NEVER Run Out of Good Video Ideas

One of the biggest struggles I hear from you when it comes to getting started and staying consistent on YouTube is coming up with video ideas, finding good video ideas, and just plain being able to stay consistent with creating valuable content. Lucky for you, over the past four years, I've created over 400 YouTube videos, such as about 100 videos a year for the past four years. So if anyone can tell you anything about coming up with video ideas and staying consistent, I got you covered. Hit that like button below if you're ready to see the process that I use for coming up with video ideas. Hey, welcome back. My name is Trena. If you're brand new here and on this channel, I help you build the confidence to show up on YouTube. Now you'll want to stay to the end of this video because I'm actually going to flip the camera around and show you exactly what my workflow looks like and how I set it up in the sauna so you can stay super organized with all these video ideas. I like to plan about four to six weeks of content at a time. I used to plan about 12 weeks of content at a time so that I got a lot done on the front end. But what I realized was is planning that far in advance didn't leave me enough room to pivot my strategy or try something different or really capitalize on maybe a video that was doing really well for me. So what I do right now is I just plan about four to six videos at a time. This also allows me to be able to test different things on my videos and Instead of doing 12 test videos and everybody hating 12 weeks worth of my content, it's only like four to six videos and I can easily change that in the next month. I also keep this calendar in mind all the time when I'm planning my content, because this calendar tells me when I'm launching something, when I need to be promoting something, and it allows me to see what kind of content I can create to either lead into my launch or prep my audience for something I might be promoting. Now it's time to come up with those video ideas. And this is the exact same process that I do for all of my videos and for my strategy client videos where I come up with their ideas for them and then they shoot them. One secret tip that I have here is to always have a brain dump list somewhere that you can write down anything that pops into your head. Maybe you see something on YouTube. Always keep track of these ideas that pop into your head. I was using Trello for a long time we recently switched to Asana, but I also have my brain dump list in Trello. You can see that anytime I see a video that I think, oh, that might be a good topic for me to do, I may just screenshot that thumbnail and title, save it there to come back to or maybe something pops into my head. I just added it there and saved this massive list of ideas. And I pretty much never run out of ideas because I have this long list of brainstorm ideas. I like to keep things as electronic as possible because I am always losing papers Post its notebooks and so I created this spreadsheet for my students inside of the Video Strategy Academy. It's a content brainstorm spreadsheet broken down by categories that can help them go out in these different categories and come up with ideas and keep them in one spread spreadsheet. So let's get your brainstorm ideas rolling with this. One of the best places to get video ideas, especially if you have been blogging for a while, is your blog. You can go into your blog analytics or website analytics and see which blogs are actually your best performing blog. So what's actually driving you a lot of traffic and turn those blog posts into videos? 1. You already know your audience enjoys this content. 2. By adding a video to this blog post it's gonna make it do even in SEO. And three, it's going to get you more views on that video if you do it because you already have traffic coming to that blog post. By embedding that video to the blog post, you're also going to get views. Win win. The next thing I love to do is just go to YouTube search and start typing in any kind of topic that is hot in your niche. YouTube search is going to try to predict what you're saying and when it does predict it, it's exactly what people are searching for on YouTube. One little bonus tip here is to make sure you go into Google Incog window because it's going to make sure the search results aren't actually clouded by your viewing history because YouTube really likes to push videos on you that they know you are going to watch or you're more likely to watch. So make sure you go into an incognito window where it's not taking into consideration your past watch history. I also like to use a tool called TubeBuddy. I like to go into their keyword explorer and just type those ideas in as well that I had and see what it also recommends. I'm not using Tubebuddy as specifically to tell me yes do this idea or no, do this idea again. It's generating ideas for me to do videos about. I'll also go to other YouTube channels that talk about how to grow a YouTube channel, but I'll also go to YouTube channels that are talking to my target audience as well. So even though that specific channel isn't talking about YouTube growth strategies or using YouTube in your business. For example, Ashlyn writes, she talks about copywriting and being productive, but I know the audience that is watching her videos is the same audience that I'm speaking to. So I'll just go to her videos and look at what are some of her videos that are doing really well. Can I do a video on that topic and put my own spin on it or my own advice on it? This is a great way to really start expanding your video ideas and allowing you to talk about a little bit more than just the same thing over and over again. If we're going across that same spreadsheet that I have, you want to think about topics that you've mastered. So have you mastered posting to Instagram? Yeah, as simple as that. Have you mastered creating a blog post or a blog writing system or process? Have you mastered coming up with a brand message, anything that's specific to your niche? What have you mastered? And just start dumping that in that spreadsheet as well? Now, you don't have to think that you're an expert at this either. Trust me, I don't think I'm an expert at YouTube. But. But I know more than probably what the person two, three steps behind me knows, and I can still provide them value. So don't think you need to be some millionaire expert on a topic. You just need to know something that somebody one step behind you may not know yet. So you may be on step four. Somebody at step two still needs your help. Now, this is one place a lot of people don't think to look is podcast episodes. So I like to check out Jenna Kutcher's Gold Digger podcast and also Boss Project Strategy Hour podcast. So I'm just going to skim through those podcast titles to see if anything kind of triggers a video idea for me and put it in that spreadsheet as well. This one I love, and it is Pinterest. I know my audience is on Pinterest and they're creating content for Pinterest, so I'd like to go in there and see how they're titling blog posts, what kind of text they're putting on their pins to give me even more ideas for My content, I'm going to tell you, Pinterest is a gold mine to dig into. Now, don't worry if you've already done some video ideas or if somebody else on YouTube has already done that idea, you can redo your ideas. You can do it more than one time, and if somebody's already done it, you can put your own take on it or your own ideas on it. I have created a video about how to post YouTube videos to Instagram three times and most recently I did it a fourth time. But my audience responded well to those videos, so I knew they were interested in it. So in that fourth time I tried to find new apps, a different way of teaching it. So that still stayed fresh, but it was still on the exact topic that they were interested in. Okay, now you have all of these video ideas ready to go. Comment below. Help me if you're thinking, now what the heck do I do? First things first, learn from my mistake and stay as organized as possible. What I mean by staying as organized as possible is getting some kind of a system or workflow in place. Because this is going to be key to staying consistent and not burning out on YouTube for me. I plan to shoot my YouTube videos the first Tuesday of every month. I just already have that in my calendar. I already know it's a Tuesday, the first of the month I'm going to be doing YouTube videos. This helps me stay consistent. This gives me a routine in my content planning and I thrive on systems and routines, especially in my business and that workflow. So I had used Trello for a long time as my workflow, but more recently have used Asana. And I'm going to tell you right now, it is life changing and it helps helps me get so much done in a day. I can always pop in, see exactly where my videos are, what videos I need to plan, what videos my video editor is editing and what videos we've already published. I want to actually go over to the computer and walk you through my Asana process so you can potentially set up a similar process for your YouTube workflow as well. So this is behind the scenes of what my YouTube workflow looks like. So you see, this is basically the brain dump area where I've come up with ideas. I also have a templated card, so every time, time I come in here with a new idea, I duplicate this templated video because it has everything that I need to make sure I'm getting things done. Now, whether you have a team or you are a team of one, this workflow will work for you as well. This is just going to help you, especially if you're doing YouTube as a side hustle or maybe a side part of your business. If you can only spend like an hour a week in here, you'll know exactly every time you come back where you left off. So let's say you last week did all the pre recording and you shot all the videos. And then you're wondering where exactly you're at in the editing phase. Or maybe you're like, okay, where am I at in the promoting phase? That's why this is important. Whether you have a team or not. Then I know when it comes time to title and script, I'll come from these ideas and I'll just click on this, move it on over here and I will do my YouTube research. Then once I have my scripts done, I will just move this on over here, I know to record it, then I'll move it on over to edit. You see that we have one particular video in the editing phase right now, and here are all the videos that we have promoted in the last two months. And so that's just kind of a behind the scenes of what our workflow looks like to keep everything organized. Now that you have this massive list of video ideas, are you ready to get started with video? I've actually got a video strategy starter kit created just for you. It's going to walk you through all the steps you need to know to get started here on YouTube. Plus the script template that I use for this video and every single video I create. Make sure you click the link that's on your screen right now or go to the description box, click that link to download your starter kit. And once you've downloaded it, make sure you watch the video that's on your screen right now where I'm going to tell you exactly how you can get your very first 1,000 subscribers here on YouTube. So go ahead, download it, click that video and I'll see you in the next one.