One Spoon At A Time

the business of writing for business writers

3 Lessons From 10,000 YouTube Subscribers

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On Monday I posted about passing a milestone on YouTube – going over 3 Million Video Views.  The sharp eyed amongst you would have noticed that I was closing in on another milestone – that milestone of course is 10,000 Subscribers.

In the last 30 minutes I passed that milestone:

And here’s three lessons learned from getting 10,000 Subsribers.

1.  I Never Asked ANYONE To Subscribe.  Ever.

Think about that for a moment.  Not once, not ANYWHERE, in any of the 210 videos that I have on YouTube have I ever said: “Please subscribe to my channel.”  Or edited an annotation that says the same.

And yet if you listen to all the YouTube ‘goo-roos’ out there, you’ll find this is one of their constant pieces of advice.

WTF is up with that?

People who use YouTube will automatically subscribe to Channels that they want to see more content from.  In the same way that people who follow blogs will use RSS feeds.  Or the same way that people on Twitter ‘follow’ the tweeps that they like.

You don’t have to ask them.  Every time you have more than one call to action in a video, you diminish the effectiveness of all the calls to action (because the viewer is confused about what you want him to do).

Don’t waste your call to action on getting people to subscribe to your channel.  Here’s why that’s a waste of time:

2.  If I Want To Contact Those 10,000 Subscribers, I Can Only Do It In Batches of 25

Yep, you read right.

If I want to send a message to my subscribers I can only do it in batches of 25.  That would be 400 separate cut and paste copies of the same message each time I wanted to send a message out to my ‘subscribers.’

Forget that.

Instead, the biggest learning of the last post is repeated in this post too – so you get the idea I’m trying to send:

3.  Work Out How To Get People Off YouTube – And Onto Your Website…

And even better, onto your mailing list.

If you can work that out, then YouTube IS a brilliant place for people to discover you and then go back to your website and take action.

There’s More To Content Marketing With Video Than Just Throwing Videos Onto YouTube

I’ve been Content Marketing with video for four years now, almost to the day.  In those four years I’ve ran lots of experiments.  Tried out different things.  And worked out how to maximize the YouTube views you are getting on your videos so they laid to getting traffic back to your website.

Plus come up with a bunch of strategies I’ve not heard the YouTube ‘goo-roos’ talking about – things like video guest posting, content curation with video, why you should use other Video Aggregator sites and not just YouTube, understanding how video works in the Sales Cycle, dissecting the Call To Action down into its core components.  And more.

And all of that information is laid out in my Course – The Content Marketer’s Video Playbook.

As it’s Thanksgiving Week, I’m offering a special.  For a few more hours you can get it for $399 instead of $499.

At midnight on Wednesday 28th November (EST) this offer goes away.  AND I won’t be accepting any new members until 2013 at the earliest.  (If you’re a subscriber to my email list here you’ll know why).

Here’s the link again:

The Content Marketer’s Video Playbook

Great Example of Video Article And Deconstruction

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Copywriter Jeff Sexton recently posted a fabulous deconstruction of a great video article.

You can find Jeff’s Deconstruction here:

Explanatory Video Done Right

Jeff is a really clever guy, and one of the few people I follow on a regular basis.  Here’s the video he deconstructs:


Seriously, go check it out.  And leave a comment for Jeff thanking him for his deconstruction.  It’s priceless.

Incorporating Video Into A Teaching Product – Interview Segment

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Here’s a segment of a wide ranging 60 minute interview I did today with Joanna Penn (who you can find atwww.thecreativepenn.com.).  In this video segment we discuss an example of using video to create a paid product – and we talk about how one of Joanna’s clients could perhaps do it.  (This example client teaches First Aid).

The full video will be one of the new Bonus Elements in my Content Marketers Video Playbook course.  If you want to learn how to do content marketing with video, this course is for you.

Here’s a link to some more information:

Content Marketers Video Playbook

PS – a future module I intend to add is how to leverage Interview Videos for your business!

How can social media be beneficial to online casino sites?

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If there are two things that have enjoyed incredible growth during the internet era it is social media and online gaming. Online casino sites in particular have introduced people who would not previously have considered gambling and, at the same time, there has been an explosion in the use of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook – and the latter definitely has benefits for the former.

For one thing, social media allows people to share things that are of interest to them. When people talk about their passion for playing casino games like blackjack, roulette or slot machines on a social network like Twitter, it has the potential to reach millions of people and at least some of whom are almost certain to decide to visit that site and try the games for themselves. Thus on a basic level, social media acts as a kind of free publicity for the top online casino sites.

Beyond this, some of the casino sites have actually sought to directly integrate some of their casino games with social networks – most notably Facebook. An example of this would be the Zynga poker game, which has become the single most popular form of online poker, and which is available via Facebook. The two are not unconnected, as being integrated with Facebook enables people to play against and discuss the game with people they are already friends with – making the process of casino gaming a lot more social and appealing to people.

Finally there are the opportunities that social media provides to casino sites such as www.gamingclub.com/ca/online-blackjack to improve their customer service. The big online casinos can use their Facebook and Twitter pages – as well as video content on Youtube – to tell potential customers about promotional offers and new games, but also to deal with customer questions and queries directly. Being able to work this way with customers to resolve problems ensures greater customer satisfaction, and this has to be beneficial to the casino sites.

Dealing With Comments On YouTube – Content Marketing With Video

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If you’re using video as one of the planks in your Content Marketing strategy – and if you’re not, you should be! – then the first place you should be syndicating your videos is YouTube.  (For the rest of the places your video should be syndicated to, please check out The Content Marketers Video Playbook.)

If you’re posting to YouTube – then you’re going to get comments on your videos.  This is (mostly) a good thing – Youtube sees this as a sign of engagement with your audience, and they tell us this does affect the rankings of your video(s) and channel.

In the rest of this post I want to walk you through the commenting strategies I use with Youtube.

Strategy 1 – Answer Every Comment [Read more…]

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