Speaker 1: I've made video content now for 15 years, and I went to traditional film school before that. But in the last five years, I started creating video content just for social media. And one of the stats that really blew my mind when I came across it is that there are 2 million people in the world that are making a six-figure income creating content for social media and platforms online. And in the last 10 years, some of the biggest content creation platforms are YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. And a lot of creators are using one or multiple different platforms to make a full-time living. So if you ever thought about making content and posting it to social media to grow a business out of or utilize it for your existing business, I have a five-step process here that I think is going to help you. This is the same process I've used to grow one of my YouTube channels to over 500,000 subscribers and 120 million views. And same way I grew on TikTok to over 500,000 followers and grew Instagram and other YouTube channels. Step one is very critical and one that a lot of people actually skip over and is having a target audience in mind before creating any video content. You have to know who you want to make videos for. If you don't sit down and think about this, everything else becomes difficult or some success becomes accidental, and then you can't repeat the same success. So a lot of times business owners that go into the content creation process is a very simple process for them to do this step because they already know their ideal customer. But if you're trying to just create a content business from scratch, you still have to think about this. So a lot of times I think of all my interests, I put them into a list, and I think about which one do I know the most about or I want to learn the most about, and that moves up on my list. Now, the more laser-focused you can get with your content serving this very specific topic and this very specific target audience, the faster you're just going to find success in creating content online. Step two is creating the type of content that the platforms actually want. So depending on the path that you choose to go, for example, you could start on TikTok or you could start on YouTube or you could do an organic content posting on LinkedIn using video and text. Depending on which one you choose right off the bat, you have to decide what kind of format those platforms want. For example, this is not just on the technical side, but the vertical videos on TikTok, those are the ones that you shoot with your phone, have to just have a different structure to them. Not just vertical, but the format of the video has to be short. They have to have a very strong opening and they have to be to the point, right? Because you have a different type of audience there that has a lower attention span than YouTube. On YouTube, for example, they could be on the longer format, but you still need a strong hook in the first five, 10 seconds of the video to get people watching the rest of the video. And the format could be longer, but it still has to be organized because it's all about how long you keep someone watching the video through the end of the video. So you need to spend some time learning about each platform. I have hundreds of videos on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram on this channel. If you want to dive deeper in any of those, there are some playlists on my homepage. Now, number three is related to the type of content you make. And I recommend you make content for the search engine as the very first thing you do. And that requires you to create a YouTube channel as the very first part of your content strategy. YouTube traditionally pays a lot more than other platforms. And you could make organic long form content that actually could reach the type of people you want to reach. And it turns them to very dedicated subscribers because long form just has a different kind of relationship than short form things like you find on TikTok, right? A 30 second video or you spending 10 minutes with me are going to have a whole different result and the different type of subscribers you're going to get from that kind of view. So I recommend you install a plugin. I use this one called TubeBuddy for YouTube, where you basically search for one key term here that you want to create content around and get a ton of video ideas. These are the ones people are searching for on Google and YouTube and your video will over time, if you use the right strategies for search, show up on the search results. I have hundreds of videos on the first page of YouTube and Google because of this technique. And then you're going to find an audience that cares about the type of content you make, because again, you should be laser focused. And then as you grow, you could add more content to it and serve the type of audience that you want to serve. Number four is very important when you're starting out, and that is having a very solid upload schedule. So if you decide that once a week, you're going to upload to YouTube and three times a week, you're going to upload to TikTok. And that's how you're going to start. Look at your overall schedule and make sure that is something you could sustain over time, because this is going to take time. So to get to 500,000 subscribers on YouTube took me many years. On TikTok, it happened within one year, but TikTok is a whole different algorithm. So if you want quicker growth, TikTok might be somewhere where you're spending a little bit more time. But between TikTok and YouTube, you need to put down your content calendar so you know when you're going to upload. I started a long time ago on YouTube with a daily upload schedule, which is very, very difficult. So I typically recommend people on YouTube start three times a week. On TikTok, you could do daily because the videos are shorter and don't take this much effort to create. Number five is having a solid monetization strategy. You have to think about this like a business from the start. So if you're just starting brand new and you want to become a full-time content creator, there is a strategy for that. And if you're utilizing this for your business and creating content to grow your business, there is a monetization and content strategy for that. But ultimately, for both of those, what you need to know is you need to utilize all the different ways to monetize videos on YouTube. So for example, on YouTube, the first way you monetize a video is when you apply for the YouTube Partners Program and they give you a revenue share when they run ads on your video. They pay you 55% of what they charge an advertiser. And then those skippable ads or the mid-roll ads, the ones that play in the middle of the video, you get paid 55% for that. And that could become a significant revenue source for you. On TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, those platforms have a creator fund. So they give you a portion of that based on the videos. It's going to be significantly less. So on those short form platforms, that shouldn't really be your strategy for monetization. The second one is affiliates. So I sign up, for example, the Amazon Affiliate Program, where every time you put a link in the description of your videos and you mention that, and this could be across any platform, they give you a little bit of money there, sometimes 2%, sometimes 3%, depends on the product. But hundreds of companies have different, unique affiliate programs. I'm a part of about 20 of them that I've utilized in five years to make another source of revenue. There's sponsorships, there is, again, selling your own product and services, especially if you have a business, and a ton of ways to learn monetization. And I have videos covering monetization in far more detail. Now, as you go beyond this, I do have a complete masterclass, a free masterclass online, specific to YouTube. So if you want to start with the YouTube path, which is, again, what I recommend, because it just has far more revenue options, and is pretty much where everyone goes as their core, when they're trying to create a content business or utilize content for their business. So I'll put that link below in the description, if you want to watch that after this. And again, I have hundreds of other videos on this channel covering TikTok, Instagram, and specifically YouTube. So you could really dive in and learn those platforms right here on YouTube. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.