Dan Willis shares what 150 YouTube videos taught him about growing an audience. Consistency beats polish for small creators, loyal communities matter more than viral spikes, and responding to comments builds real relationships. He balances high-quality projects with frequent lower-effort uploads to stay visible without burning out.
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Alright, another threshold broken. 150 videos. Here's what I learned. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I am Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire. If you're new to the channel, go ahead and click that subscribe button, little bell next to it. You'll get notified when my next video goes live. Putting out 312 videos this year. All to help you guys learn how to better run your business online, digital marketing, yada, yada, yada, etc., etc. Today, what we are talking about though is 150 videos. We broke that milestone here on YouTube and I made a point every 25 videos or so to just give a bit of an update as to what I've learned about being here on the platform, how you could build your channel better, how you can use the content you create here better to your advantage as a small business owner, entrepreneur. So without further ado, let's get down to it. What have I learned in the first 150? Okay, so here's what I've learned, guys. Quantity over quality has got to be the number one. And now I know there's a lot of people out there that are all about the high production value. They love Peter McKinnon, Casey Neistat, that real finished feel. And that's great. I love their content as well. But the reality is for most people that are starting out in video, they just get afraid of the platform because they see that highly polished content. And what I found is having frequent content oftentimes performs better than having high quality content. Provides you a greater benefit than having one video every now and again that's super highly polished. Now, I'm not saying abandon quality altogether, but if you had to pick one of the two, do I put out one video a week that's super highly polished, or do I put out 3 videos a week with whatever quality level I'm able to put into those? The reality is I found a lot more success being consistent and putting out 5 to 6 videos a week than I have really grinding down and putting one awesome video out. With that being said, I always like to have something bigger that I'm working on that is a more polished piece of content, but that happens alongside the quantity already happening, okay. It's just a huge opportunity, especially if you're using YouTube videos as content marketing, having daily or semi-daily content available for you to put out into your social networks to help engage your community and build their awareness of who your brand is, whether that's a product or a service, is just a massive opportunity that a lot of people are missing. So quantity versus quality is the standard rule with those few minor exceptions. The next one I want you guys to scrap, and this was a big one that it took me a little while to learn on the platform, was virality doesn't matter nearly as much as community, okay? And there's lots of people that claim they've got the hack, they've got the secret sauce, they know how to make a piece of content go viral, and the reality is the second you lock yourself into that, it's almost like saying I'm gonna get wealthy by buying a lottery ticket. Now, there are people out there that do that, and some get success, some don't, but the virality of a video I find is really hedging your bets on becoming a lottery winner, and that's not what you should be about. When you're creating content here on YouTube or anywhere in general, essentially what you should be trying to do is share your message, your passion, your purpose with the people that are out there. So my community knows create, engage, and inspire is the core of what I'm trying to do and accomplish, to help people learn that they can create, engage, and inspire in meaningful ways without having to have all the skills necessarily that a major video creator would would have. It's important to create regular content for sure. And we talked about that on the first one. But understanding that a video is probably only gonna get maybe 30 views, maybe 100, maybe 1,000. But so long as it gets one view, one person watched your video, and that video was helpful to them. If you operate on that mentality, where you just want to engage a community in a meaningful way, and stop worrying about the views, the subs, the watch time, really focus on how am I creating quality message inside my content and putting that out there on a regular basis, that's just gonna help drive you in a real powerful way. Last but not least, guys, now more than ever I have seen it so true, be social, okay? And this isn't— this again explodes outside of YouTube. You should be social on any network that you're actively targeting and using for your content marketing, but on YouTube it's that much more so. If somebody takes the time not only to like or dislike or leave leave a comment, you want to be engaging back with them. Okay. So making sure that you're regularly asking questions at the end of your video to spur conversation is key. But if you're doing that, if you're asking people a question at the end of your video or at the beginning of your video, and you want them to respond down in the comments below, that's great. But make sure you're taking every effort, every comment, especially as a small channel to engage back, have those conversations. As you put your content out on other platforms, you've created a YouTube video and you throw it out on Twitter. And on Facebook and on LinkedIn. As you're doing that, make sure that you engage with any commentary you get there as well. The idea, guys, isn't just to create content for content's sake. The idea is to bring information and value into your community and engage with that community in a real genuine social way. If you're not doing that, if you're just dropping your content out there and spewing on people, you're probably gonna find you're running into a wall where you're just not getting the level of engagement and reach that you're hoping for. The reality is, if you're consistently creating content, so quantity, it has a quality message that you're not focused on virality, but rather delivering value to every viewer that watches, and you're engaging in that community as they respond, react, and share your message out, you're gonna find that in the long run you're building a very solid platform, and the community that agrees with you and, and resonates with your message is gonna start coming alongside in a real serious way. That's it for today though, ladies and gentlemen. That's what I've learned in 150 videos here on YouTube. Hopefully have that number up above that 450 mark by the end of the year this year. I just want to let you know, I do know that I missed a video on Saturday, and that was due to my poor timing and lack of internet. So that was a fail. I'm gonna own it. But you're gonna get 2 videos today to make up for the one that I didn't drop before. So gonna still hit that 312 video mark. Excited to have you guys here. Let me know down in the comments below what you'd like to know about my YouTube experience, or if I can give you any tips or tricks. You're a small creator or you're just starting out. I'd love to be able to help you.
