Get VISIBLE and Grow Your Brand Online (Transcript)
Sometimes there really are secrets to success…
In this week’s podcast episode, I teach YOU this missing puzzle piece: what it was, why it mattered so much, and how I found and fitted it into my business puzzle to get the results I did.
If you’re wondering why you’re struggling to grow and get the results you’re looking for, this episode is for you.
This is a transcript of Work Less, Earn More, Episode 63. Listen to the episode here.
Gillian Perkins:
We became entrepreneurs because more than anything, we want freedom. We want to be in control of our own schedule, income, and life. But unfortunately, that isn't always the reality of being a business owner. I'm Gillian Perkins. And I'm on a mission to take back entrepreneurship for what it's supposed to be. In every episode, I'll share with you how to get the most out of every hour you work, so that you can work less and earn more. Let's get to it.
Back in 2016, I decided to go all in with my online business. Prior to that I'd been dabbling a little bit. I'd been reading books, reading a ton of blogs, and listening to some podcasts, trying to learn how this whole online business thing worked. And I had already created my website and started writing some articles and things like that on it. But in 2016, I decided, okay, it is time to go all in. And so, that's what I did. I started spending anywhere from 10 to 30 hours per week working on my online business, trying to actually make some money, and I really wanted it to become my full-time thing.
But despite spending pretty much the entire year of 2016, working an average of 20 hours per week on my online business, I earned next to no money at all. And by the end of 2016, I was feeling pretty discouraged. I was wondering if maybe I just didn't have what it took, maybe I just didn't get that lucky break that I needed. And maybe this wasn't going to work out. But it was around that time that I attended a conference, a local conference for entrepreneurs, specifically for online entrepreneurs who especially were moms. And I went and I met all these amazing women who were running successful online businesses or just getting started just like me.
First of all, it was just so encouraging to get out there and meet other people like me, and see that it wasn't just a myth on the internet that you could make money online, but there were actually real people out there doing it. So, that was the first thing. But the real big takeaway that I had from that event was when a proper sales funnel was described to me and was taught in one of the workshops at the event. And then suddenly I understood that I was missing one essential piece of that puzzle that I needed to put together in order to have a business that actually produced a profit. And what that thing was, was visibility.
See, I'd been spending that entire year working on my website, trying to get it to look attractive and be branded well, working on my branding, setting up sales funnels even with multiple steps, webinars, email marketing, the whole shebang, really. And I'd created products, and for some reason nobody was buying them. And what I realized when I sat in that sales funnel workshop was that I was missing traffic. Long story short, nobody was coming into the top of my funnel. Nobody knew that I existed. And that was when I had that light bulb moment that nobody can buy your product if they don't know that it exists, and I simply had a complete lack of visibility.
And so, that brought me to the question of, well, now how do I get visibility? And it's interesting to note that while I had this epiphany, for a moment, I actually felt not discouraged, but I suddenly stopped wondering how to solve the question of how to make money online. And so for a moment, I actually took a step back from my business, and I just felt very calm and no longer like I had to figure out this problem, this question. And so, I remember I came home and I told my husband, “I feel like I've lost my drive. I solved the big question. I have the answer now. And so, I'm no longer trying to figure this thing out.” But after a few weeks, I got back into the game, and I now had this new question of well, how do I get that visibility that I need?
Getting Visible on Pinterest
And so, at that point, what I started doing was I started using Pinterest. And so, if you've never used Pinterest before in order to market your business, let me really briefly describe to you how that works. Long story short, you can put images on your blog posts or on other parts of your website. And then you can share those images to Pinterest. And if you share them consistently enough, and you have your boards configured properly, and especially if you are on group boards, which are boards on Pinterest that have multiple contributors, and often have large numbers of followers, then you can get people to see your pins, see these images from your website. And then they can save those images which can cause even more people to see them. So they spread virally. And if someone clicks on those images, then they visit your website.
So, in short I started using Pinterest. I started using some automation systems and software to make my Pinterest work even better, and I started blogging a lot more consistently. And at this time I was blogging about marketing strategies, primarily. And pretty quickly I saw that I started to get some traction. And that was really cool because prior to this I really hadn't seen any traction at all, no growth at all. But now suddenly, within just a matter of a few weeks of starting to work on Pinterest, I started to see some growth. And I started to see my website traffic pick up.
So from there, what happened was, I kept doing that for most of the next year. And then I ended up deciding that I wanted to start a YouTube channel and try to use that to market my business. Now, there's a bit of a backstory here because I had actually started a YouTube channel a few years prior, and I had been doing beauty videos. So I had been doing beauty vlogging and beauty tutorials and things like that. And while I had enjoyed some parts of the process a whole lot. There were other parts of it that I didn't feel that great about, and it just felt awkward to me. It didn't really feel like what I wanted to be known for. I guess that's the best way to put it.
But I had seen the power of YouTube when I had done that because even though, to be quite frank with you, my videos were horrible quality. The actual video footage was very poor quality. I had no idea how to make a good video. I was really awkward on camera. I mean, pretty much like you name it, I did it wrong. So even though my videos were such poor quality, I still saw some traction, some growth. I got some visibility with that former YouTube channel, and I even had a few videos go completely viral for my tiny channel and get tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views. The one that got the most views got nearly half a million views. And that was me as a completely unknown creator with poor quality videos.
So, that had really showed me the potential power of YouTube, although I hadn't seriously considered using it for my marketing business for whatever reason. But by the end of 2017, I decided that that was something I wanted to do. And so, I really doubled down on learning the YouTube algorithm and learning what caused some videos to get traction and to take off and other videos to just stay stuck and never get more than a handful of views. And I ended up spending a solid six to 12 months working on just studying the algorithm, planning my channel, planning what my videos would be about.
Now, to everyone listening right now I don't want you to get the wrong impression and think you have to spend that much time before you start a YouTube channel. I just wanted to make sure I was doing it right. And I tend to be fairly analytical like that. And I like to have a really solid plan. Now, if some people shouldn't spend that much time at all because some people will just get stuck in analysis paralysis, and then never end up taking action. But personally, I know myself and I know that I just like to take my time figuring things out, but then I tend to actually end up taking action and doing the thing that I wanted to do. So I felt pretty comfortable with that. And by mid 2018, I was ready to launch my YouTube channel.
Knowing Where to Focus
Now again, this all goes back to me having this epiphany that I needed to get visibility for my business. And so, once I had that epiphany, it really I started to see so many things work out with my business so much better because now I knew where to focus my efforts. Prior to that I had all these different things I could be working on. And so, I would work on my website, I would work on my email marketing, I would work on my products, I would work a tiny, tiny bit on visibility. I would work on networking. I spent so much time on that. I also spread my money around. So I would spend a little bit of money on equipment, and I'd spend a little bit of money on advertising and a little bit of money on this and that and the other thing.
But now that I realized that visibility was my key missing component, now I was spending 90% of my time on visibility. And also most of the money that I invested into my business, which I mean, to be completely honest, was a very, very small amount. But when I spent money, I wasn't just throwing it away on random things, I was investing into getting more visible because that was really the weakest link in my chain, as we were talking about last week, that weakest link in my chain that was holding my business down and keeping it super, super small.
So, fast forward again, back to mid 2018 when I launched my YouTube channel, and because I had spent so much time planning and preparing, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, which made it a lot easier to be consistent, and I also was completely committed to being consistent, to making a video or two videos every single week for at least three months. Now, of course I had no idea if this was going to pan out, but I was pretty confident that it would. I was pretty confident that my YouTube channel is going to take off and was going to get me visibility. Now, you might wonder how How I could have been confident of that, considering that I hadn't had that much access on YouTube prior to this, and that I didn't know how to make very good videos, and that YouTube can seem like quite a gamble. But I was pretty confident.
The reason why was because in all of the researching I'd done on YouTube, I had discovered that it was tough to find any channels that were doing “everything right” and were not growing very quickly. So what I mean by this is I had discovered that there were very few channels on the platform that actually had good quality videos, and posted consistently, and were not seeing rapid growth. And that was so encouraging to me because that meant if I just showed up consistently, and I just really worked on my quality and worked on making the best videos that I could, and improving my videos, then I felt so confident that once my videos got good enough, they would take off on the platform, and I would see that growth that I was looking for.
And so, this really gave me, again, that confidence that I needed to be able to be consistent and to be able to be dedicated enough to put in that time every single week. And ultimately, that resulted in a whole lot of growth. Now, as for the growth of my YouTube channel, and how that impacted my business, I have done a video on YouTube a few months ago where I broke that all down what that year looked like, that first year and how my YouTube channel grew, how it impacted my business. But to give you a brief idea of that right now. So, in short, in the first three months, I got the first 1,000 subscribers, and I got monetized. And then about three months after that, I got my first check for $100. And from there, it just really snowballed.
The 1,000 Subscribers
After I got those first 1,000 subscribers in the first three months, then in month four, I got another 1,000 subscribers, so doubling my subscribers. In month five, I doubled my subscribers again 2,000 more subscribers bringing me up to 4,000. Then in month five, it doubled again bringing me up to 8,000. And then in month six, it doubled again bringing me up to 16. And from there from about month six or so I've continued to gain an average of 10,000 subscribers per month on my YouTube channel. Sometimes it's been as low as 5,000. Sometimes it's been as high as 20,000. But it's typically been in that 10 to 12,000 subscriber range. And it's been so consistent, which has been so fun to see because it really helps to reinforce the idea, and the fact that YouTube isn't just this random gamble, but it actually can create quite predictable success when you do check all those boxes and create great quality content consistently on the platform. So, that's how my youtube channel grew.
As for the revenue, like I said, after those first four or five months there, I got that first check for $100. And from there, like I said, the money just really started to snowball. So first check was 100 because that's that threshold at which YouTube sends you your first check. But then the next one was for a few 100 more. And then within just a few more months, I earned $1,000 in a month. And from there, it went up to 2,000, 3,000, 4,000. And then once I got up to about 5,000 a month, it has pretty much plateaued. And the reason for that is because my views have also. For the past almost three years now, I have very consistently gotten half a million views on YouTube. And again, I think that that is actually really cool to see that it's been able to maintain that very consistent number of views for that long, and also that it didn't take me that long to get up to that many views per month.
It really was once I figured out how to make good quality content, then I started getting those views, and then they've just been consistent. I think that that means there's such an opportunity for people who are just starting out. And I hope that that can be really confidence boosting for people who are thinking about starting a channel, but maybe they feel like they don't have enough of an audience themselves yet, and they're wondering if it will ever take off. If you just show up and you focus on the quality of your content there really is like I said, when all the channels we've studied, we've found very few that haven't quickly taken off.
Okay, so that is how the YouTube channel grew and the revenue from the YouTube channel. But now let's talk about how that really impacted my business. So prior to starting the YouTube channel, as I mentioned, I was blogging and sharing those blogs on Pinterest. Now, Pinterest did start to ramp up my visibility a bit and started to drive hundreds and then thousands of people to my website every month. And after just a few months, Pinterest was sending an average of about 10,000 people to my website a month. But here's the thing, even though I was more visible, and I was starting to see some small sales here and there, and my email list was definitely starting to grow. It was pretty slow. I would say that with those 10,000 views per month I was getting about between 100 and 500 new email subscribers per month. So, definite growth but slow growth.
Now, once I started the YouTube channel, though, I pretty quickly saw my page views on my website jump up. And they have climbed as high now as about 50,000 per month. And it's been pretty, I would say, gradual over this past three years here. Like I said, now we're up to half a million views per month, and we've been doing that for a while. So at first it was 10,000 views, page views per month on the website. And then it had bumped up to around that 30 to 50,000 mark within the first year or two of YouTube. And I saw a very direct correlation with that to my email list growth. But actually, it wasn't just an incremental growth. So, I didn't just see my page views on my website go from 10,000 views from Pinterest to 20,000 views from YouTube and see my email subscribers each month double as well. I wasn't now just getting 200 to 1,000 email subscribers per month.
Now, it more like tripled. And that's because I've just noticed that the YouTube viewers tend to be so much more engaged than viewers that I get, than page viewers, the website traffic that I get from Google or on Pinterest. While those people, maybe one in 1,000 will subscribe to my email list or leave a comment the YouTube Traffic it's more like one in 100 or even a higher rate of conversion than that. And that's just so cool to see. Because not only is it the visibility easier to get on YouTube, but it also converts at much higher rates. So I get a lot more comments on YouTube, a lot more of them actually come to visit my website, a lot more of them sign up for my email list, and a lot more of them buy my products. And so, overall, not only does it mean I'm getting visibility and growing my brand, but it also means that we are consistently growing the profits.
Okay, so that kind of wraps up the story I wanted to share with you about how I got visible and how that impacted my business. I guess the one last thing I'll mention about that is just that not only did it grow my brand, and grow my income, but it also grew my opportunities. Prior to building my audience on YouTube. And just to be clear, this isn't all about YouTube, I'm just talking about getting visible and YouTube was my key to success there. But really, any way that you get visible is going to have most of these same benefits. Anyway, once I grew, my audience grew, my brand got visible via YouTube, I started seeing so many more opportunities come my way. People were so much more interested in having me on their podcast or doing collaborations with me, or joint ventures and all sorts of other things that ultimately ended up impacting my bottom line, and also growing my brand even further.
How You Can Get Visible This Year
Okay, so now that we've talked about how I did it, I want to cover for you the top ways that you can get visible this year. So the strategies that are working for visibility right now. Now the first one, obviously is YouTube. It is still working like gangbusters. Every single year people will ask the question of is it too late to get found on YouTube? Did I miss the boat? Is YouTube already saturated? And every year we see so much proof that no, that is not the case. I have seen so many new channels take off. They got started this year, and it has been so cool to see.
And especially a lot of people have noticed that the YouTube algorithm is actually pushing new creators out there. When a new creator starts a channel and puts good quality content on that, YouTube is so excited to share that content with more people because it is a way for YouTube to expand their audience and to keep people on their platform for longer. So if you haven't yet started a YouTube channel, then that's definitely not a boat that has sailed, not a ship that has sailed, and it's something you can still get on and get started with for yourself and grow your audience, grow your brand, and get that visibility you need to really see things take off.
The next strategy I'll mention is Pinterest. Now even though the traffic that I've gotten from Pinterest has been less engaged, it still was far better than nothing. And it did start to get a lot of balls rolling. You can use that visibility that you get from Pinterest to be the catalyst to a lot of other pieces of growth. And also, I mentioned that the growth I got from Pinterest didn't impact on my email list as much as I wanted it to. But it could have had a bigger impact had I known more about email marketing at that time. Now, we recently started using Pinterest again just a few months ago, and we already are seeing a lot of growth from it. It's not near to the point of YouTube.
But the reason I want to mention this is because we started over from scratch from Pinterest. Because after I had originally been using Pinterest and then shifted to YouTube, the Pinterest algorithm made some big changes that made it so my old strategies weren't working very well. And so, I decided to just kind of abandon ship, focus on YouTube, which was what was working for me the best at that point. And so, I haven't been using Pinterest at all for these last two or three years. But just a few months ago, we got back onto that ship. And immediately we started seeing more traffic from it. And we even saw a significant number of sales, where we were sending Pinterest traffic directly to the sales pages for some of our more affordable products, and it was really cool to see some of those instant conversions.
I would say that Pinterest is one of the ways you can get visibility that has the least barriers to entry. One of the things you can do that once you just learn how it works, you can buy an affordable Pinterest course and learn the basic strategies. You learn how it works, and within a matter of weeks, or just a couple of months, you can start to see that traffic coming in. Unlike something like YouTube or relying on Google SEO where sometimes you have to wait a lot of months before you really start to get picked up by the algorithm.
Speaker 2:
The episode you're currently listening to was originally offered as a live stream inside Startup Society, a training program for digital entrepreneurs. Each week in the program, Gillian teaches a live workshop for startup members, including a teaching segment, like what you're listening to right now. A tutorial segment that demonstrates how to take action on the lesson, and an open Q&A period where Gillian and guest experts work directly with each member. Members also get access to Startup Society's library of business training courses, monthly co-working sessions, and other events, and our private community forum. If you're looking for affordable business training, mentorship and accountability, then visit startupsociety.com/podcast to learn more about the program and apply to join. Now, here's Gillian with the rest of today's episode.
Collaboration
The next strategy that is working for visibility this year is collaboration. Now this is something that has worked, I think since the beginning of time, since the first time anyone was trying to market anything to anyone who they didn't already know, they utilize a collaboration. Because one type of collaboration would just be word of mouth when your customers tell other people. But here I'm more specifically talking about collaborations where you can team up with other brands, or influencers, or personalities, or businesses that already have established audiences, that already have that visibility. You can team up with them and piggyback off of their visibility.
So this could look like you doing a collaboration on YouTube where you're both making a video for each other's audience. Or it could look like you guest blogging on someone else's website. You're writing a post that is then published on their website. So everyone who visits their website sees the content that you wrote, and then it can discover you and your business through that article. It also could be guest podcasting. And this, I would say is one of the best collaboration opportunities that is around right now because guess podcasting is just so easy. When you can get onto someone else's podcasts, it's such a small amount of your time. You show up for 30, 45, maybe 60 minutes, and you create this content. And then that content is shared with their entire audience. That's a lot less time than it takes to write a guest blog post, or to organize a lot of other types of collaborations, and podcasts tend to have a really high conversion rate.
So what I mean by that is because when someone is listening to a podcast they are hearing your voice, they feel a deeper connection with you. And also the way people tend to consume podcasts is by listening to them for extended periods of time. So instead of just finding an article on Google, clicking over to it, and then skimming it for a handful of minutes. With a podcast, people tend to click on it, put their earbuds in and then listen to it for the duration of the episode. There have been a few studies that have been done that have shown that people listen to podcasts on average something like 70 or 80% of the way through. And so, what that means is most people are listening to the entire thing. And then of course, some people are only listening to the first few minutes, but that is more than twice as long as the average length of time. In fact, it's way more than twice as long as the average length of time that someone watches a YouTube video.
The average length of time someone watches a YouTube video is somewhere around the three minute mark. But that's because the YouTube videos are a lot shorter. So if someone watches say 40% of a video on average, then that would be about three minutes. Whereas with the podcast, the podcasts are an average something like 45 minutes, and then people are listening to an average of something like 80% of them. So people are listening to more than 10 times the length of a podcast than they are a YouTube video.
Anyway, all that to say that if you can get on someone else's podcast, then you're going to have a really deep connection with their audience pretty instantly because they're hearing your voice and they're listening to you for a long time. And by the time that episode gets to the end, they are going to really consider you to be a great expert and to be someone who they really trust a lot more than if they found you in a lot of other ways. Especially if they found you through something like paid advertising, where they really have no trust for you at all, at least not immediately.
So one of the ways that you can get visible is by working on getting collaborations. Now, when you're working on getting collaborations, you'll want to start with other people who are at a similar size to your business right now. So if you have, say, 100 followers on Instagram, you'll want to try to work with other tiny micro brands and influencers who only have a couple 100 followers as well. Now, that's just because those collaborations will be easier for you to get. But as the quality of your content begins to increase and get better and better, and as you get more and more collaborations, you can work your way up the ladder.
And you can go after bigger and bigger brands, and ask them to collaborate, and you'll get more and more yeses as you rack up those past collaborations. And they can see that history of the good work that you've done with other brands, and the amazing content that you've shared on other websites and podcasts and YouTube channels and things like that. And this can be one of the biggest and best hacks for growing your audience and your visibility more quickly, rather than waiting to get picked up by an algorithm.
SEO
Okay. So, two more things we're going to talk about here about how to get visible. The next one is SEO. So, SEO, this is search engine optimization. It's getting your content to rank on a search platform. And here specifically, I'm talking about Google SEO. So getting your website content to rank on Google in the organic search. Now, ever knows how powerful this can be. If you can get your website ranking number one on Google, then of course, you can get a lot of traffic, a lot of visibility. But it can seem very mysterious and very hard to do. And in fact, until recently, this would not have been on my list because it seemed like kind of a gamble to me. It seemed like there were some basic things you could do. And then unless you were a website that was consistently churning out tons of content on a very frequent basis, and you had a large readership or traffic source already, then it was unlikely that you'd rank on Google.
But a few months ago, I did a podcast episode where I talked to Kim Harrington who is an amazing SEO strategist and expert. And she opened my eyes to the power of SEO and some things that run completely contrary to what I thought really good SEO was about and how you could really get quite predictable results from SEO. So, if you haven't already listened to that episode, we'll be sure to link that episode in the show notes of this podcast episode, so that you can find that. You can also just find it by googling Gillian Perkins podcast, Kim Harrington, or Gillian Perkins podcast SEO, and I'm sure you will be able to find that episode.
But this is a strategy that can create a really strong evergreen source of traffic. So rather than having to produce content every single week, or every single month, or having to constantly do collaborations, if you can create some really solid pieces of content, and then optimize your search engine optimization, so that you are ranking well on Google, then it can be this ever flowing fountain of traffic and visibility for your business that you don't really have to do that much to maintain.
Okay, so the last thing I wanted to talk about is kind of a way… Well, it's a way you can get visible but not really a way I'd recommend. And that is TikTok and related things. Now, I know TikTok can be a lot of fun, and I've definitely played around with it a little bit. And there's a lot of cool stuff happening on the platform. I don't completely knock TikTok, I think it's a great time. But I've also seen a lot of people… I think Gary Vaynerchuk, but lots of other people as well talk about how everyone should get on TikTok because there's this huge opportunity for visibility, this huge opportunity for growing your brand, growing your audience. That the attention is there, and that you can get in front of that attention, all true.
But here's the thing, not all visibility is created equal. Okay, I'm going to say that again. Not all visibility is created equal. Let me give you a few examples of this. Let's say we were running Facebook ads and Facebook ads are primarily run, primarily paid for to get visibility. Now, I'm not going to get into right now Facebook ads, why you should use them, why you shouldn't, whether they're the right strategy for you. We have another episode all about that. But I'm just going to use this as an example. So with Facebook ads, you can pay to run these Facebook ads to people in your immediate location who are the perfect picture of your customer avatar. So, they are that woman who is 37 years old and is interested in learning how to plant a vegetable garden. And that is exactly who you want to target and exactly the person who would want to buy your product.
So you can pay to have your ads shown to only that person and to get clicks from only that person. And what's going to happen is, first of all, those clicks are going to be fairly expensive. They might cost you a few dollars, or even tens of dollars. Possibly even as much as $100 each. But you're also going to see really high conversion rates from those clicks, a very high percentage of the people who click on that Facebook ad are actually going to buy your product. But that visibility is more expensive.
Now, on the other hand, you could choose to run your Facebook ads to some country that is not your own country where advertising is a lot cheaper. So, for example, you can typically get cheaper advertising in more Eastern countries, sometimes India, sometimes the Middle East, there just isn't as much advertising money over there. And so, your advertising dollars go a lot further. But here's the thing, even though maybe you can get clicks for three pennies each, these are not going to be clicks from that target customer who is more likely to buy your product. They might be clicks from people who don't speak English. They might be clicks from people who aren't interested in your vegetable garden, but you're getting a lot of them and they're really cheap. But those advertising dollars can end up costing you a lot more because they are not targeting the right group of people. And so, those people might convert at 0%. You might not see any sales at all. So it's just money completely wasted.
So that's just one little example of how all visibility is not created equal. Because you need to get visible to your target customers. You need to get visible to the people who will actually be interested in your brand, and who will actually want your product because that is what will impact your bottom line. And so while, yes, you can get a ton of visibility on TikTok. Or you might notice that if you post videos on Instagram, you really rack up those video views really quickly. But those video views on Instagram, they're only three seconds long. It's someone pausing on your video for three seconds, and then just scrolling on. Those video views on TikTok, first of all, that person is not consuming your content for very long. Second of all, that person is probably not going to immediately think you are an expert based on your funny little TikTok that was 30 seconds long. And finally, even if they do think of you as an expert, which is very unlikely they're unlikely to be the right person, and to end up converting into a paying customer for your business.
So, another way to think about this is think about the different platforms where you encounter people. So, for example, you encounter brands and people on YouTube. You encounter brands and people via podcast, via Instagram. And also when you read a book, you're encountering the author, and potentially the author's brand when you read that book. But think about how differently you perceive people on these different platforms. I mean, if you find someone on Instagram, you might think they're cool. You might think they're popular. You might love their aesthetic. You might even kind of think they're an expert at something. But it's going to be so different from how you feel about someone who you first meet as the author of a book. When you first meet someone as the author of a book, you see them as an expert, maybe even one of the top experts in the world on that specific subject. And it's really just because of the different context in which you met these two different people.
So, what does that say about TikTok? When you meet someone on TikTok, when you get introduced to a brand via TikTok? How are you going to perceive that brand? And now think about how other people will perceive your brand if they find you there. Now, that's not to say that TikTok's all bad and nobody should be on it. I just want you to make sure that you're thinking about who your target customer is, and is that target customer actually on TikTok. And if they are and they find your content on TikTok will they have the right first impression of your brand that will be likely to lead them to a sale?
Now, the answer to those questions absolutely might be yes. And if that is the case, then yes, TikTok and other similar platforms. The newest, hippest platform might be the perfect opportunity for you to get visibility. But for a lot of people who are listening right now that the answer to those questions is no. Either their target customer isn't on TikTok, or their target customer would have the wrong first impression of them. And if that is the case, then Tick TikTok, while it can be really fun and might help to expand your creativity isn't going to have a big impact on your business's bottom line and ultimately is likely to result in you working more without earning more.
All right, so that brings us to the end of today's episode. To wrap this all up I just wanted to let you know that if you're interested in using YouTube to grow your visibility this year, and either you haven't started your channel yet, or you've started, but right now you're getting less than about 1,000 views per video then you'll want to check out our free workshop, How To Get Views On YouTube With Zero Subscribers. It's a free 60 minute workshop that is going to walk you through how the YouTube algorithm works and how you can create content that works with it, so that you can quickly grow your channel, get those viewers, and start getting that visibility that you need to grow your business online. There will be a link for this workshop down in the show notes for the podcast episode. Or you can also find it by just googling Gillian Perkins free YouTube workshop, and I'm sure that you will find the place to sign up.
Youtube Algorithm
Speaker 2:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Work Less Earn More. Before we wrap this up listen in to this question a Startup Society member asked during the livestream.
Tomlin asked two questions. One was how did you learn how to study the YouTube algorithm? It was really just the complete immersion approach. So I was working in marketing before this. So I had a bit of context. But I just did a deep dive where I spend a lot of hours every single week on YouTube for about six to 12 months before I even started my channel. And yes, I was watching YouTube videos, but I also was just browsing people's channels, browsing the trending, and then doing a lot of keyword research along with that. So how did I learn how to study it? Trial and error, just analyzing data endlessly. If you show up for that workshop, How To Get Views On YouTube With Zero Subscribers, I walk you through a lot of what I did to learn in that year. And that can really give you a shortcut to figuring out how the algorithm works, figuring out how to grow without having to spend nearly as much time as I did.
Okay. And then we have a question from Vera, and Vera said, “How about leveraging Facebook groups to drive traffic to YouTube videos and subscriber growth?” Vera, this can potentially work but there are a few issues with it. And a few reasons I don't try to do it at all. So the main issue is just it is tough to get people to convert from one platform to another. Basically trying to get someone to click on a link on one platform and go consume content on another platform. It just tends to have pretty low conversion rates. People are more inclined to just stay on the platform where they are. A small percentage of them, click on your link, and will go and watch the video.
But even considering that, because the post that you put on, say a Facebook group, it's going to get pretty low engagement in that Facebook group because the main way someone could engage with it would be to click on that link and go see it on YouTube. Because of that Facebook will not want to promote your post. You won't get very much reach on Facebook because Facebook isn't getting a lot of signals that people like your post. They're not getting likes or comments, things like that. Because if someone's interested, then they just go watch it on YouTube. And then also, Facebook notices that when people do interact with that post that they're leaving Facebook, which is exactly the opposite of what Facebook wants.
So if you try to promote your YouTube video on Facebook, Facebook doesn't really give you hardly any reach. So almost nobody sees the post. And even the people who see the post convert at a really low rate. So all that to say, if you have content that you want more people to see, it's better to put the content on the native platform. So you can put your YouTube video on Facebook. Put the actual video on Facebook, and you'll get more views that way, you'll reach more people than you would by trying to send people from Facebook to YouTube. Now, Vera, I do notice, though, that you are specifically asking about well, would that help you grow your channel? And the answer is yes, it can help you grow your channel a little bit.
And so, you need to assess where you most need help. If you are just trying to get the maximum views possible, then you'll do better to put it in these two separate places so people can consume it on Facebook, consume it in on YouTube, wherever they're actually at. However, if you're really, really doubling down and trying to go all in with YouTube and trying to grow YouTube like I did in my first year on YouTube when I just went all in on the one platform then I actually would recommend using Facebook to drive the traffic to YouTube because even though it's going to be a very small number of people, it still will have a slight positive impact on your YouTube channel. And if that's what you're really focused on, then that is what you want to see.
Now, the caveat here is, is it worth your time? Because it is going to be a very small benefit to the YouTube channel. And I would argue that your time is more likely to be better spent on your actual video content, on making better videos, on doing more research to find better video topics or even with interacting with your subscribers and your commenters over on YouTube. So, I would say if you have time left over after doing all that and there's just nothing more you can do with your videos or with your channel itself. Then, yes, going on to other platforms like Facebook, Facebook groups, Instagram, things like that. Yes, it is going to help. Just most of the time, there are better things you can do with your time.
All right. Well, that is everything for today. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. If you found this episode helpful and you would like to participate live in future recording sessions, then be sure to visit startupsociety.com/podcast to learn more about all the benefits of membership and apply to join. And finally, it would be a big help if you left Work Less, Earn More a review on Apple Podcasts. Not only will this help us reach more people, but it's also going to give you the chance to potentially win a 12 month membership to Startup Society. All you need to do to enter is post your review on Apple Podcasts then email a screenshot to contact@gillianperkins.com. Thanks again so much for listening. Now, let's wrap this up. I'm Gillian Perkins, and until next week, stay focused and take action.
