment you'll need to create these videos! I've made a list of my recommended tools to create videos that you can use to decide what to buy. If you create speedpaints, you will need a software that can record your screen while you draw. For this, I recommend Camtasia Studio or Filmora's screen recording tool. Camtasia comes with a video editor included. You need to buy Filmora's editor and screen recording tools separately.
If you want to talk over your video, you will need a good microphone. I recommend the Blue Yeti but if you're on the US, the Audio Technica ATR 2100 is a great option for a smaller pricetag. If you want to also do vlogging and you need a webcam, the Logitec c920 is one of the best for a very reasonable price. Although, if you have a good smartphone, it can probably record nice video and audio and you may not need to buy anything extra. Test to see the quality it produces and decide whether to invest in new equipment or not. Another thing you'll need is a source of music and sound effects that you can use on your videos. I recommend Epidemicsound.com for this but you also have a wide variety of options in Youtube's Audio Library. Okay! You're doing great, friend! Now it's time to actually create those videos! Look at your list of ideas and choose the ones that you're most eager to work on! Ideally, you'd like to have enough content created ahead of time so that you can schedule it and work on a new batch of content in the meantime. You don't want to be creating and posting on the same day, that is too stressful and it's not the best strategy to grow a healthy channel. Here's a brief checklist of what you need to do to create your videos. If you're doing a speedpaint: Record yourself while you're painting. Pause the recording while you're browsing the internet or doing anything other than drawing. These kinds of interruptions are a bit annoying to viewers. If you forgot to pause at any point, crop out those parts of the recording during the editing phase. Use the editor to speed up the recording until the video is roughly 5-10 minutes long.
If you've decided to talk over the video, decide what you're going to talk about and record yourself. Add it to your video editor over the speedpaint. If you use Camtasia, don't record your audio on the program itself since it will ruin the quality. You can record it in your computer's own audio recording system or in a free program named Audacity. If you've opted for music, find a track that suits the mood of the piece and add it to the editor. If the video is long you may need more than one. Add your image at the beginning and ending of the video to show people how the finished artwork looks! Leave enough space at the end of your video to add an endcard. Render your video and give it a descriptive name file! Don't just name it "new vid sdsd". Describe the video itself. "Speedpaint of a beautiful relaxing seaside landscape". This description helps you be found in search results so don't waste it :) Go to Youtube and click on the upload video icon. Choose to upload the video as "Scheduled", this will let you upload the video and edit it before it goes live on the date you've specified. If you're not yet ready to use this functionality, you may want to upload it as "Unlisted" and then publish it once you're ready to start posting. The most important thing is not to upload the video as "Public" from the get go. You don't want anyone to view your video without title, description, tags or a thumnail. It will give a bad impression. Now it's time to optimize your video to show up in search results! This is essential because it will help you grow your audience over time. I recommend that you install the browser extension called "Keywords everywhere" from Keywordseverywhere dot com. This extension will give you valuable information about keywords when you search for them on Google or on Youtube. This will help you decide whether to target that keyword when creating the titles and descriptions of your videos or not.
Here are a few guidelines to help you get started: Choose keywords that have between 1000 and 2000 monthly searches, at least in the beginning. You can start targeting bigger keywords in the near future when you're growing faster. Try to aim for keywords with low competition or medium competition. These will help you start gaining traction on your channel. Once you're growing steadily, you can start targeting keywords with high competition as those will be the ones to drive more visitors your way if you manage to rank high in their searches. Try to use a combination of single word keywords and long-tail keywords (these are keywords that usually include 4 or more words). Long tail keywords are more specific and can attract a type of viewer better than a single-word keyword. For example: Tutorial vs. Painting realistic clouds tutorial -- The first can be any kind of tutorial whereas the second is very specific and will only attract those looking to learn how to paint fluffy clouds. Now, you need to use this information and keywords to optimize your content. Optimize your title: Give your video a keyword rich title that is appealing. What do I mean by Keyword rich? It means it should include your main keywords in it in a conversational way. For example: Adult Vanellope Von Schweetz in Hero's Duty Wreck-it Ralph fan art SAI Speedpaint --> The main keywords I want to target here are "Vanellope Von Scheetz", "Wreck-it Ralph fanart" and "Speedpaint" 7 years of Art Improvement - Growing as a self-taught artist --> and in this case I'm targeting "Art improvement" and "self-taught artist".
Why? Because I've researched these terms and they are searched relatively often by users, which means they are likely to drive visitors my way if I'm able to get my video to show up in the search results for those terms. Optimize your description: Describe the video in a conversational way but making sure you include your most important keywords in the first 3 lines. The content included "above the fold" is real estate for Search Engine Optimization. You need to do all you can to include your best keywords in this space. You should also sprinkle them along with other relevant keywords in the rest of your description as well. What you must NEVER do under any circumstances, is to add blocks of keywords to your description. This goes against Youtube's community guidelines and it will get you banned in the blink of an eye. I know others do it... and worse, others recommend it, but it's a surefire way to kill your channel. Another thing to look out for is crediting your sources. If you used a music track or sound effect that requires you to credit the author, do it. Give credit where credit is due! Optimize your tags section: You only get access to this section when you upload your video. You want to include here any keywords or long-tail keywords that you've researched and decided that are a good fit for your video. Add the most important keywords first and the least important ones at the end. You can include modifications of the keywords as well. For example, I can target both "Markiplier speedpaint" and "Speedpaint Markiplier".
Your title, description and tags section work hand in hand to tell Youtube what your video is about. If the main keywords can be found in the title, description (above the fold) and tags, you'll have a higher cance of ranking high in the results page. Optimize your thumbnails: Thumbnails play a major role in helping you grow your Youtube channel. When Youtube suggests your videos to other users, your thumbnail will be one of the most important elements in helping them make the decision to click it or skip it. The most clicked thumbnails often include close-up shots of faces with funny facial expressions, although I know this isn't always possible with art! They tend to be bright or have eye-catching elements. If you include text, make sure it's easy to read even at small sizes. Avoid script or handwritten fonts that are hard to read. Don't cover important elements in your thumbnail with text. For example, avoid placing text over a face. Wheew! You made it through the second training video, my friend! It was a lot to take in but it will help you so much! Just to recap, this is what you learned in today's training: You've decided what type of content to create and you've come up with a list of ideas for future videos You've decided which tools you'll need to create your videos You've learned how to create your videos How to do keyword research and apply SEO to your videos And how to optimize your videos to rank high in search results!
In the next lesson, you will learn how to promote your channel to grow fast and start building your own community! Stay tuned for that! What was your biggest takeaway from today's lesson? Share it in the comment section below, along with any questions you may have! I will be reading and responding to everyone! See you on the next video! SIGN UP FOR THE TRAINING HERE