So last week we started diving into the ins and outs of getting started on YouTube, with the guidance of BBTV’s own breakout YouTuber and Bachelor on a Budget star Marlon Doll. After covering the importance of finding your passion in what you create, and developing a branded identity from the get go in round-one of our series, today, Marlon is going to touch on three more questions you should be asking yourself as new voice in the YouTube marketplace:
How are you going to produce your videos?
Are you filming them yourself with a tripod or a webcam. Are your friends going to come over and help you film every time? Are you using a screen capturing software?
Don’t let not having high-end production equipment hold you back from producing high-end content! Start with the tools you have or can afford and progressively improve. Great content is being made right now from built-in webcams and phones, you don’t need to have a high-end DSLR or bring in a film crew to produce great content for YouTube.
Consistency is a huge factor in growing your fanbase, and producing great content takes time, energy, and often money. Figure out what you can realistically commit to and stick to that till you’re comfortable taking on more. For instance, I’ve committed to releasing one video per week, every Tuesday.
Having a full-time job, I realized I needed support with editing my videos, so I found an editor through Fiverr who edits my videos for a fair price. I made this decision because I wasn’t passionate about editing and knew I couldn’t commit to editing each video. I still have to provide lot’s of feedback, but we’ve established a great working relationship and the process gets smoother every video. It’s also a great way to have a valuable second opinion. I’m not saying you should go this route. Many people enjoy editing, especially as they get better at it. But having this support was key for me to be able to produce one video a week.
How will you be seen?
YouTube search is the number one way people find new videos. There are a few things Google looks at when ranking your video in the search results, including video performance, subscriber count, and metadata.
- Metadata for your video consists of the tags, title, description and even the closed captioning if you add that in. I’ve recently started paying someone on Fiverr to transcribe a few videos for $5 per video.
For Tags, you’ll want to try and maximize the character limit you can use and make sure they’re relevant to your videos. Relevant tags are extremely important. Say you use #pranks as a tag when your video is really a review for a memory foam mattress for dogs — then when new viewers click your video and leave quickly because it’s not the content they’re looking for, it negatively affects your ‘watch time’ and will lead to being ranked lower by Google.
It’s a good idea to write your description with some of your key tags weaved in naturally. Just make sure you don’t list off tags in the description as YouTube frowns upon this and it will affect your ranking.
Another method is to search for communities with similar interests and start providing value there. This has been critical to the 1000% subscriber growth I achieved in my first few weeks of posting my new channel series “Bachelor on a Budget”. I found communities such as Reddit’s /r/eatcheapandhealthy subreddit and started commenting and sharing other peoples videos that I thought was of value to the community. When my third video, a middle eastern breakfast recipe called Shakshouka, was shared there, it rose to the front page of the subreddit, and overnight brought thousands of viewers interested in my content. I was lucky and fortunate to have this early growth. I made sure to reply back to every single comment and since then I’ve been very lucky to have most of my videos go to the front page of r/eatcheapandhealthy. I should warn that Reddit has strict self-promotion policies and I suggest posting others content before any of your own. Posting any more than 10% of your own content can get you banned.
How Will You Build Raving Fans?
Who is going to watch your videos? What do they like to do? You’re going to want to make videos for your fans and create a community around your channel. Knowing who your audience is, and what they believe in will help you craft content that your fans will want to engage with and share. Chances are, your fans will be very similar to yourself, so what would you like to watch?
- Be consistent, not viral. Let your audience know when you’re going to post if you can so watching your videos becomes part of their routine.
- Don’t be boring! Your videos need to be entertaining and compel the user to stay watching your content as there are millions of other things to watch. What is it about what you’re doing that’s different from everyone else? What unique qualities can you instill in your content? For my channel, My schtick is healthy, cheap, and tasty recipes, that I’m confident my audience can make and will love.
- Commenting and interacting on other channels is a great way to build your audience. Don’t spam your channel link, but be conversational, and try to provide value to the conversation. Show yourself to be a leader and knowledgeable about your niche. This can be a great way to develop a relationship with other creators and influencers as well, and may lead to potential collaboration opportunities.
Remember, an essential part of getting people to subscribe is simply to ask them. At the end of your video, ask people to subscribe, communicate what they’re going to get by subscribing, and create a spotlight subscribe annotation that makes it simple for them to do so.
- An awesome trick to getting people to subscribe is by sending them to this Subscribe link: http://www.youtube.com/c/marlondoll?sub_confirmation=1
Just replace c/marlondoll with your custom channel url, or add “?sub_confirmation=1” to the end of your channel link. Then you can share this link with your social media followers, put it on your website, or when sending out relevant emails.
For more from Marlon, check out his Bachelor on a Budget series over on his channel.
Interested in joining up with BBTV and becoming a part of our thriving community full of talented creators? Join ranks with some of the best, and find out how we work to cross-promote and grow your followings through our exclusive VISO Catalyst technology! Click below for more on what YouTube Network Partnership with BBTV could mean for your channel.
