If you’re new to creating content, you’ll quickly realize that it’s important to post or publish consistently and frequently. But as a complete beginner, it can be difficult to even CREATE that much. Lucky for us, there’s a simple method for creating MORE content, and it’s something I learned from one of my favorite childhood activities: renting movies.
From DVDs to Content Strategy
As a young kid, every Friday or Saturday night meant renting a movie at Hollywood Video. We would rent a DVD or two, watch the movie as a family, and then everyone would call it a night. Except me. While everyone else was making their way upstairs, I grabbed the control and clicked on over to the “bonus features.” Here, you would find additional “bonus” content about the movie and its creation. These “features” would include things like bloopers, director/actor commentary, and other behind-the-scenes footage. If I liked the movie, I usually wanted to know more about it. Even though I had just spent two hours watching the movie, I’d spend another hour going through all of the extra content about the movie.
As new content creators, not only should we make our “movies” (or our main content), we should also spend some time making “bonus features” (or our side content). Here’s why.
When Quantity is Better than Quality
To state the obvious, in the content world, content is king. This means quality content is supreme king. But if you happen to be brand new to your craft – whether you make short films, paintings, TikTok videos, or in my case, blogs – you might lack the skills necessary to make high-quality content. So we make up for this lack in quality by increasing our quantity. And since we’re already making our “movies,” we can easily increase the quantity of our content by creating “bonus features” about these movies.
Let’s say you’re a songwriter. Your “movie” would probably be the actual recording of your new song, shared on Spotify and/or iTunes. But some of your “bonus features” could be a YouTube video detailing the meaning behind the lyrics, a behind-the-scenes tutorial of how you recorded the song at home, or even just an acoustic version of your song, performed live for Instagram. Whatever your craft is, there are all kinds of “bonus features” you can make surrounding your existing content and/or your ongoing projects.
Quality is the Long-Term Goal
While creating “bonus features” can tide you over until your next “movie,” don’t let them become a distraction from your main craft. Find a healthy balance between creating both types of content. To have long-term success as a creative, it will be more important to develop the quality of your content. After all, no one will want to click over to the bonus features if it’s a terrible movie!