I created a YouTube channel. Here’s what I learnt…
When I started blogging about a few years ago, I wanted to try something different, challenging and to be able to bring my skills a notch higher. I decided to create a youtube channel to share about my journey through videos. I felt that it would add a personal touch because I would be able to express my thoughts more freely.
Stepping out of the comfort zone
Making a video is completely different from writing a blog. The process involved is much longer and laborious. What scares me more is about putting my face in front of the camera and knowing that everyone will know who I am once I published my video.
My first thought was that I am afraid that people would easily recognize me from the streets and thereby losing the privacy I once had. I guess I was thinking it a little too far as if I would really go viral and lose my personal space the moment I published my videos.
No one really cares
The truth to the matter, no one really cares about you especially when you first started out. This applies to any career or anything you want to do. Even you may post out a good piece of work, because the branding and recognition is not substantial, you are unlikely to reach out to a very big audience in a short period of time. So why worry the unnecessary and just go ahead and post it!
If you want to go big, you will be recognized either way
I am not sure whether other people have this thought before but if you want to make to the top, you need to be recognized by the people around you. That also means by being good in your current job and being visible to the eyes of the management.
If you want to be head-hunted, you also have to boost your profile in Linkedin or display your portfolio online. As you go higher up the ladder of society, somehow or another you will be recognized by people. No matter what you do, you have to gain some form of visibility if you want to work your way up.
The journey to video content creation
I must say it is not easy to produce video content. It is easy to consume because you can just view it over your phone and listen what the video has to say. However, the pre-, current and post-production behind the scenes required a significant amount of effort.
Planning the content
First, I have to plan my topic and the structure of how I want to deliver my content on camera. Sometimes, I will write out my script because I wanted my story to be coherent and relevant. Once you have the outline of your video ready, we will move on to work on the actual production. This process can take a while as you need to come with fresh and innovative ideas.
Actual production logistics
Even though you have everything planned out, there is an actual production logistics you have to consider. For example, you will think of the camera you want to use to record yourself. Audio is really important because people can watch a video with bad image quality but they won’t be able to endure consuming videos with a bad audio quality. So the microphone is essential to bring out a good audio quality in the videos.
Another important to consider as well are the lighting and the types of background for your recording. A badly lit environment will cause your objects in the video to be very dull. However, it can be enhanced these days with editing software. You want to create a nice feel and ambiance to the video as well.
Post production nightmare
Even though I enjoyed this part the most, it requires the biggest effort from me to piece the entire video together. In this portion I can easily spent many hours just to put the clips together.
Once you have your clips together, it is not the end. You have consider what kind of music or sound effects you want to add to your video. Sometimes, it can easily take day to research a suitable sound effect or background music for your video. The next step is to do some color correction or enhancing to your video quality. It is a bit like photoshop but on a video perspective. This is the part where you can increase brightness, contrast and improve colors for the video.
You may think it is done after you have spent a lot of hours on it and finally put everything together. However, it is not the end! If you want to consider viewership experience, you might want to add in subtitles or transcripts which could take a lot of time. It definitely boost viewership but it is not easy to manually do it by yourself.
Before publishing to the public, you still have to research on your captions, build nice thumbnails, do keywords and hashtag analysis, create a good description and possibly a call to action. All these takes work as well.
What I do think of the journey
I would say it is very, very tedious and laborious journey but it can be very rewarding. It is always nice to see your end product because you created everything from scratch. It symbolizes your creativity and hard work.
As I am doing all alone as a hobby, I have to handle everything by myself. Maybe in time to come I could hire some assistants to help me if one day my videos were to become viral and consistent content is needed to help it stay afloat.
If you would like to view my channel, you can check it out as below!
Or if you would like to view my other blog, you can check out in this link.
Conclusion
If you would like to do something creative, you should go ahead and give it a try. Do not hold yourself back with unnecessary worries that may not manifest. Take this opportunity to explore and who knows, you may find your passion along the way.
