If I started from scratch as a creator, I’d do this.

there is so much advice online about how to grow on social media and it can be really overwhelming if you're trying to formulate a plan for starting from scratch you know you want to be a full-time content creator but you don't really know what you should be posting about where you should be posting it or how you're even going to make money off of all of this well you've come to the right place because that is exactly what I want to cover in today's video now that I have an established audience on YouTube and Instagram

and to a lesser extent Tick Tock and my podcast I often think about what I would prioritize if I had to go back to the beginning and start from zero on any of these platforms because I feel like I've definitely learned a lot along the way of growing this audience that would make the whole process a lot faster the second time around and I wanted to share those insights with you and by the way today's video is sponsored by Riverside which is my favorite way to record podcasts online but we'll talk more about them later

okay people we are starting from scratch we are going back to basics and the first thing that you need to embrace if you're serious about being a full-time content creator is you need to think about yourself as a business becoming a full-time content creator is essentially building an online Media company and I feel like not enough people are talking about it that way so many people go into it with the mindset of like oh yeah I just post stuff for fun and then I happen to get free stuff and get paid for it sometimes and

it's fun if you just want this to be a hobby or a side hustle that's fine but if you're serious about building a career that's actually sustainable and can like fund your life then I really think you need to start thinking about yourself as a business owner from the very beginning when you understand this mindset that as a Creator you are a business owner like you own an online media brand then some of the strategy stuff starts to become more clear for you for example as a growing business you know that you need a Target

customer or as we like to say as content creators target audience you know that you need to offer a quality product that's going to solve a problem for your customers or as we might otherwise say good quality content people are actually interested in watching and as a business owner you know that you need to fill a space in the market that is not currently too saturated and actually might be a little untapped and what this really means is creating content in your own unique style or creating content in a niche that is already out there

but maybe needs a little bit of shaking up or that you have something unique that you can bring to the table having this mindset of like really bringing it back to the basics of like supply and demand market research understanding your customer viewer when you come into with that mindset you can make the most strategic decisions that are going to help you grow faster remember you're not just starting a YouTube channel you are making a business plan and that is basically what we're going to do in this video we are going to talk about figuring

out what you should be posting where you should be posting it and how often and how you're gonna actually make money from all of this so let's dive into it okay so what are you going to create content about chances are if you clicked on this video you you probably already have some topics and ideas in mind whether that's cooking travel tech reviews gaming gardening or just general lifestyle content you might expect the first piece of advice I'd have for you is to pick a niche but I actually think there's a better approach niches or

in other words focusing in on a very specific genre or topic or theme can be a very helpful growth strategy especially if you want to teach something but I often find it can feel limiting to a lot of creators because you can end up feeling kind of boxed in to a very specific subject area and it can really feel like you're held back from posting about what you really want to post about because you've become known for a very specific thing so instead of picking a strict Niche this is what I would recommend doing when

you're thinking about okay what am I actually gonna post really really ask yourself what kind of content do I want to share and when you start to narrow in on a list like a few ideas start to come up with actual video ideas or content ideas for Instagram or Tick Tock ideas or whatever and see if you can come up with a bunch of them like if you're thinking of starting a YouTube channel see if you can write down like 52 video ideas that is a very good test of whether or not you think you

actually have enough to say on a specific topic or genre or whatever to include it as part of your strategy reason I say 52 is because it's like are you going to be able to post about this weekly on your YouTube channel and as you're thinking about these specific ideas or themes really try to ask yourself do you think there is interest or energy for this on the internet at large like is there demand for what you want to supply basically because when it comes down to it your Niche is not just going to be

a very specific topic instead what it's going to be is the overlap between your interests and your audience's interests because in order to sustain this long term ideally you're gonna like what what you talk about you're going to be personally interested in it but in order for it to be financially successful your audience obviously needs to be interested in it too so we're looking for that overlap okay but I don't have an audience yet right because I'm starting from scratch so how do I figure out what my audience is interested in basically we're going to

do a bit of market research and a bit of strategic thinking to really ensure that the content that you want to make is going to be appreciated and consumed by as many people as possible one great place to start is by asking yourself who is going to find me relatable or potentially aspirational a huge part of who we watch on YouTube or who we follow on Instagram is people that we find are similar to ourselves we feel like we could get along with them or we would like to be more similar to them right like

if you think about who you follow that's probably the case for most of those people so think about who might find you relatable or aspirational that's going to be a really good hint at who your target audience is going to be another thing you could ask who is going to be interested in the stuff that I want to talk about try to build out a bit of a profile in your mind of like the demographics or the other adjacent interests of people that are going to find your videos interesting trying to put some words and

categories and descriptors to this is really going to help you start to flesh out who your audience is going to be and finally this is where the market research really comes in asking yourself who is already watching similar content to what I want to make this is where you can check out your competitors and figure out who Their audience is like who are their key community members this is probably a good indication of who might become your community members so from all these questions and this like investigation you can kind of build out a sense

of who your target audience is going to be this is very very important because one of the key mistakes that a lot of beginner creators make is just creating content for themselves like as if they singularly are the target audience of their videos and that's not usually a great strategy for large-scale Success so it's really good if you can create videos not just with yourself in mind but with this potential little larger audience and I think from a creative perspective it's just really helpful to have this person in mind like for me I know a

few people in my own personal life who are kind of in the early stages of becoming a content creator they ask me questions about it they have Curiosities and those are the people that I keep in my mind when I'm writing my video scripts and it's way easier to write something that feels like there's a personal connection there like that you're really speaking to your ideal audience if you have like a real life person or even if it's just an imaginary singular person that you're speaking to it's just really key that you create with your

audience in mind because ultimately your audience is going to be what actually brings about the like commercial success of your YouTube video right so if you're not thinking about them at all it's not going to be strategic from a business perspective so really think about who you're creating for okay so next we need to talk about where you're going to be posting this content as an aspiring Creator chances are you probably have a favorite platform where you like to consider assume content I find for the most part for a lot of creators where they post

the most often or where they care the most about posting is probably where they first got inspired to become a Creator so for me that was YouTube I started this channel because I loved watching YouTubers and it seemed really fun but some people get started because they love what they're seeing on Tick Tock and they want to get in on it so it all just depends on where you're most passionate about and I really do think it's important to lean into that passion and interest because in my opinion the best creators were people who were

passionate consumers of content first it's also important to know that you don't need to post everywhere all at once a lot of people feel like in order to be successful they're going to need to have a consistent content strategy on every social platform but that's actually going to be a recipe for disaster if you hold yourself to that standard from the jump I would highly highly encourage you to start with one or maybe two at the most I think the best formula for success is going to be starting with the platform where you are the

biggest fan of content were you like spending the most time you're going to be better at creating this kind of content and you're also just going to enjoy it more and then you maybe pick a secondary platform to be complementary to it I think the best balance is having one platform that's more Evergreen and one platform it's a bit more timely Evergreen platforms would include YouTube starting a blog or having a podcast these are long form value-packed pieces of content that people can continue to discover even weeks or months after you've published it timely content

that's places like Instagram Tick Tock Twitter slash X I guess LinkedIn Facebook it all depends on like who your target audience is where you're gonna choose and so I think having one from each of those lists is a really good balance it allows you the discoverability and the Evergreen benefits of those long-form platforms but then also the community building and timeliness of the more timely platforms and I really do think it's important that you choose to post where you know the content best the reason why this is so significant is because if you are a

fan of content somewhere then you are going to be keenly aware of like what's engaging what's interesting what feels boring or cliche if you come into a platform completely fresh and you've hardly even watched content there it's going to be really hard to know what's good or what's going to perform well just like they say if you want to be a good writer you need to read lots of books if you want to be a good content creator you need to consume a lot of content so if you're passionate about being a YouTuber watch a

ton of YouTube videos if you want to grow on Instagram consume a bunch of Instagram content and get a sense of what performs well and what actually makes a good video or real or post or whatever okay so once to know where you're gonna post you've kind of landed on a platform it's important that you actually have a schedule for what you're going to post there that's what I would be thinking about if I was starting from scratch right it's like choose a platform make a schedule for it so let's rapid fire really quick go

through a bunch of the potential platforms you might be thinking about and talk about what the ideal posting schedule might be okay so for YouTube I'm gonna recommend that you post weekly videos probably aiming for like the 8 to 12 minute Mark of blank I'm gonna recommend you check out this video that I made where I break down the 3H method for planning out your strategy and I actually give you like a 12 month plan of what breakdown to do in each quarter of your first year of posting that's a lot to get into for

this video so watch that one if you want to know more about YouTube if you want to grow a podcast weekly is also a good Cadence for that and I think it's really important that you come up with a good consistent format when it comes to podcasts it's a part of somebody's routine they come to depend on it they want to know what they can expect from each and every episode so you might want to think about doing segments Beyond just your intro and outro and your main section your Podcast May maybe you have individual

segments that you go through each week have some repetition have some structure that's what people really look for in podcasts Instagram okay when it comes to your Instagram schedule first of all I want to suggest that you think about your Instagram almost like it's a TV show about your brand with different segments so maybe you have a different segment for each day of the week and these segments hone in on a sub-topic of your Niche so like let's just say I had an Instagram about van life maybe on Monday it would be like easy meals

for cooking in a van and then Tuesday it would be like van life Vlogs and then maybe Wednesday it would be like van life road trip itineraries or route suggestions so you can think about how you can have different themes for each day of the week that are kind of part of your overall genre or Niche or theme but it helps you break it down and kind of give you some structure or some place to start brainstorming and people can come to rely on those different categories of what you share and again I think posting

once every week day is probably good especially if you're really going for growth if that's not reasonable for you on Instagram you could aim for like three days a week so maybe like Monday Wednesday Friday and of course posting every weekday on stories is recommended as well if you can make it happen okay let's talk Tick Tock I think on Tick Tock you can also have a different days different theme approach like on Instagram but I think something else that really works well on Tick Tock is again posting let's say Monday through Friday every day

but instead of doing a different theme for each day of the week you maybe do a different format so let's say Mondays you do like a green screen video where there's like a list of tips from your notes app as your background and you talk through them maybe Tuesday is your behind the scenes Vlog with a voiceover maybe Wednesday you share a tutorial and Thursday could be like a chatty update video while you do your makeup so you have these different formats these different styles of videos and then you can switch out what the topic

or the theme is for each of them that can be a really great way to add structure and again give you a starting point for brainstorming so you're not just completely starting from scratch when you're trying to come with video ideas you know that okay Monday's my Green Screen Video Tuesday's my Vlog Wednesday's my tutorial Thursday is my like chatty FaceTime update you have a starting point and yeah well some people would probably say posting three times a day on Tick Tock is gonna be the way to grow I'm not gonna argue with that but

I think reasonably posting once a day on weekdays give yourself the weekends off is a really solid place to start of course the pace the style the categories of themes all this stuff can evolve over time you don't need to feel married to a schedule that you started when you were getting started from zero but I think having that kind of structure having a calendar laid out for you to kind of use as your checklist or use as your workflow is really really helpful for building up that consistency now in order to actually implement this

strategy to execute on all of your content ideas you're gonna need the right tools to make it happen one of my favorite tools for Content creators is Riverside who also happens to be sponsoring today's video Riverside is my favorite way to record podcasts online but it's an incredible tool for Content Creation in general you can record any talking head style content there for example your YouTube videos and then you can take advantage of the AI editing tools that make repurposing for social content so much easier if you do want to record podcasts the platform makes

it so easy because all you need to do is send a link to your guest and then Riverside takes care of the rest including recording full HD video for both of you and studio quality audio that you can download as separate tracks which makes editing a breeze a few weeks ago I recorded an episode of my Creator Club podcast with my friend Molly on Riverside and the whole process was so seamless plus Riverside has recently released some really cool new features including Magic Clips which uses AI to detect the most interesting parts of your podcast

and breaks it down into clips for sharing on social media oh and their AI transcription feature makes it so easy to grab a transcript of your podcast and repurpose it into a blog post for example Riverside is helpful for all kinds of creators whether you're podcasting or if you want to include interviews in your YouTube videos or if you want to do an interview series on Tick Tock or Instagram reels it is the perfect way to get studio quality interviews while recording online start recording all of your remote interviews using Riverside check them out at

the link in my description the next thing that I would do if I was starting from scratch and admittedly this is different than how I actually did start but if I could go back I would do this differently and that is monetizing from the very beginning I feel like the old approach for creators was to create everything for free for like years and years until you could build up a large audience and then you would start monetizing usually through like selling merch or doing brand deals or finally turning on AdSense but I feel like this

is really from a time when viewers were less accustomed to creators making money off of their content I think all of us who are creating now are fortunate to be in a position where our audiences are understanding of us including brand deals or having ads on our videos because people have have a better sense now that like this is work and it takes work to do it's not just like a hobby that we're all doing for fun or whatever which used to be the perception like 10 years ago and so basically that means audiences are

more sympathetic to creators actually making money now which is nice because it used to be that people would like cancel you for having a brand deal because you were a sellout so let's all just feel fortunate that that's not the case anymore so I personally think that if you want to be strategic starting from scratch as a Creator it's a really great idea to implement these monetization strategies as early as you can because if you have them in place and you start to all of a sudden gain more traffic like one of your videos really

pops off or you have a viral Tick Tock or whatever then you already have those methods in place to capture that traffic and turn it into Revenue basically okay so I know you're probably thinking yeah but KD I like have 500 followers how am I going to get brand deals I get it not everything is accessible from the very beginning but there are a few things that you can do from the start that'll be really great to have in place once you do start seeing more growth okay so for one you can build an affiliate

marketing strategy so find those products those things that you like to recommend to the people that are just in your real life or your followers already and get affiliate links for those things you can set up a like shop my faves kind of page on your website or at your Lincoln bio page and as you just organically get more traffic to your content people can buy using your links and you can earn like a little bit of money off of it you can also create your own digital products from the start whether that's templates an

ebook a little like recorded Workshop whatever it might be for you you can start selling your own offers from the very beginning and again that will just continue to scale as your traffic continues to scale also remember once you start creating those offers that you actually can mention them in your content that's something I'm guilty of like I always forget to talk about all of the notion templates and everything else that I have because I just get too excited talking about the video topic but if you are persistent about promoting your own offers throughout your

content then you will see a lot better return on that along with that I highly recommend from the very beginning building and email marketing strategy now you don't have to have like a Weekly Newsletter or anything like that that's really labor intensive but I would recommend setting up an email list having some kind of like freebie that you're giving away whether it's like a checklist or some kind of PDF or whatever like a light version maybe of one of your digital products to get people on your email list and then you can build out an

email marketing funnel that will eventually sell them your digital products down the road and it's just really helpful to actually like own that access to your audience rather than just depending on algorithms to get you and for front of your viewers later on of course you can incorporate more stuff like brand deals and other monetization opportunities but I really think that affiliate marketing and selling your own digital products and building an email list are such key things that you can do from the very beginning to actually turn this into a business the biggest piece of

advice that I can give you when you're starting from scratch is that you kind of need to treat being a Creator like it's your full-time job in order to make it your full-time job when I started to take YouTube seriously and I was really focused on making this into my career back in late 2018 I started working on this like it was my full-time job like it was a non-negotiable for me to post two videos a week that was my schedule at the time even though I was not making any money off of this fortunately

I was a freelance videographer at the time so I was able to generate some income that allowed me the flexibility to dedicate so much time to YouTube but it really took about eight months of me sort of pretending like I was a full-time YouTuber actually start seeing some money come in from this now I know I was really really fortunate to have that flexibility and that time of doing freelance work and also having a partner who had an income so like I could focus This Much Time on it I know not everybody has that but

I just think it's important to be realistic about how much time and energy it really does take to grow something like this so maybe you can't focus on it full time like I was maybe you have to do it part time but then maybe it's going to take 16 months instead of eight the timelines are always going to be different for everybody there's no guarantees it's very hard to predict but I just think it's helpful for me to be honest about how long it really took me so that you can have a sense of what

to expect if I was starting a brand new YouTube channel from xero or brand new Instagram or brand new tick tock whatever it might be I personally would not expect to really make any money off of it for the first year obviously it's not always the case that can shift you can get lucky and go viral but that's just the expectation I would put on myself now I don't want this to feel discouraging mostly I really really want to encourage you if you made it to this point in the video clearly you're very dedicated to

this journey and excited about building this business and I'm excited for you I want you to know that this is possible you can do it I spent many years feeling like it was totally impossible and I would never get to this point but eventually I did and you can too I think there's so much space in the Creator economy there's so many people that are looking for what you have to share so just keep going keep the faith and put your strategy in place stay dedicated to it and eventually you will get there now if

you want more tips about starting a YouTube channel in particular I just posted this video about why 90 of YouTube channels fail so if you want to avoid that fate watch that video to find out why and as always thank you so much for watching I hope you're having adventures and following your dreams and I will see you in the next video bye