How I Plan My Content Every Week

How would you like a universal YouTube video script that works every time and that serves multiple purposes? Sheryl Plouffe here, Video Strategist. That's what I'm sharing with you today. This is how I plan my content, and I use a script— and I'll explain why I'm doing air quotes in a moment— to do it. And so if you are a coach, a consultant, an entrepreneur, small business owner, you know that you have to be in this day and age creating content. You've got to be speaking about your topic, about your point of view and your ideas and your insights and your lessons and experiences and creating content to put out into the world. That's the world we live in now. And marketing obviously is a function of a successful business. So I don't think I have to explain, you know, that the tenets of content marketing with you. Content is really one of the fundamental you know, actions that we need to be taking in our businesses if we want them to grow. And so speaking is a great way to get your message heard. So I'm going to be sharing with you how I plan my content in a 3-step formula that you can emulate and that can serve multiple purposes. It can be used for YouTube videos, it can be used for any social media video. In fact, It can be used to do live streaming on any platform that you choose, and it can also frankly be used for training. So let me share with you what this outline is. And I do say it's an outline. This is why I was doing air quotes earlier. When I say script, what I am really talking about is an outline because I actually truly don't believe in scripting word for word for speakers. Because if you're already speaking, it means that you feel comfortable to get in front of people at a networking event or on stage or on a podcast or on a video to say what it is that, that you want to say. You know, you have some message that you want to share, and if you're already speaking, then that is aligned to not necessarily having to have a word-for-word script. So this is why it's perfect for you. And the 3E video outline is what I call it. The 3 E's are to engage, to educate, and to enroll. And so let me break down each of those steps for you and explain what each phase entails. So it's interesting because this is very meta, what I'm doing right now. I'm using my own outline on this video that I'm doing about the outline. You see what I'm saying? So did you notice at the beginning of this video I asked a question? I said, how would you like a universal video script that serves multiple purposes? I asked a question, and that is one of the ways that you can engage the first E of this formula. And so the engage step is to have people lean in. You want people to go, huh? And you want them to self-identify as, oh, this is for me. So there are 3 ways that you can do that. One is through a question like I demonstrated on this video. The, the questions are usually generated from your own observations about your audience. So that's typically where that is going to come from. So when I thought today about, well, what, how do I want to start this video? How will I engage you into wanting to watch this video? I thought, yeah, I'm going to use a question today because I know that you as a speaker would love to likely have something that's universal, that's going to be work, that's been proven to work, and that can serve multiple purposes. I think that would be a useful thing for a speaker to have in their arsenal, in their marketing arsenal. So that's why I chose that. And it's based on observations that I've made from working with clients and working with, you know, my audience members in my free trainings or what have you. So that really came more from observation. The other way that you can engage someone to want to, to watch your video is to share a statistic. So this is really based on research, and I like to use the old Google machine for this. Simple as that. In whatever niche that you're in, go to Google and search for statistics in that, in your industry on Google. You might also have some industry journals or other resources available to you that have statistics that can help you to engage someone in the first step of the video. And then the third way is through a statement. Now, a statement is typically associated more so with your point of view, with how you see the world through the lens in which you see your industry or your niche. So you can use a— and I would even go so far as to say it should be a fairly bold statement. The one thing you want to keep in mind with the engage phase of this YouTube scripting method, or outlining method as I call it, is that you want to keep it short. This is not a time to have a very lengthy, or maybe, you know, series of different sentences or phrases that are, you know, really, really long. You want to keep it really pithy and really short. All you're really trying to do is get attention. We live in the attention economy, right? So We want to just get people to lean in and go, huh? And that's really all you're trying to accomplish with that piece. It can really be as just a few seconds long, in fact. So that's the first E of the— this YouTube video script, as I call it. The second E is to educate. So if I'm using this video that I'm doing right now as an example, that's the phase I'm in right now. The phase that I'm in right now is educating you on what these 3 points are. So now this is essentially the meat on the bone of the video you're creating. What is it? What's in it for them? How do we make it meaningful to the person who's watching? This is the place where you could share a story, an experience that happened to you, a lesson that you learned, an insight that you gained, wisdom that you have. But you always want to make sure that you're making it about the other person and that there's something in it for them. You can tell a story through you, but not necessarily only about you. And that's the trick of it. This is where I see a lot of people go wrong. They will tell their story because they've been told by other people. They're like, "Oh, I just have to tell my story." No, you have to tell yours. You can tell your story, but make it about the other person, you know. And that's the trick of it all. Sometimes this takes a bit of practice to get good at doing that. But you definitely want to not be making it all about you. Tell a story, sure, but make it meaningful to the other person. So you can educate on, you know, 1 point, 2 points, 3 points. I would, I would definitely go more on the side of choosing odd numbers. So it's either going to be like 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9. Keep in mind, as you start getting into those higher numbers, the longer the video. So depending on your video strategy, whether it's stemming from YouTube or stemming from Facebook or stemming from another platform, you want to just be mindful of how many pieces are you going to be doing in that education phase and what will the length kind of be, you know, at the end of it all. So, and again, live streams are longer than recorded videos typically. So these are some considerations that you want to keep in mind in the education phase. The third E is to enroll, and this is really important because the enrollment is the next step. You may have heard this called call to action in other places. I call it enrollment. And so what it is, is that you want to give people a next step. The enrollment doesn't always have to fall at the end of the video. That's the most natural place for it to fall. But it can fall in the middle, at the beginning. In fact, you can have an enrollment at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end if you wanted to. So the enrollment piece is the next step. What is it that you'd like people to do? You can have the same enrollment for every video. You can have different enrollment for different videos based on the topic of that specific video. So enrollment is just what's the next step. For example, visit my website, call this number, text me at here, text me at this number, email me, sign up for this, register for that, subscribe to this, like this, comment, like, click, share, you know, all those different things, those actions that you'd have someone do. And so that's essentially the, the, what I really call the best YouTube video script. For speakers, because this is not— nothing in here is about scripting word for word in the sense of sitting down at a computer and typing all those word-for-word scripts out and then being forced to either memorize that or reading it. Most people are not skilled enough to be able to read very well from a teleprompter. It is a specialized skill set to do that. Also, on the memorization side of things, most people have and struggle with memorization. Most people struggle in that area, which is why it takes— oftentimes takes people a long, long time to create a video, because they're not trusting themselves to just say what they mean and getting skilled at being able to speak and being able to ad-lib. You know, the thing that I love about this idea, especially for speakers, especially for coaches, consultants, people who are out there talking about their topic, is you already know your stuff. You can do it. You might just need a little bit of practice. And what I love about this outline is that if you follow this outline, that you're going to have now a structure to follow so that you can remember 3 steps: educate— sorry, engage, educate, and enroll. And you can then speak and get out there and talk about what it is that you love to do while keeping that simple YouTube video structure in your mind as you create and as you speak what it is that, that you're talking about. I'm doing it right now, live in this moment. So I hope that's helpful for you. Please check out these other videos here on my YouTube channel. Would love to have you subscribe. New videos come out every Thursday where I help mission-oriented entrepreneurs to increase their authority and income with video. Thank you so much. Go use this strategy, and I can't wait to see your videos.