Don't make video content...

Hey!

When you’re making video content, the baseline is this:

1. you pick up your camera

2. you punch record

3. you do something

4. you hit stop

5. you send it

Everything you do beyond that adds friction. Multiple takes= Friction, Editing= Friction, Captions= Friction, Script= friction… YouTube upload= fric… you get it.

Does this mean you shouldn’t do those things? Of course not. But remember…

Every little choice you make adds friction, and it’s up to you to balance it with resources. Otherwise, you’ll drop the ball.

Resources = time or money.

But what if I told you that you could build something completely free that allows you to do more things, make more choices with your content, without adding resources? Something that focuses instead on reducing the friction.

It goes by lots of different names, but I like to call it a content pipeline.

Get used to that phrase. We built our business - Bright Red Pixels, off of building content pipelines for big enterprise clients, so I use it a lot… And, anyway, I like naming things.

In today’s edition…

• Don’t make content, build a content pipeline (we’ve already started)

• I get pissy when Forbes sews generational dischord on LinkedIn

• Then I ruin my daughter’s reputation with an interview on Founder Alchemy

Let’s get into it

I’ve got news for you

When I got started in video, it was news. First, Newscan, my middle school news program where I learned about field equipment and how to use an edit controller.

Later I’d get experience in control rooms, calling cameras, roll ins, live-on-tape, technical direction, etc. So no surprise when, years later, Jeff and I finally created Wallstrip with Howard Lindzon, we used the news model.

20 shows a month, daily production - five of us shooting on green screen in a condemned office on Bond Street in Manhattan. When CBS bought us, we first found ourselves in the News department, and when we got the chance to launch our own show, MobLogic, it was, again, a daily news show.

We produced daily shows for years - for a stretch we produced two at once. And we’ve since produced weekly shows for decades.

Whether it’s the CBS Evening News or The Daily Show, or our stuff, when you make news, you’re not making a piece of content….

You are making the next piece of content.

You’re making a content pipeline.

When you create video content for your personal brand or for your company, it has a whole lot in common with the news. Specifically:

1. It’s ephemeral - here today, gone tomorrow

2. There is a short time between when you film and when you publish

3. The content is ongoing, not seasonal

4. The content is fairly real, or at least… not too fictional

That means you need a content pipeline - schedules, processes, templates, and technology that reduce friction in your process and help you actually get the content done.

A basic content pipeline looks like this:

Now, you’re going to read that, and your instincts are going to go to a complicated, formal system, with lots of lingo and maybe a Notion workspace.

And at the same time, you’re going to be thinking that you don’t need all that, or you can’t possibly do that… Stop. Just stop.

Instead, think about the role each of these parts of the content pipeline can play in your content. Their purpose. Then you’ll get a sense of how to apply these to your own work, at the right scale for your content. At least that’s the idea.

Your content calendar is your big picture. You’re looking at how content is flowing monthly, looking at trends, events, priorities. You’re looking at each piece of content in context with the rest. Most importantly, you’re setting the publish date for each piece of content - a deadline. That’s gonna be the starter that turns the engine on all the other parts of the pipeline.

What do you do to come up with ideas for content? How do you develop those ideas to the point where you’re ready to film? This is your editorial system. This could be research, brainstorming, writing, or other things. You could use templates, step-by-step processes, swap files, all sorts of ways to systematize what you’re already doing and reduce friction.

But also, maybe not. Greg Isenberg is super prolific with his content. I’m in his Community Empire (highly recommend) and I asked him about his editorial system. Here’s what he said:

Not a lot of fancy steps, but still an editorial system.

Your production systems help you make things and actually get them done. They take you from filming through editing and graphics to a finished piece. It’s not the things you do one time to make an episode. It’s the things you do every time you make content.

Packaging is all the things you do to get it ready to publish. You need to produce assets like thumbnails, art, teasers, shorts, captions, transcripts, etc. You need copywriting on your description, show notes, and posts. Exporting and uploading the content happens during packaging. If your content gets “versioned” for other platforms, that happens in this phase too.

Last step - Publishing is everything involved in putting your content out into the world. From pressing publish to interacting in the comments , to analyzing performance and bringing thost insights back to… your content calendar.

See? They’re all interconnected steps in the pipeline.

Now start applying these to your own work.

The bottom line with all this?

Only do stuff once. Anytime you make content, you have a ton of decisions to make. The more decisions you can make once, the more assets you can build once, and then use over and over again, the more frictionless your process will be, and the more spontaneous your content will be.

Get a load of this Bloomberg headline

This headline just feels super whiny to me. It’s got a distinct “good old days” feel to it and, as someone who sees real opportunity right now on LinkedIn, it hit me the wrong way.

In truth, the article is pretty reasonable. Though I linked to it, don’t bother. I gave my life servitude to Bloomberg to read the thing so you wouldn’t have to. Here’s the TL;DR

True, and not that unreasonable.

So I had to think about why it irked me so much. After at least five minutes of reflection, it just feels like articles like this plays on the fact that people feel disconnected, out of place, and left behind.

Real talk - LinkedIn can get pretty cringe. But it’s the overly formal, salesy, impersonal stuff that’s really cringe. NOT the confessional, authentic stuff - no matter who’s doing it.

LinkedIn is about networking. It was built on connections. That’s no accident. You are accountable for the actions you take on LinkedIn. Any shlub can go visit your profile and see all of your posts and all of your comments on other people’s posts.

Other social networks are about sharing. Networking is sharing with an end. Networking = cultivating relationships that lead to collaboration. Collaboration leads to results that are bigger and better.

And I don’t think it’s an accident that LinkedIn makes this work… I’ve met a few billionaires in my time, but the one who came off the most intelligent, kind, and human of them was Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn.

Just my opinion, I think he gets human connection on a really deep level. He and the team at LinkedIn has, from the start, cultivated an environment that is genuinely positive and supportive. All they’ve done is post Ws and slowly grow into a behemoth.

Great, now he’s going to bring up COVID

You’re d*mned right I am. That’s the other reason this article stuck in my craw. The folks joining LinkedIn right now were robbed of something many of us took for granted. The IRL culture of networking, mentorship, and just learning in a corporate environment - poof, gone. And it’s never coming back.

So it’s no wonder that these young workers are turning in droves to LinkedIn, and changing the culture of the platform. It’s a great place to build the kind of connections around your work that you just don’t get to make in person anymore.

And if you’re one of those GenX, Boomers, or Elder Millennials who are feeling awkward and out-of-place, my advice to you is to check your wallowing. Because we need LinkedIn to be a place where real relationships can be built too.

We may have had IRL opportunities in the past, but that past is gone. The cultural shift on LinkedIn is about what we’re going to do in the future, together.

And the best part of this network is that it is what you make it. Be authentically you. Try to help people the way you know how to help people. Be open and friendly and curious. And you will find value there.

But all that said, the AI stuff and the hustle bros trying to sell you their frameworks all does suck. Last week I wrote about how LinkedIn could transform how business gets done on the platform to respond to these changes. Here’s hoping!

Now read this

This week, I’m using this section to pimp my own ride.

I had a great conversation with Arvind on Founder Alchemy. I really appreciated the opportunity to come on and talk:

• What spontaneous content means to me

• Co-founder relationships

• Content pipelines

• Owned media for businesses

Arvind’s really good at making sexy trailers for nerdy podcast guests, so I asked my 9 year old daughter to watch the trailer for this one and filmed her reaction.

I really appreciated the opportunity to chat about things that I have a lot of passion for. But this was the first podcast I’d been on in a long while.

In listening to the podcast, I felt I was too urgent. Too focused on delivering value. With each question, I was like a lion pacing in his cage just waiting for Arvind to open the gate so I could come out roaring.

I don’t want to embody that energy. I want to be contemplative. I want to connect more. I want to listen better. It’s a good lesson.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading🙏

Until next time…

Be Spontaneous, ae

☯️