Last updated on June 14th, 2024
I’m making this video with less than 100 subscribers, and it’s embarrassing.
VidAction.tv.
Okay, you may be watching this video because you know me, and you know that I’ve been around doing YouTube marketing for a long time, but I never really focused on my own channel until just recently, and frankly, it’s been really hard building subscribers, that’s the number one complaint people always have is how do I build my audience?
Well, as a so-called expert, I’m actually feeling that pain, because I’m growing it step by step and trying to figure out what my channel’s about, and what I want to focus on, and how am I going to get subscribers? So it’s very embarrassing to be a so-called YouTube expert, and be starting from scratch, and for it to be slow going.
I’ve done about 10 videos so far. I’ve been gradually getting going over the past five months or so, and now I’m going to plan on doing more of them, but what led me to this point and how can this help you? I mean, I’ve been promoting my videos the same way other people do it. I’ve been doing it on Facebook a little bit, telling people, hey you know what, I’m on, got a new channel now. LinkedIn, sharing my videos there, Twitter et cetera.
I’ve got pretty big connections there, and people who love to think about YouTube but YouTube marketing there, and yet I’m still not getting it, so is it just that my videos suck? Which, could be true. Or the topic isn’t what they want, ’cause, one, I’m not a production person. I’m usually behind-the-scenes person. And two, I’m trying to focus on a niche, which is really for businesses that are doing YouTube instead of personalities that have become YouTube businesses for instance.
That’s what I want to focus on, but is that the right niche, and all those things. So what about you and how does that, how does my situation help you? Well, let me just give a back story and maybe this will be relevant, maybe it won’t, but been doing YouTube marketing for a long time now, or more than five years, which is long time in relative terms.
But I’ve really thought of myself as more of a startup person, someone who helped startups who were dealing with YouTube instead of someone who’s on camera. I did a podcast for a few years, which was pretty popular, and had a voice then, and I didn’t realize that when I quit that the podcast because a startup I was working in was going in another direction from the YouTube marketing end goal. It was more influencer marketing, and I quit doing that podcast.
I realized now, looking back on it, that I lost my voice in the industry. I was writing blog posts, and doing podcasts and occasionally on video. But I no longer had a voice and I realized I have something to say and I want to still help people that I don’t necessarily work with directly, and so how do I do that?
Well, I need to start from scratch, much like an old athlete who’s getting back into shape. You have to start from scratch, all that other stuff, the knowledge helps and maybe you get back into shape a little bit faster, but you still have all the problems that other people have, and so as I build this channel from scratch, I’ve been learning a few things. One, I’ve never been a production person and still don’t believe to do well in YouTube you need to have great production.
So I’ve started very simply, you can see that this is an office in an office building. It has a couple of inexpensive lights, and a couple of inexpensive sound dampening things, but you’ll still hear some echo. It’s not properly insulated from the air conditioning, which I’m working on. Got a mic here, simple webcam. Learning what degree of production I want to do, getting reacquainted with the production tools. Haven’t done editing and video and audio in high quality for some time now, so having to reacquaint myself with new tools and new features. Also learning about what topics I should cover.
I thought that the types of things that people want to know are these big grand strategies, but that’s not what I advised people to do on YouTube, so now I’m having to take my own advice. I’ve talked about simple one topic tactics of things you can do in YouTube marketing.
I’m coming back full circle and just, and maybe as the channel grows, people will understand the baseline of the tactics and then be prepared to watch videos about strategy. But for now, I’m returning to the basics on all ways. Starting a channel from scratch, teaching people about tactics and not strategies, and just the tactics are just simple smaller items and strategies are overreaching, and that’s basically the only difference between those.
So it’s embarrassing to be in this position. There is no other way around saying that, but I’ve decided I want to help people, particularly brands and businesses learn how to do YouTube better, and my niche as I see it is creating helpful videos, how-to videos: How can brands create helpful videos that help their customers simply?
And I realized I had something I wanted to say publicly and not just privately, and so I would do that. It’s simple, that’s the whole thing about it.
I do feel that this will help my business over time, I don’t feel it will help it right away. But over time I feel that this will be helpful and I’ll build a group of resources that brands and businesses of all types can use.
So that’s where I am, just at 100 subscribers. Learning a lot of lessons that I advised people to go through the steps, but it’s very very hard taking my own advice, and that’s what I’m doing.
I hope you will join me through this adventure. Mostly it will be tutorials about how to improve your business’s YouTube channel. You can subscribe if you like, and it’s basically just VidAction.tv helping you get your customers coming back to your videos again and again.
The principle is simply that if you can get people coming back three times, they’ve built up a loyalty, and if they have the money when it comes time to buy something that you sell, you are in the running. That’s basically it. And how do you do that? You give away something, which is your expertise. Not necessarily about your product.
You don’t have to teach them everything you know, but you might be able to teach them everything they know. So when you share your expertise I believe that if it helps someone live their life better or do their jobs better, you will earn their loyalty, and their trust, and their business. That’s it.
My name’s Dane Golden. Channel’s VidAction.tv. Hope you’ll subscribe. See you next time. VidAction.tv.