The 4 Types of Viewers for YouTube Growth
Now that you have made the leap of believing that your video is good enough to be seen by a billion people on YouTube, I'd like to give you a framework on how to get your videos to the first 10000 viewers.
This framework is to make your approach to YouTube growth as structured and rigorous as your approach to making the video. Scattering your video across the internet can be an unnerving experience that leads to:
- Demotivation: You reach out to a lot of people, none of them take an action (watch, like, or share your video) and soon you find yourself questioning the time and effort you put in.
2. Lack of any measure of your efforts: You have randomly reached out to a thousand people but don't know what it has got you - has it got you valuable feedback? has your video gone viral? have you understood what people like?
You can divide the people you are reaching into four different types - based on their level of expertise in making videos and the depth of their knowledge in the category of your video.
The Four Types of Viewers
Category experts: These are people who may not be YouTube creators but are experts in the category that your video belongs to. If you have a cooking channel, it will be people who have a deep interest and knowledge in cooking or practice it as a profession. If you have a fitness channel, it will be people (like somebody who is a certified yoga instructor who might have done yoga teacher training online) who spend hours perfecting their fitness regime.
Video experts: People who have a high level of expertise in making videos (creative expertise + technical expertise). This can be video editors, amateur and professional filmmakers, marketers who sell stories about their products or even film critic friends who have an eye for how a story is told.
Joey: The wider audience of people who can propel your videos to virality and growth. These are the people who will watch what you make for:
- Entertainment
- Information
- Entertainment and information
The Ultimate YT creator: The tastemakers and influencers of YouTube who are at the top of their game and making high-quality videos with deep domain expertise.
Where and when to reach them
You will have to prioritize whom to reach with each video you make. While prioritizing you will understand the trade-offs you have to make for each audience.
Ultimate YT creators are hard to reach and are few in number, but the reach that a YT creator can give with a retweet or share is immense. Take this step when you think your videos are ready for the big time YouTube growth
Category Ninja and Video pros are relatively less hard to reach if you target the communities where they hang out. There is a chance that people in these quadrants would be looking for avenues to increase their knowledge and visibility, this is something you can use to your advantage.
There would be joeys in all the other quadrants except the 1st one. These are people who are looking for entertainment, knowledge, and visibility. When we start off on our journey, we are all Joey's.
Category experts: The set of viewers who should be first on your list when working on YouTube growth. A large swathe of YouTube channels become popular due to their obsessive focus on a specific category or genre. Hence, the first thing to do would be to find your own niche to focus on and then find where people interested in that niche hang out.
For example, if you are making videos on technology, there are a huge number of subreddits and Facebook groups where technophiles hang out, where you can post your videos for feedback. If you can get the people in such communities interested, views from people who have a passive interest in the category will follow. This is the first step to YouTube growth
Video experts: While you continue the journey to figuring out the perfect niche, it is important to focus on the technical and storytelling quality of your videos. With YouTube becoming more and more crowded, this can be an important differentiator at the moment. You could:
- Reach out to video editors, filmmakers in your network or on online communities such as Reddit. You could also ask a freelancer on Odesk or Upwork to review your work.
- Talk to marketers and post in marketing forums - marketers, in general, have a good idea of what makes something stick and they can help you figure out a differentiator for your channel.
The Ultimate YT creator: As a general rule, it can get pretty lonely at the top. There are few people who have to build expertise in video and in their specific category to become YouTube stars and influencers. These people would be getting thousands of requests every day and hence would be extremely difficult to reach. But, a retweet or share from them can go a long way in terms of the sheer reach that your video and your channel can get. So if you think your videos are ready to get the attention of the best in the business, go ahead and reach out to them via mail or on Twitter.
Joey: The people who will watch your videos to be entertained or to be informed. These will include your friends, close ones, and acquaintances who will go out of their way to get your video out there. Leverage your network to reach the maximum number of Joey's you can. This can give you an idea of what people like and what part of your videos are working.
A few channels you can use to reach the above 4 Types of audience
Category experts: Subreddits, Facebook pages, Facebook groups, and other forums on your topics of interest.
Video experts:
- Freelancers on Odesk and Upwork.
- Subreddits: r/videoediting, r/Introtofilmmaking, r/youtubestartups, r/youtubers
- Youtube creator community
Ultimate YT creator:
- Tweet out to creators you love, in your category, and otherwise.
- YouTube creator community
Joey's:
- Create an email list of friends and acquaintances to send your video to after it's made, ask them to share your work.
- Make yourself visible on social media platforms, with regular activity, need not be just videos - it can be tweets, graphic posts or just sharing moments from your life.
What hacks did you use to grow your YouTube channel? Share in the comments to help fellow creators.
Wondering how to start creating YouTube videos to grow your business today and get more attention for your YouTube channel? We've got you covered.
