Scheduling Your Way To YouTube Success

Why Creating A YouTube Schedule Is Important

At Tubefilter’s ‘Secrets of YouTube Superstars’ panel at CES earlier this month YouTube Partners iJustine, Joe Penna (aka MysteryGuitarMan), Phil DeFranco, Freddie Wong and Brandon Laatsch talked with Tubefilter’s editor and co-founder MarcHustvedt about their experience as YouTube celebs and what it takes to do what they do. You can watch the full panel here, but one of the things that really struck me is that nearly all of the panelists agreed that it is incredibly important to stick to a schedule if you want to become a YouTube success.

Hustvedt asked the panelists whether or not they had determined a secret behind how often to release videos. Joe Pennaresponded, “I think it’s different for everybody.” Freddie and Brandon, for instance, only upload a single video each week because a whole lot of work goes into their special effects. Joe uploads twice a week – on Tuesdays and Thursdays – as his videos tend to be on the complex side too. iJustine and Phil DeFranco can post more often, as they do a lot of vlogging. Joe says, “It’s really important to stick to a schedule because sometimes YouTube messes up there subscription box and people who are subscribed to you don’t get your videos, or whatever. So if people are coming back every Tuesday, every Thursday or every day then you get that real audience.” At the panel iJustine said that she doesn’t stick to a schedule, but she recently told Tubefilter, “And this year, I’m totally trying to get on a schedule for my videos. I got to all of these panels, and all of my friends say you need to have one, so I’m like, “Justine, step it up!””

Scheduling is not only important for your audience; it’s also great for keeping yourself on track. If you know that you have set a goal to upload a video to YouTube every Wednesday, lets say, then you will make sure to get it done. If you don’t have a schedule then you could fall into a trap of putting off doing the work and only get a video up every two weeks, once a month, or even less often. If you know that you need to have a video done for next Wednesday then you’ll make the time to do it.

Tips For Building Your YouTube Schedule

So now that you understand the importance of getting on a schedule if you want to build your YouTube audience, how do you go about creating your schedule? Ask yourself the following questions:

How long does it take you to make a video? If it takes you a long time to make a video because you are working with a lot of special effects or animation then you don’t want to set a schedule that is too lofty. Like Freddie and Brandon, you may choose to upload a video once a week, or if you have a lot of other work on your plate then you might only be able to put a video out once every two weeks. Keep in mind that Freddie and Brandon do this as their full time job, and they still only manage to upload one video a week. So make sure you aren’t biting off more than you can chew by scheduling videos too often.
What days of the week are you consistently available to upload? If you decide to upload a video every Monday then make sure you are available to upload your videos on Mondays. If you know that you go to a three-hour yoga session after work every Monday, followed by dinner and bed then it’s probably not a good idea to schedule for Mondays. However, if you know your video will be done early you can always upload it, prepare the title, tags and description and keep the video on private until you are ready to put it up.

Once you’ve determined how often you want to post a video and on which days you’ll be posting, mark it down on a calendar. Make sure to keep to your schedule and you’ll make your YouTube experience better for yourself as well as your viewers.

Do you keep to a schedule when posting videos online? How often do you post and when?