5 Best Practices for Planning Video Content

Some simple planning can help improve your video's performance. In this lesson, we’ll cover the five best practices for planning your online video content.

0:00 5 best practices for planning video content
0:26 The importance of the first 15 seconds of a video
0:50 Outline your key points in the video
1:07 Focusing on video flow
1:34 HICC structure to your video content
2:00 Recording lots of video for editing purposes

In this lesson, we’ll cover the five best practices for planning your online video content.

Best Practice #1: The first thing you need to think about is your first 15 seconds. Over 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute. And YouTube knows a thing or two about online video and how it performs. And part of that performance means your audience will decide within the first 15 seconds, if they wanna keep watching your video. So you need to make it good so that they're engaged and they keep watching. That's why you need a hook. An eye-catching visual or hint to something coming up later in the video.

Best Practice #2: Outline your key points. There's nothing worse than publishing a video and then realizing you forgot to include something really important. So jot it down, and organize it into a consumable format. Some great ways to format it are, three tips. Or the five best practices for creating video content.

Best Practice #3: Focus on flow. In your outline you should have identified a structure for what you'll say. This will help ensure that what you say has a predictable pattern for your audience. If you tell them you're gonna give them four tips, keep it four. And those tips, or steps, should have a transition between each of them. That creates the pattern that your audience can easily spot and most importantly, remember from your content. Just make it flow, then go with it.

Best Practice #4: Structure is key. Here's a simple structure for your video. It's called HICC, which stands for hook, intro, content, and call to action. Most people nail the first three. As a business, you have to have a call to action. You should be able to ask your customers or audience to do something. Like, please subscribe, or give me a thumbs up if you like this video. Leave a comment down below. Those are all valuable asks that you can use to build a following.

Best Practice 5: Shoot for the edit. This means camera angles. Lighting, props, all that stuff. You need to review these elements so that you're not messing around with them when you're trying to shoot. And practice your outline. Make sure your camera's focused, lighting's good, audio spot on. And always shoot more than you think you'll need. That means more takes of key points and important lines.

And that's the five best practices for making sure your video shoot goes smoothly, so you can get back to business.

Ready to get started on creating content that promotes and markets your brand and your business? No matter your skill level or current situation, our GoDaddy Guides are here to help! Let us know in the comments below, if you have any questions.

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