So, as I’m writing this post, I’m realizing as a garden youtuber, that time management, is becoming an issue. I work a regular 40-hr work week which leaves little time after work on weekdays. I always attempt to put in a least 1 hour per weekday after work into my LSL Media business but with an active YouTube channel, this BLOG and other business activities, it has become difficult to complete new posts. I’ve actually got three or four in various stages of completion but just haven’t finished up one yet!
Goals for the Channel
My goal for the Louisiana Simple Living Garden YouTube channel is to release one garden oriented long-form video per week with a post on this BLOG as well. There are numerous activities requiring a good bit of time involved to produce and release just one video. For example, this involves:
Perform Research and Decide on Topic/Title
Deciding on a topic requires some level of research. Part of this work is centered around how likely the view will be to click your thumbnail, as well as ensuring you have good SEO (searchable title/keywords) versus how common the title/keywords are (meaning you may have to compete against huge channels that already have a leg up in the algorithm). I use a tool called MORNINGFA.ME which allows you to easily modify title, description and tags and understand how likely your video would perform based on that title. It’s basically an SEO tool.
Write Script for Filming
For script writing, I use MS-Word with a template I created so I’m consistent with how my scripts are put together. When I started this journey, I needed the script, read it word by word and sounded kind of robotic, LOL. Now, I mostly just use the content as a reminder to deliver my audio. It takes time to get comfortable on camera, but I can work from bullets for the most part and talk more naturally. But I’m still working on that.
Film Raw Video
Filming is done predominately in my backyard organic raised bed garden. On some occasions, I’ll also film in my kitchen or at an event. Camera equipment includes a Canon M50 camera on a Joilcan tripod and a GoPro10, used with a small SOONSUN tripod for multiple angles and distances. I typically do long-form type Garden YouTube videos ranging in duration from 8 up to 16 minutes or so. I did some longer than that in my earlier days of YouTubing but try to limit the final video to this range or less. The crazy thing though is that the amount of content filmed versus what shows up in the released video is but a small percentage of all the video that was filmed.
Edit the Raw Video
The next part of the process is to take all that raw video and piece them together as a cohesive and straightforward informational story. This typically takes hours to do as you are piecing together multiple views from multiple cameras, removing out a lot of poor video/audio or down time. I also add in Titles and Section graphics, along with transitions from one view to another (where needed). For some videos, I also must provide some voiceovers. I do all this using a free software called DaVinci Resolve.
Develop Thumbnail
The thumbnail is a part of the process that is critically important to the success of a video. The reason is that it must stand out against other videos with the same topic, in order to get the click. There are many aspects to thumbnail generation that I’m still learning. I like borders and titles that stand out from the background to ensure the potential viewer knows what this video is about. Consistency in style and color are important as well. The title also must focus on SEO (search engine optimization) and be catchy and pull at the potential viewer’s emotions, if possible.
Another aspect of thumbnails is that some (Garden) YouTube content creators actually build their thumbnail before even writing the script. There is some merit in that as that frames up what your script will be about.
I solely use Canva.com as my go-to tool for creating thumbnails. Tubebuddy.com is another tool that can do thumbnails but also provides a ton of other tools to assist a YouTube video creator. It has tools such as a thumbnail editor, title/keyword selection (SEO) tool, A/B Thumbnail comparisons and number of other great tools that I use on a day to day basis. I really couldn’t survive with Tubebuddy!
Closing Thoughts
I put this post together to talk about some of the effort that’s required in creating videos and the amount of time required to be a garden Youtuber. There are a number of posts that are nearing completion or have been published. This includes the Spring Garden Planning Checklist, Starting Seeds Indoors For Your Spring Garden (Zone 9A), Seeds To Start Outside In January (Zone 9), and Seed Germination Rate: How to Test?. The videos get done first then you’ve got to make time to do the BLOG post as well.
Hopefully this gives another look behind the scenes of a Garden YouTube channel!
Regards, Darrell!
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