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How to Build Your Channel & Find an Audience: Advice for Aspiring YouTubers

2010-05-12
what's up everyone jon rettinger can technobuffalo here back with another round of the advice for aspiring tech reviewers and youtuber series a sort of a revamp of the whole series in the first video I talked about where my gadgets come from how I got them and where you can get yours didn't get a chance to check that out i'll put a link either down below for watching this on youtube or volleys down below to for watching on technobuffalo so this video is going to cover how to build your channel you just started a channel let's say you've had it for a while I've got a couple of videos out there nobody's watching them how do you build your audience how do you get people to look at your channel and sort of get you some exposure that you think you deserve and olives are you do so let's go and get started first I want to preface this by saying there's no magic formula you can follow these advice step by step and still maybe not get an audience these are just tools to help you it's certainly no way a guarantee so i'll tell you what i did when i was starting to build my channel first I was talking about technology to interest me I had a passion for the topic I still the passion for the topic clearly I'm a monster geek and the chance to talk about technology was absolutely fantastic so I think you first thing you need good motivation don't go into thinking I'm going to be a tech review or I'm going to make thousands of dollars per month I'm going to be super rich because it's not going to happen go into it with the right motivation than the intentions and the idea you want to do it because of the love of what you're doing don't go into it because you want to make money you want to get free gadgets that's just not what it's about and that if you think that it will show in your videos in very subtle ways and the audience will definitely react to it okay so you built your channel you've got it up in live maybe you've got one two three four videos we don't have any yet how would you get people to come to your channel the first question I get is I don't have a lot of money what do I do so if you don't have new gadgets laying around you don't have the finances and go get new gadgets that's not a problem at all you can actually be a tech review or without spending any money so the first thing I'd recommend or be a youtuber in general without spending any money the first thing i'd recommend is look at the most popular videos for the day see if there any themes so if you're a tech reviewer and you see me a couple videos about the new iphone 4g remember that if you want to film a video about another topic if you want to talk about celebrity gossip you see something on that bieber kid make a note of that see what they title the video see how the video is tagged see what they put in the description box and definitely make note of that when you put your video up online and you update the fields that are about it tagged fields in the info box those are the things that people use to search and you want people to search for your videos to searching for popular topics so if you just label it you know Apple you don't put iphone 4g rumors and everything about it you're not going to get the coverage that you want essentially YouTube see this is almost like a spider like websites use our google users rather to search through content and the content that matches the spider search is what's going to come up more often so if you use keywords that people already searching for that are very popular your videos may come up when people are looking for videos on whatever you are discussing so be very mindful of how you title your videos and what tag to use now I'm not saying tag every possible topic known to man I generally don't put in any more than seven tags otherwise the sort of gets ignored by Google's algorithm so 7 make sure their direct way you're talking about don't over tag put in tags of topics that are only in your video but you can start making videos topics that are very popular like I said and that will help bring audience for things people are already searching for so you people already searching for say iron man 2 reviews everybody wants them about iron man two so you can talk about iron man 2 you can talk about the rumors of a new macbook air people are searching for you can look through and talk about topics that are popular and that's going to help sort of build a base audience sort of your foundation coats you know if you're painting a wall which is an awful analogy hopefully you understand what I'm talking about so the next thing is the thumbnail image when people go in search for your video they see a picture of you know maybe you're going like this you know hey they're not going to click on it they don't know who you are you're not an established brand not a name people recognize it just looks like a dude talking so pick a good thumbnail and talking about an image about the iphone 4g pick an image of the iphone 4g going to get something from gizmodo be sure you cite it make sure you let people know what the image is from you don't want to steal anybody else's stuff but you definitely want to have that an intriguing image people may think oh you know it's interesting you know I think that I might want to watch that video now don't try and trick people don't talk about the iphone 4g and show a picture of it and say i have the iphone 4g if you don't have it just talk about it and pick an image that you think is going to be in treatment to people now maybe one of the three or four that YouTube gives you as an option which is fine or upload your own and find one that works that's probably the next bit of advice that I can give you second as you start doing this you to notice that may be a few more people start commenting on their videos maybe one two three or four those are sort of your first to action people those are the ones that are going to help you spread the word about your channel interact with your new audience talk to them respond to the emails respond to their questions create a dialogue that's going to help really brand you as sort of an expert and it's going to help you interact and find out what people want maybe someone's following you or comment on your video will love to know more about you know the iphone 4g micro sim card whatever they want to know more about whatever that beaver kid does on the weekend you know whatever topic you're making interact with your audience find out what they want what you think they want and what they actually might want could be very very very different YouTube is a fantastic resource to talk to people so definitely take advantage of that and don't take any way it's watching your videos for granted at all those people are watching are your lifeblood if you cut off your blood supply you're going to die that through analogy is definitely true for you to the next bit of big advice i think is being mindful of your language and i'm not saying you know don't swear or any of that but be mindful of what you're saying try to avoid lumps and ahhs and likes and sort of the slang almost if you will be no matter how what age you are you want to appear professional now you can use still you square word about your style you can use you know gaming vernacular to PO noobs whatever it might be that's your style definitely go ahead and use it don't change who you are but just look professional and talk professionally and be wary of your ohms and looking to the side of the camera you know just be very careful of what you're saying in speaking your camera pick a good camera angle I'm certainly guilty of picking some bad camera angles this one right here may not be the best but if you're talking to your eyesight camera or your webcam I'll take a good angle you don't know pick an angle of someone walks behind you or your faces or go to the side like this and just see how few pick a pic a good angle and if you have editing program try and go through and edit to the best of your abilities if you don't have my movie don't a final cut or Windows Movie Maker you know use the best that you have available even if you don't have anything that's okay if you have some editing software available learn how to use it and make your videos look professional if you can put an interim fish just text or an outro you know be very mindful of that as well and seeking up sort of text another bit of advice is annotations YouTube is a great way to mobilize an audience so to get people to go from your video to somewhere else whether it's to a website or another one of your videos so at the end of your video or during your video put up an annotation that says for more information click here for round two click here to learn about another video with the iphone 4g click here and make sure that's clickable people will start to migrate more videos let's start to see a bit more of your content which is quite nice I think you may also want to circuit coming active other people's channels now do not spam people's YouTube pages don't go to other pages and say check out my channel I of great videos don't do that but go and ask questions there a go and comment in other peoples pages see who's doing something that you want to do so if you want to be a tech review or go to tech reviews website see what sort of videos they're making what the audience is asking for and you can learn a lot from that don't go in spam that is not a good way to get people to know about your site in fact that's going to have the opposite effect of what you're looking for be very very very mindful that I can't stress enough so in post something on my page that says check out my channel it immediately gets deleted or its leaders as soon as I see it and oftentimes I all ban people from doing that you really want to be very cautious of that but go to people that you admire and see what they're doing whether it's tech or celebrity blogging your politics and see their style is that they haven't see the styles that's working and not copy them but maybe you can be influenced by them and find a style that works for you so there are ton of other things we're going to cover as you continue to do this video series but I thought it was important the Scots sort of the baseline a bit of advice about how to build your channel now it's really the biggest advice that I can give you I hopefully you follow those and they give you guys a bit of an edge and the leg up over the competition and I get asked quite a bit you know John why are you doing a series you're just growing competition for yourself and I've set this time and time again I don't view anybody else out there is competition I think it just validates the industry that I'm in which is the technology reviewing it makes the genre of a video more professional and more widely accepted the more people that are doing it so your success is my success so hopefully I can help you guys keep the success that you want and I guess the last thing that I want to mention and certainly I think it's important to do so is is TechnoBuffalo we have about six hundred thousand page views per month create a sub blog bear embed your videos if they're especially good we'll put them on the homepage people will see them in the most viewed content section you can get more exposure that way as well you can get those eyes onto your sub blog and onto your youtube page something else to sort of keep in mind anyway guys I hope you enjoyed the second round of the series here if you have something that you want to know or questions feel free to leave them down below in the comment section that will read them and I will try and dress them in upcoming videos if this is helpful to you please let me know as well if it's not helpful you let me know that too anyway I am jon rettinger from technobuffalo if you want exclusive content check me out at twitter twitter.com / John for lakers or if you just want to say hello say hello and again for all your tech news be sure to check out a technobuffalo com jon rettinger see you the next video bye
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