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I recently attended Webstock. An event where I heard so many top creators share that (just like me) they're still struggling with the many moving parts of content creation. It really struck me how essential it is to automate where possible. The content creation tools...
Jan 15, 2025
A YouTube content strategy can help you deliver on your brand goals. But making high-quality videos can be challenging, especially compared to other types of content, and even more so if you’re managing other social media platforms. That’s where a YouTube content calendar comes in super handy.
Let me walk you through my top tips for defining your priorities and getting to know both audiences and competitors. We’ll also cover how to make sure your video creation process is seamless, from planning to approval, and how to make the most of your content once it’s published.
YouTube marketing strategies ensure that making videos actually has an impact. They help you get a steady flow going when it comes to high-quality content but also tap into the huge amount of traffic on YouTube, all while improving your ranking on Google Search.
Here’s why you need a strategic approach to creating YouTube content:
A content strategy helps you keep your ideas for new videos on track. You get a much clearer view of whether your video marketing ideas will help you achieve certain goals, or if they’re likely to appeal to your target audience.
With a YouTube content strategy in place, you’ll have an idea of how often you need to post new content. This will help you plan enough relevant content in advance and avoid falling into the habit of posting ad hoc videos.
It becomes much easier to post consistent video content to YouTube when you put clear processes in place. For example, if you know you want to publish one video per week, you can arrange for scripts to be written and thumbnails to be designed in batches, so that you always maintain a backlog of content ready to be produced.
When you know how often you need new content for your YouTube channel, it also provides clarity on how you should allocate resources. This will help you communicate in advance with copywriters, designers, and video editors about what you’ll need from them and when.
Most importantly, a YouTube content strategy will help you measure how effective your efforts are. The KPIs and metrics you decide to track will be tied to specific goals you want to achieve, so it’s easier to see what’s working and what needs some adjustment.
Ready to get strategic about creating video content? We’ll go through everything from getting a feel for your niche and truly knowing who you’re making this content for to getting the word out there and being crafty about repurposing. By the end, you’ll have the basics for cultivating a loyal audience.
Having a clear set of goals keeps your YouTube marketing efforts focused, from planning through production and all the way to analytics and reporting. You won’t waste time making videos on topics that are irrelevant or unrelated to your brand pillars.
On top of that, it’s easier to generate content ideas (and pick formats) with specific goals in mind. If you’re looking to build awareness, you might create fun or endearing content. If objectives are traffic and sales-related, you’re likely to focus more on bottom-of-the-funnel videos that really showcase your product or service (demos, tutorials, case studies, etc.).
Either way, make sure your goals are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). For example: increase subscribers by 15% in the next quarter, or increase views by 10% in two months.
If you’re uncertain about how realistic your goals are, you can conduct competitor research with tools like TubeBuddy to understand whether your objectives are realistic for the niche and size of the YouTube channels involved.
A deep understanding of your target audience is always helpful when you’re creating content. You need to make the content they’re interested in, and the more you understand what resonates with them, the easier it becomes to make strategic decisions when producing content.
Once you’ve covered the basics (demographics and psychographics), really zoom into your audience’s behavior. Consider what they search for and when they want to be informed or entertained. Look out for key metrics too: watch time, engagement rates, and click-through rates.
If you’re working with YouTube channels that have been up for a while, also incorporate insights from your existing content. Likes and dislikes plus comments can be a treasure trove of info. Don’t forget to take a peek at “Other Channels Your Audience Watches” (it’s in the Audience tab under Analytics in YouTube Studio).
Competitor research helps to shape your YouTube strategy. The more granular you can make it, the more valuable insights you’ll discover, and they’re crucial for positioning your brand within its niche. You’ll see what kind of content is overdone and what parts of your industry are underserved. Just as important: you’ll get a clearer view of niche-specific slang, drama, and inside jokes.
All of this means you can cultivate an angle, a tone, a vibe. A specific take on your niche that no one else can truly replicate. To accomplish this, pay special attention to your direct competitors, but also go beyond. Consider any creator making interesting content in your niche and, if time allows, take the temperature of a few adjacent niches, for extra inspiration.
A good place to start is keyword research. Use the keyword bar, the YouTube Keyword Planner, the Google Keyword Planner, and/or third-party tools. You want words with high search volume but only moderate competition.
When focusing on competing channels, take note of relevant keywords they use, their formats, and the look of their thumbnails. It’s also helpful to consider their number of subscribers and how views or engagement correlate with the choice of subject.
Most of all, peek at the comments. That’s where you’ll find some of the juiciest insights. And definitely deconstruct their posting schedule. Just keep in mind that if you’re a small team looking into the biggest competitor within your space, you may not be able to produce as much content as they can. So always keep things in perspective.
A consistent publishing schedule is what attracts your desired audience and keeps them engaged. But it has heaps of benefits for you and your team as well. It’s easier to deliver high-quality content when the timeline is predictable.
Good videos reliably posted are the better choice over pure volume, especially long-term. But volume doesn’t hurt at all if you have the capacity for it.
That’s actually the operative word here. Don’t overreach! Before committing to your publishing schedule, you need to take stock of your video production capacity in a realistic way. Consider every element of a video and its creation, along with who’s responsible for that task.
When in doubt, start very small and work your way up. Especially if you’re doing everything with a small team and starting from scratch, make a few videos without posting in order to get a feel for the time commitment. And definitely have a small backlog of content before your YouTube channel goes live.
A smooth feedback process keeps the publishing schedule tidy and the production quality high. One of the biggest obstacles to a successful YouTube content strategy is a bottleneck at the approval stage.
This will vary depending on the type of content you decide to produce but each video might involve multiple approval stages – one for the script, one for the voiceover, one for the visuals, and a final approval for the finished video. Make sure you know who’s handling each stage and how it fits into their schedule.
It’s easy to set up a review and approval process with Planable. Collaboration is what it was built for. If you work with multiple clients, you can set different approval workflows for each workspace.
Choose between none, optional, mandatory, and multi-level approvals, then never worry about bottlenecks again.
Approval workflow options in Planable
Okay, so you’ve gained valuable insights by doing keyword research and cataloging audience preferences. Mapping them out as topics on a calendar turns your YouTube marketing strategy into an actionable plan.
You and your team can refer to it along the way and have a clear view of the distribution of subjects across time. This is also where your posting schedule comes in handy, even if it’s still a work in progress.
It can feel tricky to make a calendar from scratch, but content calendar tools come with plenty of templates you can adapt to your marketing strategy. Planable’s calendar holds your content for YouTube and eight other social media platforms, plus long-form items like blogs, newsletters, and press releases.
Content calendar view in Planable
You can reschedule with a mere drag-and-drop but also label and filter at will.
Label options, filters, and a recycle post feature in Planable for social media posts
Focus on making YouTube videos that are well-structured, so they keep viewers engaged throughout. Good structure is also a big part of rewatchability and building anticipation between publishing dates. It keeps people subscribing.
Image and video editor in Planable
Here are a few tips for making sure people keep watching videos:
When everything is ready to go, schedule YouTube videos so you can take your mind off them. Using a tool like Planable means you can work on your next batch while this one is being steadily published.
Bulk scheduling content in Planable
Optimizing your YouTube videos for SEO before publishing means that more people can find you and that you rank higher in search results. You need the intersection of what your brand has to say and what folks are actively searching for.
Start with a clear view of the subject your video tackles (for example, “low-maintenance houseplants”). Then write it down in various descriptive versions (“plants for beginners”, “best plants for newbies”, “houseplants for busy people”, “five plants that thrive easily”). Whether you use native features like YouTube Analytics, tools like Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner, or third-party software like VidIQ or TubeBuddy, this is what you type into the search bar to find related terms.
Analyze your YouTube SEO findings for volume and competitiveness, but also keep an eye out for related questions people are asking. Once you’ve gathered relevant keywords, add them anywhere you’re prompted to write something (video title, video description, within the video itself, in video and channel tags, timestamps/chapters, etc.).
A good plan for distributing and promoting your YouTube videos post-publishing date increases reach and engagement. It draws in more of your target audience, builds awareness plus brand expertise, and ultimately generates more ROI for your marketing efforts. A bonus: you’ll have more well-rounded YouTube analytics to draw conclusions from.
You can split distribution channels into owned, earned, and paid.
Start by making sure you’re putting your video content in the best possible light via owned channels. They include your blog, website, and newsletter. Once these are covered, share to the other social media platforms where your brand is active.
Earned distribution is maybe the most important in an impactful content strategy. It includes everyone from people/organizations with large platforms to everyday users who resonate with your high-quality videos and simply choose to share them. Think reposts, retweets, and general shares across social media, but also ranking high organically in the YouTube algorithm and other search engine result pages.
Finally, paid channels are exactly what they sound like. Consider if there’s room in the budget to enhance your content strategy with video ads, display ads, social ads, or partnerships with other channels.
It’s no secret that producing video content takes more resources compared to other types but clever repurposing maximizes the value it generates.
You can capitalize on your research and transform video content into other formats. For example, a blog post with text and static images might be more accessible to people who don’t turn to video first for absorbing information (but adding your initial video at the end will definitely get some blog visitors to watch).
If your content supports it, also consider turning videos into audio-only podcasts. This can unlock a whole new audience since podcast distribution has its own infrastructure. So can condensing your key points into carousels or infographics.
Definitely add snackable content to your repurposing process. Smaller bits of your video can become YouTube Shorts, TikToks, or clips ready to be posted wherever your brand has a social media page.
Editing a vertical video in Planable
Tracking the performance of your YouTube channel (but also individual videos) tells you to what extent you’re delivering on the goals set in the beginning. It highlights which topics your audience resonates with the most and how they behave and guides how you produce future content. It can also produce insights (for example, related to messaging) that influence your marketing decisions outside YouTube.
Here are some examples of KPIs to look out for:
Any YouTube content strategy needs a little refresh once in a while. Set clear reminders in your calendar for this task at regular intervals (for example, every quarter). Making the most of the resources invested means being open to tweaks and adjustments when necessary.
You might need to prioritize a new goal or downgrade a preexisting one. With several produced videos under your belt, you’ll have a better feel for where bottlenecks tend to appear in the process (and how to avoid them).
Most importantly, insights from analytics can and should influence how you plan the next batch of videos. Did one of them underperform? Consider whether it’s a case for improvement or removing that format/subject altogether from the calendar. Did a video overperform? Deconstruct the factors that made this possible and see how they can be extrapolated for future approaches.
Either way, an open mind when it comes to adjustments along the way will keep your channel fresh and authentic.
Irina is a freelance senior copywriter & content writer with an advertising agency background. If she’s not rummaging for good synonyms, she’s probably watching a sitcom or listening to radio dramas with plucky amateur detectives. She loves collage, doing crosswords on paper and shazamming the birds outside her window.
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