Structure and Constraints for your Content; Garrin Bulani on MicroStudio and Influence

Structure and Constraints for your content

It can be useful to think about the structure of your content.

At a bare minimum your content should have a beginning, middle and end, but a certain amount of structure can help both you as the content creator and your audience in terms of rhythms and rituals and routines and expectations.

I know some people are big fans of just showing up and winging it, but I like constraints.

Knowing the format and structure of my content helps free me up to think about the subject matter and not have to reinvent the wheel each time.

Your content will often come with built in constraints. A YouTube Short, for example, needs to 59 seconds or shorter.

But sometimes you get to choose. How long is a livestream? How long would you like it to be? How long can your audience afford to spend with you?

I wondered out loud last week if The Video and Livestreaming Show might want to be shorter moving forward, we haven't made a decision on that just yet, so I will talk about what it looks like right now.

The structure of our show

Our show currently goes for 1 hour. We have 6 segments. Many of these segments are separated by produced promos for other pieces of our content (podcasts, services, newsletters, etc.). While I hope people will watch these promotional videos and want to learn more, they also work as an opportunity for Sam Proof and I to catch our breath and switch up backgrounds and banners between segments in StreamYard .

The basic of structure of the show:

• Welcome
• Segment 1
• Promo
• Segment 2
• Promo
• Segment 3
• Promo (optional)
• Segment 4
• Goodbye / Calls To Action

This structure helps us build out a show run document for each episode too.

If you've seen the show, you'll know that we use a coloured tab background system to indicate which segment we're on and what is coming up.

In a perfect world, we'd always go back into the recording and add time stamps for the different segments. But even if we don't, viewers can scroll through the video and see where a new segment starts in the event they want to jump to that content.

I like to think it creates some visual interest too.

Have some personal clichés handy

This is inspired by my community radio days, but sometimes you'll be in front of a camera or microphone and your mind will just go blank for a moment. Sometimes you'll trip over your words. In both cases, having some standby expressions at your disposal can help you recover.

This, of course, is particularly important for live settings (such as livestreaming and LinkedIn Live and Audio Events and live radio and television).

Set the scene: People may have joined you half way through your show and may not know what is happening. Give them some context.

My version of this usually goes something like this:

"Hi I'm [my name] and I'm joined by [co-host name / guest name] and you're watching [show name]. Today we're talking about [subject]."

Let them know where you're broadcasting to (especially if you're multicasting to multiple streaming services) and what you would like them to do in the chat. [Candidly my co-host streams to a lot of services, large and small, so I don't usually name them all. But you might like to.]

My version:

"We're going out live to all of the places, and we'd love to know in the chat where you're watching from."

Ask for platform specific actions:

My version:

"We'd love it if you could like and subscribe wherever you're watching this."

[Fun fact: YouTube will now animate parts of their user interface when they hear someone ask the viewer to subscribe.]

I'm sure you can think of others.

The point is that once you use these enough they will become very familiar and have their own rhythm which will help you find your balance and restore your confidence in moments of unsteadiness.

Set your guest's expectations

One of the biggest errors we can make is to assume a guest on our show knows our show intimately.

I heard a great episode of Enthusiastically Self-Employed with Brenda Meller?? from MellerMarketing.com where she explained the structure of her show in the interests of educating her guests and setting some expectations.

This is brilliant and something I need to explore further as we start bringing more guests onto the show.

Garrin Bulani on Video Influence and MicroStudio

Speaking of guests, we are delighted to be speaking to Garrin Bulani ?? from MicroStudio.ca | ?????????????? ???????????????? ?????????????????? ?? later this week.

Many of you may already be familiar with Garrin, but we are really excited to talk to him about MicroStudio —his company that helps support businesses and content creators with portable video kits and video education.

He is also a video influencer in his own right, producing a lot of short-form vertical video for a variety of high end products and services.

• MicroStudio
• GarrinBulani.com

Join us live

Please join us live. Check out the event invites for time and date in your local time zone.

• Garrin Bulani on Video, Influence and MicroStudio (Watch on YouTube)
• Garrin Bulani on Video, Influence and MicroStudio (Watch on LinkedIn)

Small Win: 100 subscribers on YouTube

Sometimes I'm too far in the weeds to really know how well or badly things are going for me as a content creator.

But I looked away from YouTube statistics for a couple of weeks and suddenly had a hundred subscribers.

At the time of writing the Learn Livestreaming channel has 115 subscribers.

I'm caught between wanting to celebrate an achievement and wondering if this is just a vanity metric. But the truth is other numbers have also been going up. Views, watch time hours.

I know some people will think this isn't a big deal, but for me it is.

And I guess on the week of American Thanksgiving, even as a non-American I want to say: thank you. ?

Have a great week!

I hope you have a great week.

Remember if you're interested in video, livestreaming and content creation, we should connect.

Bonus: What are you working on? Livestreams, Podcasts, Videos, Newsletters —oh my!

Watch on YouTube

On the show last week, Sam Proof and I reflected on what we are working on, what's working well, and what could be improved, and how we can manage creator burn out.