Succeeding on YouTube is a lot like being popular in high school. You need to be interesting and/or pretty… or you need to be so smart that people need you around.
When it comes to creating a YouTube video you can entertain, you can educate, or you can inform (if you’re very good, you can do all three).
If you’re thinking about creating a YouTube video then you’ll want heaps of people to watch it. The problem is it’s a lot harder to get people on your YouTube channel now than ever before; YouTube is saturated with huge amounts of good (and bad) content, so how do you cut through?
The challenge of getting noticed
You’re not just competing within YouTube. Think about it. We are all bombarded with information on a daily basis; there’s always something new to read or watch; there’s internet and TV and radio and podcasts and magazines and books and… well you get the idea.
Your audience is content rich and time poor, so that means you better have something interesting to say.
You can be funny, you can be serious, you can be heartfelt, or you can be slap stick and just plain weird. There’s plenty of ways to skin a (lol) cat. So let’s looks at the basic first steps you should take before you start on your journey to YouTube amazingness.
1. Know Who Your Target Audience Is
The main thing is that your YouTube video needs to be interesting to your target audience (I’m assuming you know who your target audience is, right? Great, let’s continue). Remember if you try to appeal to everyone you will appeal to no one. Be specific when deciding on your video channel’s purpose and clearly understand your reason for recording each and every video. Now, one word of warning, if the purpose of your video is specifically to ‘sell more widgets’, then your video better be as funny as PooPourri, or you’re just going to waste your time and burn your audience.
It doesn’t matter what platform your content is on, people will only give you their eyeballs if you are:
- entertaining, or
- educational AND useful, or
- informational AND interesting.
I would recommend you try to hit each of these sweet spots in every YouTube video you create. individual watching you and what their personal needs are in the moment. You can drill down and get really smart about meeting all the needs of your target audience in their consumer journey
2. See What’s Hot and What’s Not
The best tactic to design a popular YouTube video is to do your research, long before you switch on that camera. So have a look around in the YouTube space, find YouTubers who float your boat and make you smile or make you think.
The people who are doing it best are the people to watch. They know what it takes to be popular. Pay special attention to the popular but low production budget end because that’s likely where you’ll start off.
Also, try not to look at people in your own space or you might be tempted to copycat, and you know what we think about that!!
3. Beg/Borrow/Learn From The Experts
Yes, I know I just said not to copycat. The difference here is that you’re only looking at how they’re delivering their content, their style, the speed, the length… all that jazz. What you’re not doing is copying their actual content.
The YouTubers with multiple high view videos aren’t just one-hit wonders; they’ve cracked the code, so study their videos and try to work out why they’re getting success. Think about:
- What do the popular videos have in common?
- What do they do differently>
- How do they present their ideas?
- What is their unique voice?
- Why do they stand out?
Study it all. But don’t take too long because success is in the action.