I attended a killer YouTube tutorial put on by their upper brass and some of their biggest stars here in Nashville recently. I learned the 10 fundamentals for creating a viral YouTube series.
Why YouTube?
Look, YouTube is the new MTV only without the guaranteed audience.
But the REACH is there and it’s bigger than MTV’s ever was.
In plain English that means any artist has access to BILLIONS of consumers, you just need to crack the code for getting them to find you and care about you.
Think about the reach possibilities for a second. One of the speakers at this tutorial was part of a comedy team that had a channel with 1 BILLION views.
1 BILLION!!
The opportunity and availability is there you just have to learn to reach out.
People, this is an incredible exposure mechanism for your music! You can target your audience via social media and use these platforms to drive traffic to your YouTube channel and grow your subscribership.
There are many people who make a living just off of YouTube, btw.
There are many artists like Noah, Karmin, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis who broke their careers wide open on YouTube.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis won Best New Artist at the 2014 Grammy’s for crying out loud!
What more do you need to know?
Why aren’t you working every day to find a way to win on this amazing platform?
Gone are the days of the “One-Hit Wonder” viral video.
FYI, it should be noted that gone are the days of a “1-hit wonder†viral video. If your strategy is to create or hope to create one video that will go viral you have already failed.
Success on your YouTube channel is like everything else in your life.
It requires consistency.
Consistency builds the foundation for ever increasing views and subscribership. Then you get your viral video.
Here are the 10 fundamentals of creating a viral series on YouTube.
It should be said that it isn’t necessary to have EVERY one of these fundamentals on every video but you want to constantly be thinking of ways to improve by checking this list often.
- Shareability – The content has to give consumers a reason to share it. Some things that make a video shareable are if they’re
- Funny
- Relatable (remember the video of the woman who filmed herself walking through NYC for one day?)
- Topical
- Practical with practical value (or be valuable) like life hacks, advice, tutorials, etc.
- Conversational – Creating conversational tones to your video posts is clutch
with regards to connecting with your audience. A couple ways to make your video conversational are:
- Responding directly to your fans via comments
- Mentioning your fans by name in the comments and/or video posts
- Talking directly to them on the video is hugely important.
- Treat the tone like a Snapchat or Instagram vid that you send to your friends
- Think of your fans as friends
- Interactivity – finding clever ways to spur interactivity gets your audience involved. I’ll bet you do this every performance. Like when you try to get the audience to sing along, to clap along, or divide the crowd to see who can yell the loudest. Here are some ideas
- Always be thinking “How can we involve the fans?†if you think it enough the answers will come. Your subconscious will reward you.
- Ask Questions!
- Tell them to comment on the video or via social media platforms.
- HINT: when we are working with our artists we ask questions in social media as well and send them to YouTube to see the answers and here their shout outs.
- Consistency – All social media platforms are about consistency and YouTube is no
different. There are several different kinds of consistency as well like;
- Schedule – From a consumer point of view, just think about a TV series you got obsessed with and then missed a few episodes (for whatever reason). Then you learned that your life was absolutely fine without watching it. You DON’T want your fans on your YouTube channel to be thinking this, do you?
- Personality – Keeping a consistent personality type is key so I strongly advise for you to be YOU, unless you are creating a character of sorts like Earl Dibbles Jr. or Miranda Sings (notice even when they’re doing characters they are consistent).
- Format – keeping a similar consistent format helps your fans recognize what they liked before AND why change it if it’s working? For instance, there is a huge channel of some guy from South America who does heavy metal guitar covers of the latest big YouTube hits. He is ALWAYS in front of the same crappy wall playing the same guitar. It’s
totally recognizable. - Style and Voice – If your posts are funny and thought provoking I don’t recommend switching to heavy topical content like religion or politics.
- Targeting – Make sure you are targeting a clearly defined audience. I think this would be a good exercise for many of you because y’all could stand to do some of that with your music projects too, not for nothing. Additionally, targeting your channel in the right genres, topics, sub topics, etc.
- Sustainability – this is big y’all. When I was at this YouTube tutorial, they had
several pro “YouTubers†speak. Every one of them said if they couldn’t shoot 3 episodes in an afternoon they would move on to the next idea. You have to make sure that your vision is doable on a consistent basis. If it’s too complicated it will not be sustainable and you will fall off; so will your audience. In plain English, if they like it can you easily make more? - Discoverability – In other words, is your video findable? Here is the main reason for lyric videos in the music business, y’all. Meta data has to be done intentionally and intelligently to optimize your video’s performance. For instance, if you are doing a video for a cover song list the song name first in the title, then the artist name, then your name. HINT: once you are aware of what needs to be done a ton of information on “how to†is available simply by looking at other videos. Now you know what to look for.
- Accessibility – Can every episode be appreciated by a brand new viewer? Essentially,
there needs to be some kind of quick, standard opening that tells a new viewer what you are about. This strategy makes each video more accessible. - Collaboration – As you grow your channel’s subscribership, collaborations are encouraged by YouTube. Find another artist using YouTube and collaborate with them on something, you will definitely glean some of their followers and get more views.
Look for a guest star or a YouTube star to get that going. - Authenticity – Don’t show a video of your white face stating you’re a black man/woman. This is funny but if authenticity is absent the consumers will know like a dog can smell fear. Another sure fire way to ensure authenticity is do what you know. They tell songwriters to write what you know, so shoot what you know on YouTube. That will keep you authentic.
YouTube is you on TV with access to billions of people if you just put together the right formula with a ton of hard work.
Don’t be misled, there is no one magic formula that is going to skyrocket you to success with YouTube.
Consistent, intelligent work will grow your audience.
Right now, to most of you, the secrets of unlocking the power of YouTube are very foreign.
So was tying your shoelaces at one point.
You’ll figure it out, man, but you have to do the work. The answers won’t magically come to you.
I’ll leave you with an old Chinese Proverb: The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is RIGHT NOW.
FYI you can find a bunch of this information at YouTube’s creator hub here:
We offered a FREE seminar that covered a bunch of this last week. Â If you missed it you can see it below.
Once you digest this, join our bootcamp to really dig down and learn how to create revenue doing what you were born to do
FYI, this is a BETA bootcamp so we are only taking a limited amount of attendees to ensure we give proper attention to everyone.
Sign up for the bootcamp here:Â http://www.JoinOnlineTraining.
Stay
In
Tune
Â
If you like this post, please SHARE it and/or LEAVE A COMMENT thank you!
[ois skin=”Bottom Post”]
Â
