#002: YouTube marketing made easy

Available on Substack, Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

Key takeaways

00:01 🔧 Use tools, goals, audience understanding, and a script outline, yet struggling with consistency? This video shares tips for creators and service providers focusing on brand awareness and lead generation.

00:28 🔄 Use the 3H strategy (Help, Hub, Hero) along with the 12-week year for a realistic content plan, avoiding burnout and inconsistency.

01:25 🎓 Help content educates and solves problems for brand awareness and lead generation.

01:54 📺 Hub content engages existing audiences, fostering trust and connection.

02:50 🌟 Hero content promotes brand awareness and attracts new subscribers.

04:12 🛠️ Conduct an audit, set goals, define content types, platforms, audience, and frequencies for a content plan.

05:30 📋 Use ChatGPT for content planning, generate themes, FAQs, and content ideas, then create a 12-week content plan.

06:26 🗓️ Create a content plan in table format with columns for week number, date, theme, content type, title, and topic.

07:44 🚀 Focus on consistent content creation, streamline your process with templates, schedule tasks, and celebrate wins to stay motivated.

Introduction

Key Takeaways

1. Embrace the 12-Week Year Strategy

2. Implementing the 3H Strategy

3. Creating a Content Plan

4. Leveraging Tools and Platforms

5. Practical Tips for Consistency

Mentioned

Transcript

0:00 You know what tools to use, the goals, and the audience. You have hundreds of ideas, your video workflow down, and a script outline to start your writing process, but you’re still struggling to be consistent. All the plans, all the goals, no execution.

In this video, I’ll share some tips and strategies to help you stay consistent without burnout. This is especially for creators and service providers who want to focus on brand awareness and lead generation and not views and subscribers. I also share how to use this strategy with the 12-Week Year to come up with a realistic plan.

After months of struggling myself this year, I knew it was time to unlearn everything and start from scratch because once again, I fell off. My main theme this year was ease. So, I had to figure out a way to get back on track without burning out. I asked myself, what’s the easiest thing I can do to create content and expand my reach using the same tools and resources I use now?

I enjoyed making tutorials, but I wanted to add other types of content to mix it up. I’m still creating short-form, evergreen content that’s under 20 minutes and that covers written and visual formats. But now I’m including audio for reach. The larger the audience, the more traffic, brand awareness, and leads. And this is where the 3H strategy comes in.

01:16 This strategy was created by Google to help you cater to different audience needs to cover all your bases. Help content is short-form, searchable, and evergreen. It’s educational, instructional, and informational content used for brand awareness and lead generation and to help you stand out as a go-to guide and expert. Examples include how-tos, FAQs, top lists, step-by-step guides, tips and tricks, and Q&As. Basically, problem-solving content, like how a certain tool, product, or service solves their problem. The goal is for your audience to binge-watch your content, then subscribe or follow, or sign up to your email list to learn more. Once they take a look at your other videos, this is where the next H in this strategy comes in to keep their attention.

Hub content is your main repeatable content that keeps your existing audience engaged. This could be short-form or long-form, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. This is the “know, like, trust” content that keeps them coming back for more entertaining, inspirational, and conversational videos to connect with your subscribers. Examples are vlogs, day-in-life videos, behind-the-scenes, personal stories, or motivational videos to take action. You can also use this for brand awareness to generate leads or give expert advice with educational content like weekly videos or podcast episodes. The call to action depends on your goals. So, if it’s to grow your email list, you send them to your newsletter form to sign up and download a lead magnet or link to your website to read a blog post or transcript if it’s to drive traffic to your services page or your shop. You can do this by adding a call to action within the post.

If you don’t have an email list, today’s the perfect time to start one. You can start with free platforms like MailerLite, Beehive, and Substack. This is so if anything happens to your channel, your email subscribers know what’s up. Plus, you can share discounts, extra, or exclusive content. If you want to know how to set up your newsletter and podcast with Substack, stay to the end to learn more about my next video.

And the last H is hero content. This is monthly, quarterly, or once or twice a year for promotional content. The purpose is to use this for brand awareness and to attract new subscribers. These could be for webinars, campaigns, case studies, success stories with testimonials, live streams to celebrate milestones, behind-the-scenes walkthroughs for your launch or campaign, and you can also promote your digital product or service to convert viewers into customers and clients. If you don’t have a product or service, there’s affiliate marketing, partnerships, and sponsored content. The call to action is to get viewers to buy your product, book your services, or sign up for a service using your affiliate links.

Overall, the 3H strategy is a nice balance of educational, personal, and promotional content to keep things fresh and the audience engaged. You can be flexible and tailor the content based on audience needs, but you’ll always have some topics ready.

4:09 Another question I asked was, what’s my main priority? After relaunching this year, I got off track and focused too much on being a content creator instead of a service provider. And that led to burnout and inconsistent publishing, trying to keep up with subscriber counts, views, and retention. I wanted to go back to the original plan when I started four years ago, which was to use YouTube for discovery to drive traffic and generate leads.

Using the 3H framework and a 12-Week Year, I created a simple schedule with monthly themes, and now my content plan is more realistic and easy to manage. And if you’re dealing with a chronic illness like me, you can even take small steps to reach your goals on your low-energy days.

To create your own content plan, start by doing an audit. Figure out what’s working, what you like to create, and what you want to keep doing. Make sure to check your analytics on YouTube or Google Analytics for more info.

After that, get started by answering the following:

Then you plug all that info into ChatGPT to come up with a plan. If you’re not sure about the monthly themes, ask it to generate a list of three to five main themes related to each topic. If you want ideas for each theme, generate 10 FAQs for each topic theme or list five content ideas that address common problems, fears, hopes, and desires for your audience.

After all that info, your next thing is to create a plan. An example prompt to use will be to create a 12-week content plan in table format with the following columns: week, number, date, monthly theme, content type, title, and topic. Use the 12-Week Year book as a guide. And the monthly themes are boosting engagement, building community, or maximizing reach. Here’s an example for a social media manager using the same format from the prompt.

6:21 But it doesn’t have to be weekly videos. For me, my goal is to post at least two videos a month with the help content being biweekly episodes. So that’s two short-form videos outlined, recorded, and edited. The help content will be tutorials once a month. And these are unscripted tutorials, which are easier to create since it’s step-by-step, and sometimes related to the hub content so I can screen share after recording the hub episode. For hero content, this will be every quarter to promote a digital product or a service with case studies.

With all of this combined, I now have the next three months planned using the same tools for scripting, recording, and editing. And all I did was add Substack for the podcast and newsletter. Substack is perfect to send updates to the email list and also distribute the podcast episodes to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And I’m not worried about metrics this time, just building what Shaan Puri called a binge bank, which is basically a library with evergreen content that viewers can binge-watch later on.

7:23 Here are some tips to make this process smoother. First tip is to break your SMART goals into small, manageable daily and weekly actions using the 12-Week Year framework, and to focus on your daily and weekly actions to stay on track. Next tip is to be flexible and adaptable, leaving space for audience feedback and inspiration, and adjust based on your energy levels. Next, focus on creating content that attracts and engages viewers and forget about fast results. Just build your binge library and keep publishing to get your message out there. Keep creating content so the more you post, the more visibility you gain. Streamline your process with templates for designing graphics, scripting, and editing, and have your checklist up so you don’t miss any steps. Set up notifications using Notion, Calendar, or Google Calendar and automate and schedule daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Use monthly themes for each month for structure. Next tip is to set a realistic schedule and batch create content on your high-energy days. Also, schedule some time to monitor your progress every month and every quarter. And for my last tip, don’t forget to celebrate your wins big and small.

If you’re interested in seeing how to set up your newsletter and podcast on Substack for free, subscribe and get notified on how you can launch yours. Head over to the link below for more tips and the full transcript.

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About

Hi, I’m Marjy! Digital Creator and Content Manager for creatives and online service providers. If you’re enjoying this post, here are other ways you can connect with me: