This is an overview of the research, decisions, and actions made in the planning and creation of my video series on Boundaries.
Links to Boundaries blog post and videos: part 1, part 2, and part 3
For all the videos I created for CrossRoads, I have written all of the content, chose images, narrated, recorded, and posted the videos’ accompanying blog posts and maximized as many SEO elements as possible.
I was prompted by the desire to create new content to draw in a new audience and create content for rankings (as proven to be popular for keywords), but I ran into some significant issues. Boundaries are a complex issue—not everyone has the same reasons for failing to define, set, or enforce boundaries, and addressing this plus the variety of types of boundaries and situations a person can face made it necessary to create a series of videos instead of a single video.
A great deal of research was done on the topic from a variety of sources, including my own experience. I learned even more about organizing information. As a result, we have been contacted due to the interest in the content. The videos have also been helpful for clients, to supplement lessons learned from counseling sessions. What follows is the Problem, Action, Result process of the primary issue and the secondary issue I ran into in the creation of the videos.
Initial Problem
- Needed to add content—I wanted to create videos for additional content to draw in a new audience and provide more content for rankings.
- Boundaries are a common issue, so keyword research suggests people are looking for information to solve this issue
- Since boundaries are a complex issue, this posed a secondary problem—the topic warranted not just a second video, but a three-part series.
Action
- Read several sources on the topic and drew from personal experience.
- As with all videos I have posted, each opportunity to optimize content was maximized. The videos end with a call to action and the titles, taglines, descriptions are all fully utilized.
Result
- Created video series that has added to clientele and drawn attention from other mental health experts.
Secondary Problem
In the creation of the original video, a secondary problem presented itself. From the creation of my first manual, I realized that a great deal of advice focuses on talking about the problem without offering much in the way of solutions. In addition to a lack of vital solution-based information, a lack of simplicity and instruction is rather common not only for professional blogs, but self-help and how-to books offer less than the desired information of exactly HOW TO solve a problem.
Problem
- By researching the issue, I found that doing only one video was insufficient to properly explore the topic while keeping the runtime under 10 minutes. Even if our channel was older and more established, a shorter runtime is generally preferred, in the 3-10 minute range.
Action on secondary problem
- Created three blog posts and videos instead of one to properly explore vital steps and issues on the topic of boundaries. Although many guides offered a more complex way of handling boundaries, I focused on the essentials and made a very simple guide that broke down the videos in order of how to accomplish the goal.
- Steps created in order of most effective process: I separated the information and ordered the posts by the most effective steps in the order in which these steps can naturally build upon the previous step. Each step creates the foundation for the next step.
- I realized that the issue of creating boundaries isn’t just enforcing boundaries, it starts by properly defining realistic healthy boundaries.
- Since setting boundaries is often avoided due to lack of self-esteem, that information was included along with reasonable steps as information can build confidence in taking on a new endeavor.
Result for secondary problem
- By creating three blog posts and videos instead of one, we got 3 times the content and exposure.