What's The Secret To YouTube Success?
Many think the secret to YouTube popularity is to merely find a subject people want answers to. Others think it’s to exploit new categories of untapped subject matter. You know, low hanging fruit, the easy stuff. It’s elusive, but there is one true angle few figure out. The secret is to create content for the most in-demand part of that market segment.
What Is A Most In-Demand Market Segement?
Imagine you collect vintage dresses or build dog houses. It could any subject. Of course, the audience is searching for help or tips on how to collect dresses or build dog houses. But what so many don’t see is the nuance of these verticals. It’s almost always the ‘beginner’. In just about any HOW TO video, do you think the advanced collector is searching on this subject?
Building Content For The Audience That Matters
Your audience is everything. That is a huge segment. It could be content for viral attention or a video with legs, or as it’s known in the industry, evergreen. Which you create for is important, and sometimes a video can fit into both categories, but the concept take-away here is to go beyond a one-dimensional view of your audience. We come back to the early point, what is your most in-demand market segment? The keyword is segment. Are you wrapping your head around this now?
The Two Avenues To YouTube Success
YouTube serves up videos through suggestions and searches. Both utilize a magic mix of relevancy factors developed by the YouTube brain trust. While some reasons are based on momentum weight which you can’t control there is an important take-away from this knowledge. If you have not reached critical mass, in the form of momentum from prior popularity then you must rely on breaking in first. Here again, we return to understanding your audience. Do you really think you know your audience?
Truly Get To Know Your Audience
Don’t you hate platitudes and abstract advice? For example, “You can’t grow your audience if you don’t know your audience.” Sure it’s true, but lacks specifics. Too many experts don’t go there when they think they do.
Let’s get into the weeds. Better yet, here is a tactical mapping plan for you to succeed in your overall strategy.
You can do this with a digital application with a flow chart, but don’t be anal-retentive out-of-the-gate. Just start with a sheet of a paper and pencil. Do this.
Here Is Your Plan
Assume you know your main audience and keep that in your head. Begin writing down on paper all the segments within that audience. Some may overlap, don’t worry about that as it will be addressed soon.
Next is to separate these groups into categories. If needed, subsets. To do this you should use a key or legend of marks next to each one. Asterisk, check-mark, X, and perhaps even circling words. Your audience breakdown should now come into better focus. Finally, you can create a hierarchical flow chart where at the top of your pyramid is your main audience name. Write down the segments below your audience name.
Case Study Example
Talk is cheap. Proof is positive. Let’s use something of personal success. Let’s use the DangerMan brand. The original primary DangerMan YouTube audience was paintball players. Scoff at the industry if you like, but you are overlooking the message if you do. The DangerMan channel is currently at 50,000 subscribers, producing a steady stream of over 1/2 million views monthly. It could do better if time allowed. Consider this endeavor as a mere personal recreational interest used to testbed marketing theories. Not bad for partial attention. Here is a breakdown.
Notice that variables overlap. Some are left out to simplify the message. For instance, I’ve left out paintball marker (they are not called guns) repair. There are paintball product reviews. The audience can truly be refined.
For my part, I saw two primary segments. The single most important characteristic is skill level. The second is game type. Early on I theorized that the beginner woodsball player audience would be the largest group that would be searching for answers. While this group evolves and moves on to other content, loyalty can’t be ignored. In addition, this group of beginners would always be replacing itself.
In Conclusion, Here Is Your Biggest Take-Away
We learned here that the beginner type would be never-ending well of prospects. There is your key to this entire instructional. Where can you find your largest, constant flow of prospective viewers?
