 Freedom! Today I want to talk to you about channel strategy. It seems like I hear a lot of YouTube gurus out there who talk about channel strategy like it's something you should already know what that means. Very simply put, channel strategy is your strategy for your channel. Now there are a lot of different channel strategies and to be honest with you there are a lot of ways to get this right and get it wrong. We're going to go over a couple of different channel strategies and we're going to go over a couple of different elements that you can apply in a way that's meaningful and relevant to you and your audience. The first and foremost thing that I talk about the most is the thing that people just miss completely. And that search engine optimization or SEO. SEO is very important because SEO is basically the key to make sure that your videos are seen a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. If you properly tag, title and describe your video in a way that's keyword rich and in a way that's going to help people discover your videos later your channel will have a very nice building effect. So rather than releasing a video and you get this as far as your tent pole, they're up and down. You actually notice that you'll have a very long tail at the end of your video or in this case many videos. So rather than a constant up and down every time you release a video, you'll actually notice that it will build over time, of course with peaks and valleys as you have more and less popular videos. Search engine optimization is a big one because it allows you to make sure that your videos are discoverable later so that you're not always working on your next video, which is your only source of traffic. So keep that in mind and do yourself a favor, Google it, do some research and find out how you can make this work for you. Another big one is thumbnails. Now we've all heard it before, blah, blah, blah branding, blah, blah, blah. Just give me a second here. There are good examples of branding and bad examples of branding. A good example of branding is say if you have a series, every thumbnail is distinctively different. However, also distinctively the same. So for instance, if you look at your thumbnails and the only difference between episode one and episode 15 in your series is simply having a number in the corner, that's probably a bad thing. However, if you can somehow figure out a way to make sure that your thumbnails are the same but different and still include very nice marketing colors, you will do a lot better. When I say marketing colors, I'm talking about colors like my shirt. I'm talking about very almost neon colors. Marketing colors can be very bright, blues, orange, red, yellow, green. These colors when used in good contrast are very effective. One thing that I try to tell people is with your thumbnails, try to imagine them as a candy bar. If your thumbnail were a candy bar, would you pick it up and buy it without having tasted one previously? Candy bars are actually a really good analogy for this because they are designed, packaging, color, everything is designed to make you pick it up at first sight without having tasted one ever before. Another channel strategy is sharing your videos. But to where? That's where the secret comes in. Sharing your videos out is, it's important, but it's also important to get it right. So for instance, if you had family-friendly content that you expected everyone from soccer moms to your average Joe to maybe a 12, 13-year-old kid to enjoy, Facebook would be a really good place to do this. But don't expect to just share it there and have it do okay. There is a little bit of work involved. Oftentimes, creating your own community for these videos is something that you have to do. Also, when it comes to Facebook and other social medias, it's not just a one-way information push. It's very important that you interact in some way and in some meaningful way with your subscribers or followers. And that really depends on you, your content, and your subscribers. As a personal example, over the past few months, I've been doing something called Deeperist Thoughts. This is one of the ways that I interact on social media with my followers. They have come to appreciate my Deeperist Thoughts series and they follow and interact through that. This way, when I do share a video or I do have something that I'd like to share or push, it's not just like I'm sharing my video. I'm interacting with my community. Also, with Twitter, you get the advantage of there being many people who follow many people, meaning when someone shares, it's a lot more valuable. Also, if you were to reshare something 12 hours later, possibly with a different hook, then you have a good opportunity to get some viewers that you normally wouldn't have. There aren't many social medias where you can get away with sharing something more than once in a 24-hour period. This is one of them. If you balance it right, then there's Reddit. Reddit is a very strange animal. I would tell you if you're not already part of the Reddit community or if you haven't been for about three to six months, don't share your stuff to Reddit. The Reddit community follows something called RedditKit. It's basically etiquette for Reddit. It's RedditKit. RedditKit is basically their social guidelines, their social laws. And one of the many things that it dictates is somewhat like the give and take that I've been describing with Facebook and Twitter. With many users focusing on whether you're following proper RedditKit, it can become a huge PR disaster if you are not properly following the rules and etiquette of Reddit. So be careful with that one. All that being said about Reddit, it is a huge source of traffic if you share it the right time and in the right place. So it's definitely somewhere you should be if you fit into that community. There are a million other social media sites and I'm not gonna get into them all, but these are the big ones that I see. Should I talk about 4chan? Probably not. Nine gag? Yeah, no, I'm not going there. Another channel strategy is very simply interacting with the community. It seems that I see a lot of YouTube creators, small ones and even large ones getting sucked into only worrying about their channel. They don't go on to other channels and comment. They don't really interact with the community at all. It's important to interact because a lot of times this can be a way for you to activate or reactivate subscribers that either you would have never had before or ones that just happened to see your comment in someone else's video. That being said, don't do this. Seriously, nobody likes that guy. Nobody. And of course, now that I've said that, I can hear you in the comments right now saying, but it's so hard to get my name out there. It's so hard to do that. I have to advertise on other channels. That's simply not true. In fact, most times when people see those advertisements, you're the last channel that they want to go and check out. Often adding something to the discussion is the best thing that you can do. Also, it keeps people from removing your comment, making it completely useless. Another channel strategy has to do with mixing popular and less popular content. So for instance, let's say you have one series that you know is going to do extremely well. Possibly salt and pepper between your content that is designed to do well and that you know will do well with content that's maybe more fulfilling for yourself or maybe pointed at a different audience. A good example of this is the show Impulse. Impulse is one cohesive show that salt and peppers content that is designed to do well with content that's pointed at developing other markets and also bringing in viewers and subscribers from other areas. There are so many different channel strategies and really any strategy that you have that is designed to get you more views in a non-spany and organic way is a channel strategy. Oftentimes you're going to mix and match between them. The key here with channel strategy is finding out what works for you, analyzing the data with your YouTube analytics and then sticking to the plan. Oftentimes you will get haters who make you question your plan. It's okay to listen to these people. However, it's also important for you to realize that oftentimes you will end up with a vocal minority and that you have to follow the numbers. Hopefully this video will help you understand what a channel strategy is and how to implement one. It's one of those things that I can't really get too specific in because it does depend on you, your audience, and your potential audience. The last thing I want to leave you with is I want to ask you, who is your audience? I want you to go down three levels. I want you to answer this question by saying, my audience is someone who does this, this, and this. So for instance, on my personal vlogging channel, my audience is people who are in freedom, people who care about the behind the scenes and what goes on, and people who care about me personally. That's a fairly narrow audience. However, by narrowing it down that far, I know who it is I'm trying to please and who it is I'm trying to interact with. And often I pick up people who are outside that cone and that's wonderful. That's beautiful. But who I'm looking for, who I'm aiming for, I know who that person is and you should too. So tell me in the comment section down below in those three categories who your audience is. Till next time, I'm Anthony. Like, subscribe, comments please.