3 Scriptwriting Productivity Tips for Busy YouTube Content Creators
As a full-time content creator your channel is your business. That means you wear all the hats of that business from marketer to editor to producer and writer. This gets easier to manage as you build a team which means you can outsource some of that work and re-focus your time.
But, assuming you are building a great team, (shout out to everyone working behind the scenes on a youtube channel) the work will continue to grow, and outsourcing that work is of course part of the productivity equation, but it is not all of it.
Should You Hire a YouTube Scriptwriter?
As a creator, you wear all of the hats, all of the time. You’re a producer, an editor, a business owner, a marketing manager, a talent agency and a writer. So as your channel grows, the weight of all those hats increases which can burn you out and affect your upload schedule, even (and especially) if you love what you do.
A lot of channels mitigate this by getting a helping hand. This can go up to 30+ people teams, but when you’re starting to feel this pressure around the 100k subscriber or 200-250K view mark, you likely won’t have the resources to onboard a whole team. However, you may have the means to and interest in bringing on one or two people.
How to Brief a YouTube Scriptwriter
So you’ve hired or are thinking of hiring your first YouTube scriptwriter, first of all, celebrate the milestone! This likely means your channel is growing and that you’re getting serious.
Hiring a writer will save you time, improve the quality of your content and help you stay consistent without burning out. Sounds pretty great.
But for all of those wonderful things to happen, you have to make sure your writer knows what to deliver and how you go about communicating this information can mark the difference between a great collaboration and one that struggles.
Let’s imagine two scenarios, A and B, both run educational channels and have the same voice and style. Let’s see how these two channels fare at briefing their writers and what effects that produces.
The Reason Your Video Essays lose viewers (and how to fix it).
If you make video essays, you might notice that there’s a significant dip in retention around the middle of your video. I’ve certainly noticed it as a viewer and writer of this type of content.
Video essays generally have lower retention rates because they tend to go over 20 minutes. That’s mostly because of those pesky short attention spans we’re all dealing with today, but let’s look at the numbers.
A 5-10 minute video has around 30% retention beyond the hook. While a 20+ minute one only has 19.7%
Writing Your Own Scripts vs Hiring a Scriptwriter: A Real Cost Breakdown.
If your channel is starting to grow past a certain point, you’re probably feeling the weight of wearing all the hats which is a one-way road to burning out.
Some creators are happy to manage the bulk of labour themselves, but some creators could really benefit from having a helping hand.
Most often this means hiring an editor but something a lot of creators don’t consider, at least until they reach the 1 million subscriber mark, is collaborating with a scriptwriter.
How to Set-up a Sustainable Scriptwriting System for Video Essay Content.
Video essays are one of the most demanding formats on YouTube. Apart from the usual filming and editing, they require scripts that are basically condensed academic papers. Done the wrong way, churning out scripts for this type of content will slow you down and burn you out, especially if you’re succeeding. This can result in […]