As a YouTube creator, it’s very important for you to diversify your audience off of YouTube, to have continual touch points with your audience so you can continue to develop a relationship with them, even when you’re not posting new videos. Let’s talk about how do we actually do that, get those people on YouTube that follow us someplace else another social networking site.
Felicia Follum wrote and asked this.
“How do get followers on Snapchat that are not friends? I know that sharing on YouTube vids, but what else?”
Good question. Let’s talk about this as social media overall. How do you get people to change YouTube to other platforms?
Naturally Integrate Your Other Platforms
So number one, and this is really the most important thing, is that you just have to naturally integrate your other platforms into your YouTube content, so that your audience there’s one, sees that you do have active postings on Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat, whatever the case may be. But two, if you do it right, hopefully you make them feel like they’re missing out on something, on an experience, or a relationship, or some sort of value by not being a part of your audience on those other platforms. You could just make a video and say, hey guys, follow me on Instagram and Vine and Twitter and Snapchat and Facebook, and leave it at that. But that won’t be nearly as effective as if your viewers feel like if they don’t they’re missing out on something.
So for example, you can say like, hey guys, we’re talking more about this right now. If you want to see pictures of what it actually looked like when I was there at the event, go and check out my Instagram. I got a lot of pictures there for you. Something like that. Just show your audience what they’re missing out on, by not following you on those other platforms. Or in other words, tease the value that you’re offering there and why your audience should also be as interested in that content as they are on what you’re presenting on YouTube.
Show Them Your URLs
Number two, this whole thing works a lot better if you actually show them the URL you want them to click on. If it’s in the description of the video, or show it on screen, so that they know where they can actually find you. Rather than you just telling them, hey guys, follow me on Instagram. They’re like that’s great, what your username? Make sure you include those URL and things in the description of the videos, so people can easily click and go follow you.
Be Committed to a Social Media Platform
Three, make sure you’re committed to a social media platform before you go promoting it to everyone. I’ve seen too many times creators jump on something that’s new and exciting to them. And their followers jump on it, also really excited to see new content from that creator. But then that creator kind of is like, eh, I’m kind of bored or this isn’t really working the way I thought. And now your fans, they’re still going and looking for this new content from you, but they’re not seeing any anymore. And so I feel like a lot of creators do their audience actually a disservice by trying to just jump on all the new stuff, get excited about it, and then peter off.
Promote Only the Social Media Sites You”re Active
Which is actually my fourth thought, and that is don’t try to be on every single social media platform unless you have like a team of people you’re paying to really help moderate and build community on each of them. Just pick the ones that work the best for you and your audience. And just stick with those. Otherwise you will spread yourself too thin, and your audience will get tired of all the different platforms that you’re promoting.
Have a Plan Or Strategy
And number five is I also think you really do need to have a plan or a strategy to keep your audience engaged on those different places. Just like here on YouTube, you need to regularly post new videos to keep them engaged, well if you’re on Snapchat, or Instagram, or Vine, or Twitter, Facebook, whatever the case may be, you should also have a plan for keeping those people engaged in a way that serves them really well. What type of content are they looking for from you on those different platforms? How can you best serve them? What can you do there that you can’t do on YouTube or a different platform? Do they really need more selfies of you? Or is there a different type of content that can serve them better?
So for me personally, the places where I am most active outside of YouTube is Twitter. I’m on that almost all day. Facebook page, VideoCreators on Facebook. I love having conversations that we can’t have as easily here on YouTube. I love having those with you guys there on the Facebook page. Snapchat I’ve been getting into a lot more lately. I love it’s kind of like quick mini behind the scenes type of stuff. And then also Instagram. And so Instagram and Facebook tend to be more personal type of stuff for me. Whereas Twitter and the Facebook page for video creators definitely tend to be more on the creator side of things, of tips and advice, and other conversations that go beyond what we have here on this channel.
And so part of the value that you get from following me on Twitter, and liking of the video creator’s Facebook page, is you get to be a part of those conversations and get the bonus content that I’m publishing there for you guys. And then the value that I deliver, hopefully, through my personal stuff on Snapchat and Instagram, is that you get to know me a little bit better. It’s more like personal stuff. And it’s not just Tim Schmoyer who talks about YouTube. But this is Tim Schomoyer who is actually a real person too, believe it or not.
So that’s a little bit about how I do it. I’d love to hear from you in the comments below two things. One, is how do you move people from your YouTube channel to follow you onto your other various social networking platforms. And then two, once you have them there, how do you use those different platforms to keep your audience engaged, to serve them well, the writer, the types of content. Would love to hear about all that in the comments below because this is something I’m definitely learning, and would love to learn along with you guys. So thank you for helping me out.
And the rest of you, read the comments. You will learn a lot more from those people down there then you ever did here in just this video. So thanks for hanging out guys.