- Alright, listen up.
This is important.
First round of the final of the second leg
of the YouTube Cup Final.
We're gonna play a shotgun formation
with a nickel and dime on the top here,
outputting to the subscriber count.
We've got likes and dislikes playing on substitutions,
and then suggested videos playing
a long ball to monetization,
which will hopefully play the offside trap
to the notification bell.
Did you get all that?
- [Robotic Male Voice] vidIQ - [Robotic Female Voice] vidIQ
- [Man Whispering] vidIQ.com
(funky guitar music)
- If you're gonna use a prop, you might as well
milk it for all it's worth.
Hello, my name is Rob.
Welcome to vidIQ, the YouTube tool and channel
that educates you on your YouTube journey
and in this series, we're charting that success
throughout 2019.
Our aim is to help you get more views and more subscribers
to ultimately grow your channel.
To watch the full plethora of videos in this series,
click on the link over here.
And if you enjoy this series,
don't forget to subscribe to vidIQ
for all of the awesome content we put out every single week.
There's some graphics appearing, some subscribe buttons.
Just click on 'em, yeah?
Good.
Hmm, strategy note to self: more enthusiasm
when asking people to subscribe.
And if you think I can write that fast ...
Alright then, let's get to the important stuff.
In the first couple of videos in the series,
we've been talking about how
you should just start making videos.
Hashtag press record.
Get something out there, gain some experience,
start your channel just so that you have
an understanding of the very basics.
The fundamentals of what goes into a channel
and a YouTube video.
But eventually, you're going to need
a channel strategy in place to attract an audience,
build a community, and sustain the channel in a long run,
so you don't run out of ideas and burn out.
So let's take a look at where you should start.
Alright, I've got a little challenge for you,
and this may take a while,
but it's really worth doing to try and identify
your target audience.
If you were to pick out one ideal viewer in the world,
who would they be?
And answer the following questions:
What gender are they?
How old are they?
What's their occupation?
What is their main interest in life?
What are they trying to learn?
What are they trying to fix?
What is the one thing they are struggling with?
Essentially, what I'm asking you to do here is
profile your ideal viewing candidate.
And there's two reasons for doing that.
The first reason is to get you into the mindset
of what's in it for the viewer.
Not what's in it for you and your channel.
Let's be honest about this.
When you watch somebody's content for the first time,
you don't care about that somebody
because you know nothing about that somebody.
That somebody has to first provide value to you, the viewer
before they are willing to invest back into the somebody
who eventually becomes a name at some point.
This is what I like to refer to as the trust factor.
And we'll talk a lot more about this in a future video
about how to get more subscribers.
The second reason for doing this
is that the vast majority of you will realize
that you're profiling yourself.
More often than not, what you like watching on YouTube
is going to be similar to what you end up
creating on YouTube.
And it may be that you enjoy several different topics
that identify with different demographics on YouTube,
from politics to soccer;
from wrestling to videogames.
But strip all of that away
until you have one specific answer
to every single question that I've asked
and other questions that come up in your head
about how to profile your ideal viewer.
Ultimately, the goal of this exercise
is to have as much of this as possible.
Call it your channel focus.
Call it your niche.
Call it your "nitch."
Call it your "nitcheese."
That one ideal viewer that you've just profiled,
you wanna make videos that target that person
time and time again.
As I said earlier, you might have all of these
different little interests, but this is the one
that you know most about.
And this is the one your audience expects
when you create content.
Concentrate on this topic, whatever it is.
Let me give you a couple of great examples.
We did a case study on a channel which had no direction.
They're doing prank videos, and then exposes
on different YouTubers, and a couple of gaming videos,
and they were getting a few hundred views.
And then they changed their attention
to one particular topic on a particular game.
And that was, how to increase frames per second
on the game called Fortnite.
And when they concentrated on that one topic
and produced video after video,
they went from hundreds of views per video
to thousands, if not tens of thousands of views per video.
If you wanna watch this case study, click on screen now.
Want another example of channel focus, you've got it.
I used to run a technology channel,
and when I focused on the one particular topic of
how to record your iPhone screen, my views
again went from hundreds to thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands of views.
And if you search for VGJFelix iPhone screen recording,
you can take a look for yourself.
You will find that most successful channels
started with one focus.
And over time they built value with their audience
who put trust into the video creator
who could then take them to other topics.
Let's look at it from this weird Rob Wilson point of view.
When people line up at a bus stop,
they're lining up for a particular bus
to take them to a particular destination.
And if they get on that bus every single day
they may get to know the driver.
And they may get friendly with the driver.
And at some point they may build up a friendship
with them to a point where,
Hey, I go to this location every single weekday,
but I wanna go somewhere else on the weekend.
And you know what?
I'd like that bus driver to take me there
because I enjoy their company.
Does that work as a analogy of a YouTube channel?
We understand that your channel focus can be very
difficult to define at the start of your YouTube journey,
which is another reason why you should be
experimenting as much as possible, as early as possible.
Through this, you'll get a flavor of
the type of videos you enjoy making
and the topics you enjoy talking about,
as well as how your audience reacts to it.
This process could take one video,
it could take five videos, it could take 50 videos.
It could take 500 videos before you really know
what your focus is on your channel.
And that's fine.
Remember what we said in the
How to Start Your YouTube Channel video: patience.
And just one more thing.
What is your channel focus if you're a vlogger?
And I think the best answer I can give you is storytelling.
You have the unenviable task of getting the audience to
place value in you within seconds of meeting you.
And that's done through an emotional connection,
which is ultimately storytelling.
Good luck with that.
(elevator lifting)
You know what we do here on the vidIQ channel, right?
We educate video creators, i.e. you,
on their YouTube journey.
That is, currently, our elevator pitch.
You can call this your value proposition
or you can pose it as a question.
Who should be watching and why?
For the two examples we've already looked at,
the elevator pitch might be
"I want to help gamers improve a
performance of Fortnite on their PC,"
and "I want to help iPhone and iPad owners
record their screens."
But those elevator pitches probably don't go far enough.
And they don't really talk about the why.
They talk about the who and the what.
So let's go back to our first example:
a video creator is making content that helps PC users
improve a performance of Fortnite on their PCs.
Well the question is why?
And I think the answer is, if a game performance
is improved, that allows a player
to improve their own performance.
So I came up with the value proposition of
improve the game, level up your skills.
Example two:
showing people how to record their iPhone screens.
But why?
Well, once people know how to record their iPhone screens,
they're gonna want to do something with these recordings.
That means sharing it somewhere.
So I came up with the value proposition:
record Apple, share your moments.
And yeah, that's my effort of drawing a little apple.
Now I know these value propositions are flaky at best
because I've spent five minutes coming up with them.
So here are some good examples from some
industry-leading channels.
Tim Schmoyer and his Video Creators TV
value proposition is certainly
one of the best in the business.
Master YouTube tells you the who and the what.
Spread your message tells you the why.
The ultimate guide to growing your following
and making money as a video influencer.
Sean Cannell & Benji Travis over at Video Influencers
leave you in no doubt as to what their channel is all about.
But in some rare cases, your value proposition
can be summed up in a single word.
Evan Carmichael wants you to believe.
And now it's back over to you folks
for another exercise you can do in the comments below.
What is a value proposition of your channel?
The who, the what, and most importantly, the why?
Try and keep it to 10 words or less.
And I'll be looking through those comments
and giving you feedback as soon as I can.
You see what I did there?
I wrote consistency three times.
I've also got to remember to rub this out
straight away because the dry erasing still marks
this board for some reason.
Got a question for regular followers of vidIQ.
Do you know how often we post videos?
We don't share this information on our channel banner,
in the about section of our channel,
in video descriptions.
And I don't tell you what
the schedule is on videos themselves.
But, we post videos on Monday,
generally at around 8 am Pacific Standard Time.
And we do a live stream every Tuesday at 11 am.
And then we have other videos spread across the week
whenever we feel it's necessary or if it's a trending topic.
The key schedule that we hold is a Monday and a Tuesday.
I know you're probably thinking,
"Oh yeah, there's always something from
vidIQ the beginning of the week."
So we stick to a consistent schedule with bonuses on top.
Also, you know that when you watch a vidIQ video
it's going to be something about growing your channel.
Getting more views, getting more subscribers,
how to do something on YouTube.
All of our content surrounds the YouTube universe.
So in summary, we have a consistent posting schedule.
And we have a consistent focus on the
topics that we cover here at vidIQ.
You wanna make a promise, written down or not,
to both yourself and your audience about
when you're going to post videos
and what they are generally going to be about.
Now, how I recommend doing that is working to 80 percent
of your maximum YouTube capacity.
In other words, if you could publish four videos
a week, aim to publish three videos a week,
and then you always have a bit of leeway
for when life gets in the way.
If you make four videos a week,
then consider one of them perhaps an experimental one.
You can cover a slightly different topic
to what your audience is used to.
Or a different video style.
Something that gains experience for you as a video creator
and sustains you creatively.
Be bigger. Be better.
Be diff ... different.
Did I spell that right?
This is the unspoken question that you may never hear
but is always asked, and you need to try and answer
as soon as you start your channel.
Why should I watch your video?
And YouTube's algorithm is asking a similar question.
Why should we promote your content?
Let's start with the bigger principle first.
When I had a tech channel, I was trying to find ways
of making my tutorials more appealing to viewers.
And when I saw Video Creators doing 10 tips on
a Galaxy S8, I thought, let's go bigger than this.
Let's go much bigger.
Let's do 850 tips on the Galaxy S8.
And I thought, if I'm going to do a camera guide
on a Galaxy S8, I'm not just going to
cover a couple a of tips.
I'm going to give people a comprehensive user guide
so I did 40 tips on the camera.
Because those videos were huge, they got massive watch time.
YouTube loves that, and so they promoted my videos more.
If you search for Galaxy S8 tips on YouTube
you should find two of my videos
towards the top of the list,
both with close to a million views.
So that's one strategy if you can
work it into your channel focus.
Now let's move onto the better principle
and we're going to use Ninja as an example.
He had a phenomenal 2018.
Crushing 20 million subscribers
and gaining at least 15 million subscribers
in that year alone.
The question is, why do so many people
watch Ninja on YouTube?
And the answer is simple.
He's one of the best Fortnite players in the world.
You can only find that level of skill
on a select few YouTube channels.
And with his daily posting schedule,
that helped propel him into the stratosphere.
And if you want to know more about how he is so successful,
we've done a case study on Ninja.
Do check it out.
There is a link on screen now.
Being bigger can take up a lot of time,
energy, and resources.
Being better can take years of practice.
But you can always and instantly be different.
Being different means providing something new
and intriguing to the YouTube audience,
and there's also a lot less competition as well
if you're completely different to anyone else.
I want to ask you a slightly strange Rob Wilson question.
Would you prefer to fish in the ocean
where there's an abundance of fish,
but is also lots of other boats trying to catch that fish,
or would you prefer your own little lake
where there's a lot less fish
but it's only you fishing there?
If you have something of value that you can share
that nobody else in the world can reproduce,
you've hit the jackpot.
And this goes back to finding your niche,
your own little corner on YouTube
which you can dominate and become the authority on.
We don't expect you to have your channel strategy
locked down within the first week
of you starting your YouTube channel.
Think of it as a kind of business plan,
the only difference being is that
you start the business first,
and then you write the plan as you shape your business.
I don't know, is that terrible business advice?
Yeah, probably.
I will go back to this point.
Gaining experience on YouTube
is more valuable than anything else right now.
And it will help shape the future of your channel.
One last thing I want you to
consider in your channel strategy.
Don't forget you in the strategy.
Some people describe this as being uniquely you.
Define yourself as a video creator
and people will either gravitate towards it
or they will despise it.
One way or the other, they'll have an opinion,
and that's better than no opinion at all.
By now, you're probably getting a flavor of who I am
on vidIQ and how I present my videos.
And either like it or you don't.
All I'm interested in is the people
who are watching right now.
And thank you very much for that.
If you want to watch more from this
grow your YouTube channel in 2019 series,
click on the playlist here.
If you want to watch more of our vidIQ content,
we'll have a video down here.
We'll see you on either of those.
Pop on over, and in the meantime,
enjoy the rest of your video making day.