If there's a secret to success on YouTube, that's probably the secret, know
your audience.
Welcome to my YouTube Master Class on content strategy.
Today we're gonna be talking about identifying your niche, and your audience as well as
building out a unique visual brand that'll help you stand out in YouTube.
Something a lot of creators struggle with from time to time is finding their
unique voice and a style that helps them set themselves apart from other creators
that are doing similar things to them. If you've ever seen my channel you know
that I cover a variety of content. Some days it's gonna be Photoshop tutorials,
other days I'm going to be talking about how to build your personal brand, and on
some days I'm going to talk about how to build and grow your YouTube channel.
There was a real struggle at one point to figure out what was the unifying
theme behind my channel, and I figured out what it was. It was creative
entrepreneurship, because I am a creative entrepreneur. I've built a successful
career and businesses around my creativity. There are at least three
questions that I think most creators need to ask themselves when it comes to
developing the niche of their YouTube channel. Who are you trying to reach?
Everyone wants to build and grow an audience but who is likely to respond
well to the type of content you're gonna make? Be as specific as possible. If you
try to please everyone, you will please no one. What content are
you most excited about? What are you interested in? What is special to you?
What makes you wanna show up and create content each and every day, and then if
you know who you're making content for and those two things line up then that
is actually the secret, and that's what's gonna make people decide to watch and
subscribe to your channel, and to share it. You also need to understand why
you're making this content, and why someone would watch it. If you decide
that the audience you want to reach our gamers. People who are interested in
video games. Then you have to think about what type of video games you're
interested in, and realize that that's the audience that you're probably going
to end up reaching. And you have to be specific with this. It is
not enough to say "Oh, well I'm a gaming channel". You could be a channel that is
about retro video games, or specific genre video games, or about the character
psychology, or the plot, or story, or about the gaming industry, and that's gonna
reach a different audience than somebody who wants to play mobile video games
like candy crush or things of that nature. If you can make sure that your
content lines up with something very specific,
every time, that relates to the overall thing you're covering on your channel
then your channel will perform better. Once you have a very clearly defined
overarching theme for your channel, packaging and presenting it is going to
be very important. And this is where visual branding is one of your most
powerful things you could do for your channel overall. There are several
different visual elements that make up a youtube channel and it's important to
cover all of them when you're building out your visual branding. The one of the
most obvious ones it's gonna be your YouTube channel artwork. This is at the
top of your YouTube channel and it can help people understand what your channel
is about. Individual thumbnails help people kind of figure out what this
video is gonna be about as the thing that's gonna get clicks, that's gonna
lead to views. Also, try to make sure that if you're doing different types of
content let's say that sometimes you're doing a product review, other times you
might be doing a skit, or an education style video, make sure that you have
something that makes each of those videos unique from each other, so that
people kind of know what they're getting. Give those videos their own unique style
of thumbnails and theme that out, kind of like branding them all like their
individual shows on your channel. But it's not the only part of a YouTube
channel that matters when it comes to visuals. Your profile pic is something
that's important because there are lot of places that you're promoted in terms
of your YouTube channel including social media, and sometimes this shows up where
you least expect it. So make sure you have a really good
profile picture associated to your YouTube channel. And remember that this
also shows up in all the YouTube videos that you comment on, so that could
actually entice people to come and watch your channel. When I decided I really wanted
my brand to stand out, I actually commissioned an artist Joshua
Pomeroy to make a caricature of me. A mini Roberto avatar that could put in my
thumbnails that would make it unique and help me stand out. And it turned out
really great. Not everybody can afford to do this, but you'd be surprised how
accessible something like this could be if you shop around, or if you make
friends with somebody who could actually do this type of artwork for you. I hope
you guys enjoyed today's Master Class on content strategy and make sure you're
checking out the other Master Class episodes in this series.
As always thank you so much for watching, and I'll catch you guys on the next episode. Take care.