Overview

Many YouTubers and content creators swear by batch content creation. The trend of filming content in one sitting has helped busy creators manage their hectic schedules and may be just the productivity hack you’re looking for. Today we’ll talk about how to batch create content for YouTube so you can save time, upload videos consistently, and streamline your workflow.

What is Batch Content Creation?

From a YouTuber’s perspective, batch content creation involves filming multiple YouTube videos in one sitting. Why? For starters, you’ll save time on setting up your equipment and getting yourself camera ready. Furthermore, focusing on a single task can help get you “in the zone” and speed up your workflow considerably. While batch content creation isn’t for everyone, it’s worth trying out to see if it’s a good fit for you and your creative lifestyle.

How to Batch Create Content

With a bit of planning and discipline, you can fully capitalize on the benefits of batch content creation. We’ll walk you through some of the necessary steps, but feel free to change or reorder anything to make a system that works for you.

Plan Out the Basics

First thing’s first: What are your goals? Write down your ideal upload schedule and determine how many videos you need to create. For example, “YouTuber A” uploads three videos per week and films all of their videos on Monday while “YouTuber B” spends the first week of every month filming videos for the entire month. Figure out an upload and filming schedule that will work for you (this may take time and that’s okay).

Next, think about how long it will take you to film one video and how many you can manage in one sitting. Be honest with yourself about your limits and more importantly, your well-being. You might be able to film five videos a day but do you really want to? Pushing yourself too hard can result in burnout and even negatively affect your health, preventing you from filming all together. A steady stream of video uploads followed by a sharp decline is one of the fastest ways to kill a budding YouTube career. When in doubt, slow and steady (read: consistent) wins the race.

Pro Tip: Take the amount of time you think you’ll need to film a video and double it. Do this until you have your filming process down to a science and can provide accurate time estimates.

Create a Content Calendar

Batch content creation and content calendars go hand-in-hand. Content calendars take the guesswork out of filming and will help keep your upload schedule on track. Ideally, you have a space where you can write down video ideas whenever inspiration strikes. Set aside some time every week or month and pull ideas from your list to plan out your calendar. Be sure to designate your filming, editing, and publishing days too. For example, you might film all of your videos on Monday, spend the next few days editing, and schedule them to upload throughout the following week.

Pro Tip: Check out our post on how to create a content calendar to learn more.

Use Project Management Tools

Tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira are game-changers when it comes to staying organized. You can easily create your content calendar in one of these apps (or something similar) and add notes, subtasks, and checklists to aid your creative process. Check out a few different options and do a free trial of one that looks appealing. You can also try out scheduling software like Sprout Social to automatically post your content, which will save you even more time. Over on the Link Space blog, we have a post all about social media management tools you can read.

Pro Tip: Remember to add other social media content, such as Instagram Reels, blog posts, tweets, etc. to your content calendar.

Film Your Videos

Now’s the time to put all of your planning into action. Grab your camera, tripod, and a fully charged battery (or several) and start filming. If you plan to show yourself on camera, have a couple of outfit changes handy if you want to give the illusion of having filmed on different days. Hopefully you have notes or a script to make filming run smoother (FYI, Talk Studio’s teleprompter feature will change your life). Take frequent breaks to rest your voice (if applicable) and be sure to hydrate.

Pro Tip: If you make a mistake while recording, find a good point to start over. For example, if you make a mistake mid-sentence, repeat the entire sentence rather than just the word you flubbed (makes editing easier and the final video more seamless).

Edit Your Videos

Editing videos is one of the most important yet frustrating things about being a YouTuber. Not only is video editing software difficult to use, editing can take just as much time (or more!) as the filming itself. That’s why we love Video Editor for editing. Video Editor is easy to use, intuitive, and lets you upload straight to YouTube, saving you time and hard drive space. If you’ve never tried Video Editor before, check out this post on how to edit your first YouTube video.

Pro Tip: Develop good, time-saving habits for creating video content. Check out our post on video post production workflow to learn more.

Publish, Promote, and Repurpose

The hard part is over but the work isn’t done yet. Fortunately, these next few tasks should only take a small amount of your time. To really get the most return from the YouTube videos you just filmed and edited, try the following tips:

• Tease your upcoming videos across your various social media channels
• Publish your videos according to your content calendar
• Interact with your viewers by responding to their comments
• Promote your videos across your social media channels
• Repurpose your content by making YouTube Shorts, TikToks, or Instagram Reels from your footage (Hint: Cross Clip can do this for you in a matter of minutes).
  There are a lot of other things you can do to ensure your YouTube videos are successful. Check out our articles on creating eye-catching thumbnails, adding chapters to your videos, and the best times to post on YouTube. Our suite of creator tools is designed to help you along the way— you can record your videos with Talk Studio or Streamlabs Desktop, edit them with Video Editor, create YouTube Shorts and TikToks with Cross Clip, and keep all of your social media links in one place with Link Space. Will you give batch content creation a try? Let us know how it worked for you!