When people talk about their biggest struggles with starting a YouTube channel, they tend to gravitate towards the same thoughts. They struggle with coming up with video ideas or what they believe to be good video ideas. They struggle with creating valuable content consistently.

This ultimately can make YouTube feel pretty overwhelming but here's the thing. I know a thing or two about content creation on YouTube because I've published over 400 videos since I've started. That's about 100 videos a year. And today, I'm going to show you how I stay consistent while creating content.

The Planning Process.

One of the things that's most important when it comes to creating content is the actual planning process. Trying to come up with ideas on the fly, without any sort of plan or process, is part of the reason people feel so overwhelmed with videos.

Instead, I stick to a routine of planning 4-6 weeks of video content at a time. This allows me to not only know what I'm going to be filming and promoting over that period of time but it also gives me the freedom to pivot my strategy, if needed.

I used to plan for 12 weeks straight but this definitely provided challenges when it came to promoting my services if they changed, it didn't allow for me to bank on any current video trends that may have occurred and if people didn't like the type of content I was creating, I was stuck with 12 weeks of it.

This is why I recommend just working with 4 to 6 weeks at a time.

Keep the Business Strategy in Mind.

One of the things that often gets lost in translation is connecting your content to your actual business strategy. You're not creating videos simply for the sake of creating videos, you're creating them to drive traffic to your business. To generate new leads.

This means you need to always be paying attention to your business strategy. I constantly refer to my big picture calendar so that I know what I need to lead my viewers into. Do I have a new service coming up? Will I be promoting an event I'm a part of? How can I use my YouTube videos to show my audience those particular things?

Create a Brain Dump List.

As you're going about your business tasks, you'll often find that you have an idea pop into your head about some type of video you'd like to create. Have a place that you can store all of those ideas so that you can look back on them when you're planning out that content calendar!

It's been an important thing for me to keep my brain dump list digitally because there have been so many times where post its have been lost, notebook scribbles have been forgotten and that idea just disappears.

Instead, I use Trello and Asana to keep all of my ideas handy. If I see an idea online that I think I can put my spin on, I'll screenshot it and add it to my brain dump list. I'll create my own ideas there. This really helps keep my content topped up!

With those three pieces of information in mind, let's dig into how you can start to really create a never ending list of video ideas for your YouTube channel!

Resource #1: Old Blog Posts

If you already have a blog or a website, this is a great time to reuse your old content. Dig into your website analytics and see what pages and posts are doing the best. You can then create videos for those blog posts! Not only do you know that the particular topic is going to do well, but you're adding some bonus SEO juice to your website by embedding a video into the post.

You can also see if those popular posts inspire any other ideas for you. Maybe you can create an updated version of a post. Or a different method of doing something.

This also means you'll get more views on the videos you create because you already know that people are coming to your site. If they're coming to your blog post and that video is embedded, they can hit play and it'll count in your YouTube analytics as well!

Resource #2: YouTube Searches

This is such an easy way to find new topic ideas! All you have to do is search a common term in your industry. YouTube likes to present information that it thinks you need so it'll start to autofill for you! You'll see several options pop up of popular YouTube searches as YouTube tries to meet your needs.

Those autofills can be a great starting point for new video ideas! The important thing to remember is that you'll want to do this in the incognito mode of your browser. Because YouTube is striving to provide you with personalize content, the content may be more catered to YOU than your audience. By going incognito, you're going to get generally popular autofills.

You can also check other YouTube channels to see what content they're putting out. I'm not recommending that you copy another person's content, however. Instead, look to see if a YouTuber that serves a similar audience has a topic that you can put your own spin on!

TubeBuddy is a great tool to use and I like to use the keyword explorer for more topic help. Now I don't use it for actual keywords but I type in content ideas to see if it'll bring even more ideas out!

Resource #3: Topics You've Already Mastered.

Listen. You might not feel like a master. And that's okay! You don't have to be a guru or expert of your industry to have mastered a certain task. You just need to be a few steps ahead of your audience.

Share something that you'll totally learned. Have you nailed Instagram? Share that! It's as simple as sharing what you already know. Because someone out there needs to learn it!

Resource #4: Podcasts.

This sounds crazy but it totally works! Head to your favorite podcast listening apps and check out what podcasters in your industry are talking about. Can you create a video based off that?

Many times, you can share your own unique take on podcast topics in video!

Resource #5: Pinterest.

This is a gold mine. Seriously. Head to Pinterest and dig around in pins that are relevent to your field. Pay attention to what's being repinned. What are people titling their posts. How can you tweak those ideas for YouTube.

Now you might be thinking "Trena. I can't do that. Those posts have already been done!" Friend, that doesn't matter! You can redo ideas, as long as you keep them fresh and YOUR OWN. I've posted the topic of how to post your YouTube video on Instagram FOUR TIMES. And each time it's well-received.

But to make life even easier, once I have all of those ideas, I like to keep them super organized. Click the video to see how I use Asana to organize my video content.