TJ Walker talks about building an audience through video. He argues that consistent, simple content matters more than technical perfection, and that anyone can start creating without waiting for the right equipment.
Chapters
How do you communicate on YouTube? Well, there's no one way. There are wildly successful people who speak out on YouTube and it's all about entertainment. A lot of quick edits, a lot of thought scripts written out in advance. Justin Bieber communicated very forcefully and powerfully in YouTube, singing in his early date. There's no one way of communicating on YouTube, but there is one way to not communicate on YouTube, and that is by just thinking about it, watching others, wasting time researching the best camera. For six months now, I don't hold myself out as the world's greatest YouTube expert. Although I have had several million views on various YouTube channels, I have. I have had some videos go moderately viral, and I've had a lot of videos and help my business and bring in clients, customers and prospects. So I do think of myself as perhaps a step or two above many. I've also produced about 10,000 videos that have gone on various YouTube channels. So I've produced a lot. I'm not saying you have to do my style. My style for YouTube videos is simple talking head, not edited, not particularly slick. Although I do take the time to try to light properly, have decent audio, have a backdrop. By the way, those of you who are listening on itunes or various other podcasting platforms, all of these podcasts are available in a video format on YouTube, as well as Facebook video, as well as Vimeo, Dailymotion and a few other video platforms. So I do try to practice what I preach in that if I'm gonna say it, I might as well capture it on video and I might as well post it on YouTube. Here's the thing. There's a lot less competition on YouTube for certain keywords than there is in Google. You can look at certain phrases such as public speaking or media training on Google, and hundreds and hundreds of millions of websites come up on YouTube. It may be a hundred thousand, a lot less competition with certain keywords. You may have 50,000 competitors on Google and seven competitors on YouTube, which means if you do a video that topic with those keywords, you're guaranteed to be on the first page. So even if it's not the best video in the world, even if it's not the slickest video in the world, if you're there and people can find you, then you are in fact communicating every single day. I communicate with people online. Often it's more than a thousand people now. That's not millions. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging I haven't figured out everything, but I'm communicating You know, in any given month with tens of thousands of people across various video and audio platforms, it's not necessarily because I'm the world's greatest public speaker. It is because I am putting content out there. The beauty of YouTube unlike traditional media interviews where you've got to pitch someone and there's gatekeepers, unlike giving a speech at a convention where you have to be hired and sometimes there's a year long process working with media planners, the beauty of YouTube is you can just do it now, you can do it today. Any one of you can just pull a cell phone out of your pocket, record yourself saying something interesting, useful and insightful, write on your cell phone video and post it within minutes. And then if you promote it on social media, start building an audience. Here's the thing about doing videos for YouTube. The more you do it, the easier it gets. The faster it gets, the more comfortable you get, the better you'll get. A lot of people never get over that initial discomfort of I don't like myself on camera. So they waste so much time on the perfect camera or changing their backdrop ten times or more green screens, or they say, well, I'm not going to be on, I don't have a face for the camera. So they record their voice and then they spend all this time with screen capture and putting up graphics again. Some people are successful with that. I don't mean to knock it or disparage it indiscriminately, but I do believe that for many communicators, for many experts, authors, consultants, where you're trying to reach as many people as possible with your message, with your expertise, that you're really better off just doing simple talking head videos. You don't need special effects, you don't need graphics, just talk to people, get a decent microphone, get a decent light, put your ideas up right away and start getting feedback from people. And that's really the best way to communicate on YouTube.
