Summary: Your work as a YouTuber isn't finished just because you've uploaded that video. Find out how to build your audience on other platforms on this week's episode of TubeTalk.
You've done all the hard work. You've shot your video. You've edited it. You've created a great thumbnail. You've uploaded it, and given it an amazing title. So, you just waiting for those views, right? Wrong. The work doesn't stop at the upload. Let's find out why on this episode of TubeTalk.
A common mistake I see with a lot of YouTubers is that they think that the work is done the second the video is made live, then they sit back waiting for those views. Well, that's not necessarily the case. My guest this week is Antony Ambriz, who is a YouTube growth and content strategist, who has built, managed, and grown multiple YouTube channels for influencers, entrepreneurs, and companies. He’s generated over a billion views and millions of dollars in sales for his clients all through YouTube. In this podcast you will learn:
How to use your videos for mailing list generation
How to provide extra value to your email list subscribers
How to collaborate with your viewers via mailing lists
Why Facebook Groups are so valuable for video creators
How to leverage YouTube's Community Tab
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How to Build Your YouTube Audience on Other Platforms: Full Transcript
Liron Segev: Anthony, thank you for making the time to be with us.
Anthony Ambriz: Oh, I'm excited to be here.
Liron Segev: This is going to be a very special episode because, well, clearly you've worked something out on YouTube, which is one thing we all want to know how to do. How do I make my channel pop? Where do we begin?
Anthony Ambriz: First thing's first, I would say once you have your content, you have your voice down, you're working on it, you've got that part done, then your optimization is key. You've done everything you can do to really get out there on YouTube and get the exposure that YouTube wants to give you. After that, you sort of have to go outside of YouTube.
Liron Segev: We're basically assuming at this stage that you know about thumbnails, you know about titles, you know about descriptions. You've done everything you can to optimize yourself on YouTube. Are you saying the work is not done at this stage?
Anthony Ambriz: Yes, I'm definitely saying that because oftentimes what I see is everyone's putting all their blood, sweat and tears into producing this amazing video. They put it out there. It's optimized. It has the right keywords, everything, the beautiful thumbnail, and then they just sit. They just put it out there and they just sit back and try to rake in the views, but then that's it. There's so much more to do afterwards.
Liron Segev: Okay. Well, you've opened up this door. Guess what? We're going through this. Okay. Let's start. I've done my thing, where do I begin off YouTube platform?
Anthony Ambriz: The first thing I would say is that the biggest kind of distribution strategies that creators need to focus on is creating that email list.
Liron Segev: How do we build this list?
Anthony Ambriz: Your channel contains a lot of content. If you were to create a guide of ‘here's my favorite tech’, ‘my top 10 choices for Father's Day’ or for whatever holiday we're going into, for Christmas, you just create this list and you say, "Here's my list. I want to give it to you for free after watching the video," right? You sort of want to entice them at the beginning of the video with "I'm going to go over this tech, but the end, I have something special for you."
Right there you've given the viewer a promise to wait out until the end. They're more geared to watching your whole video for the big reveal. The big reveal is that you have a list that they can download, a guide, a checklist, whatever it is, and then they just have to opt in with their email and then you give them the guide.
Now, I know this might sound complicated because now we're dealing with like landing pages and opt in forms and all those things, but it could be easily set up. Even the guide itself, like if somebody's using a Mac, they can use Pages or Keynotes or if they're using a PC, use PowerPoint or Word, and it's just creating something really simple, export it as a PDF, upload it to something like Google Drive or Dropbox, and then go into a platform like MailChimp.
MailChimp lets you set up landing pages and then set up your hosting for your emails and all that stuff. Then you just set up that link, people put in their email, and then you can send them the guide that they wanted to download and go from there.
Liron Segev: The steps are not so complicated once you break it down. We have a link in the description. You can call it out in your video. You take them to what you refer to as a landing page, which essentially is just a one pager saying, "Hey, I'd love to send you this guide. I need your email address so I know where to send it to." That's kind of the definition of the landing page. Of course, you can get more complicated as you grow by having pixels and remarketing techniques, but that's a conversation for another time. Let's start with the basics. Now I'm asking for an email address. Behind that you run MailChimp.
MailChimp gets the email address, then sends them the guide. Everybody's happy. Now MailChimp has sent out this email. It's got the attached PDF and the link to download. What do I do now that I've kind of gathered these email addresses?
Anthony Ambriz: Now it's just sending out a welcome email to let them know that they're now part of this newsletter of sorts, and then provide value right off the bat. Give them something else after that. Share with them another really helpful tip that they can use. Then after that, you start to get into this flow of once a week when you have content. Let's say you're doing just one video a week and once a week you share that video with them as soon as you publish it. Right away you have like a locked-in audience from your email subscribers that know you have a new video out on your YouTube channel, and so then they just start to watch it.
You already brought in an audience to YouTube. If we're getting really complicated or very intense here, now you're starting the session watch time off of your video on your channel because you've led them from an email, which then looks good for you.
Liron Segev: I love that. Essentially, you're in charge of your own notifications if you think about it. We know notifications are a bit weird or wonderful to say the least at the moment, but this way I get to push a button. I get to notify my audience. This is absolutely superb. Then just as a pro tip here, what do you think of an idea of having maybe an unlisted video that's not available to the public, but as your first welcome email, maybe it's an additional three tips that the general public doesn't get to share?
Anthony Ambriz: Oh, yeah. I think that would be wonderful. Everyone wants to feel like they're in the VIP section. That exclusivity and treating your viewer like that, I think that's fantastic.
Liron Segev: All right. I'm building my email list. I'm in charge of my own notifications. Of course, you’ve got to comply with the whole opt out. You want to play fair because it's your brand at the end of the day. It's your name on these things. You do all of that. Does MailChimp handle your unsubscribe notices?
Anthony Ambriz: Yes. They'll put all the legalities in and handle for people to opt out and do all those things, so you don't have to worry too much about that.
Liron Segev: Okay, fantastic. I've now sent them a notification every time I put a video out. Maybe if I put out three or four times a week a video, do you think maybe one email as a digest will be good enough at the end of the week or should I give them one email per video that goes out?
Anthony Ambriz: I would say doing a digest is a lot better, but having it highlight maybe your best video, the one that you really want people to pay attention to, and then just making a little note of like there's other videos that they can watch as well.
Liron Segev: What else do we do with this mailing list?
Anthony Ambriz: I mean in the end, that's up to you what you want to do with that. I think one of the biggest ones that I like to do with an email list, besides offering courses and things of that nature, is promote upcoming videos. Let's say you want to do a big premiere for one of your videos, right? You're getting that setup, or you want to go live on your channel. When you go live on your channel, that's only going out to your subscribers on YouTube. You can now use this email list as a way to do a live launch. You set it up where you send out an email and you say "Hey, in a week I'm about to go live at this date. I'm going to do a really cool video."
This is where you might run into sending out a couple of emails to do this because you want to keep reminding people that you're going to go live on YouTube. You do an email campaign, and set it up to go out a number of times. You can do five emails. You can do three emails. I usually say if you're just starting out for the first time, maybe just do three emails. One at the very beginning to announce it, one the day before, and one the day of.
All these emails are doing is just announcing you're about to go live and share a really awesome training or an awesome unboxing or whatever type of content you're doing.
Liron Segev: Could you involve the community at this stage? Like maybe ask for any questions and maybe kind of feature some of these questions on your channel?
Anthony Ambriz: Oh, definitely, yeah. I think one big factor about going live is that you want to involve the community and saying "I'm going to answer the questions that you ask on this live stream. I have this topic I want to address, but at the same time, we're going to have a section for Q and A. We're just going to have a party. It's going to be fun." If you want to go a little above and beyond, you can do like a giveaway on that live stream, whether it be a discount code to something. If you have merch, giving away some of your merch.
Liron Segev: Okay, perfect. Even if you don't go live, because a lot of people are still scared of doing that live stream, maybe use this as a way to gather questions from your audience so that you can feature them in a video. Not live video, but you can say, "Hey, so-and-so asked this question, which is a great question. Let me address it," and make maybe a ask me anything kind of video. But again, it's about making your community feel special and in the VIP section.
Anthony Ambriz: One thing I would say is often times when creators are thinking about collaborating, you can collaborate with your viewers. That is a good example of a way to collaborate with your viewers there. They're the ones offering you content to share in your videos.
Liron Segev: Okay. A superb approach, collaborate with your viewers. That is beautiful because normally we think collab means others creators. That's kind of the first thing that comes to mind, but people don't think that your viewer is actually a great, great source of information. They're your fans and they're the ones going to keep coming back again and again, especially if you feature them. That is just hot nuggets right there. Love it. Anything else on the email list or we're moving on to tip number two?
Anthony Ambriz: The second one I would say is Facebook Groups. Now, I'm sure a lot of you out there are probably members of Facebook Groups. I think Facebook brought out a stat saying that a billion people a month are active in Facebook Groups. That's one of their biggest things. Facebook Groups are just a fantastic way to get your viewers to really form that community and really build it around the topic that you all love or you could build it around your own personality, right? Your own brand.
Liron Segev: Okay. Let's unpack that a little bit. Are you saying start your own Facebook Group or you saying join Facebook Groups and have discussions there?
Anthony Ambriz: I would say do both, but definitely start your own Facebook Group.
Liron Segev: Not everyone's going to have a niche where they can start a Facebook Group where they'll actually get members or maybe that's more of a fear I suppose. Like if I start a knitting Facebook Group, who's going to join that? Well, maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe if people are watching my knitting videos, why wouldn't they want to then talk to me on a Facebook Group?
Anthony Ambriz: What's great about Facebook Groups is that if you get viewers from your YouTube channel over to a Facebook Group, and you get to see who they actually are. You get to see their actual names. You get to see their actual profiles. You get to really understand and know your audience, and then a lot of that community starts to build. Again you can get them to start helping you and collaborating, interacting with your content, helping you create new content. Doing a Facebook Group also helps you collect the emails too because you can always setup a question like, "What's your email? I want to send you something.
Liron Segev: You also mentioned being part of other groups. The problem I see in a lot of these Facebook Groups is that people just spam their links to their videos. That's a no no.
Anthony Ambriz: Again, it's about providing value, right? If you really are genuine and you want to help people out, when you go into those groups, start a conversation. Be a part of other conversations. I think you get noticed more when you join in on other conversations and actually help by answering questions that people have. I've been a part of some groups where the admins never answer any of the questions, but it's just the community really taking over. That gives an opportunity for you to be noticed. When people see who's answering their questions and who's commenting, most people start to see the profile and investigate who this person is.
That way they'll usually find whether it's your own Facebook Group or your YouTube channel. If you're really talking about that on your personal profile on Facebook, they'll find it and then you'll get a new viewer, a new fan.
Liron Segev: That's also another important tip - to make sure that your own personal profile, the one that you're joining the Facebook Group with, has very clear links to your YouTube channel, very clear links to what you have to offer so people can see it and go, "Oh, here's another click, go to your channel and then maybe subscribe to that because they enjoy your content.
Anthony Ambriz: You can do that really easily right in your bio of your Facebook profile. It actually allows you to link out to something. It only works on desktop. Mobile it doesn't. The link isn't clickable, but you have spots for website links that are clickable.
Now, this third tip is one that I'm really promoting with people right now because YouTube did this great thing where they added a Community Tab to people's channels. Now, the Community Tab is supposed to act like the Facebook Newsfeed in a way. But I think it's so much more and I've seen people use it in so many different ways. It causes a lot of good engagement from your subscribers, and it could bring in a lot of views as well. What you're able to do there is always promote your video as soon as it comes out.
Also, you're able to promote other people's content. You're able to tag those people in those posts. You're able to do polls and do a quick survey, and you're able to like post images and share maybe behind the scenes or just maybe do like a poll of like which thumbnail do you like. You can also add gifs.
The Community Tab is fantastic because you can be posting older content and get new viewers to it again. You’ve got to remember, subscribers are coming in all the time and some of them might not have seen your older content. You can do your own Throwback Thursdays again. Bring the throwback to YouTube and you can really engage people that way. What's been fun is I've seen a lot of amazing creators out there, large creators who are sharing some of their audience's own content. I've been able to see that and that's fantastic. I think that's showing the community coming together and helping each other out. One thing about the Community Tab, is that you can share your content alongside the YouTube notification system too.
Liron Segev: It's a 24 hour world that we're living in. Maybe I address my morning community when I upload the video, but then when the rest of the world is waking up, it's a good time to push another one of these things out, getting some more eyeballs on the same video, or people are at work. They forgot about it, but maybe they get one in the evening and now they might click on it and watch that video. The one thing you did mention is being able to share other people's videos. Is that not a bad strategy because you're basically taking people away from your channel to another creator?
Anthony Ambriz: I think it's just showing that you are a part of the community, that you are a creator along with your other friends who are creators. I think it's just a great way to highlight other people. That always helps you. When you're helping other people it tends to help you. Not to be selfish, but it's just what happens. It's the side effect, right? The next tip that I want to share, and this is a very old school one, but I think it's now long forgotten because everyone is so busy learning about optimization and all this other stuff. It’s actually using communities like other websites, other blogs.
Maybe if you have your own blog, or use Medium, which is a great blogging platform, or Quora, which is more of a community that people are asking questions on. Then there’s Reddit, and its thousands of Subreddits. There's a world out there that are talking about certain topics that you're creating videos on. They're just writing about it or doing pictures or taking pictures about these topics. But you as a video content creator, you have video to show them and that's going to blow their minds, right?
There's a great community out there to then be able to publish your own articles with your videos embedded or to reach out to those blogs or those subreddits or those communities and say, "Can I offer you my content so you can write about it and feature it and have more rich content on your blog besides just texts, posts and pictures?"
Liron Segev: Oh, okay. This is a whole other can of worms here. Even though you're a YouTube content creator, that is your center of your universe, you're saying let's look beyond that. Let's look at the Google searches. Let's look where people are hanging out, and they're hanging out on blogs. They're handing out on podcasts. They're hanging out in other forums. In the olden days, we used to call them forums. I'm not sure what they call them these days, but people are kind of hanging out there as well, in which case you should be tapping into those communities and just drawing attention back to you.
Anthony Ambriz: Yeah, definitely. The thing is you can benefit from those communities as well because they have to produce daily content because of how Google's algorithm works for them.
With YouTube, we don't have to worry about that so much anymore. But yeah, I think you can get some information from those communities and be like, "Oh, they talked about this topic in this way. I've never seen it presented that way. Let me make a video with that concept as well." I think this is also a great way to collab. Let's say you have a writer or an author of that blog post. You can create a video around that post saying where you got the idea from, giving them credit, and then you go back to them and say "Hey, I made a video about your article. Would you want to share that along with your article or highlight it in some way?"
Liron Segev: Okay, that's cool. As long as this aligns with your YouTube content, then that should work beautifully for you and your channel. It should work for the blogger because now they're getting an additional medium to show their audience. Instead of just an image, now it's actually a video giving them credit. That's amazing. That would work. That would work really, really well. Being a blogger, if someone was going to offer me a video about my own content, why wouldn't I share that? Absolutely. Awesome.
Anthony Ambriz: Right. I have two more. One is a given. I mean, we're experiencing it right now. Podcasting, right? Be a guest. I'm not saying go start a podcast because that's a whole other world, but try to be a guest on a podcast. I think that's a great way to bring exposure to what you're doing, what you're creating, your expertise. Definitely reach out to two podcasts and see if they want a guest.
Liron Segev: From this side of the microphone, I can tell you that we are constantly looking for new fresh ideas and new people to chat to. If people start approaching and say, "Hey, listen, I've got a new angle on this. Here's what I could offer your audience," of course, I'm going to take that opportunity. Don't be afraid to reach out. Tell them what you can offer them and their audience. Make it appealing. Make it easy, and then you'll get a guest slot in no time. It's much easier than you think. yeah, definitely second that.
Anthony Ambriz: I would say for the blogs and communities and podcasts, become a listener, become a reader. Don't just say "Hey, I want to write for you, or I want to share my stuff on your platform," and not know anything about that blog or appear on the podcast and not know anything about the podcast. It's a little rude. But yeah, like actually be a fan. For me, I'm definitely a fan of TubeTalk. I've listened to it since back in the day, and I've seen how it's changed ownerships. I love where it's been progressing, and it's a great podcast.
Liron Segev: As you heard before, even on this particular podcast, Anthony knew that I have a tech channel. He's done his research. It's just a much easier conversation for us to have when we all are on the same page as opposed to, "So, what do you do?" You know? It just shows that you just didn't take this seriously enough, and then it becomes a very stale kind of conversation.
Anthony Ambriz: Yeah.
Liron Segev: It's great. Now I have an email list. I've got a Facebook kind of strategy I'm thinking of. I'm going to reach out to other communities in terms of forums, blogs, kind of create my own content, and then start using my own Community Tab to promote my stuff, my channel. Will this help me if I have a channel that I haven't been posting for awhile, and maybe I'm thinking of reviving it. Are these strategies good for a dormant channel as well as an active channel or should this only be done if you're active already?
Anthony Ambriz: I think this works very well for a dormant channel as well because it's bringing new life to it. Because with the YouTube's algorithm and the way they're going to do their notifications, when you upload that new video, who knows where it's going to go, to how many of your subscribers. You're going to need to bring that audience from somewhere, and I think these methods help with that. I do have one more tip.
This one requires a lot of courage though because this requires you to meet with people in real life. This is do meetups. Hold an event. It doesn't have to be like a big conference workshop type of thing. It just can be a hangout event where you bring in like-minded creators or fans to a location and you just hang out, get to know each other, maybe have a topic or a presentation. But I think doing an in-person meetup really builds even greater fans and builds friendships and really builds a community outside just of YouTube.
Liron Segev: I fully support meetups. It costs money, but wow, does it pay you back in bucket loads. Nothing better than a handshake. That's all I can say.
Anthony Ambriz: Definitely. Yeah. If you're hosting your own meetups, you're collecting emails again.
Liron Segev: We have another email gathering technique. I mean, fill that email bucket with any opportunity that you can because that is still the one application that we check every single day. I mean, no matter which social media we're on and what we love and what we hate, guess what? Email is still the thing that's required every single day. Okay. I'm assuming we've used up all your bonus tips now, since you've done so much more than what we were expecting. Tell me what have you got going on if people want to get a hold of you, if people want to learn more. What's happening in your life?
Anthony Ambriz: Yeah. I'm going out from behind the curtain, from behind the scenes. I'm working with so many different channels and influencers and entrepreneurs, and I've finally created my own channel. I say everyone go check it out. It's called Video Creator Secrets. I'm experiencing it from the other side now as a creator myself.
Liron Segev: It's amazing how many content strategists and YouTube strategists are taking that step. It's easy to help a client out because you can instantly see what's right, what's wrong. But when you do it for yourself, you're so overthinking these things that it takes you forever to push that button. Well done. I'm glad that you're doing it. Of course ,guys, everything will be in the show notes in case you missed any of those links. I'll have them all in here. Anthony, thank you for spending some time with us sharing this insane amount of information. If you just do one of these, you're going to be so much better than just simply relying on YouTube, simply relying on notification. Your work is not complete once you push the upload button. Anthony, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it.
Anthony Ambriz: Thank you.
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Liron Segev, aka TheTechieGuy, is the Director of Customer Success at vidIQ, an internationally celebrated Digital YouTube Strategist working with some of the largest brands and YouTube influencers in the world. Over the past 20+ years, his work has taken him to South Africa, the UK, and the US where he frequently speaks at conferences and provides expert tech commentary for various print publications, radio, and TV while actively running his Tech YouTube Channel.
