Everything That’s Broken About Video Content Planning: Our Survey of Creators

We're currently prototyping a video planning web app. Central to this work has been talking to video creators and using their feedback to guide functionality.

We started gathering feedback about creator workflows last year—specifically, about planning and pre-production. We had already learned from our own experience that while there's no shortage of apps for video post-production, it's a ghost town for pre-production tools.

Earlier this month we posted about it on Reddit: "We asked YouTubers how they plan their content. Here's where the answers led us"

The response to the post was eye-opening: video content producers have been pushed into using broken, disorganized workflows cobbled together from business apps and "productivity" tools—because no dedicated tool exists for the creative workflow.

It’s a 65-million-strong workforce that has normalized using tools that were never designed for planning entertainment content.

There’s real frustration.

We studied the feedback closely and engaged with creators to really understand their pain points (and their wishlists). From this, we focused on a plan for the app’s functionality and features.

First, their biggest frustrations:

"too many tools", no universal app/platform, "not all-in-one"
Disorganization. ie. managing content/media files across multiple apps
"Content overload" and burnout, repetitive tasks
No accessible/central workspace, for "phone / tablet / laptop"
Tracking/categorizing ideas and media is tedious, there's no tagging system
Planning, creating scripts/outlines, creating metadata, marketing/promo content
Finding ideas/topics
Some tools/services are expensive

We asked about workflow bottlenecks and what's missing from current tools:

No "simple workflow", no planning workspace "to see the bigger picture easily and breaking it down into steps"
No ideas manager/content organizer
Not enough user-friendly templates
No AI tools specific to creating videos
Limited/clunky collaboration features. Ie. sharing ideas/scripts/media files that are up-to-date. No integrated feedback for teams

Lastly, we got feedback on presenting/shooting:

"Sticking to a script"/"lack of script", rambling/going off-topic, missing talking points
Having easy talking points visible when filming hands-on content
Nerves/awkward/no confidence
Switchable teleprompter, voice-activated scrolling

There's more feedback coming in every day (quick survey on our site showshaper.com/feedback) but this is already a solid picture of what creators want.