The number one problem I’ve heard from fellow students in the video production emphasis, and from other filmmakers and content creators across the nation and over in Europe, is that audio for film just isn’t being taught. Or if it is being taught the information is basic, shallow, and usually has incorrect application. For something that’s 50% of a filmmaker’s or content creator’s story this has always bothered me.
So for my senior project I chose to finally launch a brand that I’ve been wanting to start for a while. Post Audio for Media, a brand that focuses on helping filmmakers and content creators learn more about post audio production to help improve their stories!
Post Audio for Media
Most information out there about post audio production for films, social media, podcasts, and other media content just isn’t good enough. This is a need I’ve been noticing for the past few years on social media, YouTube, and other platforms.
The information that is out there has mostly been created by filmmakers. And while there isn’t necessarily a problem with them wanting to help others learn what they’ve struggled to understand, from a trained audio engineer’s perspective, it’s just not correct, or it’s half-truth.
I’ve been working in the audio field for close to a decade at this point. Half of that time doing my best to self-learn like so many others and the other half professionally with mentors and as a student employee for BYU – Idaho. I currently work as a full time employee for BYU – Idaho as one of their live audio engineers. All that to say, audio is my life. I’m lucky enough to be well trained and experienced to be able to confidently teach what’s been lacking for so many other creators.
And that was the main goal with this project. Of course I wanted to launch my brand to help gain more authority in the industry and to land clients, but possibly just as important I wanted to create a place where creators can learn about post audio production from a reliable source.
Planning the Brand
Before being able to launch the brand there was a LOT I had to plan. People often underestimate how much work it takes to launch a brand successfully. There was a ton I had to learn, re-learn, and figure out.
So the first thing I did was create a Brand Binder. Also known as a Corporate Binder, this handy tool was essential in organizing my thoughts. I created a simple graphic on Canva of my sales funnel to help me plan out what the goals and purposes were, listed out every graphic, video, and audio template I needed to create, made a content release calendar, and typed out workflow checklists when creating and uploading content so I wouldn’t forget a step.
I also needed to plan out what pieces of macro content I wanted to create per week. I decided on:
- 1 Blog Post
- 1 YouTube Video
- 1 Podcast
From there I would dice up the video content into micro pieces of content for Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, TikTok, Facebook shorts, and LinkedIn brand posts. Naturally, while planning all this out YouTube decided to do what social media always does…change.
Being Flexible
Out of all the lessons I’ve learned while doing this project, one of the biggest that stood out was the need for brands to be flexible.
A great example of this was with YouTube. While working on planning out the brand launch and creating all the templates and editing workflows, YouTube made a huge update by introducing Video Podcasts. Creators could now add any video they previously uploaded, or any future video, to a Podcast Playlist. That would then add a tab to your YouTube channel called “Podcast” where subscribers and visitors can visit to see a list of all video podcasts a creator has made.
So that completely changed the way I was planning on creating the podcast. Initially it was just going to be audio only hosted on Buzzsprout which would then launch it on Spotify, Apple, Google, and Amazon. But with this new change I decided to record a video of the podcast as well. This turned out to work incredibly well, especially for creating more micro content to put on shorts and reels.
The Brand Launch – Final Time Table
Overall, the estimated amount of hours I spent on this project was about 160.
- Website design with WordPress and Elementor Pro hosted on Siteground – 100 hours
- Brand planning, research, brand binder, email marketing setup on Brevo (formerly SendInBlue) – 15 hours
- Template planning and creation – 10 hours
- Video gear setup and workflow, OBS – 5 hours
- Social media platform setup, Metricool setup, Buzzsprout setup – 5 hours
- First round of content creation, template corrections, automation scheduling – 10 hours
- Website update to host YouTube video and podcast show-notes, analytic review from week 1 of posting, target audience research – 15 hours
The following are links to all current brand pages, website, and Spotify page where the podcast is currently hosted (I’m still working with Buzzsprout to get the podcast working on Apple, Google, and Amazon):
As I’ve looked over my analytics from this first week of posting towards the end of this project two things became clear: TikTok wasn’t performing and short form content is king.
I’ll be giving TikTok a few more weeks after batching a couple months worth of shorts the rest of this semester but unless its metrics improve it looks like I’ll have to drop it. This goes back to brands needing to be flexible. So far it looks like my target audience, filmmakers and content creators, aren’t using TikTok to learn about post audio production. And that’s fine! You don’t need to use every social platform out there to build a community around your brand.
Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook, however, showed great results after just one week of posting. This was a great boost of confidence that if I continue to provide quality content that my target audience is looking for, to fill that need, this brand can really grow into something special.
And even as small as these numbers seem, this effort has already paid off. I was able to land a $2000 contract for some work being filmed down in Utah that I’ll be editing the audio for in the coming weeks! It isn’t life changing money but it’s a strong proof of concept that content marketing works.
Legal
The voice over on the podcast was a service purchased from Will R. through Fiverr. The YouTube intro video template was licensed through Envato Elements. Both Will’s order receipt and the license from Envato are shown below.
