If I started my channel again, this is what I’d do… #ASKSUNNY

We haven’t done this for so long and if you’re a real OG, you know exactly what this is – it’s #AskSunny. So this is where you ask me questions and I answer it. Pretty simple.

Let’s get into the question for today and head all the way to Nigeria and meet Ijapari.

“Hi, Sunny. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I’m Ijapari Gyang from Nigeria and my question is, what keeps you motivated and what are the challenges you encounter as a YouTuber? Then my second question is looking back today as an established YouTuber, what would you have done differently if you are to start all over again to first start your journey here on YouTube? Thank you so much.”

Thank you so much for that great question, Ijapari! If I were to start all over again and go back to the early days of my channel, if you don’t know my story on YouTube, I totally fell into this by accident and I didn’t know what I was doing in the beginning. And truthfully, my whole channel was really focused on my clients at the time because at the time I had a social media consultancy, I really didn’t want to have to hire a team, and I wanted to be able to basically not have to go to more meetings and not answer more questions from my clients. And they often have were asking me the same question so I just started making videos of their most frequently asked questions about different social media things and topics. And I decided to just test it out and try it for a year and see what happen.

And things escalated very quickly and I really started to form my own strategy. So in the beginning it was all over the place and I feel I went into this backwards. So this is such a good question because, what would I tell myself and what would I tell you if I were to start over? And I made a video where I’m really in-depth on this recently, and you can check that out. I’ll also link to that in the description below. But the biggest thing I would tell myself, honestly, is you. I know it sounds weird but this is a really key part of how I operate on YouTube and how my strategies really shifted especially in the last 12 months. So viewer over views all day, every day. Because the honest truth, and some people are going to hate me for saying this, it’s easy to get views on YouTube. It really is.

There are some very easy tactical things you can do to get views and also, if you just focus on any content that’s performed well on your channel and double down on it, you’re going to escalate your views very quickly. But for me, my focus has been, in the last year, to really go deep not wide because I understand that the more I focus on the viewer and the health of my viewers and subscribers as opposed to the virality of my viewers and subscribers and the value I’m providing to them, the more that the algorithm will support me using traffic sources to find more viewers just like that and it becomes this really amazing community on my channel. So that’s the really important part to focus on here. What I also wanted to mention and I touched on this as I mentioned in the other video recently about my new strategy on YouTube and it’s important to understand that there’s really levels to this.

So you have your evergreen content right here. So evergreen content really is keyword focused content. It tells the algorithm who you are, what you’re all about, and ultimately, who you’re trying to reach and what you want to be known for. So this is vitally important in the beginning. So I really wouldn’t change that at all, but I would really focus in on, okay, who do I want to be known to? Who do I want to reach? And also, what do I want to be known for? And it’s okay to start all over the place, but it’s even better if you have a pure focus and a clear intention at the beginning. So what are some keywords and categories and topics that you can focus on with your evergreen content to reach a very small but very targeted and very warm, hot audience? Super important. Because the more that you focus on this, especially in the beginning, the more that these viewers will be super engaged in every piece of content you put out moving forward.

So then you have depth content which I’ve talked about before. But depth content is content that is really for your existing subscriber base. Even if it’s one to two subscribers, you want these people who find your evergreen content to come back and watch your depth content, because that is really reaffirming that you have an engaged, loyal audience that YouTube is then going to use in the algorithm to find more people like that, to grow your audience internally without you having to put as much effort in. And then from there you have viral content, but viral content is only helpful if it’s relevant to these people. Because if you make viral content without actually knowing who you’re making it for and why you’re making it, and you just want to go viral, it really can kill your channel because ultimately it brings in all these views, subscribers and engagement and then that tells the algorithm that’s what your channel is about, and it screws with your channel moving forward.

Virality needs to be based on relevancy as well but this is how you grow a really, really healthy audience on YouTube, and this is what I would really focus on if I were to start all over again and it’s what I am hoping that you focus on as you move forward. So figuring out, okay, what are the topics that are clearly going to tell the algorithm what I want to focus on, what I want to be known for and who I want to reach? What kind of content can I create that really connects with those people? Storytelling, more in-depth content, behind-the-scenes content, humanizing you, and then viral content to broaden your reach, to find more people just like this.

Viral content can be based on trends, hot topics in your industry or in your category. It can be based on content pieces that have done really well on other channels. It can be reactions. All of those kinds of things are potentially viral content. So how do you actually do that? Okay. So these are my five S’s to focus on as a new channel. First and foremost, what I would do if I were to start all over again, is I would, before doing anything with my channel, study the heck out of anyone who has a similar audience and viewer to what you want to attract, you want to study those channels, study the pieces of content that are getting the most engagement, that are getting the most in-depth comments because the views aren’t everything and leverage that to give you ideas for your own channel to really understand your viewer. Because if you know your viewer, the views will inevitably come.

So first and foremost, study. Then you want to stalk. This sounds creepy but hear me out. So you want to stalk those people that are viewing anyone who has a similar audience to you, anyone that has similar content to what you want to create. You want to stalk their viewers and subscribers. Meaning, you want to follow them or just at least look up their profiles across platforms to understand their behavior, what they’re interested in, what are they posting about because, the more you understand them, the more you’re going to reach.

So study, stalk, and then, you want to actually speak to real human beings who fit the bill of the exact viewer that you want to attract and I mean this. You can talk to them in DMs. You can talk to them on Zoom meetings, just simply ask and this is something that our clients do. This is something that I do. Ask them, what are your biggest pain points? What do you wish there was more content about out there? If you were Googling how to solve the problem that you’re struggling with, what would you search for? Asking those questions is going to give you an endless stream of content ideas and topics. Maybe you already have an audience that you want to attract on YouTube in a Facebook group or on Instagram, et cetera, do little polls and ask them those questions. Actually talk to real human beings. I know, crazy idea, but it works really well.

So study, stalk, speak, subscriber health is really important. I would really focus on this. Subscriber health means, are the people that are subscribed to your channel actually watching your content? Because if you’re getting subscribers that are not actually interested or engaged in your content, then it’s not doing you any good and you’re going to have this massive subscriber base, and you’re not going to have an engaged audience. So making sure that your subscribers are coming back and they’re repeat viewers, and they’re really loyal to your channel. That idea of 1000 true fans is really all you need is so true. So start small, start with the evergreen, start with figuring out who that real ideal subscriber is, and then the algorithm will work for you to find more of those people.

And then the final thing is set up. So set up simply means that you want to set up YouTube to create your audience everywhere else. That’s the beauty of this platform. People are coming here to watch content. They’re loyal, they’re engaged, they will follow you across platforms and when you do that, you actually are building your own audience outside of just having the audience on YouTube. So getting people on your email list from your YouTube videos, getting people onto IG, getting people onto LinkedIn, getting people onto Facebook from YouTube diversifies your audience so you’re not solely relying just on YouTube. And this creates this really healthy ecosystem where you’re building a super solid base from your content on YouTube. And you don’t need a ton of subscribers for this to start to kick off and get that hockey stick growth that I talked about in this video. So I want to share an exact example of how well this actually works.

So Tuan is one of our YouTube for Bosses members and he said, I’m an online fitness coach. Just wanted to share another win after implementing the new updates from YouTube for Bosses 3.0. For months, I’ve done content about evergreen content. So on topics. After I followed the system with the first eight tests videos, then I decided I wanted to do a depth video and I was actually really scared just talking to camera, but I did it anyway without expecting anything from the video. To my surprise, look at the analytics. This video outperformed every other video I’ve made for months with views, watch time, watch time doubled. To me, it seems my audience liked me sharing my own fitness journey while talking and that is quite a surprise since I didn’t think they would care.

You know why they care and why this works so well is because he really focused on that evergreen, small audience in the beginning and getting the right subscribers so that anything he makes moving forward, those subscribers are going to tune in and watch. And I really, if I were to start all over again, to answer Ijapari’s question fully, I would avoid viral content at the beginning of your channel simply because it can get out of control and attract the wrong base. And you can see some of my most viral videos actually have the worst retention on them which, again, is doing more harm than good.

So Ijapari, I hope this answered your question and let me know if you had comments, takeaways, light bulbs throughout this. If you want to be part of the next #AskSunny, join my secret group and I look forward to hopefully featuring you very soon. 

Thanks so much for reading and watching!