All right.
This video is for YouTube creators.
I wanna make this video exclusively for you.
My name is Derek Johnson from tatango.com.
We are a mass text messaging platform, and I've been watching YouTube creators like Casey
Neistat, Philip DeFranco.
And a lot of the conversation is about...and a lot of frustration with YouTube as a creator
is the alert system.
So essentially when you go to a YouTube channel, you can select to be notified and then you
can kind of be super notified and get an alert every single time.
But a lot of the confusion and frustration with YouTube has been if a consumer says,
a user of YouTube says, "Yes, I wanna be alerted of this, and I wanna be alerted every single
time, and I'm gonna check that little bell.
I'm gonna click the button and subscribe."
Well, YouTube has been very, very vague as to...does actually those alerts go to everybody
at the same time?
Does it go to everybody?
Maybe they're...if you subscribed way back in the day, you haven't watched their videos
in a long time.
Is it just annoying?
So they're kind of reducing the amount of alerts you see, and that's frustrating a lot
of YouTube creators and rightfully so.
I get it.
We have a YouTube channel so I get it.
But one thing I want to kind of put out there, and again, I don't care what platform you
use.
I just wanna kind of help the YouTube community because I know they've helped me a bunch,
is I think a lot of YouTube creators should be looking into alerting their fans via text
message of new videos.
So here's why.
And let me walk through kind of process of how a fan would I guess opt-in to receive
alerts from a YouTube creator.
So, essentially, in our industry, we use things called keywords.
You see them at Chipotle, Macy's, Kohl's, things of that nature.
So I would use a keyword like join, and that would be unique to your brand or your YouTube
channel.
And you would say, you know, "Text join to a shortcode," and a shortcode is like a five
or six-digit phone number.
So let's just say, for example, one, two, three, four, five.
So, your fans would text join to one, two, three, four, five to opt-in.
Now, text message marketing, unlike email marketing, is a strict opt-in process.
So you can't just get people's phone numbers and then kind of throw them in a list and
upload them.
It has to be a strict opt-in because we have federal laws.
You can search about the TCPA.
It's a whole thing.
Just know you have to have people opt-in.
And that is why text message marketing has a 99% open rate.
And what's crazier is 90% of text messages are opened within three minutes.
So I'm gonna touch on that in a little second here because you can kinda do some YouTube
growth hacking also with text message marketing.
So what I like about text message marketing is you control the alert system.
So with YouTube, they can screw with the algorithm and they can change things and they can alert
half the people or not half the people.
You have no control.
With text message marketing because you have that strict opt-in, you have complete control
of when you send a message and with 99% open rates and essentially 100% delivery rates,
especially people are opting in, you know that that message is being seen by your fans
as a YouTube creator.
So, that's kind of the first piece.
Then the second piece, which I find really interesting.
And I know when you're a YouTube creator, there's a lot of things about velocity, so
how many people are watching a video, when they're watching, and kind of the trend line.
And YouTube really use that to determine what videos rank and how they rank and things of
that nature.
I'm not a YouTube expert.
Trust me.
I'm text messaging expert.
So if you have text messaging questions, let me know.
But I think I'm dangerous enough that I am a little dangerous.
So, with the velocity, what's interesting about text message marketing is you get to
decide how fast the messages go out.
So if you're a YouTube creator and you have a lot of subscribers, let's say millions of
subscribers in the United States, well, you, especially with 90% of text messages being
opened within three minutes, you're essentially dictating when consumers open it by when you
send it.
So if you want to have...let's say you have a million phone numbers and you wanna send
a message out to those million people.
Well, you can send those out at a rate of 200, 300 per second and just get them real
out there real quickly.
90% are opened in three minutes.
So people are gonna open the message, click on the video, and then you get a huge amount
of views right away, like within the first five or 10 minutes.
You get a huge spike in your viewership.
That's one option.
But because you know that 90% of text messages are opened within three minutes, the other
option is you could delay messages essentially.
I don't know if you can figure out kind of what the algorithm looks like for YouTube
or what they like in terms of velocity.
Maybe they like it starting out slow and kind of ramping up and then going really supernova.
Well, what you could do with text message marketing is essentially drip your messages
out slowly, so slowly, slowly, slowly, and increase the amount of messages you're sending
per second until the very end where you're sending 200, 300 messages a second and you're
driving a lot of traffic to your videos.
Also, everybody knows right now everybody's watching the videos on their mobile phone,
so great opportunity to ping them on their mobile phone when they're on the bus, when
they're in the car, hopefully, as a passenger.
But it is a great opportunity because all they need to do is just literally get the
text message.
There'll be a link in the text message, and they just click it and it would open up the
YouTube app or it would open up a web browser and essentially they can watch it right on
their phone.
Also, I don't even know if YouTube values mobile watches more than desktop watches,
but that could be also played into the algorithm.
With an SMS you most of the time, unless they're using iMessage on their computer, you know
that they're actually watching it on their mobile phone.
So anyway, I wanted to make this video.
I'm not trying to get business from anybody.
We usually deal with kind of the more the enterprise brands, so retail restaurants and
big million person subscriber list.
But I've been watching a lot of YouTube creators kind of complain and show their frustration
about a lot of these issues, and I'm like, "Man, our software...this is exactly what
we do and this is exactly why brands use our software."
Maybe I can just help them out and at least point them in the right direction to text
message marketing.
There's a lot of, if you're a smaller creator, there's a lot of smaller SMS providers out
there.
You can search like mass text messaging and you can find them.
But I just think it would be a great opportunity for YouTube creators to essentially take control
of the alerts and take control back of the alerts, rather than giving it to Google because
they make the decisions and they're gonna make the decisions a lot of times without
your input or feedback.
And that could affect your business or your channel.
Where text messaging with that 99% open rate, 100% delivery, you have all of the control
of when people get to see your message.
I'm sorry.
I just think it's a huge, powerful tool, and I wanted to just make sure YouTube creators
were aware of it and thinking about it because I just think it would work.
And if there are YouTube creators out there, you have questions, let me know in the comments.
I would love to help you guys.
Let me know also if you have questions about text message marketing.
That's what we do here Tatango.
Subscribe to our blog if you really wanna know...sorry, YouTube channel or blog is good
too, but subscribe to our YouTube channel if you wanna keep up on text message marketing
and you wanna really take it to the next level.
But I think most YouTube creators, they should just be able to kind of create a keyword,
build a list, and then message out every single day or every week whenever you're kind of
filming and publishing your videos.
So again, my name is Derek Johnson with tatango.com.
Leave a comment.
If you have any questions, I'm definitely willing to answer, and hopefully, everybody
has a great day.
Thanks, YouTube.