I'm a bit late writing this, but life happens. I've been busy preparing for my part in my brother's wedding that takes place this weekend.
I definitely feel like I'm making progress in tightening up my videos and making them more engaging. It's slowly becoming less and less a stream-of-consciousness deal and (slightly) more produced. I feel OK with this, as I already have a podcast with that creative philosophy. I feel the need to have a free-flowing content platform is being met, so giving this channel a narrower scope makes sense. So I've taken to create a more drilled-down outline and separating each point while I record. I find that I'm able to give the details a little more focus, and hopefully make each one more engaging. The only aspects of it that are fully scripted are the intro & outro, the rest of it is still pretty off-the-cuff. I'm still not quite sure where that balance lies. I'm going to start a live streaming series called Ryan Learns to Code, in which I go through a tutorial on a language or framework & build something. I'm not sure how often I'll do it, but I've gotten more views on a live stream test than most of my videos. I think doing regular live streams would foster more community growth, so we'll see how that goes. You can find my Freelance Journey Vlog Series here.
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I produced this concurrently with the "How I Got Started Vlogging" video, so it's difficult to distinguish which lessons are isolated to this particular video. As I mention in this video, YouTube will be my primary content distribution platform going forward. I'm at the point where I'm ready to move beyond press-record-then-talk-then-stop-recording. It takes more than that to create an engaging video that holds people's attention.
I'm seeing the spots where I need some structure to bring people in & say "hey, this is what this video series is about," as opposed to just record & upload it without considering how a new person may see it. That's not to say that I can't be off-the-cuff in some aspects of producing the content, but I have to be more purposeful in how it's used. While people are looking for more authenticity, having a structure does make it a bit more digestible. Every comic is somebody's first comic. I also need to work on my wrap-up to make it integrate with the end cards better, especially when it comes to timing. I'm sure there are other tweaks that will help in discoverability, sharing, and engagement, but that's more about working within best practices of the platform. I have a feeling that I still need to work on making the content itself more engaging, which would be applicable regardless of how the platform operated. You can find the entire series here. It's been quite a while since I've last posted in the blog. I've been really focused on getting a main gig. It took a while to really nail-down the direction I want to go in, and I'm moving forward with a renewed sense of focus. So I'm plugging away & keeping the faith that something will shake out at the end.
I realized that as I progress in this freelancing career, I will need some way to keep it organized. I have difficulty handling more than a few situations at once, as far as keeping track of specifics, so I've been looking into project management software. I've been trying out a handful of options that look like they may do the trick, but it's going to take some trial & error (mostly error) to develop a long-term solution. I just started a channel on YouTube, and it took some internal back & forth for some time to reach this decision. I chose Vimeo because of their hands-off approach to content management...but it also has a fraction of the audience that YouTube does. I was very wary of going with YouTube from all the stories of people's channels being taken down, and especially after the shooting that took place at their HQ. After reading through their guidelines, I am confident that I can avoid the biggest pitfalls and provide ample evidence if I have any slip-ups. So I a have a couple ideas for new videos, and I will be using the project management software to keep track & see how it feels using it. Part of my workflow will involve writing a blog post about my experience creating the video, so more content is coming out! |
AuthorI'm Ryan, a freelance content creator & web developer from Colorado. Archives
February 2019
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