 It's the network. What's up everybody once again is Brandman Sean and I'm back with another video of Inside the Network where we show you exclusive content from our conversations inside of brandmannetwork.com and in this video one of the artists asked me, how did I grow my YouTube channel? There's some things that I really want to break down and add at the end, but just to make very clear what is Brandman Network, it's a space where we help artists navigate through their situations. We've got artists that we help get signed, we've got artists that we're helping them build their fan base, managers that we're speaking with and in this environment for whatever reason though he decided to ask, what is my way of growing a YouTube channel? Here it is. It's the network. I had a question specific to YouTube Sean. I wanted to know if you could give us some insight on what was your strategy for growing your own channel? Okay, from my channel, two big things were at the beginning, SEO and just going to where people already are. So one, I actually had a few homies and this didn't even get me to a huge amount but I had a few people like people I had my festival and so many other things I'm doing. I had a strategy back on Instagram was still chronological where I had people for the first month posting my every time a video dropped and we all did it at the same time and kind of flood attention and all that stuff. That was just for one month. That might have got me to like 56 followers or something like that but at the beginning you've got to be as manual as possible to get any attention that you can. That's just the purpose of it. Two was the SEO. I'm choosing to do things about artists that people are looking for they're interested in versus just giving them straight information because how am I going to be found in the first place and how are people going to be some people are just curious about the artist first and then they'll realize, oh, I like this information. So and artists do that from in the artist ways, I do remixes that I do beats like such and such like all that stuff. That's the same thing just from an information standpoint. Another huge thing I did was particularly when I had my people posting, I interrupted attention. I'm big on pattern interruption. So I remember one of my homeboys he really didn't want to post my stuff. It was like it was a Fetty Watt video my very first video he was like, yo bro this looks spammy. I don't like the way it looks it feels like it just it was a real bad quality type post. But I have a lot of artists like the lot of artists were following me. This was not because of my general advice is just because of the people I work with work for and all that stuff in there. So like this is what a brand should look like this is what a brand like they love that more produced look like we just talked about the polish and I was like nah man that's the point. So much in this in my and our circle was polished. I know when they see this is going to interrupt their pattern on Instagram and they're going to be like what the hell is this they're going to critique they critique it. They're going to read it and then they're either going to check it out or they're just going to be like yo what is that either way they know what exists and they're not going to forget it. So the understanding that's always going to be relative right you know wearing wearing red to to work or whatever like or dressing in all red having red hair and then you go to some corporate job you probably gonna stand out you wearing red in a in a gang of bloods you just fitting in you know I mean like so it's always gonna be relative you have to realize where you're posting and where you're presenting yourself so you can stand out in that particular category first and evolve from there so again that's stand out SEO so leveraging things that are already getting attention to bring me some attention and then third I can't remember what the other thing I said was oh just how I had people like just posting chronological which a doubt that'll be hard to do these days because Instagram has different rules and actually this is less just YouTube but oh and I was also posting like Reddit forums and things like that looking for people with that interest so that's something to keep in mind and I also put that Instagram video who was wherever was asking about Instagram earlier make sure you check to check section I got two videos on that in there but one thing I got to make sure I say I say some of y'all might have heard this already from me but if it makes sense for you which you don't know it yet for sure just try it out figure out how to make TikTok work for you because in a place that is is early it's a sweet spot if you can get it to go you will get it to go and you will probably have more followers and and people checking out for your stuff in one month that you have on Instagram right now maybe went hard like some people are less than that so just keep that in mind for real for real for real. Alright so that's that video and there's a few things that I want to add because that was the conversation but I can always you know add on a few other things that I did in the very beginning so here's one thing as well I actually went on Reddit and I was dropping videos in Reddit groups that had interest in hip hop in just artist growth and things of that nature and I put the videos there as somebody else right at the very beginning until it got to the point where other people were posting my stuff there as well sometimes I got flagged and had to fight that situation generally speaking though I got a lot of great feedback especially since there was pretty much nobody doing those types of videos it seemed right at that time so yes I leveraged organic music marketing I mean organic advertising just using a small subset of influencers and by influencers I meant just friends and I'm not even talking about big influencers but they were influencers in a small community and I was targeting them so remember when we talk about influencer marketing or influencer PR and things of that nature and we make sure that you get on platforms that have an overlap of fan bases well this is exactly what I did essentially right I had friends that had similar friends and I was helping them advertise me in multiple ways so a lot of their concentric circle overlap started to experience my videos again and again and just looked like I was everywhere to a very small I mean to a very very small subset of people but it worked over time right and you can start in the exact same way not just a YouTube channel but as an artist whatever and then another thing especially if you're talking about how to grow a YouTube channel that's not like an artist thing being consistent and dropping a lot of content is a huge thing most people say they want to do it but consistency is an extremely hard thing most people won't do it so that sounds like some fluff thing you always hear but no it is a real thing and then the SEO making sure that you actually consider things that are trending there was a combination of things that I did right I did trending topics just to bring in some energy right to bring in that free traffic that comes from organic SEO but then I did other topics that other people weren't talking about because at the end of the day there might be more people trying to do that whole SEO game where they want to type create videos based off of things that are already searched but once you hit that all right there's gonna be other people doing it which means they're gonna be competition and you want to do those better than anybody else however on the other end when people come and they decide hey man I like what you have to say well I like your type of video then you also need to say look this is what I differentiate I don't want to just be the SEO topics that are trending just to stay top of mind what's going to create your brand and give a people idea of who you are deeper than the training topics and how you differentiate and position yourself in the marketplace is what you decide to talk about right I don't talk about a lot of production things I'm not a producer don't want to be a producer I don't talk about certain aspects of being an artist because I'm not an artist I'm a marketer right I have a lot of experience with artists right I've seen a lot of things but at the end of the day I'm a marketer so I don't get heavy into the legalities I don't get heavy into sync licensing and all those types of things even though I have a lot of the knowledge but for positioning sake especially marketing and branding right is because I do that is not just hey I'm doing this advice the general advice that a lot of people do on the channels I'm doing this in real life and I'm helping other artists so now I can I'm presenting that type of advice it helps position me if I stay in that pocket versus chasing other things that bunch me up with people who aren't necessarily even doing what I'm doing because marketing is definitely a trending topic how to grow a fan base like all those types of things right how to promote a song how to boost your Spotify plays that's something that a lot of people will talk about just to talk about because they're trending and they're going to give their advice on it just to get views on it but if I just talk about those and I just talk about those again in in the way that other people talk about them that won't differentiate me from people who just go and then create a video off of it and from me who is actually doing it and seeing these finer results so that's another thing brand positioning and that's something that you only get from going over over and over and over when it comes to the videos that you create and understanding that what is your perspective what is your POV and your POV doesn't mean you're talking head you're giving advice or anything like that even as an artist what do you have to say or what's interesting is there a strong aesthetic right is that is there a strong feel of vibe and energy that people get through get from you what do you want to own that part really becomes important after you get past that initial hacking of the SEO and things of that nature you don't have to run ads I didn't start running ads to to build my channel I didn't do a lot of things to build my channel that I know how to do what I do for other people why because a lot of it was just for one making sure that it was as real as possible and there were plenty of periods some of you might need this some of you might not there were plenty of periods where I did antiviral videos is what I call them right I do viral videos channel starts to really take off but what that happens with that is a lot of people a lot of people that aren't necessarily your core demographic the core audience you want to speak to start to experience the videos and they like it and they think it's dope or they're starting to be negative and stupid but then they start to also see the rest of your channel and it doesn't connect right right they think that you're I don't know another type of channel for my instance and they might think it's a world star or a DJ academics or a complex style channel or whatever that might be right when it's not it's not commentary for the sake of commentary or any of that it's analyzing how success happens in the music industry or providing marketing and branding type insights from real things that get done real data real experiences all of that stuff so my audience isn't the fans I don't want the fans generally speaking right my core that I need to make sure I grab first is people who actually care not people who just are artists no people who actually care to educate themselves and make decisions so that's a smaller and smaller audience and that doesn't mean that you don't need to have a huge fan base it means that you need to have people that you know that you're speaking to right and as long as you're speaking to those people the extra people they're all you know they're all good like that's cool so when I go back to the antiviral videos what I meant by that concept is I might have that video that pops off but then after that I might do a video that's so boring that is can't be bearable for anybody who doesn't want actual practical information right to do the task that I'm set out to do help artists grow right so they're not looking for that specifically and if they're only in it for like a quick fix right that's not the type of artists that I'm trying to communicate with the type of business music professionals that I'm trying to communicate with so I would literally go the other direction with that type of content just to weed out some of those general fans as you might call them right and even again some of those artists who aren't actually and really bear that and really just want somebody to hold their hands they thought they were going to study but not it they're not really serious serious for real for real alright so those are some concepts that you can utilize for yourself but it might not be relevant to you that's last thing especially but anybody who might be watching this was just building a channel in general that's not even music specific and might have a more business-minded focus those are some aspects that you can use especially the antiviral videos just to keep yourself on track because easy to get lost in the sauce of what's cool what's popping trying to get a hundred thousand two hundred thousand subscribers right trying to get millions of views all that stuff is cool but remember you can have a whole lot of views and very few people that respect and understand what you're saying that'll actually capitalize and pay you if they're doing it for a business need or you can have the right people and then build from there right which means they're gonna be better for business better to network with better to even be connected with just because they're obviously doing better for themselves or carrying themselves a different way same goals for fans right that's that same idea I'm either connected on a superficial level with not necessarily even the right people or I know who my core fan base is and I make a certain amount of money when they say that 1000 fans alright and I'm able to live a sustainable livelihood just because I've targeted and I'm clear on who I'm speaking to so that's it for that video again that clip that I originally pulled this from is from a conversation and brand man network calm we have a lot of great conversations and there's a lot of stuff that I'm not going to ever show inside the network because it goes very deep into artist situations no go investor negotiations so many things where we're talking to artists in real time helping them do their situation and the information is too sensitive to just pop on the YouTube channel all right so hope you like it hope you join or 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