Youtube Project: Day 3 - Planning Out The Content

Now that I have my channel set up, my tools in place, and workspace configured, im ready to start making some content. One of the things I have learned here is that in order to make good content you need to have a plan. Sure, you can wing it and have a chance at being successful, but why not spend a little bit of time and have a plan?

Im approaching this in a very similar way to how I approach my blog sites:

• Have a theme
• Pick a direction or goal
• • This is the current 'thing' that you want to deliver to your audience.
  • There can be multiple directions, but focus on one for now. I'm thinking of the direction sort of like a season of a show.
• Figure out your topics
• • Think of several interesting topics that you can use to guide (or travel with) your users to get to the chosen direction
  • You'll need enough topics to make a set of content for
  • If you are struggling to find enough topics for your direction then consider expanding your direction or even adding to it so that themes are more readily available

The Theme

The overall theme for the site is making interesting music using digital instruments, and doing it in a way that can be shared.

The Direction

The initial direction for the channel is setting up and using a specific piece of software to create, arrange, and ultimately release the music. This is a really broad topic which aligns with the overall theme, but is a little open ended. Sure you can make endless content with just this direction, but I decided that having content in cohesive chunks would be better for my channel. So I further refined this direction to something specific:

• Friends deciding to learn how to use this software to create electronic music.

This gives me a definite starting point and a clear enough end point that there is something to aim for.

The Topics

In the beginning I had a bunch of topics that were related but did not flow. They were just random things that sort of fit into the theme of the channel. After refining my direction for season 1, the topics immediately came to mind. The goal was so clear I could even select the first and last topic and then fill in the rest:

Topic 1: What do we need to make electronic music?

[ ... multiple topics ... ]

Topic n: Finishing our song!

And there you have it; a content plan! For me this really allows me to plan out some quality information for my audience and takes some of the stress away. Personally I enjoy having a direction - which is probably why WA appealed to me so much. I think this pattern could also be applied to a niche site or any of the things that we do here. I think it was Fleeky that suggested to find things that could stack together. Making a content plan like this could easily allow you to use the same topics to put on any and all of your sites - social media, blogs, etc.

Anyhoo - time for some more coffee. Y'all have a great day!