Tips from my first 8 months as a content creator

Photo by TheRegisti on Unsplash

Some context:

I’m only 8 months into my “serious” content creation journey and thought I’d give you guys an inside look at my progress.

In this time span, I gained 16,000 followers on Instagram and 600 subscribers on YouTube. Though my YouTube cadence isn’t as consistent as it should be for optimal growth, I spent the past year studying content creation systems, formats, and best practices, and am starting to apply this knowledge now.

There are a few things that anyone starting out should know:

1. Start with foundational content that you can repurpose.

Work smarter, not harder. Content, unfortunately, is a quantity game as much as it is a quality game. If you can create a high volume of good content, you’re winning. That’s why you need to pay close attention to this tip.

It can be tempting to spend a Saturday scripting and recording a bunch of YouTube videos, spend Sunday scripting a bunch of reels, then spend Monday writing a bunch of feed posts and threads.

Etc, etc, etc.

Don’t do this.

You’re duplicating efforts when you can just restructure your workflow to kill 5 birds with one stone.

When you see each platform as a beast of its own that you need to tame, naturally, it becomes too much. Your approach to content should be to spend the most energy doing the biggest thing:

Writing the longform content that can be repurposed into everything else.

After a year of barely keeping my head above water, I feel silly now that I’ve started to do things this (much easier) way. Here’s my new content workflow:

A long-form blogpost becomes a YouTube video script. This YouTube video gets turned into 3–5 shorts and/or reels. I pull quotes and excerpts from the original blog article to make X posts, threads, and captions on Instagram (also promoting the blog article). Outside of all this, the original blog article can be repurposed into chapters of a book or other info-product that I want to roll out one day.

So, sitting down for two hours to write a valuable blog article not only adds value to my (currently small) audience, but it also creates 1 or more YouTube videos, 3 or more Shorts/Reels, and probably 6–8 social posts.

How many blog articles would you need to write per month to fuel the rest of your content? Probably 2 or 3, and you’d have a ton of spillover content you can use later. This clarity lets you attack the first priority before spewing energy everywhere else.

Don’t just run and start making stuff for everywhere. Treat it like a pyramid. Start at the base, and let that original hard work carry everything else.

2. Focus on format

This is important, and a lot of new content creators skip over it.

Experimenting with and figuring out your format is crucial to start gaining creator momentum. It’s often overlooked because content format is only really thought about by creators, not so much by consumers. If you’re coming from being someone who exclusively consumes content but never created it, different content formats may not be obvious to you.

There are different formats of content, and there are sometimes formats within the formats. Let me explain:

Videos in general are technically a content format.

Long form vs. short form are a sub-format of videos.

Talking head commentaries, vlogs, news anchor deliveries, interviews, skits, and faceless B-roll videos are more specific formats.

Lots of people decide on a niche rather easily.

I want to make videos about fashion.

Great! However, there are 8,000 ways to go about this.

Are you going to vlog your daily outfits and bring the audience along as you get ready?

Are you going to create video essays exploring fashion and culture?

Are you going to make talking head videos where you judge and rate other people’s outfit choices on the red carpet?

There are many ways to do the same thing. Notice the many different formats that content can be expressed in, and get creative! Truly unique content is born when people innovate, drawing elements from different formats and making something new. Additionally, having a better grasp on the different ways to do things will help you with experimentation and testing. Try one format for a while, then try another. Double down on the format that performs best, or that you enjoy more.

3. Get comfortable running tests. A lot of them.

Stick with something for long enough to get a real understanding of its performance. If you’re constantly switching formats, styles, and brand colors, you’re never able to get a big enough sample size to draw any valuable conclusions.

Test content ideas, such as headlines and video topics, on the people around you. Ask them which title sounds the most interesting and which thumbnail generates the most intrigue.

If you’re considering making content on a topic that will require a lot of your energy, test smaller versions of that content on your audience to see if it garners engagement.

When you make a YouTube video, create 2–3 alternate thumbnails that you can swap out if you’re noticing low engagement after the first few days.

4. Build your email list

If the end goal is for your content to be a vehicle toward monetization and revenue, build your email list.

Even if monetization is not on your mind right now, build your email list.

This will let you have direct contact with your followers and supporters outside of any social platform.

We all know how algorithms shift–one moment your reach is high and you’re gaining 100 new followers a day and the next you’re lucky to get a single comment over the span of a week. You don’t want the fate of your creations to be in the hands of social platforms. You want to “own” your audience, so a platform can’t take them away from you.

Your social account gets hacked, and now you’ve lost the entire audience you spent building? Absolutely not. Prioritize the email list.

Use these platforms as a meeting place for you and your audience, but always make the goal to head back to your place.

That sounds weird, but I’m keeping it in.

5. Have guts.

Or balls.

Whichever you prefer.

Find it in you to have confidence and conviction in your messages.

Your thoughts and ideas are valid. Your creations are valid. Don’t speak quietly because you aren’t sure if you belong in the room.

YOU BELONG IN THE ROOM.

(That was me shouting at you. Lovingly.)

Even if you don’t feel like you’re an expert in a particular field yet, that’s fine.

You’re a pro at being yourself. That’s all you really have to bring to the table.

 — Dezzy

There’s more to explore.

I make content to help people identify the mental blockages that prevent them from doing great work.

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