I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE HERE.
underknown: origins of food
After working as a writer and editor for Underknown,
a social-first entertainment company, for a little over a year and a half, I was given the opportunity to lead a new channel for the brand: Origins of Food.
The Goal: Take the show concept from the development team and turn it into a performing product with a dedicated team and a steady flow of content.
Running this show from its infancy required me to be adaptive. In the beginning, I had to continue to write and edit content as I hired and trained my freelance team. As my team filled out, I was able to dedicate more time to ideation - looking at trends, running topics through VidIQ, researching, and learning from the show’s analytics on YouTube and Facebook. I made several small changes early on that had a huge impact. First, I requested a change in the format of the research brief which was adopted from other channels. After changing the brief using my suggestions, my writers were getting the info they needed and creating better stories. Second, I created an in-depth guide to editing the show. I included where to find sources, how to properly attribute sources, which graphics to use, when to use them, and how to best build out each video. I also included any tips and tricks I had learned from over a year of editing similar content.
My management style was servant-leadership. I monitored schedules and checked in if things seemed stuck, I was always available for communication, I provided intentional and actionable feedback, and I helped my editors by sourcing relevant footage. I was proactive about schedule and time management and made sure I did not overload my freelancers, while also respecting the amount of work they expected.
The combination of the training resources I created, my management style, and my relentless ideation and development led to a gain of 4.1k subscribers on YouTube with 8.1k watch hours in just six months. On Facebook, the show reached 9.8 million people with 11.3 million minutes viewed over the same period of time. On the operations side, my team overperformed, often creating 20 mid-form videos per month (with a quota of 16) and built up a great content library.
