There was a time when being an astronaut was what kids wanted to be when they were all grown up. Turns out, there are more kids who want to be YouTubers than astronauts. This reflects the success of many YouTubers such as Emma Chamberlain, who have turned having a YouTube channel into highly profitable endeavours. In this article, we will discuss just how you can become a successful YouTuber.
There’s a lot of stuff out there about how to become a successful YouTuber. Many people think they understand what it takes to become a successful YouTuber. The truth is, most people don’t know what they’re talking about. The only people who know what it takes are the people who have done it, and those who study them. It’s not about doing something crazy on YouTube like juggling eggs with your toes while you do a handstand. And no matter how much content you study, at some point, if you are to truly become a YouTuber, you need to create your own content. In lieu of the fact that there isn’t some School to Teach you How to Be a Successful Youtuber, you’ll have to get by with this article.
We’ll study two YouTubers, Raye Boyce, of the beauty channel, ItsMyRayeRaye, and Gibi, who runs the channel, Gibi ASMR. Raye has 1.95 million subscribers while Gibi has 3.25 million. So if you wanted expertise, these guys have it in bucketfuls.
Just Do it
I’ve always liked Nike’s motto, “Just Do It”. That’s a good place to start. Many people agonize over the perfect conditions to start their YouTube channel. Don’t wait. Just do it. There will never be a perfect time. Perfection is now. In 2012, when Raye began her career as a YouTuber, she was motivated by a message from one of the original YouTubers, Andrea Brooks, who loved Raye’s posts on Tumblr on all things beauty. Brooks suggested that Raye could post on her favourite products and looks. That’s it. And Raye was off.
When Gibi was a middle schooler, she used to post sketch comedy videos. The quality was awful, but she did it anyway. More than 100 such videos were made by her and her brother. But that experience of making videos inspired her to go to film school. When she made her first video for film school she simply posted it on YouTube and began her career as a Youtuber.
So, just do it. Don’t wait for the perfect conditions of some profound experience to happen. These two didn’t need more than a nudge to start creating and posting content.
Be Authentic
Most YouTubers stick to a theme. That’s alright but the bigger restriction that you must impose on yourself is that all your content is true to who you are. You can post videos on a range of subjects. Ultimately, YouTuber followers are following you more than your content. They want to engage with you and feel as if they are sharing in your journey. That, more than fidelity to a script, is what they are after. This makes sense if you think of businesses: Berkshire Hathaway owns everything from insurance firms to stock in Apple. Facebook invests in social media platforms, payment systems and even digital currency. What you make is less important than staying true to yourself. It’s about having a consistent brand.
You also need to be consistent about when you post and what type of content you will be posting when. This primes your audience to expect what you are going to deliver. For instance, Gibi’s ASMR content primes her audience to expect relaxing sounds, so for her, she can’t surprise her audience with loud videos.
Make Great Content
A lot of people emphasise the need to post consistently. While this has merits, it’s more important to post great content. Posting poor content consistently does nothing for you. Inconsistently posting great content is worth much more. People can tolerate inconsistent posting, but they can’t tolerate rubbish. You need to have the highest possible standards for your content creation. There’s no point investing to buy YouTube subscribers if you will serve up poor quality content.
You also have to factor in your schedule. You may want to post every day or every week but your schedule just doesn’t allow this. Trying to force time you don;t have is a path to posting poor content under time constraints. It’s okay to post in between long time periods if that’s all you can do. Just make sure the content is great. Quality is everything.
Long-Form Content is King
YouTube isn’t TikTok. Yeah, sure, YouTube is experimenting with short-form content, but it remains fundamentally a platform where long-form content is king. If you want to grow your subscribers, you will need to tilt your content creation towards long-form content. Think of YouTube as a dinner with a friend. If you really like your friend, you want dinner to be long, not short.
Gibi discovered that 20 minutes was optimal for her content, because that was how long it took her subscribers to fall into a relaxed state and sleep. Raye posts content ranging from 4 to 20 minutes long. The length depends on what she is shooting that day. Experiment to find the optimal length of your videos.
