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- Branding Is Too Powerful To Ignore
Branding Is Too Powerful To Ignore
How thinking like a business can grow your channel
Ryker
April 25, 2023
Whether you realise it or not, every channel that wants to exist long-term, does what businesses do on a daily, some intentionally, some not.
Letâs dive a bit deeper.
MrBeast Assassin video thumbnail
Preference
What happens when you get 10 videos recommended from different channels similar to MrBeast?
Which do you click on and why?
The Thumbnail Concept, Clarity and Uniqueness are some of the factors in play here, but the final decision comes from the audience.
You might pick MrBeast out of the others because of the psychological element.
You like HIM more than the other creators,
You would PREFER his videos over others,
You're more EXCITED when you see his video come out.
Why is that?
Because you're part of his audience now, you're a fan, an active viewer.
Even if you're not active, you may prefer his videos over others.
This amount of preference varies for each person, and ultimately, how much you can make someone prefer you over the other person, depends on how well youâre targeting your audience, among other things.
Why Should You Think About Building An Audience?
The consequence of not building an audience goes down to the shifting interests of viewers and changing topics.
And sure, you could keep up with them, but eventually someone with a fan base will make the same quality thumbnail/video as you and take over your audience.
But if the thumbnails and the idea are just as good, why would viewers pick them over you?
Because they've built up the audience, and you haven't.
How do the Thumbnail, Title and Video play into it?
The amount of views that is an outlier for a video is relative to the channel's other videos and if 2 different people post the same video, the results are going to be different.
And this goes down to the audience factor I've mentioned before.
Having said that, the maximum potential of views for a video is still unlimited, if a video is REALLY good, it will go viral and break through the upper limits of your channel, potentially getting Millions of views even if it's your first video.
What separates the Audience from the Thumbnail, Title, and Idea itself, is that the Audience factor is mostly consistent.
The stronger your audience is, the more consistent it is.
So those 3 definitely play a big role, and they are very important as they give you the exposure to be able to build the audience.
Then primarily the video itself, and the idea styles will start to build up the audience.
How can you apply this concept to your channel?
1. Establish WHO your audience is.
2. Identify UNIQUE aspects of your branding, even down to how you say and edit things.
3. Create content TAILORED for your audience.
In short, Branding.
Your branding is created at the beginning of the channel (or changed later) and then built up over time with high-quality videos.
Important to note that âhigh qualityâ is relative to who youâre making videos for, which is also part of branding.
Before we dive into how we need to understand the what:
Brand Awareness - Who knows about you
Brand Recognition - How recognizable your channel is
Brand Trust - How much do people trust in your content
Brand Awareness
The first step of building any brand is to get your audience familiar with who you are. In other words, you want them to be aware that your brand exists.
However, be careful with simply getting as many eyeballs on you as possible, the viewerâs first impression of you will stay with them for a while, and you want to make sure that it counts.
Brand Recognition
After brand awareness, the next step is brand recognition. While they might not be your loyal viewers yet, your audience is aware of the existence of your brand and is able to identify you based on some of your branding elements.
On YouTube, MrBeast is one of the best examples, his thumbnails are vert distinct especially with his face, so as soon as you see it you recognize the channel. Another good example is sunnyV2, His thumbnails are very recognizable even if youâre not necessarily a fan, that is brand recognition.
Brand Trust
After youâve watched a video or two from a creator, youâve gotten a certain lasting impression of them, if you loved the content and the next video delivered on that expectation (or even better, beyond your expectations). You now trust that brand/channel to keep delivering that value.
So even if the thumb is not the best, you will still click because you trust them.
This is one of the most important elements in MrBeast thumbnails that no one talks about
This lasting impression is personally why I avoid making empty shorts just for the sake of Brand Awareness. Viewers on YouTube are picky and if they didnât like you once, they may not give you a second chance for a while
What you want as a channel to build an audience is strong Brand Recognition and Trust.
So how do we do that?
Focus on the right audience.
Remember how I said that quality is relative? Well if you want to provide high quality, you need to understand who youâre making the videos for in the first place, otherwise, youâre just blindingly shooting a shotgun.
- Why did you create your YouTube channel? What value are you providing to your viewers?Identify why youâre different
To really have a strong brand identity to fuel recognition, and stand out as a creator, you want to have a unique selling point about your channel.
- Whatâs one thing that your channel has that others canât or would find very hard to copy?Stay consistent.
If you change your niches too often, all your efforts are going to go in vain. While some brands allow for this to happen as a creator (especially personality-based channels), Others would lose a lot of their built-up audience if they were to suddenly change course.
- Make sure that every video you post is intentional towards your brand
Weâve established how Branding and building an audience helps MrBeast get the numbers he sees (other than his ideas, thumbnails, video execution etc)
And weâve covered how you can create your brand and start building it yourself. But this is only scraping the surface of what goes into it, the core of it, is of course quality and value..
Thereâs a lot more that goes into this, but this newsletter is getting too long, so tomorrow Iâll be sharing some free gems đ in our discord server below, donât miss out on this!
Until next time!
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