Vlogmas is such an interesting time of the year to watch YouTube. There’s new daily vlogs from your favorite content creators and sometimes it’s extremely difficult to keep up with the hours upon hours of content flooding the platform. The vlogs typically have a different cadence from the content creator’s normal posting schedule to accommodate the seasonal festivities. 

If you’ve never heard of the phenomenon, Vlogmas is when YouTubers post daily videos leading up to Christmas - usually December 1st through 25th. Popular video topics include holiday gift guides, winter makeup tutorials, baking recipes, DIY decorating, and shopping ideas among many others. 

The very first Vlogmas video was uploaded on December 2nd, 2011 by a beauty YouTuber named Ingrid Nilsen. She revolutionized the platform by introducing the idea of daily vlogs to showcase a creator’s life behind the camera. Since then, it’s grown into an annual trend enjoyed by millions worldwide. 

Some like to think of it as a fun video advent calendar, but there are some benefits to participating in the marathon before Christmas. First, more videos mean more exposure, likes, comments and subscribers to increase the growth of your channel. Second, because brands are vying for prime advertising space, you can earn a premium for any brand deals completed and posted during this period. And finally, it helps you be more creative and try new ideas that you wouldn’t have otherwise. 

Before we get too far into it, I’m always looking for new people to watch. Let me know in the comments who your favorite YouTuber is so I can check them out. 

It’s typically extremely difficult completing the 25 day challenge when you factor in the time it takes to film, edit, and actually post each video. It’s also difficult coming up with that many video ideas that are both engaging and entertaining to an audience. 

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe every content creator should participate in Vlogmas. I know, it sounds like I’m hating, but hear me out first. 

Some YouTubers struggle to produce a quality vlog every two to four weeks, so asking them to produce daily vlogs would be a stretch. For the ones that consistently produce weekly vlogs, seeing them suddenly dip into the daily content during December actually comes with some drawbacks. 

For starters, most of the long-haul vloggers have lots of skippable dead space in their hour and a half long videos. When they chop it up into daily segments, you realize just how much filler is actually included. Sometimes YouTubers will include conversations where the camera is pointed up to the sky, which is fine if it adds context and isn’t too drawn out, but more often than not, it usually makes for a poor viewing experience. 

Another drawback to posting daily videos is that they are usually shorter in duration and have less editing. I’m personally a big fan of edited content. I’d much rather watch something that’s fast paced, dynamic, and includes interesting effects than watching someone just turn on the camera and say a 20 minute monologue in one place. It takes skill and talent to transform ordinary footage into a complete body of work with humor and stylistic cues.  

More content doesn’t automatically translate into better content. Quality over quantity is the main theme here. While Vlogmas definitely promotes the idea of quantity, if the quality isn’t up to par, you could argue it’s not even worth stretching to meet that insane goal of posting for 25 days straight. 

Some creators start filming and editing content during the month of November to prepare for the sprint in December. While this is a great idea to get started, it’s very important not to date the videos. If content is extremely old (and the audience can blatantly tell), most people won’t actually click on it. I remember Kris and I stumbled across a recent video with footage from six months ago and we immediately turned it off. I can’t stress enough how incredibly important it is to keep your pre-recorded content timely and relevant. 

Producing quality content on a regular schedule should be the goal. Whether that’s posting every week, every two weeks, every month, or every two months, it’s important that the content is well thought out, there are no editing errors, and the topic itself isn’t lazy. This also generally means the longer you make your audience wait for each quality video, the less slack you’ll be granted if a video flops. 

Simply put, quality content includes videos that are unskippable, engaging, captivating, and interesting to a viewer. They usually have good music mixes, fun elements that pop up on the screen, and successfully provide just enough b-roll without going overboard. It’s already difficult to create on a normal basis, so the marathon of Vlogmas requires strong editing skills to produce high quality content in such a quick turnaround.

If you enjoyed this episode, let me know by giving this video a thumbs up, leaving a comment, and subscribing to my channel. I’ll see you in the next episode! 

Signed, 

Jessica Marie