How I Plan and Film Content For YouTube (Tips to be FAST and EFFICIENT!)

I know creating YouTube videos takes a lot of time. I'm a mom of a six year old and a four year old running an agency and a digital course product business and I'm still finding time to consistently post on YouTube every single week. So what's my secret? Today I'm going to share with you my biggest tips for making your YouTube content creation life much easier. I'm going to show you how I plan my YouTube videos in advance. So I so it only takes me half a day to shoot a month's worth of YouTube videos. But first, hey, welcome back to my channel. My name is Trena. If you are brand new here and this channel is to help you plan, organize and create video content that grows your business. Before I dive into my secret behind planning and filming videos a lot faster, I want to personally thank one of you who have commented on a recent video of mine. Aisha, I am so glad that my batch day vlog really motivated you to start batching as well. I hope it's going well. Now, if you want a shout out in one of my next videos, make sure you leave me one of your biggest takeaways from this video down in the comments and you might just see your name in my next video. Real quick, I want to remind you to stay to the end of this video because I've got some tips on how to make filming more than one video in one day a little bit easier on you. Now, if you want to start planning and filming your YouTube videos faster, the first tip that I have for you is you cannot plan your videos and film your videos on the same day. Today for me, I am shooting four videos. Now, I've already planned these videos yesterday actually, because I want to make sure when I sit down here to record the videos, all I'm worried about is showing up and speaking to you on the camera. If I had to also plan that content, that takes a lot of brain power for me. I'm researching the video, I'm planning it out, I'm thinking about what I'm going to be saying. And so by the time I'm done planning that video and writing my video game plan, I'm exhausted and I can't show up here on video with the energy that I can on a new day. So. So let me walk you through what I did yesterday when I was planning my videos. As far as how long you should take to plan a video, it may take you about an hour to plan each video. Now remember, you can take these YouTube videos, you can turn them into Instagram videos, you can turn them into Facebook videos, you can turn them into posts. And so while you are taking more time to plan these videos, you can really repurpose them if you do put the time into planning these right. So let me walk through my planning checklist for you. The very first thing I do with any video I'm about to create is determine what the goal of the video is. I talked about this a little bit on last week's video and the outdated YouTube growth tips that you shouldn't be following anymore. But you really need to determine what type of video you're going to be creating before you start planning it. So is the goal of your video to get views, to get subscribers, to get sales? Because this really is going to take dictate the topic that you're going to pick for your video, which is the second thing on my checklist, determining the topic of my video. Now, you will notice that I'm not saying the keyword or the tag of my video. I said the topic again, referencing last week's video. I told you how very minimal the keyword and the tag and picking the best one is helping your video be successful. And so I really want you to think about it as your topic of your video. So how I'm determining what topic that I'm going to do is the first place that I go is my analytics. I want to see which content that I've done is doing well that YouTube is recommending and can I expand on that topic? Can I do a part two? Is that video old and needs updated? For example, one of my best videos right now is what to say in your first YouTube video. And so I've redone this video. I've updated this video quite a few times because YouTube is really putting me out there. For people who are looking for topics like first YouTube video, making your first YouTube video. So I know when I create a video around this topic, YouTube is going to be more likely to recommend it to more people. I also like to look at this new feature that YouTube has rolled out. Now you need to be getting enough views every single month to see this feature, but you can actually see which channels and watch videos your audience is watching. This allows me to see, okay, my audience is actually interested in this topic. How can I spin that and share my own perspective on that topic? The other thing that I like to do to come up with topic ideas is to think about any questions I've been asked recently. Recently a lot of people have asked me, how do I structure my videos and that's why a few weeks ago I did a video just on that I shared how I structure my video game plan. And then the third place that I like to go to come up with topics is trending. Now, if you pick a trending topic, this video is not going to have a long lifespan, right? It's going to shoot up and then it's going to die off. Because if it's trending around a season or a new feature rollout. So Instagram recently rolled out the links sticker instead of the swipe up feature. So if you're creating content around how to use that, right now you're basing your content around a trend, eventually it's going to die off, right? People are going to know how to use the link sticker and it's not going to be searched as much, but you're really going to capitalize on that increased search traffic, getting possible new people to your channel. So you also want to look at trending topics that you can create throughout your content plan as well. Okay, so once you know the goal of your video, the topic of your video, now you're going to do a little bit of research. The this is where you're going to really nail down that keyword. Now, I'm not saying you need to find the perfect keyword. You just want to determine what people are searching for around that topic and you want to make sure that people are searching it. So my favorite place to determine if my keyword is actually searched or not is TubeBuddy Keyword Explorer. So what I'll do is I'll go into the keyword explorer, I will type in my topic and I'm looking for how many monthly searches this topic is having. And if it's zero, I need to find a way to tweak it so it's a topic people are actually searching for. Because if people aren't searching for it, what's the point? How are they going to find my content? So if you want to try out TubeBuddy for your next planning session, I have a link for you down below to try out. It's a free 30 day trial that you can test and see if you like it or not. I use TubeBuddy for every single video that I plan. The other two things that I'm looking at in this research phase, besides determining the actual term or the keyword, so to speak, is titles and thumbnails. So I'm looking at what is showing up in search right now for that topic. Are there any trends with the thumbnail Are there any trends with the title? How are people titling them? And then it is helping me determine how I'm going to title my video and thumbnail it. Because I need to know what my title and thumbnail is before I even start writing any kind of content for my video. So those are the three main things that I'm doing when I get sick started. I like to keep this all organized. I use a tool called Asana. And inside of there I have these already as checklists so I make sure I'm not missing this step when I'm doing this. And it just is an organized place. I can take screenshots of thumbnails that I have inspiration for or title ideas as well. Because if I keep this stuff in a notebook, I have no idea how long that notebook is going to survive here with a four and a six year old. Once I have all that done, then I dive into the template that I have for my video game plan and I start actually writing my content. Now this is an A script. What I've learned after doing over 500 videos here on YouTube is when I try to write word for word in a script and try to deliver it here on camera, I don't become as relatable. I'm not able to be myself and I kind of become robotic because I get so wrapped up on how I wrote that script. And how I wrote it isn't necessarily how I speak. And so I only like to really script the hook of my video and then just basically bullet point what I actually want to say in this video. Now, why this is so important is because without this formula or this structure, it could take you a really long time to film a video. You could sit here and think about what you want to say, pause. And the longer it takes you to film a video, the longer it's going to take you to edit. So not only are you wasting a lot of time filming your video, but you're going to be wasting a lot of time editing your video as well. So this means that you cannot wing it as well. You need to be following a video game plan if you want to film videos faster. There are some key elements that every single game plan needs to have for a successful video. I. E. Audience retention does well, as in people watch your video and watch it to the end. And I break down all of those pieces in a recent video that I did. I will link it right up here so you can watch that after this video and it goes into each piece of the video that you need to have planned out. It's really essential to understand here that without doing this upfront part, without determining the goal, without doing the research, without writing the video game plan, you're not going to be able to film your videos faster. This process has to be done on one particular day, so you can sit down here and bang out these videos in less than a few hours. So once I have all of that done, like I said, I did that yesterday for four videos. I have it all in my asana, I have my outline, my game plan all ready to go. So today, after I got kids to school, dropped off at preschool, I can sit down and film these videos before lunch. I like this because I only need to do hair and makeup one day a month. And like I said earlier, I'm able to give all of my energy into this filming process. Now before I jump into everything that I do here on day two, I would love for you to click that like button right now if this process is allowing you to see how YouTube could maybe be doable for you. Alright, so like I said, I sent the kids off to school, I went ahead, I did my hair and makeup, I got my desk set up. What I actually do is I move my desktop to another table so this desk is really cleared off. I get my lighting set up and I really like to keep my equipment minimal. I'm using a Canon M50, I'm using a new microphone that's down here and my laptop is over here with my video game plan. I don't like to memorize my content or use a teleprompter. So since I bulleted my content, I'm just looking over at my screen, see, seeing what section I want to talk about. Then I'm looking here at the camera to you and I'm just doing chunks of my video at a time. But it's also allowing me to stay on task. So I'm making sure I'm getting through all the points that I wanted to share and I'm not going off on some random tangent to make this video longer than it needs to be. You also do not need to film this video in a one take, right? You don't need to be a one take wonder. You don't need to memorize it all and spit it all out in one take. Take. All right. I hit record on my camera and I'm saying chunks of the video and then I'm pausing and I'm saying chunks of the video. In fact, I'm even messing up and I just go back to what I was saying and then resay it so that we can edit out all those mistakes. And yeah, I'm messing up just like this clip right here. Today I'm going to share with you my biggest tips for making Today I'm going to share with you my biggest tips for making your YouTube content creation life much easier. But also understand that you don't need to delete all your mistakes. You are human. We connect to humans. We don't need to watch a perfect robot. We want to connect with you. We want to see you trip over those words and laugh about it yourself. That's what makes you relatable, likable, trustworthy, right? Know like and trust. So since I'm recording this entire video at once, I generally have about a 20 to 25 minute video clip and we will just cut out all the pauses where I was looking at my script and regrouping myself. I'm now at the point where I do have a video editor, Annabelle, who does that for me. But I used to do this myself when I got started and what I would do is I would look at the sound waves of my video file and edit out those places where I'd pause and it makes editing go so much faster. I have found that having a bunch of little clips makes it too overwhelming and for my brain to wrap around all of these little clips and the possibility of losing a clipper there. That's why I just like to do one large file. Now let's move into those bonus tips on how to make this filming day faster. Since I'm filming more than one video, all I do differently is have different shirts. I am not changing my makeup. In fact, I wore the same red lip in the last video. I'm not changing my hair, I am just changing my shirt for each video. The second thing to make this day easier is don't add anything else onto your calendar. I did this cardinal mistake. I do have a phone call later today and it's just because I didn't have my calendar blocked off right? And I really wish I don't have that call because I'm thinking about it. It's in the back of my mind. And when you're filming, I want you to really just be present and thinking about the people you're speaking to on the other end of the camera and not worried about what else is on your to do list that day. The third piece of advice I have for you is to make sure your batteries are charged for your camera. You have space on your phone if you're using your phone and and you have backup camera cards. Nothing sucks more than to be in the middle of a video and your battery died and you don't have a backup Battery. I have three backup batteries for my camera and I have two SD cards for my camera that are 128 gigabytes. That way I'm never running out of space and I always have a battery to keep my process going. Now, if you want a detailed breakdown of what to actually say in your video, watch the video that is on your screen right now because I walk through the four main parts every YouTube video needs to have. And if you are looking for some equipment recommendations, watch the other video that's on your screen because I'm sharing the minimal equipment that you need to get started. If this video was helpful, make sure you hit subscribe and I'll see you next week.