Are you looking for ways to leverage the power of YouTube videos in marketing? Want to learn how to create content that drive audiences and connections that take your real estate investing efforts to the next level? You’ve have stumbled upon just the episode for you. Scott Carson hosts Rob Balasabas, the Partnership Growth Manager of TubeBuddy, in this conversation that teaches you how to use video content to drive customer engagement. They discuss some of the easiest things to correct in your video marketing, best practices, and the power of TubeBuddy to help you maximize your reach and video engagement. Learn the best way to get people to watch and engage and how you can use that attention to your own advantage.

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Video Marketing: Learn The Best Practices With Rob Balasabas

I’m Rob Balasabas here with TubeBuddy. I’m excited for you to read this conversation that Scott and I had about how you can use YouTube to grow your channel, reach and influence as a real estate investor.

—

I’m excited to be here with you. If you have known me long enough or you follow me on Facebook, YouTube, reading the blog or listening to the radio network, you have checked out the website. You see and know how valuable that video has been for us not only in getting the word out on what we are doing and teaching people on the note business but also the real estate side of the business. For years, I was known as the note guy from the YouTube videos I did, teaching people or walking around properties and note deals and sharing the story along the way. I’m excited. I feel like a little kid in a candy store because when you talk with like-minded people, you get a chance in the community of marketers out there to meet somebody who’s probably more passionate about specific things than you are. You get excited to spend some time on it.

I’m honored to have our special guest join us on here and share some of his insights because of him and what he has provided, it has helped my channel and my marketing go to a whole new level. I’m talking about the man, the myth, the TubeBuddy legend, Mr. Rob Balasabas out there. If you don’t know him, he is a Brand Evangelist for TubeBuddy. He is in charge of the Partnership Growth Manager at TubeBuddy and speaks at various conferences, summits, shows and live streams. He’s also the host of a very valuable TubeBuddy Creator’s Corner Live Show, as well as the weekly TubeBuddy 101 Live Training Sessions. I’m honored to have this guy, who’s not only an awesome marketer but also a dad, husband and coffee connoisseur. Rob, welcome to the show.

Scott, thank you. I’m going to need that recording for every introduction now. That’s amazing. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I’m super excited to talk to you about YouTube, videos and a few things I would love to share. I’m excited to be hanging out with you.

I’m sure you look at hundreds of channels throughout a month, whether it’s marketers, real estate investors, speakers or podcasts, what’s the thing that jumps out at you? What’s the number one thing that’s your pet peeve when you see with people when they are screwing up on their YouTube channel?

It’s not because I think people mean to do it but because I used to do this a lot is super long introductions. I totally understand why. You want to make sure you validate and give credibility to why you are about to speak about something but it’s like, “This is what I do. This is me. I have grown X amount of businesses to seven figures.” Sometimes it’s a three-minute introduction before people deliver what they said they would deliver in the thumbnail and the title. That’s the biggest pet peeve for me. I feel bad because I’m sure the watch time is very low for those videos. I learned that my introductions used to be two minutes long-ish. I still have those videos up and all the comments. There were like, “Fast forward to three minutes. You are welcome.” I was like, “I get it.” I’m going to keep it on here because people need to see that struggle.

That makes a lot of sense, getting directly to the point and leave the introduction by to the end a lot of times. A lot of people forget the fact that you are speaking to people already on your channel. You have already got a little bit of credibility. If you are speaking on another show or an event, you’ve got credibility because you are on stage virtually or in person. If you are new to that, all I’ve got to make sure is that I show value and get to the shit.

We will talk about some video best practices. Get to it and then people will connect with you. Your content, knowledge, whatever you are sharing will show and then people will make the decision. They were not going to decide to click, subscribe or stay listening based on your introduction and based on what you have done. YouTube is a search engine, they were looking up things, questions and then just get to the answer. They will appreciate that. They will watch maybe more videos of you and start seeing more of your videos get recommended to them. That’s how YouTube works. Get to the value. Keep hammering value and give it all away.

 

Being under 1 minute, 30 seconds or a little thing is probably a good start there for it. You may not have the analytics. I know it’s going to vary by channel and how long. If you are seeing people spend time on a channel, what’s a good minute length that people are hanging out? Is it 2 minutes, 30 seconds? I know it will vary for some of the different stuff. If you look at your channel overall, what’s a well engaged post timeline? Is it 3, 6, 12 minutes?

For the length of a video, that ranges a lot. It could be 4 or 5 minutes. One of the things I look at is the average watch time for my videos for my personal channel, not TubeBuddy. Look at the average watch time. You can tell like, “On average, people watch 3, 4 minutes and then they dip out on all my videos.” Start there, “From now on, I want to make sure that’s three minutes.” Your average watch time for your channel could be 3, 4 minutes but then the average video is about 15, 20 minutes. That’s too short. If your average watch time is three minutes, then maybe moving forward, start there. Make a 3 or 4-minute video but then make sure that everybody watches as close to 100% as possible.

Once that happens, then your videos will get served more because then YouTube will say, “This is a good product.” Every video is like a product on your shelf if you look at your channel as a store. You show YouTube-like, “My product right here, this video, people are watching 80%, 90% of it. Go and share this away.” You’ve got to understand what does YouTube wants. There are three players here. There’s you, your viewers and YouTube. This is YouTube’s house. What does YouTube want? YouTube wants people, viewers, to binge-watch on YouTube. They don’t want people to leave.

If your product, your video, keeps people watching, they were going to be like, “This is a good video. Let it work here with Scott. Let me share it with other people who are like Scott, who are into the same thing because we know that this video statistically performs well. It keeps people engaged.” If they have watched that video, “What else does Scott have? Does he have other videos on this topic? Maybe something related? Let’s serve it to this guy, who is the same viewer again because we know Scott performs well with his videos.” Focus on that. Start there. As you earn that right to hold someone’s attention for longer, then start playing around with like a 6 to 7-minute video.

There’s a thing too. If people have a monetized channel, meaning you can run AdSense to your videos, eight minutes is the minimum length of a video where you can put what’s called mid-roll ads, where you can put AdSense in the middle of the video throughout the video. A lot of people are like, “I want to make a video that’s a minimum of eight minutes so I can put a couple of more extra ads in the videos.” That can be part of your strategy but again, if people aren’t even getting to the 3 or 4-minute mark, they are not even seeing the ad so it doesn’t even matter and it hurts your channel.

Look at your average. Take a look at your analytics, what’s your average watch time and then start there. If it’s 3, 4, 5 minutes, make that length of a video but try to make it so that people watch the entire thing. That’s a bigger exercise because you’ve got to look at your videos, editing and all those things. You may need to take things out that are repetitive. You may need some animations and transitions to keep people engaged. That’s where I would start.

You said keeping people engaged. It’s all about grabbing that attention. If you’ve got content and you are searching for it, it’s great. How important is the title and focused on the title? One mistake I made early on is I would throw stuff up there with a decent title but I would leave a stroke face. I didn’t have a good thumbnail. I just left it there. I was like, “You don’t need it.” Both are important, aren’t they?

Both are very important. The title serves a couple of different purposes. The title is typically what we teach people who are using TubeBuddy in our different sessions. Titles are two parts. There’s the first part, which serves the algorithms. That’s the searchable keyword. This is why you would use Keyword Explorer inside of TubeBuddy. The second part comes directly from YouTube. It’s the compelling part of your title. For example, live streaming tools. Let’s say that that’s the keyword and the searchable part. People might be looking like, “Live streaming tools for free.” The compelling part is, “Five live streaming tools that you can use for free.” I was like, “It has got the keyword there that’s searchable that YouTube likes. It serves the algorithms.”

What happens is even if your videos show up in search, somebody searches that and then your videos show up, now your challenge is to make that person and strike some emotional thing or reaction to them that they click into your video. That’s why you’ve got to look at other videos. For a lot of tutorials, tools and gear, it will be like, “I bought this camera. Is it worth it? Canon M50 review. Is it worth it? Facebook ads, the biggest mistakes I made. The mistakes I regret.” They’re not clickbait but compelling. You don’t want to mislead. The difference with clickbait titles is that they are misleading. The image is misleading. It has nothing to do with the video itself but it makes people click, which also hurts your channel. That’s the thing with titles.

You are the Brand Ambassador for TubeBuddy over there. I discovered TubeBuddy and loved what it has done for my channel because I used it. We all have a million plugins of things that we use but I use it daily sometimes when I’m uploading or after I have uploaded when I get around to editing a video or getting it to go live. I love some of the features. For those who don’t know what TubeBuddy is, could you explain what it is and some of the cool features?

 

TubeBuddy has been around for about years. The founders have been in the YouTube software space for about years. Now, we have over five million channels that have installed TubeBuddy, which is insane. As big as a number that is, the actual number of channels on YouTube is way more. It’s a drop in the bucket. We have over 80 different tools. There are a lot of tools inside of TubeBuddy anything from Keyword Explorer. There’s also SEO Studio, which makes it super easy or straightforward to optimize your videos for search. There are A/B testing, all aspects of being a creator, managing all your comments and all that stuff. It has been an awesome tool.

As YouTube grows, changes and features change with YouTube, we are right in line with them, making sure that those changes translate to our platform as well. That’s what TubeBuddy is. We have an awesome community. We are a community inside of TubeBuddy but also the team members, me, Andrew, Judah, Renee, we are all creators ourselves before we joined TubeBuddy. It’s built into us. We love doing these kinds of things and collaborating. You see us doing that on our channel, off our channel and in different community groups. That’s about what TubeBuddy is.

It’s a beautiful tool because most people will upload stuff and put a title in. Maybe not put a big description in and forget about the keywords or the terms that they need to put in their description. For me, that was one of the biggest things that helped me identify what my video was about, “What are the key terms that are ranking high that I can add into the options and put it into the descriptions or put into the title?” All that stuff has helped out tremendously. I went from less than 1,000 subscribers to 4,200 in less than 24 months. We average about 150 subscribers a month, 3 to 5 people a day. That’s not big as some of the other bigger real estate niches but I will take three new people subscribing to my channel each day. It’s a drop in the bucket but it all adds and they are very engaging. We see about somewhere between a 10 and 15-minute viewership engagement. Our videos are usually 30 to 45 minutes long. I’m happy with that.

That sounds like great numbers. It’s not all about having a huge channel. It’s about building the community and loyalty with your community and audience. If you are looking at it as a business, which most people are, it depends on what you are offering is as well. I would rather have 4,000 people who are engaged than 1 million or 100,000 who are passively checking out some videos, watching 1 or 2-minute here and there. Especially in your space, I don’t know the margins and the numbers but if you are in real estate or investments where potentially there’s a high ticket for every value for every customer or client, you don’t need a play button. You can have a very successful business using a relatively smaller channel size in terms of subscribers and do well.

That’s one of the things I have heard from people like, “I don’t have time to market.” I’m like, “You have to incorporate. You’ve got to have a video of some sort in your marketing. Especially with what we do with finding deals in different parts of the country or also raising capital in its local location. If you can start in your warm market, that’s always a good thing getting the word out. Especially since we are buying assets in Indiana, California or Florida and we are a four-hour flight away, being able to share that video that you can create about the asset or a walkthrough and sharing it in other markets is important to get the word out to get the engagement. You don’t have to have 1,000. You’ve just got to be using that tool a lot.

You can’t be everywhere all the time. You’ve got to leverage videos. Beyond that, this goes for anyone who’s trying to do business is that you’ve got to be top of mind. You’ve got to build trust. Building trust takes a long time. There are a lot of people who do a lot of service-type businesses, consulting or where they were putting deals together. Trust is a big factor. You can’t get on calls with tons of people every single day, single week but if you are creating videos where they can see your face, hear your voice and see your body language, that’s doing that work of slowly, steadily building up trust.

You add on the fact that you are sharing honest, real, valuable information for free through YouTube, that trust factor is getting built up. When that time comes, when people need to decide like, “I want to do this deal or I need the service,” hopefully, you are the one that they are going to think of. You have already built so much leverage by giving them free information, then they are going to be like, “His paid version or the paid channel of working with this expert must be super crazy. It must be over the top and much more value.”

We talked to a lot of people who are selling information or doing coaching. They do YouTube and share all the stuff on YouTube. As your community builds, they were like, “I want to pay you.” As much as we think people want free information, naturally, most people feel like, “I have taken so much. How can I give back to this person? Do you have a Patreon? Do you have courses? Do you have a book I can buy?” Build that leverage and trust using videos. Share the knowledge that you have because it’s already out there. Your competitors are already sharing it anyway and then build that trust. It will open a lot of doors for you for sure.

I always tell people like, “Start sharing your journey. That’s what people love.” We get phone calls and emails that we have been following for six months. I had one lady call me and she went, “You are the only white boy I let in my bedroom at night.” I was like, “You are married, too.” She was like, “Yes. I and my husband loved watching you at night.” I started laughing about that. Building that kind of rapport with people without that one-on-one conversation and that one to the masses leads to valuable one-on-one conversations. If somebody is looking to start a new channel, do you have any recommendations? We talked about getting some short videos up there. Any idea about the top 5 or 6 things they might need to throw on their channel story-wise?

The first thing is to look at your daily work like your emails, social media, phone calls with clients and your customers. What’s the thing that they ask you all the time? If you have a website, you must have an FAQ part like a Frequently Asked section. Make videos on that because that gives you a reason to share that video. Make videos to show up on YouTube and be found in search. Initially, make videos, especially if you are in that space, to save yourself time. If people are asking you the most basic questions, to you they were very basic. You are like, “Why?” but look at your emails and DMs. Make short videos that answer those questions, so then they are on YouTube.

When people email you and they were like, “I want to set up a consultation,” and then you can send them maybe 3 or 4 videos from your YouTube channel that answers, brings and educates them so that they are at the level where it’s worth your time to talk to them. You use it as a way to filter some of the inquiries that come in so that you are not talking to somebody and then you realize 1 or 2 hours later like, “They were not a fit for me.” Somebody reaches out to you about an opportunity or like, “I have this property and opportunity. Here are a few of my videos so you know how I run my business. This is how I do things.” They can watch that. “Once you have watched this, click this link. Let’s set up a call but I want to make sure you watch this so you know what I’m about. I don’t want to waste any of your time.”

At the same time, it’s multipurpose because then it’s also on YouTube and the search engine. It’s also going to generate some more viewership and build you an audience there. That’s where I would start. Answer questions that people ask you regularly. We do that here at TubeBuddy. I’m on the affiliate side of things. I’m always getting common questions. People are like, “Rob, how do I put my affiliate link with my coupon code?” I’m like, “I have answered this eight times this week. Let me make a video and then I will use that video.” Save yourself time. That’s the best way.

One of the greatest things that we have done in teaching a lot of our students is for them to put together a pitch deck video, where they take a SlideShare or a PowerPoint. It’s a twenty-minute video talking about who they are as an investor or as a business, what they were focused on and maybe a soft pitch at the end for the hook. We have had a lot of people record it once because it’s the same question that they were being asked, “Tell us about your business,” and then sharing that video across from the other platforms like BiggerPockets, Connected Investors, LinkedIn or having it be the main video that plays in a channel so that’s something that’s playing regularly not only to find investors but raise capital. No matter what niche you are in or what your focus is, it’s good to have something that you are going to be staying on regularly that plays all the time.

There are a lot of value in that. It’s time-saving but also is trust-building. That’s probably the main thing here with the audience that you have. Personal story, I create videos because I create tutorials. For me, I love software and all the tools that I get to share and use. My personal channel is all about, “Helping creators be better creators.” I never thought about it like, “It’s going to open doors and all the opportunities,” because you never know who’s watching. I’m sure you have experienced this.

People will reach out to you and they were like, “I want to do this thing. I have been watching your stuff or listening to you on your show for years.” I’m like, “I never knew you. You have never commented. I have never seen your name.” All of a sudden, they will come out and be like, “Let’s do this thing. I want to invite you to this thing, this event or the conference.” You never know. Do the work of putting it out there, saving yourself time. It will do the work for you. That’s the awesome thing about YouTube.

That happened. Somebody commented on a video that I didn’t know followed and invited me to be on their show. I was like, “Yes, I’m excited about this,” on the video that was released. We had a good connection over Instagram as we are going back and forth on YouTube. We haven’t talked but we have already booked for each other’s show. I was like, “This is going to be great. What did I do in that video so well?”

You never know.

Would you recommend that people if they are in a niche, going and stalking their peers or competitors if they see a video that has done well like replicating that video or doing something different?

 

For YouTube, there are a lot to be said about trending topics. For example, if a social media platform changes something, you will see a lot of creators in that space talking about that one change. It’s not rocket science because people are searching for it. If you see somebody in your space and one of their new videos is killing it, what a lot of creators will do is won’t watch the video but they will look at the title, topic and what it’s all about because what happens is a supply and demand thing. There are a lot of demand for these videos and content around this topic.

Somebody will watch this thing and then naturally, YouTube is going to be like, “It looks like you want to watch more of these videos but we don’t have anymore.” If you create a similar video around the same topic, then your competitors, you are helping each other because they are going to be the next video after somebody watches yours. Their video will be fed as the next one and vice versa. My tip is a personal thing. Most people and I included, I will look at the topic but I won’t watch the video because I don’t want to be swayed as to what they say. Also, I don’t want to be accused of like, “You just copied my video.” I never watch a video.

In utter respect, I will watch it after but I don’t want my opinion to be swayed by what they said. I will just look at the topic because I think that’s the most important part. By all means, if something is happening in a specific state, a new regulation to change around the real estate, investing or a new development, create content around it because people are looking for that. It’s going to help your competitors or people who are in your niche and vice versa.

I love what TubeBuddy does when I’m typing in the tags and keywords how it will auto-populate some stuff. I’m like, “That would be a great video. Let me do that. Let me make a list of some of these things. I will do extra videos to follow up that ranked high in that.” It’s a valuable thing. It has helped me with content. Besides looking at what’s trending, somebody is like, “I don’t know what the heck to talk about.” We talked about FAQ. We talked about what’s hot. When you get beyond those two things, let’s talk about some of the things that maybe you use to create topics or ideas for your channel.

There are two things right away. My space, for example, is LinkedIn marketing. If I type LinkedIn marketing, all of a sudden, because we have direct access to YouTube data and Google data, it will start suggesting other things people are searching for. Just like if you went to Google or YouTube, you will get suggestions as soon as you start typing. It’s the same thing. I get a lot of ideas there. We also make recommendations based on your channel because when you install TubeBuddy, then it overlays on top of your YouTube channel. We know the data of your channel as well. Based on that, we will make some recommendations. If I searched LinkedIn marketing, it will make recommendations, “LinkedIn marketing for entrepreneurs, for small businesses and using videos.” All of a sudden, it’s like, “Let’s talk about videos. People are searching that LinkedIn marketing using Facebook ads or something.

This is one step back in understanding your audience. Before we went on, you knew your audience. You know their age demographics and what they like. Have an avatar of your audience. Understand who they are. My audience on my personal channel, for example, are 25 to 40-year-olds who are savvy marketers but they don’t understand videos and how they fit. That’s why I’m talking to them. I’m just talking to somebody like myself and what would I want to know about. Start creating like answering questions for that one person in your mind. What happens is also the comments. Be very sensitive to comments and questions in the comments. Unless you make that perfect video, a good video should invite new questions.

You should answer the immediate question that somebody asked to search. It should give them ideas and then it should incite some new questions. Hopefully, they go into the comments like, “Rob, that was good but how about LinkedIn marketing for somebody in the yoga space? Does that make sense?” I’m like, “Maybe that’s an interview or a video. Maybe I pull somebody who’s a yoga expert using LinkedIn well and interview him or her on my channel.” Look at the comments and that’s going to be a gold mine for more future videos that you can make.

I like going in like, “What questions do you have? Who do you know?” If we are doing a YouTube Live or a live stream, going back and asking questions, they were also going back. I’m always trying to make sure that I’m answering questions or taking the time to leave a response because not everybody does.

Try and play around on YouTube Live streams. You can schedule them ahead of time. It can be polished or you can just pop up live. You can go directly to YouTube or your mobile and live stream. One of the things that I think did well for my personal channel to grow is doing live streams weekly. It’s a real-time engagement and a good way for you to understand your audience. They get to ask you questions and then you were like, “That’s a good question. I can’t cover that here but it’s good. I didn’t know that you were wondering about that.”

If one person asks you a question, there are usually a few others who are too shy to ask it in the crowd. Don’t underestimate that one question that was vague, weird and out of the blue because it’s also a reflection of how they see you as an expert in that space. They wouldn’t ask you if they didn’t think you would have the answer. Live streams are a whole other topic. It can stay on your channel after the live stream. You can hide it or you can delete it altogether if you don’t want it there. That’s up to you. Think about implementing some live streams, too.

Do you have any insights to get approved for LinkedIn Live?

I’m in the middle of that to be super transparent. I applied for LinkedIn Live in May 2019. Not too many people were even aware that you could apply and there was a thing. I’ve got approved within four weeks, which seems long. Now, I’m on the other side and people would be like, “Rob, how do you get? Do you have any?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I just applied.” Now, I’m trying to get LinkedIn Live for the TubeBuddy business page. I’m on my fourth rejection. I’m right there with you. I don’t know who to reach out to. I’ve got no tips.

That’s the thing. I have applied twice. I have never even gotten rejected and nobody reaches out. LinkedIn missed the boat in 2020. You have seen more videos are going live and they were live streaming on Zoom, where they were being so selective. It hurt their channel because people went to other places to share regularly.

It’s tough. I get what they were trying to see and make sure it was the right people but it should have been a little bit more streamlined. We will see. I’ve got no tip. Keep applying. That’s what I’m doing with the TubeBuddy channel.

Do you think the recording of shorter videos 10 and 15 minutes and then uploading them there to LinkedIn is helping out people who have gotten approved for things? You can’t upload long videos to LinkedIn besides doing an external link. I will be doing a live video on YouTube, downloading and then uploading the ten-minute video. Do you think that helps people out?

Yes, I think that helps out people to be visible. I know that part of the application. People were asking, “Where else are you live streaming to see and share the links?” We do that. Looking back, when I did apply, I wasn’t as heavy in terms of creating on YouTube as I was. Maybe that’s why. Now, since I’m doing a lot more on YouTube, maybe that’s hurting my application.

They are trying to hurt the views towards LinkedIn.

Like Facebook and all the platforms, they don’t want you to leave their platform but that’s what I thought on LinkedIn, “If you want more live streamers, let’s open up the gates and have more live streams on here.” I have seen some people who do it well but there should be more people there who should be approved. We will see what happens here.

One of the things I love about YouTube, which is different than a Facebook Live or an IG Story is a 24-hour a day, 7 days a week advertising that YouTube is doing to go throwing views at you versus a Facebook Live video that might stick around for 24 to 40 hours before it gets buried down in content. That’s why I like going to YouTube and then sharing it with other places because YouTube is going to have the bigger bang for the buck compared to things. What’s your advice on that?

That’s exactly my thought. When I first started, I was very much creating LinkedIn content and did fairly well there. I felt like I’ve got a lot of traction in building my community and my personal brand and getting good opportunities but then I started looking at it that the shelf life was not that long for videos that you upload to LinkedIn or Facebook directly. It might be good and relevant. You might still get some views in the next 48 to 72 hours. After that, because it is a feed, it’s not a search engine. You are not going to go to LinkedIn and search, “How do you invest in real estate?” It just doesn’t happen. People will go to YouTube or Google for that.

I was starting to think, “I’m putting this much effort into creating these videos for LinkedIn. It will last 24, 48, 72 hours. Is there another place where it can last longer?” YouTube came up. That was when I started shifting more to creating on YouTube but then still using LinkedIn. For people who are in this space, you put that long-form full video on YouTube. You take the 20, 30-second value-bomb drops from that video, chop it up, upload that to LinkedIn and then hit people hard real quick. If you want the full video or the other four tips that I shared, head over to YouTube. That’s the basic funnel, like 30-second clips on LinkedIn, driving to the full video on YouTube. You do that all day, then that’s how you are going to do it.

If you are on LinkedIn versus YouTube, in YouTube, you are going to be like, “I’m about to watch some YouTube videos. I’m going to sit down, consume and binge-watch. I’m going to put stuff on my playlist. I’m going to let in the queue,” but in LinkedIn, people are scrolling. It’s like Facebook. The behavior for them is they were not there to binge-watch 10, 15-minute videos. They were there like something catches them, a 30-second value-bomb drop. Use captions because people are surfing on mobile with the audio off usually on LinkedIn. That’s it. If you want the full thing, head over to YouTube. That’s how I try to use LinkedIn and it works well. It’s the same thing if you are using Instagram Stories, Facebook, all of these platforms are in one category. YouTube is on its own and still for now because the behavior on YouTube versus all those other platforms in terms of consumption is very different.

It has got some great stuff. You can see YouTube with live streaming and then with YouTube Red. People are getting rid of cable because of negativity and then binge-watching stuff on YouTube on their Roku or Smart TVs. It makes it nice for a lot of things. What would you say would be 1 or 2 big things that you were like, “Don’t ever do this with your channel?”

I would say when it comes to YouTube, don’t be promotional. That goes across all the platforms because somebody could watch who has been watching for a long time like a long time subscriber or somebody who just came across you because your video was suggested on another video they just watched or they searched you and you came up. Deliver value. Don’t be super promotional. People can smell that kind of stuff far away. They will tune out if they feel like they are being sold to. Teach rather than sell. That’s my main thing and then introductions. My introduction is maybe 30 seconds like, “Hey, guys. I want to talk to you about how you can get brand deals using affiliates. Let’s get started.” What you may want to do is rather than saying all the, “Make sure you subscribe,” just use little animations. If you search, there are marketplaces. You can get animations for a few bucks. The little subscribe notification bell graphics, use that. That saves you some time as well and then you get to the value right away. Those are two big things if you are starting up. Don’t sell and get to the point as quickly as possible.

One of the things I love about TubeBuddy too is how you have gamified the platform. Awarding awards for views, subscribers and videos help with the accomplishments. You guys do a good job of rewarding that in your channel there too on your Facebook group like, “Share your most recent award.” It helps you connect with them. I saw that and I was like, “I connected with twenty people fast.” I was like, “I’ve got some great tips from other people out there, too.”

YouTube is a team sport. You’ve got to have a community or else it’s going to be a real tough ride because YouTube is a long play. You’ve got to have some people on your side and in your corner. We try to do that. As I said, we are all creators behind the scenes of TubeBuddy. We understand we need some people along the journey.

I have seen this popped up where I have the Community tab on my YouTube channel. I was like, “This is cool.” Is there a specific number of subscriber amounts you’ve got to have? I have seen other people and I talked about, “Do you have a Community tab?” They don’t have it. Can you explain that for people?

Yes. In the Community tab on your YouTube channel, you need 1,000 subscribers. Once you get that about a week then you get the Community tab. That’s it. There are a lot of other things that you unlock, features. There’s monetization that you unlock as you go along the road of YouTube. That’s one of the most important ones if you want to have a Community tab or maybe you don’t care about it because you are growing a Facebook and that’s where your community lives. That’s another big thing. Make sure you are building those communities and having connections. There’s a difference between subscribers and community members. Subscribers are consumers but somebody is part of your community, they are loyal, participate, advocate and share your content. You want to make sure you are making those connections, too.

What’s the best way for people to connect with you to find out more about what you are creating and connecting with you?

 

Scott, thanks so much. It’s always an honor to be on someone’s show. Thanks for the invite. If anybody wants to connect, send me a DM. Look me up on Instagram or LinkedIn. That’s the best place to connect with me. If you have any questions, fire away. If I can’t answer it, I will direct you to somebody who I think can. I’m super approachable and reachable.

You heard me preach about it when Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank was telling me, “You’ve got to do video.” We have invested in it and it grows. It may not go viral overnight but every little bit helps. All you need is in the words of Gary Vaynerchuk, “You need one person to watch your video to have an impact.” If nobody watches, it’s okay. One person is one is more than none. If you get one new person, think about how the difference is going to be impacted in 30 days, 60 days, 1 year and years beyond that.

Check Rob’s channel out there. Connect with him. I have learned a ton of stuff from him. It’s always nice to have human eyes. He’s a mentor to me on what he’s sharing regularly. I picked up some nuggets. Take what he used. Start playing around with it. I believe YouTube is where it’s at for a lot of us if we are growing our audience, connecting with investors, with funders in raising capital and making things happen out there. Go out and take some action. We will see you all at the top.

Important Links:

• TubeBuddy
• Facebook – Note Closers Show
• YouTube – Note Closers Show
• TubeBuddy Creator’s Corner Live Show – Facebook
• TubeBuddy 101 Live Training Sessions
• Keyword Explorer
• SEO Studio
• A/B Testing
• Instagram – Rob Balasabas
• LinkedIn – Rob Balasabas
• https://www.tubebuddy.com/NCSpodcast​

About Rob Balasabas

Rob Balasabas is the Partnership Growth Manager at TubeBuddy.com, and speaks at various conferences, summits, podcasts and live stream interviews.

He’s also the host of TubeBuddy’s Creators Corner Live Show, as well as the weekly TubeBuddy 101 Live Training Sessions.

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

• WeCloseNotes.com
• The Note Closers Show Facebook
• The Note Closers Show Twitter
• Scott Carson LinkedIn
• The Note Closers Show YouTube
• The Note Closers Show Vimeo
• The Note Closers Show Instagram
• We Close Notes Pinterest