 Freedom! I'm back. In case you don't remember who I am, I am Adam, manager of the Geek channel powered by freedom And I'm very thankful to be part of freedom. In this video I would like to share one of my top tips for growth on YouTube. Typically, I don't share my tools of the trade with anyone, but that's what we're all about here at freedom. Growing together as a family. So why not? Today's tip is to build a portfolio. But don't just build a portfolio out of anything. Learn to objectively build a portfolio out of your best work. This tip is actually something I've learned from interacting with my own subscribers as well as freedom members like you guys as much as my own channel experiences. You see, once you've worked on YouTube channels long enough, you start to gather a very large list of Skype contacts. Subscribers, acquaintances, friends, collaboration partners, and even group chats. And it is very very tempting to take advantage of that large list of people and send your video links out to them. I mean, why not? They can watch your videos and share them with other people and help you out, right? Well, while this is actually one of my pet peeves, if done correctly, this can actually be a very strategic advertising tool. What would I mean about doing it correctly? Well, the key to advertising is to advertise the right content. You want to advertise your best videos. Let's all be honest here for a moment. Episode 28 of your Minecraft custom map Let's Play, or episode 15 of your Grand Theft Auto series, probably isn't going to make or break your channel. While every once in a while, a random Let's Play episode will be end up being this hilarious, you know, standalone video, typically your channel is not going to make it big off of a random Let's Play episode in the middle of your series. Will your subscribers still stick around for the ride and enjoy your series? Will those looking for that specific Let's Play, watch your series and potentially subscribe to your channel? Absolutely. But when you're advertising to just a completely, you know, random target audience, that's not what they're looking for. You're not going to grab a new audience of people who probably know nothing about your channel or haven't watched your videos based on a random Let's Play episode in the middle of a series. And unfortunately, like when major companies make bad marketing decisions, if you start advertising with that, people are less likely to pay attention to you when you do actually have something truly worth sharing down the road. How can you fix this? Easy. Be able to portfolio. Learn to build a proper portfolio that showcases your best work. Just to go with a working example here. If I wanted to advertise the geek channel to somebody or to a group of people or anything like that, going through the geek videos, would I choose Game 2 of 3 of Rarity Ho's Yu-Gi-Oh deck builds fighting against each other to advertise the channel? Most likely not. Again, on the off chance that that just ended up being the most hilarious outrageous video that works really well as a standalone video, then I might consider it. But typically no. Instead, I might choose one of his Tech Card Tuesday videos. They're completely standalone. They're in-depth. They're entertaining, and they provide value for anybody who hasn't watched his videos before or who has. They're not going to get that same value from Game 2 of 3 of Deck X versus Deck Y in his series. They're not going to know what's going on. They're not going to be interested. With the Tech Card Tuesday videos, doesn't matter if they've watched any of his videos or any of the geek videos before, they can see the value and they can actually get the value and then want more of that value from other videos, which would then lead to Deck X versus Deck Y game videos. But you don't want to start with those videos. The same thing applies to your videos as well. Let's say episode 13 of this Let's Play series of yours did happen to be one of your best videos or funniest videos you've ever made. Then absolutely, yes, you can include it in the series. But remember to use scrutiny. You don't want to just, okay, I chose episode 13. So why not just throw in episode 14 and 15 in here? No, then your portfolio is just going to be full of quarter trunks of random Let's Plays, and it's not going to be as effective. You want to choose the best of the best of your work. That's what I meant by using scrutiny as you want to objectively pick what are your best videos. And if you're struggling to determine what your best videos are, ask a friend, get some feedback, you know, get a list of videos together and get some feedback from friends or co-workers and just be like, Hey, I think these are the best videos from my channel. What do you think? Hotly enough, they're actually going to help you out. Once you've picked your best videos, organize them any way you like. This can be a playlist you feature on your channel. This can be a featured videos list you keep on a website. Or this could simply just be a list of links you keep in a text file on your hard drive. Whatever works for you that you can remember to access and keep organized, go for it. Also, don't be afraid to update your list. If you make an even better video than what's been on your portfolio before, or you decide one of the videos you chose before just doesn't actually make the cut on second thought, update it, change it, keep it dynamic, make sure it grows and changes with you and your channel. Even for myself, a portfolio from a year ago or six months ago, as far as my best videos, may even be unrelated content to what my channel is now. And while they may still be great videos, if they're not related to what the rest of my videos are, that's false advertisement. You don't want that. You don't want people come to your channel for a bunch of hilarious Minecraft videos. And now your channel focuses on Grand Theft Auto or Halo or Call of Duty. That's really going to confuse them and instead of subscribing, they're just going to walk away. Now, they may still watch your Minecraft videos, but if they go to your channel and that's not what you have, they're not going to be interested anymore. This may seem at first like something that's just, you know, going to sit dormant on your computer as a list of links. But if you're taking advantage of every opportunity to advertise and promote your channel, it shouldn't. There are always opportunities where people are going to ask for an example of your work or show me a video or what's your channel about or every once in a while you will have an appropriate opportunity to share a video with a group of Skype contacts. Go ahead, pull a video from that list. Pull one of your best videos and show it to them because that's what advertising is about. You want a video that will quickly and strongly grab viewers' attention and demand they subscribe to your channel. You don't want to mess up these kinds of opportunities with a video that will either confuse them, not make sense to them, not interest them or bore them, which in all likelihood is going to be that random mid filler episode of your Let's Play. Sure, that video may be doing less than views, but if you choose that to advertise your channel, then their impression of your channel is going to be that your entire channel is just kind of this Let's Play, you know, middle episode filler content and not the epic videos that you can really make. Finally, this will also make your life tons easier when you go to make your channel trailer. Yes, that channel trailer is very, very important. I'm willing to bet that pretty much every personality that has been on freedom so far has talked about the channel trailer. Recently, I just heard Smirky Boomper Pop, I think Bumper Pop. Smirky, talk about it. George has talked about it. Anthony has talked about it. Big C has talked about it. I bet even Alex has talked about it. The channel trailer is very important to getting new viewers to your channel. What's the easiest way to make a great channel trailer? Pick your best videos. How can you do that? Well, if you already have a list of your best videos together, that makes it easy. You don't have to go through hunting through your entire video library. You already know specific ones to go to and highlight. Makes your life so much easier. I do hope this video was helpful and informative to some, if not all of you. Thank you very much for watching and if you don't mind, go ahead and check out the geek channel. It is a freedom channel. Links will be in the description below. We have content for people who love anything remotely geeky. And for those of you I've seen in the comment section complaining, wanting videos that aren't gaming related, we've got plenty of those as well. Again, thank you so much for watching. If you'd like to see more of me or this type of video, let us know in the comment section below. Also, what do you think is your best video? Otherwise, I've been Adam, manager of geek, powered by freedom and you've been watching... Let's discover freedom. Click the first video to learn what is freedom and how it helps you grow. Click the second video to learn about sponsorships for all freedom partners, even if you have just 10 subscribers. And click the other videos like, How Do I Leave Freedom? To Learn More. Click Get More Views to learn how to build your audience faster on YouTube. Click Get More CPM to learn how to make more money from your channel. And click Get More Music to learn where to get more music to spice up your videos. Click the first playlist to watch The George Show on Freedom. That's my show. Or watch The Anthony Show or The Alex Show also on Freedom.