How To Make Your First YouTube Video (Step By Step For Beginners!)
If you've ever wondered how I make my videos from start to finish, you're in luck! I'm not in the business of keeping secrets and today I'm going to share with you every single step of my YouTube process so that you can get started on YouTube.
We're going to be covering everything from my simple system to making sure that my videos are great for my audience and what happens after I hit publish. Ready to dive in?
The first thing that you need to do to start creating video content is create a process. This is something that I wish I would've done as soon as I started on YouTube because having that process is going to make your life so much easier. Create a step by step process that you'll be able to repeat again and again. There are plenty of project management tools that you can use to set this up but my tool of choice is Asana.
I've created my step by step template right within Asana and then a duplicate it for every single video that goes out. This ensures that I never miss a step! If you were to dig into my Asana board, you'd see that this process is broken down into different sections.
Those sections are Pre Record, Record, Editing, Uploading, Promoting and Analyzing.
Let's take time to look at each of those sections.
Obviously, we're going to be starting with the Pre Record section. This is where I plan my video content. And the very first thing I do is research. You really want to take time to research your content to make sure that you're creating videos your audience wants to see.
What I like to do is take about 30 minutes per video to research. I'll look at my past videos and determine what's been performing well. Once I know that, I'll see if any topics are relevant to that video that I could explore. Since the video is performing well and YouTube is recommending it, I want to try to replicate that without creating the exact same content.
Another great research tool is YouTube itself! I'll search YouTube to see what topics are generating interest in my industry or what topics are spring boarding off of the idea I got from my analytics. This tells me that people want to see the content and helps validate it.
Once I've done the research, it's time to decide on the goal for the video. So many times, people will throw a ton of calls to action in a video and this can be very overwhelming for a viewer. Instead, determine what your goal will be for each video and focus on that.
So maybe you want people to subscribe. Focus on asking for that subscribe and nothing else. Maybe you want people to opt into your mailing list. That mailing list would be your only call to action. Moving on from there, you're going to want to decide what your thumbnail and titles to be. This is critical to the planning phase because you want to tie all of that into the first 3 to 5 seconds of your video.
After that, we move onto scripting! That's right, we're going to script every single video and this step makes it so easy to film. Click here to get a copy of my script template sent straight to your inbox. I highly suggest really scripting your hook and your intro because those are really going to affect your audience retention. You want to make sure that your audience is engaged with the content and you're getting right to the point so don't be afraid to write everything down word for word!
And that wraps up the pre recording phase. This means we can move onto filming. Luckily, this is the easy and fun part! Why? Because we're going to keep it simple! All you need is your film equipment and a clear background and you're ready to go!
Now I get asked about teleprompters a lot and I don't recommend them. Viewers can tell your reading and it can be very off putting. Instead what I do is read a few lines of my script, look up, smile, deliver the content, pause and repeat. This ensures that you're speaking naturally to the camera but also saying what you want to say.
Another thing I do on film day is film alternate endings. See, I'm not trying to build a massive YouTube following, I'm trying to use YouTube to get clients. So I'll also film endings that work for Facebook or Instagram Live as well!
The last step of the filming process is taking a thumbnail photos. Take a series of photos using what you know about your thumbnail from planning and you can choose what will work best!
Moving onto editing! I use an editor for my videos now but for a long time, I edited my own content every single time I put out a video. The editors that I use most are Final Cut Pro and iMovie.
The key to making editing painless is to create a template. You know where you want your intro to be. You know where you want an end screen. Create a template that you can drag and drop content into and that will save you so much time. If you want to see more of the process, watch the video above and see how I edit a clients video every week!
Once your video is all edited and ready, it's time to upload and schedule. You'll log into your YouTube channel and upload your video. While the video is uploading, you can add all the meta data necessary. This includes everything you've already planned. The title, thumbnail, your tags, description, etc. You'll also want to add your end screen!
An important thing to remember is to upload it as private. This will allow you to schedule it to go live whenever you'd like. You can actually change your upload defaults to make it automatically private everytime you upload.
The video is published. It's live! It's time to share it with the world! That's right, we've now entered the promo phase. Create posts for each social platform to share that you have a new video out. You can share with your email list, add it to your blog, to Pinterest. Everywhere! This is how you're going to start building momentum in your channel.
Finally, it'll be time to analyze your video. Take time to determine how your video did. You'll want to pay attention to your click through rates, your watch time and retention. By knowing your analytics, you can continually improve your content for your viewers!
