2020 Jul 16
“These three categories are the pillars of content creation. If one of them falls off, even if you are getting viewers but you’re not happy with what you’re doing, you will fall off the wagon eventually.”
– Janeeth Rodrigo –
Welcome back! You made it to the third and final edition of the series of articles that reveals tips and tricks to help you be a successful YouTuber. Continuing the conversation with the General Manager of IdeaHell, Head of the Digital Arm of Derana Macroentertainment, Janeeth Rodrigo, we explored the “10 fundamentals of a creative strategy” that new and experienced content creators could utilise to maintain the growth and stability of their YouTube channel.
As mentioned by Janeeth, the following 10 fundamentals that will be discussed in this article is extracted from a handbook that is given by YouTube themselves to MCNs, as means of helping content creators grow. These 10 fundamentals of a creative strategy will fall under the following three principles, that is the holy trinity of achieving success on YouTube:
- Getting viewers
- Keeping viewers happy
- Keeping yourself happy
The 10 Fundamentals of a Creative Strategy on YouTube
- Sharability
Create topical content, meaning, when a topic or a conversation that is currently going viral in Sri Lanka or around the world, you could relate your content to that topic and join the conversation.
Create content that is relatable, content that will strike a chord with your viewers that will compel them to share your video across their own social media platforms.
Be valuable, by trying to add value to your viewers in a way that will be helpful to them, through your content.
Be remarkable; if you have any exceptional talents or abilities to demonstrate, you could utilise those talents in creating content that will boost virality.
- Conversation
Make sure to engage in conversations with your audience, to keep your viewers happy and satisfied. For example, Lilly Singh a.k.a Superwoman conversed with her audience for 30 minutes after a new video was uploaded.
You could check in with your subscribers, thank them for the support that you’ve been receiving and respond to the comments that they leave.
Be authentic, personalities are what takes centre stage on YouTube, hence the face of the channel must come across as real, genuine and honest.
- Interactivity
Interacting with your audience is key to keeping them engaged and also building a certain type of relationship with your viewers.
You could directly ask them questions and respond to them in a subsequent video and you could also ask your audience to give you ideas for future videos and if you do use their idea, you could give them a shout out in the video.
You could also ask them to submit clips of themselves doing something, which can be showcased in your video, with their permission. For example, Sachini Nipunsala asked her audience to send in clips of them dancing to a specific song and some of those clips were showcased in her video, alongside her dancing to the same song. This created massive engagement and interactivity amongst Sachini and her audience.
- Consistency
Consistency is vital for the growth of a YouTube channel. Make sure you upload content on a regular schedule, on a certain day of the week, that was promised by you.
Have a consistent personality throughout the videos on your channel. For example, if you’re a makeup artist and you only use products that are vegan and not animal tested, avoid rooting for non-vegan makeup brands down the line.
Make sure that you are within the theme of your channel. For example, SL Diaries originally had a channel that had serious content, highlighting some of the social issues faced in Sri Lanka and suddenly, they started creating prank videos to drive viewership. Since it didn’t bode well with the audience, they had to make a separate YouTube channel for their prank videos.
- Targeting
You could better target your audience in the following three ways:
- Channel name: If you want to create content relating to travel, you could include the word ‘travel’ in your channel name itself.
- Show level: If you have a tech channel and you want to only focus on content related to technology surrounding mobile phones, you could create a different playlist on your YouTube channel that is dedicated for mobile phones and their technologies.
- Individual video level: You could also target a group of people through an individual video. For example, JehanR targetted Sri Lankans with his “Sh*t Sri Lankan Mother’s Say” video.
You could also find a niche that creates virality, on YouTube. For example, ASMR videos are videos that focus on different sounds that send shivers down your spine. This is one of the most growing YouTube trends of all time.
- Sustainability
Keep your videos simple in the beginning and schedule your uploading days and the video format in a way that is easy for you to manage.
In the beginning, don’t strive to use industry-level equipment, you could use whatever equipment that is easily accessible to you. When your YouTube channel is growing, you could reach out to companies like IdeaHell and utilise the facilities they provide.
You could try block shooting, where you would take an entire day and shoot around 4-5 videos in one go, which will be paramount in helping you save time and energy.
Know what’s coming next, plan the next 5 videos that you are hoping to publish beforehand.
- Discoverability
You could utilise Google Trends to discover what kind of content the Sri Lankan and global audiences choose to watch on YouTube and try to relate your content to such trends.
You could create Evergreen content, that is content that will answer common questions or solve common problems that people face on the daily.
For example, if you publish a video like ‘how to tie a tie’, there’ll always be people watching your video because there will be someone who will come across the need to learn how to tie a tie.
YouTube also has a creator’s playbook that describes how to optimise your videos to be discovered easily on the platform. This playbook consists of information like how to style your thumbnail, how to title your videos, how to add keywords and if you should optimise your videos for mobile or desktop. If you are serious about making your YouTube channel your full-time profession, you could reach out to the team at IdeaHell in order to utilise the information given in the creator’s playbook.
- Accessibility
If you are targeting the global audience, refrain from tying every episode that you upload to the previous episode. You could design your videos in a way that every episode does not have to rely on the backstory that is only described in the first episode.
This is because, if someone starts watching your videos from the middle, they wouldn’t know or understand what’s going on without watching the previous episodes.
If you’re targeting the global audience, you could also show a brief recap of the previous episodes as an introductory sequence.
However, in the local context, tying up your episodes to previous episodes have proven to drive viewership among Sri Lankans.
Have a strong call-to-action. You could give your viewers a hint of what the next video is going to be about and encourage your audience to subscribe to your channel, like your videos and leave a comment in the comment section.
- Collaboration
If there’s a content creator on YouTube who has gained more subscribers than you already have, you could reach out to them and collaborate with them.
This will help the audiences from both channels intersect and both channels will benefit, as it will drive viewership and additional subscribers.
You could design your videos in a way that makes it easy and logical for you to have guests, once in a while.
- Inspiration
Paying attention to what you love the most and basing your videos on what you most enjoy or what you’re most passionate about is bound to help you achieve success on YouTube.
You could also observe what audiences like best and try creating different shows to cater to audience preferences, which will help boost your viewership and subscriber level.
And we have reached the end of the article, folks. We sincerely hope these three articles were helpful to you and we also look forward to seeing many different Sri Lankan content creators being born on YouTube, in the near future. Should you require any further information, assistance and clarification, you could always reach out to the team at IdeaHell and they will help you out!