Most people disable push notifications from the YouTube app on their phone, but you can instead grow a text messaging list to send your viewers notifications of your live streams, new videos, and other important announcements. Here’s 6 ideas for how I use text messaging as a part of my family’s YouTube channel for our live stream notifications with those subscribers every week, plus 3 tips I’ve learned to help you make the most of a text messaging list with your audience.
Now I know that YouTube mobile apps have push notifications built in. But depending on what research you look at, somewhere between 60% and 82% of people just automatically disable push notifications on their phone across the board– except for text messaging and phone calls.
I’m not about to make a phone call to everybody. But I am growing a text messaging list simply by providing a link for people to do that, which I’ll do in the description of this video, or by simply encouraging viewers to text the word SCHMOVIES to 43506. That will just add people on to my text messaging list and let me broadcast things and share things with them that way.
There are six different ideas of how I think this could be really valuable and beneficial to you as a YouTube creator.
#1 – Announce Live Streams
The first way is the way that I’m primarily using it, and that is to announce upcoming live streams. About 30 minutes, 15 minutes, before my family goes to live on our YouTube channel, which we do about one or two times a week, I will just send a mass text message saying, hey, we’re going live on Schmovies in 15 minutes. Come join us. We’re doing this, that, and the other thing.
And then I’ll just add the YouTube link at the bottom to that video where we’ll be live, and then just broadcast that out to everyone on the text messaging list. That way, they have a little bit of a heads up and can kind of finish up whatever they’re doing, and then tap on that link and come join us.
#2 – Announce New Videos
Number two, of course you could also use a mass text messaging list to send out notifications of new videos that you’re publishing. Maybe that’s a separate list from your live streaming list or whatever the case may be that works best for you and your audience.
#3 – Announce Meet Up Locations
You can use it to announce meet up locations just on the fly. I think this is going to be really important for places like at VidCon as a creator. And you’re not really sure what your schedule is going to be, but you know you want to hang out with your audience.
You can tell them, “hey, text (certain key word) to 43506 and have them join the text messaging list”. And then whenever you’re available, you can say, “hey, I’m going to go have lunch at such and such place. Everyone come meet me”. Broadcast that out to everybody and they can all come and find you. It’s different than just doing it on Twitter or posting on Facebook or something, where you kind of rely on your viewers to actually be on that platform at that time in order to get your message.
This is a way you can kind of interrupt whatever they’re doing and make their phone vibrate in their pocket so they take it out and see what you have to say to them. And that kind of goes along also with number four. A real huge tremendous value of mass text messaging, at least using the service I use at techsignal.com– not sponsored or anything. It’s just who I use, and I think you guys would like them– is that your audience can also send replies back.
This is a great way to get immediate instant feedback.
#5 – Set Up Auto Responder
This is one that I personally experience. When I am speaking at conventions and conferences and things, I’m on stage presenting, it’s really hard for me to get people to take out their phones, open the YouTube app or download it if they haven’t already, find my channel, subscribe. It takes a lot of work.
But one of the cool things that I like about the service I use at techsignal.com is that I can set up an auto responder to automatically send them a text message back after they text in like, SCHMOVIES to 43506 or whatever, and the autoresponder message can have anything in it that I like. So it makes it really easy for me to know– like if I’m speaking, I say, “hey, guys. You want to learn more about my channel? Just text this keyword to 43506 and you’ll get a message back” that has the subscription link right there or the Facebook link or whatever information you happen to want to give to those people.
And the times I have done this on stage in front of a crowd, I can see visually how many people pull out their phone and text the number to get the link as opposed to going through all the steps and trying to find my channel and figuring out how to subscribe and all that kind of stuff.
#6 – Integrate Patreon
If you are running a Patreon page or campaign, I think it makes a lot of sense for you to integrate this into that as a perk reward level for your patrons.
So maybe they have direct access to text messaging you, and you can log into techsignal, for example, at your convenience and just reply back to those people. Or maybe this is a secret VIP list where you’re sending special rewards or special announcements or something like that just to people who are paying at a certain perk level to be on this text messaging list for something that you provide to them.
3 Ways to Use Patreon
I think there’s a lot of ideas for how you could use this with Patreon. But using text messaging is not just like one big bed of roses. There are some things that I’ve learned over time that hopefully will help you use your text messaging lists more effectively. And there’s three of them.
#1 – Follow-Up with an Auto Response
You might lose about 45% of the people who sign up for your text messaging list– you might lose them immediately if you don’t follow up with an auto response message. And the reason for that, I found, is that people need to know very clearly what they signed up for and what they are going to get. You have to set that expectation very clear from the very beginning. And I found the best way to do that was with an auto response message. Otherwise they sign up, they’re like, “I don’t know what I just did, and they quickly unsubscribe”.
#2 – Send Text Messages During Business Hours
The best time to send mass text messages is typically between business hours in whatever time zone you’re in. So if your audience is primarily in the United States, then the best time to do that is probably between noon and 5:00 PM eastern time.
#3 – Make Use of Facebook Remarketing
This third tip is a little bit more advanced. But what you can actually do is export all those phone numbers from techsignal and upload those to a Facebook re-marketing campaign for those numbers, which is really powerful if you do a lot of brand deals.
There is no other creator that can really compete on that level and do that. And if you have no idea what I just said, then don’t even worry about it. It’s not that big of a deal.
If you are looking for a mass text messaging list, personally, I’m using techsignal.com. Not sponsored. That’s just who I use. There’s a link to them in the description below.
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Text VCLIVE to 43506 to get a notification when I live stream here on Video Creators!
Or, signup here
Text SCHMOVIES to 43506 to get a notification before my family goes live each week!
Or, signup here
I use txtsignal for managing my text message lists.
Check out my family’s vlogging channel