Detailed Notes
The past few years have included us creating content channels across a number of outlets. Â That has led to a request to provide a presentation on how to go about such tasks. Â The goal is to focus on the content portion more than just list technical tools and platforms. Â We talk about approaches to producing content and considerations if you want to start down any of these paths.
Creating Content Channels - Many Options, Similar Approach One thing that was apparent in creating this presentation was how similar many of the channels are. Â That gives us some overarching steps to take and then refinements based on your channel. Â All of this combines to give you a thoughtful approach to creating content channels. Â Likewise, it provides some checklist material to help you get started.
Transcript Text
[Music] all right so today we're going to talk about uh it's basically i've labeled it a creating channels communication channels because the the genesis of this presentation was how do you create a podcast how do you create a a blog a youtube channel write a book stuff like that it's it's basically all of these things are really it's content creation but it's also doing it for a specific channel because although books are a little more one-time type things when you look at things like podcasts and blogs and that they are you're regularly feeding this channel with content and so i wanted to try to cover all of these in a single session even though we could easily do a whole series you know where each you know break out each one specifically and dig pretty deeply into them and we have in the past we've we've had points where we've talked a little more in depth about each of these from a technical point of view i guess more so than the the business and the content side of you point of view so i'm still going to walk through this when talking about some of the steps to get there but it's a little more focused on the the process than it is the technology and so we're going to talk about in this one just sort of in general content creation we're going to look at blogging podcasts books or audiobooks uh youtube or video platforms and then also i broke them out because a little different would be like your educational platforms like a udemy or something like that where you're you're churning out content but it's specific it's like it's course or class content so first with content creation why do we even why would we do this because it's work it takes time it takes effort and it's usually not paid it's usually stuff that we're at least starting off now some people are professional podcasters bloggers and such and can make good money at it but a lot of us that's not it and then when you start you're you're not paid this is stuff where you're investing in your future at best well one of the reasons you want to do this is is an excellent addition to your resume even if you never make a penny off of your content this is something you can point to and say hey here's where i have produced content here's work that i've done it's like a an artist having a portfolio that you can look to to say oh this you know this person knows their stuff about these topics so it's it is professional development valuable uh it is a way to put something on a resume and it's not just putting it on your resume the fact that you do that there are certain skills and we're going to talk about that a little bit there's going to be some skills you're going to learn as part of that there are things that you get out of creating content and presenting it and creating that platform and supporting that platform that you're not going to have doing other stuff like if you are a coder you can write code all day and be very good at it and never have the skills that you would develop if you were now going to be like these coders that record themselves and then build a community and all that kind of stuff so there's there's a good set of skills that you're going to learn from this it's also an opportunity to either build or contribute to a community and especially these days where people remote all the time and things like that i think we may you know maybe we've lost that a little bit but there are definitely as developers i think we sometimes underestimate the value of the communities that already exist that we probably lean on daily you know particularly where most of us now will if we want to learn something we'll go google search we'll find somebody else's somewhat done it and we can either build on what they've done or sometimes almost directly just take what they've done make a few modifications and boom we're off and running something that people don't i don't think people realize enough that are particularly content creators uh the exception being probably the master that would be like a tim ferriss is that you can test theories and research ideas as part of your content creation you can go out there as a developer and something i've done is say you know what i want to learn this new language or i want to play around in this new environment and go do it yeah you can the content creation part sort of drives you to create an outline and have a goal and not just play around in it but actually use it and so doing content creation as part of either testing out a theory or learning new ideas or doing research is actually very useful particularly in the whole accountability side of it because now you're not just doing it for fun you're doing it as part of this uh sort of this promise that you've made of i'm gonna do this class i'm gonna do this course i'm gonna have this uh this season or the series that i'm gonna go through and part of it too is content creation is a good excuse to do more of what you enjoy do what you love if you like learning new programming languages then that could be your your stick is that you are constantly showing you're going through and doing the languages or uh writing tests for systems or writing applications of their own or getting out of the technology side from content is it could be it could be you doing movie reviews for the movies that you've watched in the last week or tv shows that you love or books that you you know series that you like to read or anything like that content creation and we often in developer neural world talk about technology technology stuff and technical things however content creation can be anything it could be whatever your hobby is and if your hobby you could be a a high-end c coder let's say c-sharp coder and your hobby happens to be uh i don't know vegetable gardens and you could do say a podcast or video series on your vegetable garden and doing all that kind of stuff and you'd be amazed at how much the fact that you did that that you put that effort in that you do those production values that you learn all those things about a gardening podcast it does benefit you professionally it is a professional development tool so let's talk about the channels that are out there a little bit and these are the ones we're going to go through anyways it blogs so you know daily weekly regular writing you got your podcast which i'm always going to assume that's a these days it's an audio podcast although there are video podcasts that have been from the start um there was also video blogs basically that were effectively that but most of that video related stuff now is really more moved over to be like it becomes like a youtube channel or something along those lines and then there's books or audio books which are going to be more to me the difference between a blog and a book or an audiobook is that instead of that regular release cadence that you have for a blog or this that you should we'll talk about that you've sort of bundled it all up and then have one big release in the podcasting world hardcore history is actually an interesting example of doing that in an audio sense where he probably could do a blog or a podcast or he does you know i don't know 15 20 minute episode once a week or something like that depending on research and all that instead he does these you know monumental three four five hour you know they're basically audio books that he's cranking out even though it's you know technically a podcast and then there's the education platforms which are out there like i've mentioned udemy and there's there's many others and you can even create your own [Music] where you are putting some you know basically think of like a traditional class or course on whatever your topic happens to be and then you know like say it's uh learning a foreign language then you you have you know all of these sessions of hey we're going to learn these words and we're going to learn those words so we're going to learn how to put these together we're going to learn sentences and grammar blah blah blah whatever it takes to get a student from whatever the starting point is to the end point for that class so we have a lot out there and let's start with blogs because those are sort of the older oldest version of these when you're going to launch a blog first thing is i guess isn't necessarily all in order but one of the things you really need is what is your theme or vision or mission statement why are you doing this blog and it could be just a personal blog it's like hey i just want to weekly write about what's going on in my life that's fine that's that is suitable as a you know vision or the vision or the mission statement or your theme it could be something like um i'm going to i'm going to do sort of like a i've suggested this about i'm going to sort of do a work status of like here's a couple of things i learned you know this week at work uh it could be again it could be like a sports related hey here's the latest my favorite teams that i follow and things news related to them uh it could be political here's the political stuff that i'm following if you look at popular podcasts in particular it is there is a theme or some sort of like vision statement mission statement or something like that that maybe they haven't specified that but you can you can extract that by looking at the title the topics you know sort of the direction they go so that on a given episode usually if you just randomly pick an episode you're going to know that roughly these are the things they're going to talk about this is roughly the expectations i have for this for this blog and in this case and it's it's something where there's a there's a production value uh blogs are a little different from some of the others but even with the blog there is a the language that you use as far as you know is it aimed at first graders sixth graders you know phds and grammar uh the grammatical stuff you use the colloquialisms the uh like the references and bibliographies and things like that that you may include whether it's all text or whether you're going to include diagrams and stuff like that whether it's more opinion versus something that's you know heavily researched where you've got a lot of data points all of these things factor into your approach or your tone for your blog you know is it is it lighthearted is it more professorial academic is it very business-like is it uh is it humorous is it serious is it dramatic um is it just you or does it involve other people either uh interviews or uh research you know reading that you've done from other blogs all of that is stuff that you want to sort of have as your your starting point if you think about it from uh to me these ways think about it it's acting when an actor steps into a role there is everything they do impacts the how you view that person that they're acting as and that's you know it comes to the whole idea of there's you can do stuff that's in character or out of character and if it's out of character it can be very jarring or even ruin the whole story or the whatever you're trying to communicate blog is the same way it helps to have a a character that you are that character that you step into that as part of doing the blog and it may just be who you are normally that may be that may work fine because you should find it easy to be yourself but there may be other things that you want to do where it's like i said it may be more serious it may be more professional and think about it are you you know who's your target audience are you talking to uh your boss you're talking to your parents and your family are you talking to your buddies and whatever it is all of that factors into this approach or tone that you're gonna you wanna set up scheduling or a calendar is critical for and we're going to see this in this throughout this presentation figure out what what are you comfortable doing are you going to write a blog once a day once a week once a month once a quarter once a year figure it out and then set your mind to the point that you're going to get that done now once a year it's probably not going to be frequent enough it's just it's one of those i mean i guess you could do like a january 1st every year december 31st or year july 4th or pick a date that's like a in itself is very memorable or tied to a holiday or something like that but if you're doing a blog that only shows up once a year really even if you're doing a blog that's once a quarter you're probably gonna have a hard time getting you know some momentum and getting a following for that assuming that that's one of the things you want to do it's not always needed and sometimes like if you're really more trying to do more it's almost more like a newsletter approach maybe you do a quarterly here's how things are going here's what's you know planned for the quarter ahead then you can do that professionally you could do that you know maybe it's a family thing you send out something that's really meant for personal friends and family hey here's what's going on here's the big things that are coming up in my life when you're going to launch before you launch have a have a list uh at least you know i would say at least three or four preferably like a half dozen to a dozen topics that you want to cover yeah if this again if you're cranking this out once a year you won't have to worry about it but even if you're doing it monthly i would want to make sure i've got at least four or five months worth of topics already lined up before i even dive into it it's like okay i've set up my vision my mission you know sort of got my theme i know what my target audience is i know the approach the tone i'm going to take all right what am i what am i going to write about and then when you're going to get into the launching is how am i going to let people know that this exists you could just write it and say i don't care if anybody ever reads it i'm just doing this to write it but typically you're going to want to get you know put this out in front of people even if it's just friends and family so think through what is that going to look like how are you going to announce it are you going to sign up emails are you going to try to create a mailing list are you going to call a bunch of people because when you do the launch you know i guess in all caps you know like the big launch day or whatever is it gonna be who cares or is it gonna be okay i've sent it out to these people so now hopefully you know they'll at least check out my site so that's a blog [Music] you
Transcript Segments
[Music]
all right so today we're going to talk
about uh it's basically i've
labeled it a creating channels
communication channels
because the
the genesis of this presentation was
how do you create a podcast how do you
create a
a blog a youtube channel
write a book stuff like that it's it's
basically
all of these things are
really it's content creation but it's
also doing it for a specific channel
because although books are a little more
one-time type things when you look at
things like podcasts and
blogs and that they are you're regularly
feeding this channel with content
and so i wanted to try to cover all of
these in a single session
even though we could easily do a whole
series you know where each you know
break out each one specifically and dig
pretty deeply into them and we have in
the past we've we've had points where
we've talked a little more in depth
about each of these
from a technical point of view i guess
more so than the
the business and the content side of you
point of view so
i'm still going to walk through this
when talking about some of the steps to
get there
but it's a little more focused on the
the process than it is the technology
and so we're going to talk about
in this one
just sort of in general content creation
we're going to look at blogging podcasts
books or audiobooks uh youtube or video
platforms and then also i broke them out
because a little different would be like
your educational platforms like a udemy
or something like that where you're
you're churning out content but it's
specific
it's like it's course or class content
so first with content creation
why do we even why would we do this
because it's work it takes time
it takes effort
and it's
usually not paid it's usually stuff that
we're at least starting off now some
people are professional podcasters
bloggers and such and can make good
money at it but
a lot of us that's not it and then when
you start you're
you're not paid this is stuff where
you're investing in your future at best
well one of the reasons you want to do
this is is an excellent addition to your
resume even if you never make a penny
off of your content
this is something you can point to and
say hey here's where i have produced
content here's work that i've done it's
like a an artist having a portfolio that
you can look to to say oh this you know
this person knows their
stuff about
these topics
so it's
it is professional development valuable
uh it is a way to
put something on a resume and it's not
just putting it on your resume the fact
that you do that there are certain
skills and we're going to talk about
that a little bit there's going to be
some skills you're going to learn as
part of that
there
are things that you get out of creating
content and presenting it and creating
that platform and supporting that
platform that you're not going to have
doing
other stuff like if you are
a coder
you can write code all day
and be very good at it
and never have the skills that you would
develop if you were now going to be
like these coders that record themselves
and then
build a community and all that kind of
stuff
so there's there's a good set of skills
that you're going to learn from this
it's also an opportunity to either build
or contribute to a community
and
especially these days where people
remote all the time and things like that
i think we may you know maybe we've lost
that a little bit
but there are definitely
as developers i think we
sometimes underestimate the value of the
communities that already exist
that we probably lean on daily you know
particularly where
most of us now will if we want to learn
something we'll go google search we'll
find somebody else's somewhat done it
and we can either build on what they've
done or sometimes almost directly just
take what they've done make a few
modifications and boom we're off and
running
something that people don't
i don't think people realize enough that
are particularly content creators
uh the exception being probably the
master that would be like a tim ferriss
is that you can test theories and
research ideas as part of your content
creation
you can go out there as a developer and
something i've done is say you know what
i want to learn
this new language or i want to play
around in this new
environment
and go do it yeah you can
the content creation part sort of drives
you to
create an outline and have a goal
and not just
play around in it but actually use it
and so
doing content creation as part of
either testing out a theory or learning
new ideas or doing research
is actually very useful particularly in
the whole accountability side of it
because now you're not just doing it for
fun
you're doing it as part of this
uh sort of this promise that you've made
of i'm gonna do this class i'm gonna do
this course i'm gonna
have this uh this season or the series
that i'm gonna go through
and part of it too is
content creation is a good excuse to do
more of what you enjoy do what you love
if you like learning new programming
languages then that could be your
your stick is that you are constantly
showing you're going through and
doing the languages or
uh writing tests for systems or
writing applications of their own or
getting out of the technology side from
content is it could be
it could be you doing movie reviews for
the movies that you've watched in the
last week or tv shows that you love or
books that you you know series that you
like to read or anything like that
content creation
and we
often in developer neural world talk
about technology technology stuff and
technical things
however
content creation can be
anything
it could be whatever your hobby is
and
if your hobby you could be a a
high-end c coder let's say c-sharp coder
and your hobby happens to be
uh i don't know vegetable gardens
and you could do
say a podcast or video series on your
vegetable garden and doing all that kind
of stuff and you'd be amazed at how much
the fact that you did that that you put
that effort in that you do those
production values that you
learn all those things about a gardening
podcast
it does benefit you professionally it is
a professional development tool
so let's talk about the channels that
are out there
a little bit
and these are the ones we're going to go
through anyways
it blogs so you know daily
weekly regular writing
you got your podcast which
i'm always going to assume that's a
these days it's an audio podcast
although there are video podcasts
that have been from the start um there
was also video blogs basically that were
effectively that
but
most of that video related stuff now is
really more moved over to be like it
becomes like a youtube channel or
something along those lines and then
there's books or audio books
which are going to be more
to me the difference between a blog and
a book or an audiobook is that
instead of that regular release cadence
that you have for a blog or this that
you should we'll talk about that
you've sort of bundled it all up and
then have one big release
in the podcasting world hardcore history
is actually an interesting example of
doing that in an audio sense
where he probably could do a blog
or a podcast or he does you know i don't
know 15 20 minute episode once a week or
something like that depending on
research and all that instead he does
these you know monumental
three four five hour you know they're
basically audio books that he's cranking
out even though it's you know
technically a podcast
and then there's the education platforms
which are out there like i've mentioned
udemy and there's there's many others
and you can even create your own
[Music]
where
you are putting some you know basically
think of like a traditional class or
course on
whatever your topic happens to be
and then you know like say it's uh
learning a foreign language then you
you have you know
all of these sessions of hey we're going
to learn these words and we're going to
learn those words so we're going to
learn how to put these together we're
going to learn sentences and grammar
blah blah blah whatever it takes
to get a student from
whatever the starting point is to the
end point for that class
so we have a lot out there
and let's start with
blogs
because those are sort of the older
oldest version of these
when you're going to launch a blog
first thing is
i guess isn't necessarily all in order
but one of the things you really need is
what is your theme or vision or mission
statement why are you doing this blog
and it could be just a personal blog
it's like hey i just want to
weekly write about what's going on in my
life
that's fine that's
that is suitable as a you know vision or
the vision or the mission statement or
your theme
it could be something like
um
i'm going to i'm going to do sort of
like a i've suggested this about i'm
going to sort of do a work status of
like here's a couple of things i learned
you know this week
at work
uh it could be again it could be like a
sports related hey here's
the latest my favorite teams that i
follow and things news related to them
uh it could be political here's the
political stuff that i'm following
if you look at
popular podcasts in particular
it is
there is a theme or
some sort of like vision statement
mission statement or something like that
that maybe they haven't specified that
but you can you can extract that by
looking at the title the topics
you know sort of the direction they go
so that on a given episode usually if
you just randomly pick an episode you're
going to know that roughly these are the
things they're going to talk about this
is roughly the expectations i have for
this
for this blog
and
in this case and it's it's something
where
there's a
there's a production value uh blogs are
a little different from some of the
others but even with the blog there is a
the language that you use as far as you
know is it aimed at first graders sixth
graders
you know phds and grammar
uh the grammatical stuff you use the
colloquialisms
the
uh like the references and
bibliographies and things like that that
you may include whether it's all text or
whether you're going to include diagrams
and stuff like that whether it's
more opinion versus something that's you
know heavily researched where you've got
a lot of data points
all of these things factor into your
approach
or your tone
for your blog you know is it
is it lighthearted is it more
professorial academic
is it very business-like
is it
uh is it humorous is it serious is it
dramatic
um
is it
just you
or does it involve
other people either uh interviews or
uh research you know reading that you've
done from other blogs
all of that is stuff that you want to
sort of have as your
your starting point
if you think about it from uh
to me these ways think about it it's
acting
when an actor
steps into a role
there is
everything they do impacts
the
how you view that person that they're
acting as
and that's you know it comes to the
whole idea of there's you can do stuff
that's in character or out of character
and
if it's out of character it can be very
jarring
or even ruin the whole story or the
whatever you're trying to communicate
blog is the same way
it helps to have a
a character that you are that character
that you step into that as part of doing
the blog and it may just be who you are
normally that may be that may work fine
because you should find it easy to be
yourself
but there may be other things that you
want to do where it's like i said it may
be more serious it may be more
professional
and think about it are you you know
who's your target audience are you
talking to
uh your boss you're talking to your
parents and your family are you talking
to your
buddies and
whatever it is
all of that factors into this approach
or tone that you're gonna you wanna set
up
scheduling or a calendar is critical for
and we're going to see this in this
throughout this presentation figure out
what what are you comfortable doing are
you going to write a blog once a day
once a week once a month once a quarter
once a year
figure it out and then set your mind to
the point that you're going to get that
done
now
once a year
it's probably not going to be frequent
enough
it's just it's one of those i mean i
guess you could do like a january 1st
every year december 31st or year july
4th or pick a date that's like a
in itself is very
memorable or tied to a holiday or
something like that but
if you're doing a blog that only shows
up once a year
really even if you're doing a blog
that's once a quarter you're probably
gonna have a hard time getting you know
some momentum and getting a following
for that
assuming that that's one of the things
you want to do
it's not always needed and sometimes
like if you're really more trying to do
more it's almost more like a newsletter
approach
maybe you do a quarterly here's how
things are going here's
what's you know planned for the quarter
ahead then you can do that
professionally you could do that you
know maybe it's a family thing you send
out something that's really meant for
personal friends and family hey here's
what's going on here's the big things
that are coming up in my life
when you're going to launch before you
launch have a have a list uh at least
you know i would say at least three or
four preferably like a half dozen to a
dozen
topics that you want to cover
yeah if this again if you're
cranking this out once a year you won't
have to worry about it but
even if you're doing it monthly i would
want to make sure i've got at least four
or five months worth of topics
already lined up before i even dive into
it it's like okay
i've set up my vision my mission you
know sort of got my theme i know what my
target audience is i know the approach
the tone i'm going to take
all right what am i what am i going to
write about
and then
when you're going to get into the
launching is how am i going to let
people know
that this exists
you could just write it and say i don't
care if anybody ever reads it i'm just
doing this to write it but
typically you're going to want to get
you know put this out in front of people
even if it's just friends and family
so
think through what is that going to look
like how are you going to announce it
are you going to sign up emails are you
going to try to create a mailing list
are you going to call a bunch of people
because when you do the launch you know
i guess in all caps you know like the
big launch day or whatever
is it gonna be who cares or is it gonna
be okay i've sent it out to these people
so now hopefully
you know they'll at least check out my
site
so that's a blog
[Music]
you