If you’re a business owner or a freelance content writer, it’s important to have a content strategy. Without a solid content strategy, you end up wasting a lot of time managing your content.
By having a solid plan and sticking to it, you won’t have to spend time coming up with new ideas or scrambling to meet deadlines. One of the best ways to build a content strategy is to use a content planner.
A Sample Board to View
Whether you’re working alone or with a team, a good content planner can really boost your productivity. So, let’s see how this company uses a content planner to plan and publish its SEO content.
Click on this image to view this sample board, live!
A Free Template to Use
If you found this board interesting, here’s a free Template from Kerika that you can use to set up your own board in just seconds:
Click on this image to view the Template.
The rest of this article will walk you through the process of using this template:
Step 1: Gather resources
If you’re a serious content writer, you already know the importance of gathering resources before you start writing. After all, you need to have something to write about!
One of the best ways to manage your gathered resources is to use a Content Planner. A Content Planner can help you organize your thoughts and ideas, and it can also help you find new and relevant information to write about.
Step 2: Research Content Ideas
Before you start writing, you need to have an idea of what you want to write about. Make a list of content ideas that you think would be popular with your audience.
You can get content ideas by checking out your competitors, looking for news stories, looking for guest post ideas, and brainstorming ideas with your team.
Step 3: Drafting
Now it’s time to start writing your content. Keep your keywords in mind as you write and try to include them naturally in your text.
Step 4: Designing graphics content
Graphics in blogs capture your reader’s attention, communicate your message more clearly, and overall make your blog more visually appealing.
Once the article is ready, the next step is to add graphics to it. Graphics are important to capture your reader’s attention and make your blog more visually appealing.
Step 5: Integration/Schedule Content:
Once you’re finished writing, you need to integrate your content into your website. You can do this by adding a blog to your website or by scheduling your content to be published on your website later on.
Step 6: Promote Content
Finally, you need to promote your content. You can do this by sharing it on social media, writing guest posts on other blogs, or by paying for advertising.
Producing great video content is essential to a successful YouTube channel, but it can be a time-consuming task if you don’t have a proper process and workflow.
A very helpful tool for planning your content workflow is the Kanban board.
Kanban boards, like Kerika’s Task Boards, can help you plan and execute your video production process, ensuring that each step is completed in a timely and efficient manner.
In this article, we will show you how you can use Kerika to set up a great workflow and process for your YouTube video production.
A Workflow for You
This template will set you up with a good workflow. Each phase of this workflow is represented by a column; let’s take a look from left to right:
Click to view this Template
Resources
The cards in this column contain helpful resources for you to get started with. The first card, for example, helps you understand how to use video tags; the second card provides a guide for how to write a good video description. And so on.
Content Ideas
This is where you start to gather all your ideas for different videos. If you are having trouble coming up with ideas, take a look at the first card in this column.
Create Video Scripts
When you have decided a specific topic you want to work on, move its card from Content Ideas to this column and start writing your script. (And there’s a card in this column with some really useful tips on writing a template for a script.)
Record & Edit videos
Use this column to track the videos you are currently working on: once your script is ready, move the video’s card from the Create Video Script column to this column. This helps you keep track of the videos that are currently in production.
Review Videos
Once everything related to a particular is done, move its card to this column. This will help you track videos that are finished, but you haven’t published them yet.
Schedule / Publish Videos
When you have decided when to publish a video, move its card to this column. This way you and your teammates know which video is when going live. Kerika will remind you if you scheduled a video but forgot to publish it.
Promote Videos
Promoting videos is essential to growing your YouTube channel: once a video is published, move its card to this column and create a checklist of where your videos should be shared and promoted.
Best Practices of Great Teams
If you are working just by yourself, you are ready to go. But if you are working for an agency or the Marketing department of a company, there will be others you need to get involved in this project.
Set up your Team Members
Kerika makes it really easy to organize your team: if there are people who will be actively involved in the video production, e.g. photographers or content writers, add them as Team Members on this board.
They will be able to make changes to this board in real-time, as they get their pieces ready, and everything that they do will be instantly accessible for everyone else that’s on this board’s team.
Set up your Visitors
There are often people who need to be informed, but aren’t necessarily going to contribute in an active way. For example, there may be a product owner who needs to keep track of videos that are relevant to their product, or a senior manager who wants to be kept in the loop.
Add these stakeholders as Visitors to this board team: they will always have a real-time view of what’s going on, but they won’t be able to move any cards or make any changes (in other words, mess up with your careful workflow!) and you won’t have to keep giving status reports. That’s a double-win.
Understand the Workflow
In a Kerika board, every column represents a particular stage in a workflow, and every card represents a specific task (e.g. a video that needs to be produced).
Start at the top-left
Open the first card in the first column
Read the instructions inside
Check out any resources that are attached to the card
Take action.
Some tasks are best handled by you, and others should clearly be handed off to coworkers.
Update the cards as work gets done
A card can be assigned to one or more people, and this can change throughout the course of the project: something is initially assigned to you and then gets handed off to someone else.
As cards get worked upon, update the status of each card: start with READY, then IN PROGRESS, and so on. This makes it easy for everyone to always have a clear idea of where things stand.
Set due dates. This will help you make sure nothing slips.
Use Kerika’s chat instead of email: this will keep your communications quick and focused.
Move cards along the columns as the work progresses.
Get to Done
The team’s goal is to get all your cards all the way over to Done, on the right-end of the board.
Sometimes things that were initiated need to be discarded: maybe something turns out to be a bad idea? In that case, move the card to the Trash column. (If you change your mind later, you can always retrieve items from the Trash.)
Kerika gives you Resources
The Resources column, the first in this workflow, contains six cards to help you get started:
Kerika provides you with resources
Video Tags: Tags are important as they help YouTube algorithms understand what your video is about. This influences when your video appears in search results.
Video Description Template: one of the most important things you can do is create descriptive, keyword-rich video titles and descriptions. This will help your videos rank higher in search results and give your audience a better idea of what your video is actually about.
Video Thumbnail Template: Your thumbnail is what appears first on your YouTube channel and in the search results, so it needs to be eye-catching and representative of your video content.
How To Edit YouTube Videos Quickly: All successful YouTubers put a lot of time and effort into their editing because that is what helps them stand out from the crowd. This card has useful links, including some of the best video editing tools.
The Easiest Way To Write A Video Script: Writing a video script for YouTube can be as easy or as difficult as you make it. If you have a clear idea of what you want to say and how you want to say it, the process can be relatively straightforward.
10+ Places To Share Your Video For More Views: Sharing your videos on other platforms lets you borrow their audience and show your content to people who might not have found it otherwise. This helps get more views and subscribers on your channel, which leads to more success on YouTube.
Start Generating Content Ideas
The second column is Content Ideas and it contains five cards:
How to Generate Video Ideas: content ideas are the basis for your YouTube videos, and without a clear idea, it is hard to plan, make, and edit videos that are engaging and effective.
This card will help you generate good video ideas. It gives you useful resources and a list of content ideas that you can use for your videos.
Your Video Ideas: Use this card to keep a list of video content ideas. Remember, no idea is too specific or too vague! Refer to this card when you need a content idea to work on.
Example Video (DUPLICATE THIS): This card will come in handy while writing your video script: it contains a template for writing content that you can duplicate for each of your content ideas and a checklist that divides the script writing process into smaller tasks.
(Example) Video Idea: Latest Smartphone Review is an example of a video idea that discusses the latest smartphones. This video needs a script to educate the viewers about the pros and cons of the latest smartphones launched this year.
(Example) Video idea: How to create a successful advertising campaign is another example of a video with tips on how to create an advertising campaign:
Create Video Scripts
This column contains two cards:
Create Video Scripts
The first card will save you time by giving you a ready-made format for scripts. It offers a clear and consistent structure for you to follow, which can help organize your script ideas and ensure that you tell the story in the most compelling way possible.
The card also includes guidelines for things like video titles, introduction, body, conclusion, and call to action. It will help you follow industry-standard conventions and make it easy for you to read and follow later on.
The second card will help you write a script that keeps your audience interested and engaged in your content, and this card shares some of the most useful tips to help you with it.
Record & Edit Videos
This column contains two cards:
Record & Edit Videos
The first card helps you understand keyword optimization, which is an important aspect of creating and promoting YouTube videos.This will increase the number of views on your videos, ultimately leading to more engagement.
The second card has useful tips to improve the overall quality of your videos and make them more professional-looking.This will increase the chances that viewers will watch your videos all the way through and even share them with others. Overall, video editing is an important part of creating successful videos on YouTube.
Review Videos
As videos are ready, drag the video card here and assign them to the folks who will be reviewing them, and change the status of the card to NEEDS REVIEW. If you need feedback by a certain date, set the Due Date on this card so people understand its urgency relative to everything else that’s going on.
Schedule & Publish Videos
When a video is ready to be scheduled for publication, move its card here. This makes it easy for everyone to know what the publishing queue looks like.
Finally, Promote Your Video
When you promote your videos, you are essentially making people aware of its existence and inviting them to visit and subscribe. This can help attract more viewers and subscribers, which can in turn help your channel grow and become more successful.
We have some tips for you in this template.
Tips for Promoting Videos
Like what you just read?
Here’s the template: just one click, one the USE TEMPLATE button, will set you up with a new Kerika account and your first board, in just seconds.
Click to view this Template
You can try everything free, with your entire team, for 30 days.
From the moment a new hire walks in the door, they start forming opinions about your company culture, their role within the organization, and what it will be like to work for you. That’s why when it comes to hiring new employees, first impressions matter.
When done correctly, on-boarding can help new hires feel welcome, valued, and prepared to do their best work. But when done poorly, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. Here are a few tips to help make your on-boarding process as smooth as possible:
1. Start with the background check
Before you bring a new employee on board, it’s important to run a background check. This will help you verify that the person is who they say they are and that they don’t have any red flags in their past that could negatively impact your business.
A background check can also give you peace of mind that you’re making the best hiring decision possible. To know about a candidate, you need a process that ensures the new employee is the right fit for the job. Check out how this company conducts a background check for its new employees.
Click to view this live board
Check one business reference
When it comes to bringing on new employees, it’s important to do your due diligence and check their business references. This will help you get a better sense of their work ethic and what they’re capable of.
Check one business reference
Check one personal reference
Personal references can give you valuable insights into an applicant’s character, work ethic and overall suitability for the job. They can also alert you to any red flags that might not be apparent from their resume or cover letter.
Asking for personal references is a simple but effective way to screen applicants and make sure you’re making the best possible hiring decision.
Check one personal reference
Check applicant’s resume/CV for completeness & accuracy
While on-boarding a new employee, it’s important to check their resume or CV for completeness and accuracy. This will help you ensure that there are no discrepancies in their work history.
If you find any inaccuracies, be sure to follow up with the employee to get clarification. It’s also a good idea to run a background check to verify the information on the resume. By taking these precautions, you can help ensure a successful on-boarding process for your new employee.
Check applicant’s CV for completeness & accuracy
Confirm that applicant has all claimed academic & professional qualifications
It’s always a good idea to confirm that an applicant has all of the claimed academic and professional qualifications before onboarding a new employee. This can help ensure that the individual is qualified for the role and can help avoid any potential issues down the road.
There are a few ways to go about doing this, such as contacting references or requesting transcripts. Take the time to do your due diligence and it will pay off in the long run.
Confirm that applicant has all claimed academic & professional qualifications
Credit Checks
Credit checks are an important part of the onboarding process for new employees. They help employers to verify an applicant’s identity and to ensure that the person is who they say they are. Credit checks also help to determine an applicant’s financial stability and to assess their risk of defaulting on their financial obligations.
(Optional) Credit Checks
2. Get the necessary paperwork
Make sure you have all the necessary paperwork in order before the new employee starts. Here is a good example of how a US-based company collects all the necessary paperwork upfront from a new employee. The paperwork includes the W-4 form to calculate taxes, the I-9: form to verify the employee’s identity and eligibility to work in the US, the direct deposit form, and the employee handbook acknowledgment.
Complete the necessary paperwork
3. Set clear expectations from the start.
New employees should know what is expected of them in their new role, and the best way to do this is to set up an Orientation Program and Schedule mandatory training sessions.
Orientation Program
The Orientation Program is a great opportunity for employees to learn more about their role, and ask questions and get to know their colleagues.
For the Orientation Program to go smoothly, choose a date and time that work for both you and the employee. You’ll want to make sure the program is informative and engaging. If your new employee feels welcomed and comfortable, they’ll be more likely to hit the ground running and be productive from day one.
Schedule Orientation Program
Schedule mandatory training sessions
Training sessions for compliance and regulation are important for several reasons. First, they ensure that new employees understand the company’s policies and procedures from the day one.
Second, they help to ensure that employees are up-to-date on any changes in the law that may affect their job.
Finally, training sessions provide an opportunity for employees to ask questions and get clarification on any points that are unclear.
Schedule mandatory training sessions
4. Make sure they have all the information about their team and department.
New employees should feel informed about their role, the company, and the team they’ll be working with. In the following example, the HR has organized a team lunch. This is a great to way to introduce a new employee, this gives a employees get to know each other well.
The department is also getting introduced to the new employee, and this is just as important. So a formal announcement about the new employee, helps existing employee know them better.
Prepare departmental announcement
And last, but not least, don’t forget a Team Lunch on Day One!
An Account Owners can now designate other members of their Account Team to be Account Admins, which will allow these people to also manage the subscriptions and membership of that account. This can help where the actual ownership of the Kerika account is someone from outside the user community, like a purchasing department.
Managing Account Admins can be done from the Manage Account screen, by the Account Owner:
Manage Account screen
Once you are in the Manage Users screen, select one of the Team Members on the account:
In the Team Member details dialog, select TAKE ACTION:
And select Make this user an Account Admin:
There’s a confirmation step, since Account Admins have tremendous power over the Account:
Confirmation Step
And your new Account Admin is set up:
Account Admin Added
An Account Admin can set up other Team Members from that Account to also be Account Admins.
Account Admins have a lot of power over the Account; they can:
We have redesigned the Task/Card details dialog to provide a more space-efficient layout, so you can see more of what you need without having to scroll:
Task Details
What used to be vertical tabs for Details, Chat, etc., is now a compact horizontal tab; this frees up a lot of space to see the details of the tags.
The other big change we made is to make the Priority setting separate from other Tags:
Task Priority flag
Clicking on the star will bring up your task priority options:
A long (45 minutes) video of the presentation that Arun Kumar, CEO of Kerika, made at the Lean Transformation Conference last October, anticipating the need for accommodating remote and virtual teams.
We have made some improvements to the process that guides new users when they sign up, so they can join the accounts of coworkers they might need to work with.
The new process works like this:
When a user signs in (with a Google ID, Box ID, or their email), Kerika examines the email address associated with that user and compares it against other users who are already registered.
If it finds that other users from the same domain are already active Kerika users, it offers the new user the option of joining a colleague’s account or starting an entirely new account.
In most cases, people are better off joining accounts that have already been established by their coworkers, so they can find the most relevant Kerika boards.
Kerika tries to be smart about this in a couple of ways:
First, it rules out free domains, like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook. (There’s a long list of free domains that we check against.) With free domains, there could be thousands of other users who have similar emails but no connection with you.
So if you sign up with a free email, you won’t be offered the possibility of joining an existing account. (Of course, an existing Gmail user could invite you to join their teams; it’s just that Kerika doesn’t suggest these connections.)
Having winnowed out the free domains, Kerika then considers whether the older accounts from the same domain as the new user can actually accommodate new people: do they have free subscriptions available that could be used by the new user?
If the older accounts are still in the Free Trial phase, then the answer will be Yes: trial users can have unlimited Team Members .
If the older accounts are tagged as Academic/Nonprofit, there’s a good chance they can accommodate new users.
If the older accounts are Professional Accounts, the chances are much lower — unless the older account had bought a few extra subscriptions in advance to accommodate this scenario.
Having further narrowed down the list of potential accounts, Kerika considers whether your potential coworkers are, in fact, active users of Kerika. This is important in universities, for example, that have been whitelisted so that everyone joining up from a particular university automatically gets a free Academic Account.
From University of Washington, for example, there are thousands of registered free accounts, set up over the past several years. Not all are still active because the students involved may have graduated already. So even though an account may have free/unused subscriptions, it doesn’t make sense to suggest that to a new user if that account has been dormant for more than a month.
After all this we could still end up with a large set of potential list of collaborators, particularly in large organizations.
So, as the final step, we check the “last active time” of our candidate accounts and then present the 8 most recently active accounts. Our rationale is that a new user may want to join the most recently active account, which perhaps belongs to a fellow user who had suggested the new user sign up for Kerika.
All of this takes place in a fraction of a second, of course, so users don’t experience any wait times. But it helps new users orient themselves within Kerika by trying to connect them to the most likely coworkers.
At this year’s Lean Transformation Conference in Tacoma, Washington, Arun Kumar spoke on the subject of “Virtual Teams: How to Make Them Succeed”.
A synopsis of the presentation:
Virtual teams can be as successful, even more so, than traditional (collocated) teams – but you need to understand how the project dynamics change when everyone can’t be in the same room at the same time. In this session we will cover the key success factors to building a high-performing virtual teams: how you can plan your work, run your daily standups, communicate, and share content. We will discuss the different roles and expectations of Project Leaders, Team Members and Visitors, and how people can juggle multiple projects at the same time.
The presentation was an hour-long, including Q&A; here’s an edited version of the talk (about 45 minutes long.)
One of our users had a problem recently when they mis-typed an email address while adding someone to a Board Team: the mistake was essentially a typo of “.com”
The user didn’t notice their error, but our system did: when Kerika tried to send the email invitation to the mis-typed address, the email bounced (naturally).
And while the user didn’t notice or complain, we want help our users avoid these mistakes by including some email checking when someone is being added to a Board Team.
Kerika now tries to see if the email address looks incomplete or malformed, and alerts you if you made a typo.
Visitors don’t count, and no one is double-counted: if the same person is working on several boards owned by your Account, that person is counted just once.
We have made it a little easier to manage your Account Team, by making the menu option for this screen a little more prominent:
Manage My Users
This feature is part of the Manage My Account function, but given the fact that this is one of the most important and commonly used features in accounts, we wanted to make this easier to find and access.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're OK with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
