I can't imagine if when I was 12 years old a Backstreet Boy had tweeted at me
and said, "Hey, I really like what you're doing". I woulda lost my mind.
So, I like to think of that every time I leave a comment, I think you know what
I'm someone's Backstreet Boy.
Today's episode is about building a community.
Hey my name is Meghan Tonjes. I'm Tonjes, here on YouTube, and I am a
musician, and body-positive activist, who makes daily content about news
and culture. Basically, I have an opinion and I share it all of the time. So when I
first started making YouTube videos I was 19. I had no idea what I was doing. So
I was just making videos for my friends and that's kind of how I started out. I was
making videos about my life, what I was going through, what I was thinking, and
that kind of grew into more of an understanding of who was attracted to my
videos. Over time, I definitely started to realize there were similarities with the
people that were attracted to what I was making. So a lot of times I find in my
audience people who are struggling with their weight, struggling with their
self-love, their sexuality, maybe have issues at home, and just kind of feel a
little left out, a little left of center. And I tend to attract people like that
because I went through that when I was growing up. I think sometimes we get a
little in our heads about okay who's watching me and what are the
demographics, and we can go into analytics and we can look at those
things and we can see these numbers that, you know, make sense to a certain extent
are good when you're doing branded stuff. You understand who you're reaching, but
ultimately if you're interested in the audience that's watching you, I encourage
you to actually reach out and jump in the comments, and jump in the conversations,
and research the people that you keep seeing showing up on video after video. I
mean people are you know really easily putting their information out there as
far as their age, and where they're from, and what they like, and their pronouns,
and what shows they watch. And so if you take the time to really invest in
learning about the people that watch your content, you're gonna get a lot
more information and very layered information about who likes your stuff.
Anytime that people feel like they're being seen
they are going to engage more. So a lot of times, I will heart comments, I will
pin comments, because you can't respond to every single thing, but you can
respond to a few bigger things and you can kind of acknowledge and validate
everyone else that's leaving a comment. Let them know, "Hey I see you, you're
important to me." And that really is as simple as using
those tools. You're also gonna find other ways to engage with them, and interact
and that's gonna be inspiring to your content. If all of a sudden I notice
there's a lot of people from Australia that watch a very specific TV show and
they really like these other YouTubers, maybe I'll start watching that TV show,
make a video about it. Maybe I'll collaborate with that YouTuber they all
love. Not only are you gonna find people that are going to inspire content, whose
conversations in your comments are gonna push you to make better stuff, but
you're also going to find other people who are making content that want to work
with you. The most important thing that I do, is I
pay attention. I really pay attention to how I view things, how I consume content
how I interact with other people. And so if I see another content creator putting
something out there and I automatically feel the desire to respond, or to share, I
pay attention. I lock that away in my mind for later, because there's something
there. There's some kind of little bit of magic, that I need to reverse-engineer
and figure out for my own channel. When I was moving to Los Angeles I drove here
with a friend and we would kind of annoyingly call each other Bebe, bebe. So
eventually when it came to, you know, I need a name to call these viewers,
because I don't always like using subscribers, or viewers, or fans. And
everyone has like a really cool last name and they have all these really cool
ideas for what they can call their like army, or their family, or whatever it is. I
didn't really have a great last name that I could just like turn into a cool
group name, so the Bebes are what we call them. What up my big beautiful bebes, it's
Meghan Tonjes, and it is Sunday, which means it is....
It's a gender-neutral, it's easy, it applies to everyone, and it's really just another way of me calling
them a friend. In Episode one, we talked about building your community. How by
simply watching the shareability of your videos, and the engagement by your
audience, you can figure out the things that you're doing right, or
not so right. Like what you learned? Don't forget to subscribe by clicking the
button below, and make sure to check out similar episodes.