29. Why Planning Is So Important To Making Great Content

Burhaan [00:00:00] :

‍Most people online will tell you that you just need to make content.But there's a lot that actually goes into making content. most of you are thinking that you might want to just go live. I think there's something to be said about planning your content   I'm going to cover the planning stage , of actually creating your content.  I'm going to give you a full framework  to actually understand and  see what type of content to make, how you're going to make that all of those steps.

Burhaan [00:00:25]

Welcome to the marketing stack podcast. My name is Burhaan and in this episode, we're going to be talking about why planning is so important to actually make great content. In this episode, we're talking specifically about planning I want to first differentiate the word. Strategy from planning because those are two different things. When it comes to strategy, you're actually trying to figure out who when it comes to putting together a content strategy, you've got to think about

Burhaan [00:00:53]

What are your end goals when it comes to your content? . Do you have a membership that you want people to sign up for?[00:01:00] Do you want to just give free value and hopefully reap the reward later on in that case you're building a brand. Do you have a course, or do you have some sort of a newsletter signup or do you have consultancy services that you're actually going to be delivering on from that content?

Burhaan [00:01:14]

What is the purpose of your content? That's the strategy piece. I'll be covering the strategy piece,  in another episode.

Burhaan [00:01:21]

Now, this is way before you actually. Record. And this is way before you go and find a location to record your video. We're not talking about that. We're talking about the planning stage, why you're creating your content, who you're creating your content for, which also comes from your strategy and what you're going to be doing when it comes to making your content.

Burhaan [00:01:41]

So let's get into the why. Simon Sinek talks about why, and he's got a whole book which talks about why starting with why,  and, and basically working your way backwards to say, okay, well, why are you making this content?

Burhaan [00:01:54]

I want to help you get a better understanding of why planning is important. I want to help you save [00:02:00] some time because that's ultimately what planning is supposed to do. It's supposed to give you sort of a time. You've got to save your self time in the long run.

Burhaan [00:02:10]

That when you actually plan your content, you become more successful in the long run because when you put a plan together and when you put it together properly, or you put it to put it together in a way that actually makes sense for people, then ultimately whether the content is for YouTube or for LinkedIn or Facebook, or for Instagram or Pinterest or wherever you're making your content for, for those people, for the people that are on those platforms.

Burhaan [00:02:35]

Then your content will perform better because you've had a better plan and your planning stage went well.  Those are some of my goals. As well as just giving you some of the resources, some of the questions to ask yourself, to be able to make the content that you want to make. So that's the why. The next thing I've and I've spoken about this already is who.

Burhaan [00:02:56]

Who are you making your content for? And that plays into the [00:03:00] platforms as well. So if you're making content forLinkedIn, the question you're going to ask is, well, who are these people? What type of content do they want?  who are the people that you're speaking to directly? And that comes back to your niche that comes back to your, , your end, end product or your goals in terms of your strategy.

Burhaan [00:03:18]

Like, what did you want to get out of it? And what do you want your people to actually get out of it as well? If your strategy is all about building audience and building brand, then who are the people that are going to connect with your brand and who are the people that are gonna. , coming into your sphere, coming to your audience, whether it's aFacebook group, but you want them to subscribe.

Burhaan [00:03:37]

You want them to like your videos. You want them to come watch more videos, maybe on YouTube, or if we're talking specifically about LinkedIn, it's about green followers. So if that's part of the goal, part of your strategy, then who are the people who are more likely to follow you, ,where are they best?

Burhaan [00:03:54]

How old are they. All the demographic information that goes into putting a niche together, but [00:04:00] then psycho graphically, like, what are they interests? What are they about? What do they like seeing?And so we'll get into some of those things into the planning as well.  When it comes to sort of the content itself, you're asking yourself, well, for this group of people, what do they like to consume?

Burhaan [00:04:20] Do they like long form videos? Do they like short form videos?  Do they like transcribed content? Do they like podcasts? Do they like long form videos on YouTube? Do they like images only? This is, these are some of the questions that you've got to ask related and relating to your home because it's all about preferences.

Burhaan [00:04:39]. Which is again, psychographic thing is what do they prefer watching? What do they prefer seeing? What do they prefer consuming? So now let's talk about the what, because the, what is actually a little bit more detailed than just what type of content,  and the specifics things that you can do, certain texts, tactics that you can use online, like [00:05:00] going to look at keywords.

Burhaan [00:05:01] So that's what keywords are people searching for?What are they looking at online? What are they clicking and what are they actually going to consume  in there a bunch of different tools. And I can link down below in terms of. Different tools that you can use to figure out keyword keywords and what people are searching for.

Burhaan [00:05:20] One of them is Google ads, keyword planner. One is Uber suggest, which is by Neil Patel. And one is keywords everywhere, which is a Chrome extension that can actually go onto your Chrome browser. we spoke about keywords.   What what is the title of your video or what is the title of your content going to be? Because every single blog post, every single video, every single piece has got to have a title behind it. that comes back to the keyword.

Burhaan [00:05:46] And so once you've got your keyword and your hoop, Now you create a title that's specifically for those people. And it's got to be interesting enough for people to actually hook onto that title and want to click on that title. And that applies to YouTube. It [00:06:00] applies toLinkedIn. It applies to every single piece of content you produce is what is the title?

Burhaan [00:06:06]

What is the hook that you're going to bring people in with so that they actually start consuming your content?

Burhaan [00:06:11]

If you're talking about Instagram, then we're covering things like hashtags.

Burhaan [00:06:15]

what are the hashtags that you want to make your content for? Right.

Burhaan [00:06:19]

So speaking specifically of hashtags is one is what are, what hashtags are you going to use on your content to actually one put yourself in that nine box on Instagram and also what are people searching for or what do they look at when it comes to Instagram, hashtags and what they use on the platform to actually go follow.

Burhaan [00:06:41]

Cause there's a lot of hashtags that people follow. And so what you've got to do is figure out.  Which of the hashtags that people are following, do you want to fall into? . And that also goes back to the algorithm. So it's, it's a question of what is the algorithm wanting?

Burhaan [00:06:55]

What is it that the algorithm is serving to people and when you're doing your [00:07:00] research, which we'll cover in the nextstep. Yeah. Is going to look at those hashtags, figure out what type of content it is. That's working for people. What's getting people in that nine grid and then working backwards to say, okay, well, if that's the hashtag you want to talk about, what's the topic, what's the content type.

Burhaan [00:07:17]

What's everything that, that goes, it was into actually making a piece to perform in that three by three grid. On Instagram.This video is not specific to any platform, but I'm going to give you a few, a few more examples as well.

Burhaan [00:07:30]

Then you've got to ask yourself what is actually working on the platform that you want to post on.  Let's say you go to LinkedIn and you say you want to make a post about a specific thing. go in search on that word inLinkedIn and going find out .

Burhaan [00:07:42]

What are the type of content pieces that you want to create on that platform? What's working on the platform right now, when you search on LinkedIn, what is LinkedIn showing you specifically, and I'll give you an example, like on YouTube, if I had to go and find a specific [00:08:00]keyword and put that  into the search bar, you'll get a whole host of videos where people are ranking.

Burhaan [00:08:05]

They're videos and you'll get a sense of age. How old is this video? How many subscribers does this particular channel have? How many views does this video actually have on it? And so those will give you indications of sort of what type of video you should create, what type of thumbnail you should create for that video.

Burhaan [00:08:26]

And also what length the video should be. And you're covering all the, what questions as you go through this process.

Burhaan [00:08:33]

Then when it comes to answering another, what question is, what type of video should it be? If it's a video that you're creating? For example, there are a lot of different types of videos that you can actually create. You can do a talking head video, which is just like this one.

Burhaan [00:08:46]

Well, you could do a demonstration video where maybe you're showing something to somebody, either a physical product, or maybe you're sharing your screen. And you're showing a specific tool to somebody and you're walking them through the process. Maybe it's a [00:09:00] whiteboard.Sort of video where you've actually got a whiteboard behind you and you're drawing in your, using doodles to actually show them stuff.

Burhaan [00:09:07]

Maybe it's a doodle video and you use a tool like doodly to actually create the video for you when you actually don't have to be on the camera itself. Maybe you do just stuck videos or stock photography. And you're talking specifically to that. or maybe it's a written form.

Burhaan [00:09:25]

Piece. And so maybe it's an article or LinkedIn, or maybe on medium or maybe on your blog post. And if that's what's more consumed, that's what LinkedIn is sort of pushing then definitely write an article around that piece because maybe a video might not be the right way to go.

Burhaan [00:09:42]

So you've got to think about what type of content you want to create. Not only the type of content, but also format of the content.

Burhaan [00:09:50]

Then you've got to ask yourself, well, what are the resources you need to actually make this piece?  The question is what are you going to put in the video or the blog post or the [00:10:00] post on LinkedIn? What stock videos are you going to use? What music are you going to use. What's appropriate for your audience? And what do you think in terms of what other videos have been made on the topic?

Burhaan [00:10:13]

What are they using? What have they put into how what's the style of that video and what resources did they use? If it's product videos, then which products are you going to be talking about? . These are all the, what type of questions that you need to ask. And then the most obvious thing is, well, when do you want to actually publish this piece?

Burhaan [00:10:32]

And so that's where planning comes in place. So it's like, let's say, I want to do a video for next week Tuesday. We've got to work backwards and say, okay, well, when do you want to record this? When do you want to actually get the stock footage and all of those things done? When do you want to write your script?

Burhaan [00:10:45]

When do you want to do your thumbnail? When do you want to actually do the research for, and go through this process that I'm guiding you through? When did you actually doing all the planning work?  Because in order to hit the deadline of Tuesday, you definitely could do all of it on [00:11:00] Tuesday, but in order to really leverage your brand and leverage your time to plan the video properly, to actually get it performing eventually.

Burhaan [00:11:09]

Is maybe using a couple of days before forehand to do a draft, to do a second draft, to do a third draft. Memory, to record the first version, then look at it after a day or two and say, okay, well you can improve on this. You can improve on this need to tighten up this, maybe a stock, a video, or maybe a stock image here, or there maybe a screen shot here there,  you can actually work backwards and say, okay, what are the things that you need, which is over and above there sources.

Burhaan [00:11:35]?

So. Thinking about when all of these things need to happen is also very, very important when it comes to planning the content and actually getting it executed in, in the best possible way.  if you know that you need four hours or five hours to get a video edited, or you know, that you have two days lead time for video editing team to actually get the video edit done, then.

Burhaan [00:11:59]

You plan in [00:12:00] advance so that you're always on schedule so that you can keep that consistency, which all the platforms require, whether it's Instagram or LinkedIn or Pinterest or YouTube or any of these platforms, they all require consistency. And so the planning actually helps to become more consistent, which invariably helps you with performance because as you become more consistent, your performance does go up.

Burhaan [00:12:24]

And if your planning is done correctly and all your research and all of those things are in place. You've got the right titles. You've got the wrong ripe thumbnails. Then you can definitely give yourself a better chance to perform and use your time in the correct manner.

Burhaan [00:12:38]

The other thing you need to think about when it comes to the, when question is when are you gonna promote the videos or when are you going to promote the content? Cause it's one thing to actually publish a post. But then,  you've got to let people know that you've done this thing. And so putting in a promotion schedule or planning the promotions maybe you're going to tweet about this particular video that you

Burhaan [00:13:00]

uploaded on YouTube every three days or once a week or once a month or whatever the case may be.

Burhaan [00:13:04]

It's putting that into your schedule and planning those posts out. So that you can actually give yourself a better chance to succeed. One example is if you've got an email newsletter and what are you going to write in that email newsletter, which comes back to the planning,  and also, when are you actually going to push the email out to promote that video?

Burhaan [00:13:26] ]That's basically what I see as the planning process. And it's a process that I am still working on in my business and also for my clients.

That's basically what I see as the planning process. And it's a process that I am still working on in my business and also for my clients.

Burhaan [00:13:34]

It's something that  I've put into place from courses that I've taken. And also just from me experimenting on my own stuff, I really hope that this video was useful and I hope I answered and addressed those goals that I had right. In the beginning of, of basically telling you why I'm making this video.

Burhaan [00:13:50]

So thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode depending on where you're listening to this podcast episode. ,subscriber follow,  depending

Burhaan [00:14:00]

on which platform you're on. And I do look forward to chatting to you on the next episode. Thank you so much. Have a great day.