In May I had an idea to create 30 posts about SwiftUI in June, one post for each day. It was some kind of challenge for me. However, I realized that there is WWDC and if I want to spend time writing those 30 posts and stay up to date with new things from WWDC, I won’t sleep at all, so I decided to postpone it.
On the last day of August, I decided that September is a good month to do it, it has 30 days and I can manage my time in the way I’ll handle it. Meanwhile, I wanted to learn how to create a video post on YouTube. I have plans to create more of them so it can be a great exercise to learn how to do it. Short articles should be easy to record. Yea, they should…
First I wrote down some ideas about what I can write about and what can bring some value. I think it’s an important part because I knew that there will be days when I don’t know what to write about and that list can save me. Even while writing some posts, I found more ideas to write about, and thanks to that I finished with around 40 ideas for posts.
So, as everything starts there is huge energy to create, I use it to learn how to create videos as I wanted. I mark it here that if you don’t know how to create videos and audios and then combine it together then it can take you much more time than you expect. How long can it take to create 2-3 minutes of videos? My first video took me 3 hours, the second one took 2 hours, it’s better but still not perfect.
Even though I had the day off at work, I had plans to create at least two posts for the first day, of course, recording video took a big part of my time and energy for that day.
The next day, I spent 2 hours on one video but I managed to create posts and videos.
The next days were better and faster. I found that putting work into the block is more efficient. For example, first I spend time writing two or three posts, and then I record all of them. I worked like that when I was preparing posts for days I knew I wouldn’t be able to create anything.
How I work
I write a post, then I record audio and slice it into a few audio tracks and then I record screen from Xcode, then I combine them together, video and audio into one file. I am aware that it’s not the most efficient way but for me, it’s the way that I don’t need to re-record anything twice. After a few posts, I managed to do it much quicker and the average time to record was about 40 minutes.
Hidden tasks
Writing a blog post or creating a video for YouTube is one thing, and many people when they start creating something think that it’s enough, it isn’t.
Beside content itself there are few things that also take time like creating a logo for the post, I used to take some images I thought it’s close to the topic of the post but with so many posts it’s too hard. So I had to find a different way. I created some templates separate for the blog and YouTube. Creating them takes much more time than finding a picture but in the long term, it’s much faster. I use Canva for logos, it has a free account.
Besides creating something you need to promote it as well, it also takes time. I didn’t want to share every post everywhere. I have just selected a few of them and from time to time I shared them on social media.
There are two things that also take time and it’s easy to forget, rendering video and uploading it. Few times, I wanted to quickly render it and upload but it took a few minutes, it’s worth remembering that it can take up to a few minutes.
Plan ahead
Doing something every day is a great exercise to learn how to be persistent. However, there are some situations I knew that I won’t be able to write a post on that day. I had to plan how to prepare content for that day and schedule publishing. For one weekend, I knew that I won’t have access to a computer so I wrote a post and recorded a video and scheduled it.
It’s important to plan ahead and predict what can happen and be prepared for it. However, there are situations that you can’t predict, like scheduling things on blog and Youtube, for some days it works, and for others, the same thing doesn’t work. It happens.
Excuses
After a few weeks, when the initial excitement falls then there is a true challenge to create a post. There are always thoughts like “you create someone to post, you can skip this day” or “you don’t know what to write about, don’t write anything”. I knew that that second one will occur so I prepared my list of topics to write about. For me, it’s important to remember why I started and keep going.
I did it and I know that if in the future I’ll have some project to create a lot of content I can handle it and I deliver it. Of course, there is still a lot of work to do.
Key lessons:
- creating video at the beginning is harder but later it gives fun to create it
- listening own recorded voice is strange at the beginning but for other people, you sound all the time in the same way
- plan ahead how to cope with difficulties you know will occur
- you need to share with the world what you created
- a piece of bring value is better than a lack of it
- scheduling content for two platforms doesn’t have to always work as you think
If you did something similar or what to ask about something let me know in the comments or via email: kornel@smashswift.com I love to talk with you!
