On Monday I finally ended my video project. That project was first mentioned when I wrote my post about creating content.

Sunset Over Lake Ontario

The main idea was that I needed more videos on my business YouTube channel. I had fewer than 30 videos overall, and now I have 58 on that channel because I did a video every single day for the month of June. I shared a couple on that other post, and during this month I celebrated my 13th year of having my own business with a video post giving 13 business lessons for those 13 years, the longest video of the series coming in around 29 minutes. I’m sharing that one now:
 

http://youtu.be/roOzb1sdqYA

One doesn’t undertake such a project without having some ideas and beliefs of what’s going to happen and what the goals are.

My first goal was to see if I could do 30 videos in a row, and that was only challenged once, when I knew I’d be on the road coming home and wouldn’t get in until after midnight, and since I’d be working all day I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do a video unless I did it beforehand and uploaded it just after midnight, which I did. Other than that… I did one every single day.

My second goal was to see if I could get more viewers to that YouTube page and possibly increase my subscribers in some fashion. I had a few viewers but overall I’m not sure it was more than what I’d had before. As for subscribers, I only got 2; I’ll take what I can get. 🙂

The third goal of course was to increase the number of videos that not only helped enhance what I tell people I do, but also to have some videos in reserve that I can go back to and embed in blog posts whenever I touch upon those subjects. That’s something that not all that many people do who create videos, but it’s also one of the reasons why I tell people all the time that they should create more videos.

With that said I did learn some things, and I’m going to share 5 of them with you here. I’m not sure you’ll be able to use them all but hey, I think lessons can be learned in many different ways, in many different formats. Let’s see if you get anything from what I’m going to share; after all, this IS I’m Just Sharing lol:

1. You don’t have to plan every step way in advance for anything. For this series, the only video I actually planned was #24, the one I’ve shared above. In a way, that’s how I write most of my blog posts; I come up with an idea, then I write about it. I put this out there because so many bloggers tell people they have to come up with a blogging schedule to help them figure out what they want to write about; nah.

2. Almost every subject has a lot of different things you can talk about. I concentrate a part of my main business on leadership and topics surrounding that. Except for the last video and the one above all the other videos were on some type of leadership topic, which includes motivation. Truthfully, I could have probably done 30 more, but I think I made my point.

3. Marketing is a bear when doing that much content producing. Other than weekends, I worked or traveled every single day in June. I created the videos, but since they’re on my business channel they automatically go to my second Google Plus channel but no others, and I only have 4 people I’m connected to there. Also, if you create a video via Google Hangout you have to share the video links on your own, which is different than if you create a video and upload it.

Because I did a video every day, sometimes around 11PM Central time, I’d do the video, wait about 15 minutes for it to show up, and then post the title and link to my main G+ account and Twitter. I only posted two videos to my Facebook page, and neither got 20 views; cursed Facebook. lol And because it was daily I only posted each link once except for the video above, which I felt had a chance to reach a much larger audience.

The marketing of videos, along with the time period for trying to let people know when I was going to do one, wasn’t great and I think I suffered in that manner. This taught me two things.

One, I need to put out a message asking people to let me know if they want to be informed when I’m going to do a live video on certain topics and base it on those channels so I can add those people to their own circle.

Two, for the most part it’s better to do videos at a time when people are actually awake and not about to go to bed. It a way it’s not enough just to have the content. If I did a video around 7PM instead of 11PM and only got to share it with people afterwards, they were more apt to see the link while they were still on Twitter or G+ instead of being asleep and possibly seeing it when they awoke (yeah, like that happens for most people). I don’t think the pre-notification would have done much but posting afterwards much earlier in the evening or during the day on the weekends… way smarter thing to do.

4. Don’t do videos if you have a mirror in front of you. In the second hotel room I was in there was this large mirror in front of the desk. Sometimes I start moving my arms when I talk, and most of the time you don’t see that in the video because I have the camera mainly on my face. However, I’d keep distracting myself because I’d see something moving, which of course was me. I could have covered up the mirror or gone out to the living room / dining room area to do the videos but I was too lazy. Still, trying to avoid as many distractions as possible is smart.

5. Sometimes you have to go with the flow. When I did the video above, which was long, I had multiple times where I had to scratch my nose or face. Initially I was fighting it like a boxer but eventually I had to succumb because there was no way I was going to make it through without scratching. If I knew how to edit videos I could have stopped and then come back, but that would have looked choppy and I’m not sure that would have made the video look better.

So I announced it the first time, and every other time I had to scratch or rub my face I just did it. Hey, it was hot, and I didn’t want to turn the fan on because I didn’t want the noise messing up my audio.

Sure, you want to look as professional as possible, but there’s a thing about live, that being that, well, it’s live! When I do live speaking engagements, sometimes I get an itch, or need to cough, or will pause and drink some water. When I interact with people in person, sometimes that happens as well. I don’t think that was an issue on any of the short videos because I pretty much spoke on my message and got out. But 29 1/2 minutes? Wasn’t going to happen.

There 5 takeaways that you may or may not be able to use. In any case I hope some of you watch the video above, especially if you’re thinking about starting your own business or have your own business and might feel you’re missing a few things.