The Content Series: Ep 4 - How I Film Content
Subscribe Now: Apple Podcast | SpotiFy
I’m continuing our content series with an episode that answers one of the most common questions I get..
“How do you film your content?”
Spoiler : It’s not as complicated as you might think. This episode is packed with actionable tips to help you simplify your content creation process, batch smarter, and stay consistent—without losing your sanity.
Here’s a sneak peek of what we’re covering:
Why planning your content in batches can save you hours every week.
The key to balancing evergreen and seasonal content for maximum impact.
Content Organisation Hacks: From Airtable tagging to my dedicated content phone (yes, it’s a game-changer!).
How to leave room for inspiration while staying consistent with your schedule.
Resources:
Follow me on Instagram @PandoraPaloma_
Join us in London for the Scale in a Day Retreat HERE
Learn more about Consultancy & 1:1 offers HERE
Join Be Reel HERE
Transcript
Hello. Hello and welcome to this episode of the podcast.
You might notice that my voice is a little different today.
Last week was what I call a write off week, which ultimately meant I got struck down with the flu.
I'm forever grateful that I now, at the stage that I am in business, I'm so able to think in years and quarters, versus weeks and months, because my goodness, it was a write off week.
The podcast did go out as normal.
Newsletter did not, unfortunately, but I did manage to do the very, very bare minimum for the week, which you know is no mean feat when you're bed bound with the flu.
I hope you are having a wonderful day, wonderful week wherever you are.
I'm continuing The Content Series, of which there will be two more episodes and then we will break.
There'll be one more episode of the podcast for December, where I'm going to share with you how to map out a plan for 2025, and then we will break until the new year.
So, for this episode of the content series podcast, I thought I would share with you how I film my content.
It's actually a question I get asked a lot.
First of all,
how do you find the time?
Do you batch create?
Do you not batch create?
How is it done?
So let me share that with you now.
First, I will say that yes, I very often will spend, let's say, two hours on a Monday morning filming content.
So in that two hour period, I typically will either be at my home or we often do shoot in location. And I will have a list of all of the different B-rolls that I want to create in order to have enough content assets to create content over the coming weeks.
Typically that will be based on the ones that we know that we always need. So the obvious kind of B-roll clips, me working from my laptop in my workspace, me putting my makeup on or getting ready, me reflecting on the end of the year with a hot cacao, you know, tucked up in the lounge next to the Christmas tree.
You can see where I'm going here.
There's typical B-roll clips that we know that we need, content assets that we need all year round that I like to refresh, and then we have more specific ones.
At the end of this episode of the podcast, I will give you a festive B-roll content list that you could use for yourself.
First of all, we will always prioritise standard content and then seasonal content.
Of course there will be some seasonality filmed content, obviously for December, because we are officially in the festive season. So I do batch.
I do batch create.
And typically, the list doesn't really change unless there's something specific that I want to speak to.
Let's say that in January, I did have a series of content on reflection, I would specifically create more content that has me in a space of reflection. You see where I'm going here.
Let's say that you are a coach and you have a nervous system regulation course coming up.
You might create some content that is very centered around the theme of nervous system regulation. You see where I'm going here?
So we do create a batch of assets.
Absolutely I will give myself time and have space and time in my calendar every day to be able to film and schedule content in real time as well.
That's something I just really love to do. I just find that ideas come as I'm working with clients and just in my own sort of space of creativity in the day.
So whilst we do have a lot of content,
I would say 50% we plan, 50% we leave very much for today's creation.
So that's the first thing.
We typically have a list of all of the different shots that we need.
And then I will map out typically two or three different outfits.
Let's say there's a shot of me working for my laptop, I would have three versions of that because there would be three different outfits.
And then I might move the camera and I might do three other types of shots.
So it could be me with a cacao writing in my journal. And I would do that in different areas of the house in three different outfits.
So we have three different content assets.
You see where I'm going?
We have the content list, we create the list.
And then typically how we do this is I save all of those assets in my phone, and I section them in different albums within my phone.
Now I do actually have a content phone (I did until it got stolen, but we will be getting that replaced), which means that my work phone or my actual mobile phone is the phone where I take pictures of my children (my dog child and my human child), of my partner or life. And I do work from that particular phone.
Then I have a content specific phone. It means that there's no calls, there's no WhatsApp. The only app that I use on that phone is my Instagram.
And it does mean that I can try and separate content and pleasure, which is really working for us.
It also means that on that content phone I have various albums saved and then I put the content into those albums.
This obviously makes it nice and simple when I am searching for my videos.
Then we have the content itself, the hook (the most important thing), the caption and the call to action.
Now I'm quite old school. I actually start all of these in the notes section of my mobile phone or my computer and I sit and I write.
If I'm in batch creation mode, I will typically sit and write all of those in the notes section and then they go into Airtable immediately.
If I'm not in batch creation then typically that gets written wherever it gets written.
A lot of the time in the summertime it's when I'm sat on the harbour with my coffee.
In the wintertime it might be as I'm strolling along the promenade on my morning walk, or once I've got home and I might just have a few notes that I take as I'm walking, and sometimes I very much sit down and I'm in content mode.
I will map out my unaware stage, pain aware stage, solution aware stage of awareness for my ideal clients and of course the thing that I'm selling.
I map out my hooks and I write my captions and my calls to action.
So there's different ways that I actually write the content, very much depending on if I'm in batch creation mode or if I'm there doing a one-off.
But everything starts in the notes section and I write my hook, I write my caption and I write my call to action.
A lot of the time, especially if we are in launch or selling something specific that we've sold before, I actually go to Airtable to find my content, to edit my content.
Because I'm not necessarily writing new content, I'm actually repurposing content in which case I have my hook, I have my caption and I have my call to action. And the only thing that might change is the new assets of the new B-roll filmed content.
So that's typically how I then write my content.
Let me talk to you about Airtable.
Airtable is a software that we use to save all of our content. The reason being is that we can tag it. So I can tag it by theme, I can tag it by offer, I can tag it by anything I want, really. And so in my Airtable database, I have my hooks, I have my captions, and I have my call to action.
Now sometimes I go a little bit crazy and off-piece and I use a caption and use a different hook. Why not? But it means that it's all there.
So it's a really, really smart way for you to start seeing all of your content in one place and being able to tag it.
Let's say, for example, that you have five different content themes that you play with and then you have three different core offers.
You might tag it multiple things. You might tag it personal brand, you might tag it visibility, you might tag your offer, and you might tag personal story, because it's a personal story.
It's a way that you can start to tag your content and save it all, meaning that you're never ever, ever, ever really starting from zero.
That's the process that we use a lot of the time.
Hands up. My content sits in that for weeks, and then I pass that over to my assistant and my assistant will then upload it all into a table so that we can keep everything up to date.
Now, at the end of every month, I have a look at that month's content and I look at what worked, what didn't, and I audit it.
I very objectively look at:
why I thought that worked,
what the results were,
did we see any direct sales from that?
What's our overall engagement like?
What was the engagement like on the posts that did specifically well?
And then I of course repurpose those.
So I will quite literally repurpose word for word, image for image. Any content that did really, really well for us, sometimes I tweak it and that's really just a test based on what I think I could optimise.
Sometimes it does do better, sometimes it doesn't and it does worse.
And it really is because, of course, content is always a bit of trial and error at first.
Then once you know what is working for you, it's really about testing and optimising to get an even better result.
That's typically then how we map out the content. We put everything in Airtable and then we track our best performing content, worst performing content, reasons why, at the end of every single month.
And that will of course then inform the content that we create and share for the following month.
We also keep a list of our best performing hooks and that also gives me an opportunity to enhance those and think about how we might use the baseline of that hook for other pieces of content.
An example of this is, we know that ‘things you might not know about me’ performs very, very well. So once a quarter we tend to use that as the hook, and then of course we change the caption or the content itself.
We might start playing with ‘things you might not know about me business’, ‘things you might not know about me personally’, ‘things you might not know about me and my health’. There's various things that we can play with here.
We also know that ‘here's how I built XYZ in X timeline’ also works well for us. So we play with that hook quite a lot.
Things like ‘how to increase your Instagram engagement by X percent’. That works well for us.
So, we would then think about how we might also use that, ‘how to increase your revenue by 25% this quarter’.
You see where I'm going with this?
It's just really identifying and knowing what assets work really, really well and how you can continue to optimise that.
We typically find that any content where it's me and my daughter performs really, really well.
That said, I don't really want to be using my daughter on every single post because it's irrelevant to my business and who I am as a business mentor, and I don't really want her plastered all over Instagram.
But it does inform the content that I know that I do get to create.
So knowing that, for example, I will often try and capture some content where you know, her back is to the screen and I am more present on the screen. So she is there and she is present but she's not fully, fully seen. And that way it obviously means that I can continue speaking to how I make it work as a single co-parent and the fact that I am a multi-six figure business owner who has a child, without feeling like I'm out of integrity in the content that I'm creating.
You really want to let the data lead
but also know that it gets to be played in line with your own integrity as well.
That's it, it's actually kind of simple.
I would absolutely invite you all to think about how batch creating your real content would change the game for you.
I guarantee that it will.
I think when we're always relying on having the time in the day that can ‘set us up to fail’.
For me personally, I have in my calendar half an hour at 12 o'clock pretty much every day. And that is my time for content.
So I can quickly film and get it out within 5-10 minutes. It's always out in the ether by 12:30pm.
That works, but it's not the smartest strategy to only rely on having the time in the day, because you're relying on the fact that you think that you are just able to switch on creativity like that.
So again, it could be that actually you film in the day but you have all of your hooks and captions pre-written and that way solves that problem.
I do think that we have got to a point where we just don't need to over complicate content creation as such.
I think the way that content is working right now is actually so, so much easier than it used to be.
We're not having to sit and faff around on Canva for hours a day.
We literally just need to video ourselves for six seconds doing something (and it could be anything. It actually doesn't even need to be relevant to the theme itself anymore).
It really is about just creating content, really giving people a behind the scenes.
Make sure that your location is the right location, make sure that it's on brand, make sure it feels like you and make sure what you're wearing is on brand and feels like you.
All of these things add up to the aesthetic of your overall personal brand.
It goes without saying, brand is increasingly important but equally, it doesn't need to be complicated and done is better than perfect, and I really stand by that.
I hope this has been helpful. I hope it's given you a bit of insight into really how you get to do it.
We use an ATUMTEK tripod and I edit everything in my phone. I edit everything in Instagram actually, apart from the Tone Studio app which we use for some of our toning, some of our filters and that's it.
I've always actually just liked to create my content directly in Instagram, and also Instagram loves that too. So it's a win win.
I hope this has been helpful.
If you have any questions, I would love to hear from you. You can come and find me @PandoraPaloma_.
I'm going to leave it there for today because my throat is starting to hurt again.
But wishing you all a wonderful rest of your day, wonderful rest of your week.
Remember, content is queen, content is king.
It really is the simplest way for you to scale your business, get yourself known and convert your clients.
I hope this has been helpful to give you some insight and inspiration today. Have a wonderful rest of your week.
And a reminder, if you haven't heard this already, but the content series is officially and unofficially sponsored by my Be Reel membership. If you're struggling with content, if you sit at your computer and you don't know what to write, if you struggle with knowing how to film or what to film, Be Reel is your solution.
We ultimately create a system and tools and templates and quite literally a weekly content calendar that you can plug and play into.
Which means that you can cut your marketing time in half, and never feel like you're sat not knowing what to write and not wasting time procrastinating on what to write or what to film.
You can find the Be Reel membership in the shownotes. It's £47 a month.
Or you can pay upfront for the year and get a live monthly content training with me.
This is not just content for Instagram. The trainings will be content across the board, because once you learn messaging and you master messaging, you know that won't just impact the content you create for Instagram, it will impact the content you create full stop.
Your sales pages, your landing pages, your thank you pages my real divine mission is to support women to be seen and heard and fully booked.
And you will do that when you learn the power and the art of communication.
I would love to see you inside. We have a beautiful community who support each other to of course increase their own engagement as well. Yeah, it's a really sweet space to be in.
That is it from me.
Over and out.
Have a great day.
Recent Episodes
.
Recent Episodes .
IF IT’S TIME TO MEET YOUR NEXT-LEVEL IN BUSINESS, WELCOME TO MY WORLD
Whether you’re new to business, got a side hustle that you’re ready to make your full-time reality, building to your first 6 figures, or scaling to a million, I have a coaching container to hold and support you