Читать книгу Get Rich Blogging - Zoe Griffin - Страница 10

YouTube has 1 billion active viewers per month. Some of them will be interested in what you have to say, some will hate you and some will be indifferent. You can’t please everyone.

To be successful, you need to close your mind to negativity and focus on what you can control. With a little thought and research it’s possible to identify groups who are interested in your topic. If you learn as much as you can about the people in these groups, you will not only attract them, but you will remain relevant to them.

Beatles star John Lennon once said: ‘Trying to please everybody is impossible. If you did that, you’d end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You’ve just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it.’ The Beatles went on to sell 65 million albums worldwide to a generation of music fans. They found a sound that was unique to them, stuck with it and the fans loved it.

John Lennon’s advice applies to vlogging as well as music. There is no point making videos containing lots of different elements in an attempt to keep every single one of the world’s billion YouTube users happy. Trying to make people interested in what you have to say takes time and energy, and means you’re not doing as much as you can to please the people who are already interested in your subject. The way to grow viewers and subscribers is to work out who your audience is and what their expectations are, then consistently deliver content that you know this group of people will like.

Music manager Scooter Braun discovered Justin Bieber on YouTube in 2008 and liked what he saw so much that he persuaded Justin and his mother to move to Atlanta so he could manage Justin’s career. After signing him up to Island Def Jam, Scooter made Justin create more YouTube videos to grow an audience so his records would sell. He succeeded – Justin’s debut album My World was certified platinum in the US in 2009, and he became the first artist to have seven songs from his debut album chart on the Billboard Hot 100. How did they do it? At the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) conference keynote speech, Scooter said: ‘My career started sat on the sofa in my underpants, thinking of ways I could get more people to watch my videos. Then it clicked – I needed to keep it simple. If you want to make YouTube work for you, don’t make content for billions of people. Don’t try and think of the broad spectrum you could reach and aim for people sitting on the fence. Look at yourself. If you feel something, there’s a good chance some other people will feel the same way. Go to your office or bedroom, say what you’re interested in and how it makes you feel.’

Only when you are clear in your mind as to the subject you want to vlog about should you start to think of your audience. By this, I mean working out which groups of people are interested in the same subject as you, and thinking about their personality traits and other interests. But why should you think of your audience at all? The answer is because you’ll be talking to them when you’re looking down the camera, and you need to know how to address them. You need to treat your viewers as friends and forge a connection with them, and you can’t do that if you don’t know anything about what these people are like.

It may be a good idea to grab another sheet of paper and a pen, and answer these questions: