There’s never been a better time to increase YouTube subscribers and optimize your video content. Don’t believe me? Take it from John Crestani. With over 400k YouTube subscribers, he knows a thing or two about leveraging video content in the digital marketing world.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with John about his road to YouTube success and what it takes to get started, gain traction, and pivot when you have to. John got his start in digital marketing back in 2009. Inspired by The Four Hour Work Week, he decided that his current life trajectory towards stock trading and real estate wasn’t for him:
“After reading that, I realized that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to travel the world. I wanted to run my own business… So at that point in 2009, I kind of made up my mind. I was like, okay, I’m going to figure out how to run an internet business and make a lot of money.”
However, it wasn’t until 2011 that he joined ClickBank. Then, in 2016 that John tapped into the power of video content as a tool to run his business and make money. According to John, the recipe to increase YouTube subscribers requires four ingredients:
- Consistency
- A scientific approach
- Content that informs
- Empathy
Ingredient #1: Consistency – Post a Video Every Day
John credits famed YouTube Casey Neistat for inspiring him with the advice, “Just keep uploading.”
Over two years, John posted 500 YouTube videos, amassed 400,000 YouTube subscribers, and had more than 1 million views per month.
John says that success started with a commitment to posting:
“Be consistent and give yourself six months with three uploads a week minimum. You have to be consistent and give yourself time. I just kept uploading. For the first year, I didn’t really see any traction or growth. I was posting a lot of motivational stuff. Then, in my second year, I started doing things differently. I focused my topics on keywords or questions that people search for. I took a scientific approach.”
Ingredient #2: A Scientific Approach – Figure Out What Works
Once you start consistently uploading videos, the next step is to dig in and see what’s resonating with viewers. You’ll start to see trends emerge and patterns will start to get more defined.
“Slowly but surely these videos would continue to get views and over the course of say a month, I would do five videos on one topic and another five videos on a different topic and another five videos on another and then I looked at which topics did best. It took about three months to figure out where people resonated.”
After you figure out which topics are the most salient, it’s time to figure out which part of the videos people are most engaged with. Pinpointing engagement at an individual video level is how to improve your content–the third ingredient to increase YouTube subscribers.
Ingredient #3: Content That Informs – Focus on the Information
Everybody loves a joke, but timing is everything. Unfortunately, as John and many other marketers have figured out (myself included) the best places to inject humor is not always a YouTube video about achieving freedom and making money online.
“I noticed that engagement was dropping off when I was repeating myself too much, or going on tangents, or even being funny. I started to notice that people didn’t like me to be funny because learning how to make money online isn’t actually funny. It’s actually a serious subject for a lot of people.”
In fact, John noticed that engagement was highest when he was demonstrating something on his computer. The best videos were the ones that focused on the information and helped people improve their skills.
Ingredient #4: Empathy – Put Your Audience First
Once he realized people were coming to view videos for the instructional content, not his jokes and stories, he started really striving to understand who his audience is, a part of video-making that he credits as the best part of his “job.”
“My favorite thing about what I do is learning about people. I believe, at the end of the day marketing is about empathy and understanding–just talking to people and underdtsnding what their day is like.”
After you have enough videos posted to figure out what your viewers are sticking around for, the next step is turning that into empathy, letting go of your personal expectations for the videos, and making content that speaks directly to the people who need it the most.
“That’s the most important thing in marketing… it’s not about you. It;s not about what you know, it’s not about what you want to talk to people about. It;s not what you want to sell. It’s not what ideas you want to come across to people. It’s about the audience always.”
To check out John’s videos and subscribe, check out his YouTube channel here.
Click here to join ClickBank and start your own journey to making money online.