My Tog Blog About Awesome Content Creation

A Week in My Life as a Part-Time Content Creator, with Tips, Strategies, and Resources

• Tim (Mytogblog) • Season 3 • Episode 33

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What if the key to being a successful content creator wasn't more time but a better strategy?

Thanks to Riverside.fm for sponsoring this episode. I use this software for recording all my podcast interviews, and you can try it out with a 15% discount using the code MyTogBlog. Check it out here. (Note: This is an affiliate link, which means I would earn a commission if you purchase using this link.)

In this episode, we go behind the scenes to a week in my life as a part-time content creator, breaking down the strategies and best practices I've developed over the years that allow me to produce this podcast and publish content across multiple social media channels.  

As an added challenge, I set myself the goal of recording most of the footage for this long-form video in the same week as I would produce and publish three short-form videos, share my usual photo content, and engage with my audience through replies and comments - all while maintaining my busy schedule as a full-time academic administrator. 

This setup allowed me to demonstrate some of my best tips around content planning, workflow, and strategy, along with the tools and resources I'm leveraging to make everything work for me most efficiently and effectively.  

Other Episode Links

I also want to thank Popov Leather for allowing me to try one of their belts for this video. I really like it. If you want to get one, check out their website.

Metricool, All-in-One Social Media Management Tool.
Ginger Starr Borden, Instagram Stories templates, check Link-in-bio. 

Thanks for listening! Do you have a comment or question about a topic or episode? I'd love to hear that. Feel free to contact me via Instagram, LinkedIn, or the Contact Us page. You can also check out these links for resources and merch for content creators.

[00:00:00] Tim: Hey everyone, my name is Tim and today's episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Riverside. And before we get started today, I'm super excited to share one of the latest updates in the Riverside studio, B Roll Clips. Now, as we've talked about before, podcasting can be an excellent way to have great conversations and do deep dives on different topics.

[00:00:19] But when it comes to video podcasts, the thing is that the action can be fairly static if it's mainly you and your guest sitting and talking to one another for the entire episode. This is where b roll clips can come in to add visual interest, help you explain things visually, or just change things up once in a while.

[00:00:36] And of course, again, it's very easy to do this in the Riverside Studio by uploading the clip and adding it to the timeline. And then once it's there, you can determine the size and location of the clip, as well as how long it appears on the timeline. If you want to try this out for yourself, I've got a link in the description, and you can use the code MyTogBlog for a 15 percent discount.

[00:00:56] And now, on to the show.  

[00:00:58] Intro Music

[00:01:03] Tim: so time and energy management has got to be two of the most important aspects of being a part-time content creator. And for this episode, what I thought I'd do is I'd take you through a typical week of my life as a part-time content creator. 

[00:01:20] So the idea for this episode, which I've had for a while now, is that I'm going to take you through from Sunday all the way to Saturday, and show you every day of the week and what happens behind the scenes to make all of this come together on my different channels, including my social channels, my YouTube, and, um, podcasts, of course.

[00:01:41] And, you know, just to raise the stakes a little bit, I thought I'd try and do something that I've been wanting to achieve for a while, but, um, you know, haven't quite been able to manage yet. And we'll see if I can get it done in this week, which is to film a long-form video like the one we're making right now in addition to doing at least three short-form reels and then posting a little bit of other content to my social channels. 

[00:02:07] It's a kind of a tall order and what I know is going to be a busy week already, but I think I'm ready because over the last few years I've developed a number of strategies and best practices that has helped me to produce content consistently and I think can be helpful to you too.

[00:02:24] This is especially true over the last year; I've really ramped up production of YouTube long-form content while still producing short-form video content at the same time. 

[00:02:36] So without further ado, let's get into it.

[00:02:39] Okay, Sunday afternoon here, and I'm just getting ready to film a quick clip for my first short form video of the week here. It's actually for a special effect that I was trying to create. Out of context, it looks a little silly there, but I actually like the way it turned out in practice. However, because it was my first time trying that effect, it took like an hour to film and edit that one little segment just to get it right.

[00:03:03] And that kind of brings me to one of my first tips, which is to Take video projects and break them down into their component parts so you can do a little bit at a time, because especially as part time creators, if we're always looking for that one big chunk of time where we can do an entire video from beginning to end, that probably doesn't exist.

[00:03:22] I've got to learn to plan things out and work in piecemeal chunks as much as we can. That's why most of my weeks start right here with my content planning calendar. This was February, for example. And I think this is one of my key tips for part time content creators. If you want to have a successful week with limited time, you've got to have a plan for the week.

[00:03:42] You've got to know what you're posting on what day so you don't waste a bunch of time every morning or Evening before the day, thinking, okay, what am I going to post? Am I going to post something? Just take away all of that uncertainty, have something that you know you're going to do, and then you can just focus on implementation.

[00:03:59] So this week, uh, it's going to be super busy, as it always is. So my plan is that I'm going to do one higher effort reel at the beginning of the week, and then for the other two, I'll do two, what I'll call, kind of lower effort reel. And I think that's a legit approach because it's always a balance between quality and quantity.

[00:04:17] You want to maintain some consistency so that you remain, you know, top of mind and please the algorithm, if you will. But, um, you know, you want to have some good quality, uh, higher quality stuff in there as well so that you can help with the conversions. You know, it's always that, um, combination of, like, attraction, conversion, keep kind of the, funnel in mind, if you will. 

[00:04:41] The other thing I'll often do is ultimately check out my work calendar and calibrate what the plan is according to what I think is manageable given whatever else is going on. So, that's another important thing because, you know, the plan has to be realistic or you're just going to kind of flounder and, you know, it becomes frustrating. 

[00:05:01] So what I planned for this week was to skip posting on Monday so I could finish that first short form video, post something easy in the middle of the week like a street photography photo and then a podcast clip, and then I'd finish out the week with a third short form video that was partly done and another photo.

[00:05:16] I don't know. So far that's the plan. We'll see how it goes.

[00:05:18] Okay, Monday morning, looking good out there, looking good. We're gonna start things off with a little coffee, get us going, fuel the machine, because we got a big day ahead of us today. Got content creation stuff to do and today at work I'm gonna be doing a campus tour for some high school teachers. Uh, who are coming to visit our hair salon and do a little professional development there. So, you know, gotta look good. 

[00:05:45] And that's just one of the reasons I was so glad to hear about the arrival of my new belt from Popov Leather. It arrived just the other day in this neat package here. So we're gonna unbox it and have a look at what we got here. 

[00:05:56] And it starts with high quality full grain leather. And that's combined with excellent craftsmanship. And attention to detail. You can see there's no fraying of any edges. It's all smooth. And on top of that, it's got sturdy construction with metal hardware and a brass belt buckle. Good looking polish on the outside. Soft on the inside. 

[00:06:19] And another nice thing is, this is a Canadian company. And they make not just belts, but really a whole range of different leather products. All of them with excellent reviews. And I'm liking what I see here, especially this leather field notes cover. Maybe this notebook cover, too. Lots to choose from. 

[00:06:38] All this is why they've been able to ship over 100, 000 orders since their founding in 2023, and they're just a great Canadian business to support.

[00:06:47] But I digress. So with the belt on, I'm ready to go. Fashion twirl, and I'm out the door. We'll see you on the flip side. 

[00:06:55] Okay, so uh, here we are on the flip side. I uh, had a long day today. I did get through the tour. Uh, and, uh, a lot of other stuff. But, uh, now I'm back here at the computer. It's about, uh, ten to ten.

[00:07:15] Um, I'm a little tired, but, uh, we're gonna push through. 

[00:07:19] So, after dinner, I did a few minutes of engagement on Instagram. Did some replies to comments, and also commented on a few posts. Took a little break after that, and right now I'm just gonna try and finish editing the reel that I had filmed yesterday.

[00:07:38] I've got most of it, uh, ready to go. In fact, did a little bit of the special effects editing last night, so it shouldn't be too bad. And then, uh, probably won't post it to Instagram today. There's no point this late in the day. But might actually push it out to YouTube. Uh, that's one of the things I've noticed about YouTube is seems a little less time dependent, even with shorts. You can push stuff out at different times and you're gonna get about the same amount of reach depending on how good of a short it is. Whereas Instagram, LinkedIn, I think, seem to be, in my experience, a lot more time dependent. So I want to post it there earlier in the morning, um, when, uh, I know some of my audience and just people in general are getting onto those platforms and, uh, checking things out.

[00:08:31] So, um, to have it ready for that though, gotta finish it tonight, so. Let's get to it. So off I go, editing my first reel of the week there. 

[00:08:42] Okay, well that took a little longer than I thought. It's 11:03 pm right now, and I'm about to hit export. I think I've had enough for today. Um, so tomorrow is the day we're gonna bang out the description and get this one published across all, uh, platforms, but, um, got it done.

[00:09:01] I think today was probably In a way, the hardest day of the week. Um, we'll see what the rest of the week holds, but, uh, I think I've got a good plan and, uh, we're going to keep going.

[00:09:13] Okay, Tuesday morning, 6am. I actually stayed up last night and I did, uh, write the description for that YouTube video. So, it's gonna be easy to copy and paste that over here into Metricool and create this post. Got a busy day today, so I wanna get this out fast. And, um, that's gonna help me do it. 

[00:09:32] And Metricool, that is one of my secrets to success as a part-time content creator because the nice thing there is that you can take something that you've written for YouTube or just write some original content for one platform and then easily adapt it to other multiple platforms. You can also pre work on stuff and have it auto post when you want. So, it really is a very helpful tool for helping you to manage your time. And you can work on stuff when you're able to work on it and you also don't duplicate effort by, you know, reposting stuff to different platforms yourself.

[00:10:10] You can even adapt the post according to platform. Within Metricool, there's different tabs where you just click on the one that you want and you can use that tab to, say, shorten a post for Blue Sky or something like that. It's all through the one interface and I think, uh, when you're a part-time creator, you want to find these kind of tools or these kind of practices that allow you to Save time and do things as efficiently as possible. So, that's one of my tips for if you're going to invest in a tool, I'd say that is definitely one of the ones that is worth the money if you want to save some time. 

[00:10:50] And so there I go with a little cutting, pasting, and polishing up. Actually, for me, this is one of the fun parts of content creation when everything is basically done and you're just kind of tweaking things creatively to make them a little better.

[00:11:06] Okay, so that took a total of like 10 minutes, and now I've found a way to optimize the description. Uh, for YouTube, I often find that's the case, you know, when I take a second run at writing a description. I write it a little better the second time, so I'm gonna smooth things out over there, and, um, get this ready to post, and we're all set to go.

[00:11:27] Alright, post scheduled, I'm gonna go grab a coffee, we're gonna respond to a few comments on Instagram and LinkedIn, and then, uh, we're gonna be good to go for the day. I think the rest of the week gets a little easier from here, um, but now we got, uh, now that, now that we got over this, uh, initial hump, we'll see.

[00:11:51] Speaking of engagement, we're back here on Tuesday night and, uh, I'm tired tonight. So not doing any work on any posts, uh, just going to do a little bit of Instagram engagement and maybe some, uh, LinkedIn blue sky, but you know, nothing crazy. Just like 30 minutes while watching a little TV here.

[00:12:13] Okay, so now we're into Wednesday morning. Gonna start the day with checking a few metrics and doing a few minutes of engagement to get the day rolling. And what I found checking the metrics here was that my short was off to an okay start. A little slow, but within the average range there. And pretty much the same story over on Instagram, as well as TikTok.

[00:12:36] And so that was a little disappointing because I put so much effort into the hook there, but reality is that there's no necessary relationship between how well a video does and how much work you put into it. It's affected by just so many myriad of factors you can't tell. 

[00:12:52] And it's one of the reasons that as a creator you want to stay focused on that long term vision of what you're doing and not get caught up in those day to day metrics. And then in addition to having a larger strategic vision in terms of your why, you want to set some goals in terms of things like productivity, quality improvements, learning, those kind of things and not just base everything entirely upon performance, especially in the short term. However, speaking of short term performance, one of the best ways that you can support that is by engagement on the platforms that you're posting to.

[00:13:25] So, back to doing a little bit of that here on Wednesday morning. Okay, 10 15 minutes here and we're good to go. Actually, one of my best tips about engagement is that you should do it in smaller increments. At least that's what works most effectively for me. Just break it down into these manageable chunks and do a little bit throughout the day. Makes it a lot more manageable than trying to do like an hour's worth of comments or something like that all at one time. It can be hard to be effective in making comments for that long. And in addition to that, it just creates this big chunk of time that you have to find somewhere in the day. It's a lot more easier to find, again, 10, 15 minutes here or there.

[00:14:07] And of course, you can kind of modulate this better that way, too. Sometimes, maybe all you'll do is 10 or 15 minutes throughout the day. Other times, um, maybe you've got more ability to spend, like, 30 minutes doing it. And you can do it watching TV or Relaxing, uh, having a coffee, or any kind of other way that, um, just makes it, uh, you know, easy to get done. It shouldn't be this big obstacle somewhere in your day. 

[00:14:35] Okay, all dressed and ready to go for my work from home workday here. Rockin the Popov Leather belt there. And one of the nice things about it is that you can wear it with dress pants or jeans, and looks great either way. But, uh, on to getting some work related work done now.

[00:14:49] Okay, Wednesday afternoon. Good day working from home. I'm just going out to have a little walk after work, get some exercise in. You know, when you're a part-time creator, and you have an office job sitting at a desk, and then you create content sitting at a desk, and edit videos sitting at a desk, it is so important that you get out and get some exercise.

[00:15:11] And also try and get up and move around during the day. I'm not that good about that second one, but I've gotten a lot better about the first one. Uh, just get out and go for a walk, end of the day, start of the day, integrate some exercise, you know, somehow, so that, um, you know, keeping good health, it's really, really an important part of, uh, what you do.

[00:15:36] Also, like, honestly, I get some of my best ideation done this way, just moving around, uh, because, you know, movement and changes of environment, all those, uh, you know, I think contribute to stimulating, uh, creativity. So on this walk, I'm already looking ahead. Thinking about what those next videos are going to be and what the rest of the week looks like.

[00:15:58] And tonight we're going to be doing another video. This one's going to be a quick one because like we said had a long few days to the start to this week. So trying to make the second and third reel that we're doing a little bit easier podcast clip the contents already there. Just got to use magic clips to identify What a good one will be do a few quick edits to Spruce it up a little and then we'll get that out there Thursday morning Okay, so there we are working away on the podcast clip looking a little tired, but you know still grinding And the nice thing for me is that the Riverside editor is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of identifying good clips and doing most of the basic editing needed to prepare those clips for distribution.

[00:16:50] And so before too long I was able to wrap this up and head to bed for the night.

[00:16:54] Okay, so last night I realized there were a couple of tweaks that I could make to my short to make it better by adding some b roll in a couple of the cuts. Um, so it's 6. 17 right now, Thursday morning, and we're making them. So just a few clicks here and there and it's ready to go. Okay, final edits took about 15 minutes. Now I'm going to get this posted and have a little breakfast. 

[00:17:18] So this podcast clip was from my episode with Grace Clemons, a digital marketing expert who's done all kinds of things, including managing digital strategies for the XPRIZE and Carbon Renewal. And she gave my merch store a digital marketing audit, which was kind of cool.

[00:17:35] And the clip did pretty well, actually getting about 300 views on LinkedIn, as well as 600 on TikTok, and about 400 over on Instagram. Pretty good performance for a podcast clip, actually, and kind of goes back to my earlier statement about, um, you know, never being able to tell, really, how one, uh, short form video is going to do versus another, which actually brings me back to a point that I wanted to make about the use of short-form clips from your long-form videos.

[00:18:06] Um, in my previous practice, I used to do this fairly sparingly, thinking, you know, people have already seen the long form video, why do they want to watch clips? I think that's the wrong approach. I think that if you've got long form videos, uh, like podcasts, where you can make clips from them, Don't just make one or two actually make five or six take every good segment that you have from that long-form piece and share it as a short-form video because kind of like repurposing not everyone's going to see every piece of content.

[00:18:40] And if you're not doing this, you're really missing out on an opportunity to maximize the value of those long-form pieces, um, reach more people potentially, and also just make your content creation process easier. You saw how this week, one of the things I did is I made that clip in the middle of the week and it was an easy to produce clip and you can just kind of work it into your content flow, maintain some consistency, um, but do it in a way that's, you know, kind of sustainable. Anyhow, give it a try. That's all I got for you for Thursday. 

[00:19:11] Okay, so here we are. It's actually Saturday morning now. Friday was, uh, so hectic I didn't actually film anything that day. I did get out a post though. It was just a simple photo post to, uh, you know, keep the consistency going. 

[00:19:25] Um, so far this morning I did a little bit of engagement again on Instagram, you know, reply to some comments, comment on a few posts, see what's going on. And the rest of the day, I'm doing some cleaning around the house. 

[00:19:38] So the other thing I'm doing this morning is checking out these Stories templates that I bought from Gingerstar Borden. And I think templates are an important thing to have, especially as a part-time creator. They can save you a lot of time and give you ideas and actually improve your designs in a lot of cases. And you can see here, it's only $9, so I think that's a really great deal, especially for 593 templates and, you know, frankly I'm not very good at stories yet, so, um, having something like this really helps with, uh, you know, the ideation and the quality of the post.

[00:20:15] That's kind of my other point here is that, um, you need to spend a little bit of time, I think, each week or maybe let's say each month, on innovation as opposed to just constant posting and engagement. That's a big part of it, but that's kind of a treadmill, right? You've got to always be trying to improve or tweak what you're doing a little bit on a continual basis.

[00:20:37] And so, you know, getting the odd resource, or the odd course, or reading blog post articles, checking out different online resources, different tools, I think that's all part of it, and that's the way to keep improving your content over time. 

[00:20:50] But, having said that, I, um, also have my third reel that I want to produce and get that done before, um, we wrap up the week. So that's my main thing for this Saturday. Um, I think you want to be careful not to get so involved in trying to do new things that you also forget the plan that you actually had for the week. So, uh, it's always a balance, but you know, um, Doing a bit of both is a good thing.

[00:21:22] And I think that's the other thing. This third reel that I'm doing is just a fun and easy one. And, um, I don't know if it'll get a lot of traction, to be honest, but that's okay. I think some reels or some content you make just for yourself, just for, you know, some Idea you have that you think is cool, and you know, try it out, and it helps, um, you know, keep the motivation up because you know if you're always just kind of grinding and doing search-based content or jumping on trends and not like creating stuff that you're passionate about. I think that, you know, it's going to get in the way of long-term success, especially as a part time creator So another thing to consider enough talk enough procrastination Let's get on to it.

[00:22:04] So there I went, banging out that final reel. I did finish it, after all. Made it to my goal. Now there's just the question of what it all means.

[00:22:11] So you know, I was going to originally title this video a typical week in the life of a part time content creator, but I now realize that that is some kind of a misnomer. Every week is kind of its own beast and we just gotta take it on as it comes. And part of being a resilient, successful creator over the long term is recognizing there's going to be those periods where it feels like things are going really well.

[00:22:36] All the arrows are going up. Everything's going in the right direction in terms of impressions. subscribers, productivity, and so on. But then there's gonna be these periods where it feels like the algorithm turns against you, and nothing's going your way, and it happens precisely at the time where you've got some kind of business or personal issue that you've gotta deal with as well.

[00:23:00] I mean, it's all kind of interrelated, right? It becomes harder to take those risks and put yourself out there, and be creative, when things are not going well, and you're stressed out about other stuff. And actually, I think these are the periods that have the greatest impact on our long term success as content creators.

[00:23:19] And it's not about, like, how fast can you turn things around. There's times where we all gotta take a step back, and that's totally okay. This is more about not getting so discouraged that you quit altogether. Staying in the game, that's the win. And as long as you're still in the game, you can still win long term.

[00:23:37] On a lighter note, getting through those, uh, three reels during the week, in addition to filming this long form video, showed me that that is, in fact, possible. Takes a lot of organization and self discipline. Um, but you can get there and I think that, uh, big thing that, um, was a benefit was that mix of like high effort, medium effort, low effort content.

[00:24:02] You've gotta adjust things kind of based around your schedule, as we were saying, and also to create content organically as much as you can, whether it's behind the scenes photos or videos that you film while you're out and about doing other things, just kind of weave it into your day or day. draw inspiration and content from your day, that really helps too.

[00:24:24] But at the end of the day, none of that effort is going to matter very much if your videos and your other content isn't packaged well, which is why you want to watch this video next right here. And thanks for watching. Hope you have a great day. We'll see you in the next one.