A Year of Posts
How it possible that we take videos of ourselves constantly and yet… when it’s time to create social media content…
Somehow, I have nothing to post.
The main problem for me, at least is that my content isn’t organized well enough to inspire post ideas.
Using the GTD Method (Getting Things Done), I’m going to help you create a year’s worth of content using stuff you’ve already made.
Capture everything.
Every social media idea in your head,
Every video and photo (stashed away on your external hard drive, computer desktop, phone, Google Drive, Google Photos, iPhoto, Dropbox, etc.)
You’ll be tempted to start organizing here, but try to stay focused on the gathering process. Create a folder on your computer desktop and just start DUMPING into your external hard drive.
Here’s the one I have. It’s 4 TB (but 5 TB is actually a better deal).
If you always work in the same place (i.e.; your home office), you can absolutely put everything on your external hard drive.
If you (like most people) work in multiple locations and want access to your files all the time, you can keep everything on your desktop, and schedule a Backup/Reorganize day once a month to put things you don’t actively need onto the hard drive.
Of course, you can keep everything on the Cloud.
The Google Workspace “Business Starter” account provides 30GB for $6/month (included in your email plan connected to your business site).
2TB is $12/month (Business Standard)
5TB is $18/month (Business Plus).
Video files are pretty huge, though, and I always get nervous I’m going to run out/have to pay for more space. My external hard drive has 4 TB of storage, which keeps me pretty calm about how much stuff I can put on there. You can get a 5 TB external hard drive for $160, which is cheaper than paying for 5 TB of Google storage for a year. The Cloud, of course, makes it possible to have your files with you wherever you go.
I personally like the idea of having everything in one place, but I also want the flexibility of not always having to be connected to my external hard drive 100% of the time. I put 99% of my stuff on the hard drive, though.
2. Organize everything.
Create folders that work and make sense for you. You’ll get a good idea of what kind of folders you need as you sort through all the stuff.
For videos, I created folders with the names of songs. Here’s how I organized a random video that was sitting on my desktop:
The video was labeled “Do Something”, the name of one of our original songs. We’ve re-written and re-recorded the song a few times, sharing the demos and different live videos with our Patreon page over the course of 2 years. So, I have a bunch of random video files of us performing it. I watched this particular video and realized it was a live take. I re-labeled the file “Do Something, Live downtown”.
I have a folder in my external hard drive called “Videos”.
In that folder, I have a folder called “Originals” (we have a lot of videos of covers, too).
In the “Originals” folder, I created a “Do Something” folder. All random “Do Something” videos (including this one) get put in this folder. That way, if I want to promote that song for whatever reason, I can go to this folder for ideas and all the different versions of it. I created a Reel once of the evolution of “Do Something”, sharing all of the different versions.
You’re going to find, at this point, that some stuff can just get thrown out. I’m a big purger — it keeps this whole process a lot clearer for me.
We once recorded 5 songs at home, live, for a friend of ours having a virtual “festival”. I watched the videos and, honestly, they aren’t the best takes and they have a big logo for the festival in the corner. I asked myself, “Am I really going to share these on social media? Am I going to go into my video editor and remove the logo?” The answer was a resounding “No”, so I just trashed ‘em. The files were massive, so throwing them out cleared up space in my head and my hard drive.
3. Clarify & organize your content calendar.
GTD suggests we clarify before we organized, but we kind of needed a moment of organization for all of this random stuff, right? I know I did.
Go through the files and decide what kind of social media post you might want to make with each video/photo. Put that idea in your social media content calendar. Holidays, anniversaries of your albums/releases, and other markers in the calendar make for great content ideas.
For example, we made a video of Brandi Carlile’s “The Mother” for Mother’s Day 2020. I checked the calendar for Mother’s Day this year and put that video into the date on my social media content calendar.
Another example: Our last album came out in May, so I put a few videos from our recording sessions into my content calendar around the date of its release, to celebrate its 2 year anniversary. It’s a great idea to put those release anniversaries in your calendar as recurring events, so you remember every year to create some content on those dates.
Other posts: Look at your calendar and put any upcoming events, or other things you have to promote, into your content calendar.
4. Review every once in a while.
Go through your files every once in a while (put a reminder in your calendar for “File Organizing” once a month or so), and go through this process again. You’ve probably gathered some random videos on your phone since the last time you’ve organized. The next time you do it, it will take way less time. This first organization is the real pain. If you stick with it, it will get easier moving forward.
