What a year of content creation taught me
Growing on LinkedIn, YouTube and on other social medias over the past year hasn't always been the easiest.
A few weeks back, I wrote a post on LinkedIn about YouTube and how I’m slowly making progress with my watch hours!
This lead to a few people asking me to talk about my journey writing and creating content over the past year, and thus a video and this article was born!
If you’re starting out as a content creator or wanting to get into a different area, I hope this advice helps you. The advice I’ve accumulated over the past year has been fundamental in my growth.
Consistency over going viral
There seems to be this fixation over getting viral posts on social media in order to grow on various platforms. I don't agree that this is the key to long term growth.
Over the past year, I’ve only had two viral moments:
You can see that on LinkedIn that happened around March, but it didn’t make much of a difference to my reach in total.
The thing about going viral is that you’re not necessarily reaching your target audience by doing that, and so it doesn’t really make a difference to your long term audience by having a viral post.
What has made the difference is posting every day.
Alternatively, let me show you the difference where I didn’t post for a week:
That little dip in August is when I hadn’t posted for a week due to being on holiday.
I went from around 400-500k impressions per week to 20k impressions for that week.
That’s the importance of staying consistent.
Get comfortable speaking to the camera
I filmed my first video for YouTube in September 2023, I didn’t publish my first video to YouTube until January 2024.
The reason why was because in my first iterations of filming, I didn’t sound like me. It felt robotic and scripted and I didn’t come across as natural.
Maybe one day I’ll show those videos so that you can compare (if that’s of interest to anyone), but there’s a massive difference between the way I talk on camera now versus back then.
Now I feel like I’m coming across as myself and I’m speaking my mind, I feel like I’m having a conversation with my audience, and I only got to that point by practicing to do it.
If you don’t start, you never will.
Get a good quality mic!
In some of my earlier videos, I didn’t use an external mic and was using the mic from my phone, and you could definitely tell.
I watched some of Ali Abdaal’s YouTube videos on how to grow on YouTube and one of the first things he recommends is to improve the audio. He says that people will watch bad quality video, but they won’t listen to bad audio for long.
And so I did, and the difference it made to my watch hours really did improve.
You can get really affordable external mics, and I definitely recommend you research the best one for you, but if you want to know what my set up is, here’s my affiliate* links to the mic setup I have:
*as an Amazon Associates Partner I earn commission on purchases.
Dedicating time
There’s no avoiding it, planning content takes time. You have to be willing to dedicate a number of hours per week to do it.
I would say I typically dedicate around 10 hours per week, but I know some who only a 2-3 hours per week and still manage to post at least once a day on LinkedIn.
It’s very often that from when the kida go to sleep at 8.30pm, for me to be responding to people and getting on with writing content for my LinkedIn, TikTok, Newsletter and YouTube until around 11pm.
Because I do LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and my Newsletter, my time includes the following activities:
Planning and scheduling content
Scripting and writing content
Filming and uploading videos
Responding to messages and comments
You don’t have to dedicate as much time as I do, but I would say it’s good to schedule time in your calendar, a couple of hours per week, where you can plan, write content and catch up with any comments/messages you need to.
You can also use AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude to help you along the way. I often find asking for help on how to make some of my ideas better structured can be really helpful, given that I’m a bit chaotic in my thinking :)
Don’t over script
If you’ve already started trying to film, but you’re constantly getting your words mixed up.
You’re getting frustrated and annoyed that you can’t remember the script you’ve written and so you say the wrong thing and have to film over and over again.
Sound familiar?
If so, then stop what you’re doing and do this instead.
Rather than trying to remember word for word what it is you’re wanting to say, use prompting words or phrases that bring what it is you want to talk about.
For the video to this blog post, I literally just used the headings of this Newsletter, and that’s enough of a prompt to me to talk about the things that I want without it sounding scripted.
Now you can also add specific prompts too if you want to cover something within those topics but don’t fixate on scripting them line by line, it flows so much better when you’re just using prompts.
Trust me!
Setting the scene
Viewers like consistency. They like to know what they’re going to expect video after video, post after post. Once you’ve figured out your branding style, try and keep it consistent between videos so people know what they’re going to expect.
For example I often use green, blue and orange undertones in my videos, my hair is ginger and my clothes are often blue/green too. My fonts are the same and my thumbnails are black/yellow and have the same style across them so viewers know I’m the same person.
This helps identify you amongst the crowd and if someone has enjoyed a video by you, they’re likely to recognise another video by you too.
Another example is LinkedIn, you will tend to see I follow the following format of posting one informative post and one-two jokey/satire style posts. I believe this combination means I can help people whilst also letting my personality show and have some fun with my audience.
Listen to feedback
This one is key, there have been a number of times where I’ve listened to feedback from my audience:
Feedback:
And here’s an example of the change I made based on the feedback…
Before:
After:
And you can see how it’s just been slowly improving from there.
Early on, I made the decision to outsource my editing, this was a decision that I made from a time perspective because I was spending a lot of time editing, and if I continued doing it myself I would have to go down to a four-day work week. It was more cost-effective for me to outsource it instead.
I decided I wanted to treat LinkedIn, YouTube and content creation in general as an investment, I truly believe you can do good, and find ways to monetise without ripping off your audience or doing things you don’t agree with. I have stayed true to myself, I have turned down a lot of deals that could have made me easy money, because I know believe that it can be done in the way I want to do it.
To finish on this chapter, don’t get upset or offended by feedback, take it on the chin and use it to make your content better!
Remember, you’re content isn’t for you, it’s for others and it needs to serve them.
And finally… Keep experimenting!
It feels like a bit of a contradiction to the ‘Setting the scene’ point, but whenever you feel like things are getting a bit monotonous, don’t be afraid to experiment with new content.
You can still stay true to your main niche, all whilst experimenting with new ideas to see what you like and see what sticks.
If your content is no longer performing in the same way, don’t be afraid to switch it up and try something new.
The journey is a rollercoaster that you should be enjoying, and if you aren’t enjoying the content you’re posting, then don’t feel stuck in posting it.
Make it fun!
Thank you for reading! If you’d like to watch my YouTube video where I talk about this in more detail, head on here:
Loved the video! Great tips. 👏🏼
congrats Jade, and wish you the best for the coming years.