- The best way to grow your YouTube channel
is to develop a content strategy
that will help you meet your goals on the platform.
What is a content strategy?
It's simply the plan, the route, the path
that you'll take with your videos
that will get you to the destination you'd like to reach.
There's a lotta different content strategies
that make sense for different kinds of goals,
audiences, personalities, creators, budgets, et cetera,
but there's two foundational things
you need to decide first.
One, who is my target audience?
And two, why should they care?
In order to make any content strategy work,
it needs to resonate with a specific audience,
not a general audience of people on the internet.
You'll never strike an emotional chord
with generic videos for a generic audience.
Like, what is your value proposition?
What value do you propose to deliver
to your target audience through your videos?
After that, when I work with clients,
I typically break down their YouTube strategy
into four main areas.
First of all, you need to have discoverable videos.
These are videos that are designed specifically
to go out and get a new audience
and introduce them to your channel.
When you make these videos,
the primary audience are people
who have never heard of you before.
They found your video through search or suggested videos,
and they click because the title and thumbnail
creates a story or a value that's of interest to them.
They have no idea who you are yet,
what your channel's about,
so this video is designed to hook that brand new viewer
and introduce them to the value
you provide through your channel
and convert that viewer into a subscriber.
You also need community videos.
Now, these are videos that are designed
to build a relationship with your existing audience.
These videos are not intended
to go big and get a lotta views.
They're just for your subscriber base
and people who already know who you are,
what you're about, and they have indicated
that they want to see more from you.
They're primarily finding these videos
in their subscription feed on YouTube,
and after a week or two,
most of the traffic to these videos has probably died down
as newer videos have entered their feed.
But that's okay because the goal of the community videos
is to grow the know, like, and trust factors
with your existing audience.
It's to deepen how well your community knows you,
likes you, and trusts you.
It's also important to have what I call big videos,
and the big videos, these are the videos
that you make to generate a lot of buzz
in your niche or in your industry.
Typically, the audience here are people
who are not actively involved in your niche on YouTube,
but they are active on other publications in your field,
whether that be blogs, forums, Reddit, Facebook Groups,
maybe traditional media outlets like television,
radio, magazines, or something else.
With big content, you're spending a lot of time
generating hype for the video
among your community with teasers.
You're seeding it early to bloggers and media outlets.
You're setting aside maybe a promotional budget
to help promote this thing.
You're growing a list of influencers
who are committing to help you
push this video when you launch it,
and the whole goal for when it launches
is to get as much attention as possible in your field.
It's a lot of work to pull this off well,
so I don't really recommend doing this
more than maybe once, maybe two times a year.
But if you do it well, you can really set yourself
as a leading authority in your niche
and get a lot of exposure for your channel.
You also need to have sales videos.
These are the videos that make it possible
for you to continue investing into your videos,
your community, and the message that you're spreading.
Whether you realize it or not,
almost everyone has sales on their channel.
It's either through the advertisements
that run against your videos on YouTube
or someone else is selling to your audience,
or it's brand deals where you're selling
someone else's product to your audience,
or it's sales for your own products that you pitch and sell.
However you slice it, however you wanna cut it (laughs),
your viewers are either paying
the advertiser on your channel,
your sponsor, or you directly.
It's because of the sales videos
that the message you're spreading
and the value you're providing can be sustainable longterm
and even allow you to provide the value
in bigger ways than you otherwise could.
Now, the biggest mistake most creators make
is trying to accomplish all of these things
in every video.
When you try to make a lot of general videos
all designed to accomplish general goals
or even designed to accomplish too many specific goals,
the video ends up not being very effective
at accomplishing any of them.
So instead, consider making videos
that are more strategically positioned
to accomplish a primary goal
that moves you along the path toward your destination.
Have a primary objective for each video,
whether it be a discoverable video,
a community video, a big video,
or a sales video, and do it well.
Here's a test for you: Which area does this video,
this video right here that you're watching right now,
which area does it fall into?
Comment below and let me know how this video
is a part of my content strategy
for growing my channel (laughs),
and if this is your first time here,
I would love to have you subscribe.
We're just all about helping you guys
grow your YouTube audience.
You can spread a message that reaches people
and changes their lives.
So subscribe and I'll see you guys again on Tuesday.
See you then, bye.