But as a marketer, have you thought about podcasts as a content strategy?

Podcasts aren’t just for creatives who want their voices heard.

Brands can start using podcasts as part of their content strategy to reach more people, educate their buyers and build an engaged community.

Podcasts are a way for brands to find customers with a different kind of content, one that’s easier to consume.

Instead, people can listen to podcasts on their way to work, while they’re relaxing at home, or even while they’re at the gym.

This article will explain why brands should use podcasts as part of their digital marketing strategy and how to do it.

Benefits of Podcasts for Content Marketing

Easy to start

Podcasting doesn’t require expensive equipment and a studio to begin.

Instead, you just need a microphone and recording software. Of course, you can always invest in high-quality equipment and a studio, but it’s not necessary when you’re just beginning.

So think simple when starting out.

Podcasts are easy to consume

Brands are always looking for new ways to connect with their audiences easily.

As you already know, people have a short attention span, so it can be difficult to teach them about topics when they’re constantly distracted.

However, with podcasts, your audience can listen in while they’re doing anything.

Drive better Engagement

An engaged community means informed buyers and loyal customers.

Podcasts drive continuous engagement because they inform and educate their audiences – something every company should be doing.

People who listen to podcasts typically spend more time listening to them than they would when reading their favorite blogs or articles.

Additionally, they’re notified each time there’s a new podcast to listen to if they’re subscribed. By easily delivering new content to your audience, you can reach them wherever they are.

Boost your content output

Podcasts are a great way to supplement your other content efforts, but they also offer you the opportunity to create a unified strategy with your company blogs and video content.

Your podcast can also increase social media engagement and help you throughout your entire digital marketing strategy.

Additionally, you can boost engagement on your website by using podcast transcriptions to increase your SEO, offer new articles, and develop infographics from.

Cement your thought leadership

Podcasts are a great way to elevate your spokespeople and increase their thought leadership.

Instead of forcing your audience to read a long blog by your CEO, you can ask that they listen to a podcast to learn more about a topic and how your people suggest challenges be addressed and solved.

Because podcasts are conversational your listeners can learn from the dialogue between your host and their guests.

Improving Your Content Strategy With Podcasts

It’s clear that podcasts can increase your audience’s engagement with your brand, but many small businesses lack the expertise to start podcasting.

So, here’s how you can start improving your content strategy with podcasts.

Interview Interesting Thinkers in Your Industry

If you specialize in an industry, you might already have connections to other thought leaders, especially those with engaged audiences.

Unfortunately, even though you might be an expert in your field, it can be difficult to build a podcast audience if nobody has heard of you. 

However, there are likely many thought leaders in your industry, and I’ll bet you know who they are. Think about inviting them onto your show as a guest.

Leverage the community of other podcasts by interviewing their hosts on your show. This is a popular and effective strategy used by many podcasters, so don’t be shy.

This applies to influencers too. Many have their own podcasts so be sure to invite them onto your show as a guest.

Naturally, I’m not suggesting you interview a competitor, but you can certainly interview journalists and other industry experts including analysts to help yours develop trust with a new audience.

Have a Timely and Consistent Publishing Schedule

Podcasting is not a one-off content strategy. Like any digital marketing strategy, you’ll need to create podcasts regularly.

It’s typically best to have a schedule for podcasting.

For example:

You can have a podcast come out the same day every week to ensure your audience knows when to listen in.

Creating timely episodes will also make people want to tune in regularly because they’ll want to stay updated on the current news you talk about.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Podcasts not only give you more content to share across social media channels, but you can use also use it to help get more listeners.

You can use both organic and paid social media strategies to amplify your audience engagement and create buzz for your next episode.

You can also promote past episodes, so people never stop listening to what you have to say.

Choose the Right Topics

Before you can begin podcasting, you’ll need to know what topic to focus on and what type of style you’ll use.

You can podcast any way you want, but what resonates with your audience will depend on your niche.

Ask yourself, do you want to have a formal or informal style to your podcast?

For instance, if you’re a B2B business, you might want to podcast using an interview style that leverages relevant influencers in your industry to help generate buzz.

However, you can also co-host podcasts with another person on your team to make them more conversational.

Whatever you choose to do, you’ll need conversation topics to help avoid any awkward pauses. 

If you’re using podcasts to improve your content strategy, always ensure you’re podcasting about relevant topics that help inform and educate your audience.

Think of it like this:

If you’re a pet industry business, there’s no reason for you to podcast about current events unless they involve pets.

In this case, you might want to interview vets and industry experts to help build trust with your audience and make them more interested in your point of view and business.

Hold Regular Contests

One way to keep your audience engaged is to hold regular contests and allow listeners to win something by tuning in.

Of course, you don’t have to get fancy with your contests.

Instead, you can ask listeners to post a photo or answer a question on your social media with a unique hashtag to win free swag.

Know Your Audience

Before you can begin podcasting, you should know important information about your target audience, including their interests, challenges, and aspirations.

For example:

If you’re in the automotive industry, you might want to talk about current events be sure to focus on electric vehicles and hybrids.

Of course, you should know whether or not your audience is interested in learning about these types of cars by researching who your audience is and their interests.

Knowing as much as possible about your target audience is the smart play.

Closing thoughts

Podcasting is a great way to boost your content marketing strategy in a new format that promotes engagement without asking too much of your audience.

Of course, you should do a few things before you start podcasting, including choosing the right topics, writing your podcasts, and learning about the types of topics your audience is interested in. 

Marné Amoguis holds a B.A. in International Business from UC San Diego. She is a contributing writer at 365businesstips.com where she loves sharing her passion for digital marketing. Outside of writing, she loves traveling, playing music, and hiking.

The post How to Improve Your Content Strategy with Podcasts appeared first on // 551 Media LLC.

Because influencers are industry experts with dedicated followers brands like to partner with them to achieve their specific marketing goals.

However, unlike what you may read elsewhere, influencer marketing is not as simple as sending a popular Instagrammer a message asking them to showcase your products.

If you do so, you’ll likely be ignored.

Therefore, it takes time and effort to build a campaign that can get you the results you want.

In this post, we make it simple and layout the necessary steps for a successful campaign. 

Step 1: Identify Your Goals

The first step to your influencer campaign is to identify clear goals to provide yourself with a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how the program will benefit your business.

Remember, influencer marketing should be part of your overall marketing strategy, and the goals should align with your other marketing initiatives ideally working in tandem.

For example, if your marketing goals are to increase brand awareness, that should be a goal of your influencer marketing campaign. If you want to drive registrations to a webinar, be explicit.

You have to be clear so you will craft a strategy that gets you there.

Now let’s dig a little deeper:

You should also identify micro-goals, which include numbers to help you measure your progress.

Don’t give up if you don’t achieve every metric you set up for yourself, but it will give you something to measure progress.

For example, if you want to get more sales for webinar registrations, you could begin an influencer campaign to try and drive to a specific number.

Once you have a clear baseline, you can aim to find new ways to improve your ROI.

Step 2: Define Your Influencers

An influencer marketing mistake many inexperienced businesses make is targeting any influencer, no matter who their target audiences are or their niche.

Identifying the right influencers for your campaign is key to helping you increase your ROI and make more sales. To find the best influencers for your campaign, you’ll need to consider the following:

Audience: No matter how large or small an audience is, it should be engaged.

If you find an influencer with tens of thousands of followers but no likes or comments on their posts, they don’t have an engaged following, which means few people are clicking on their posts.

Not only that, but if you find influencers with a low engagement rate, their followers might be bots, who won’t take action on a post.

Relevance: An influencer should be relevant to your industry.

For example, if you sell supplements, you shouldn’t reach out to a pet influencer because their audience likely won’t be in the market for supplements.

Instead, supplement brands can reach out to health and fitness influencers who have a more engaged audience likely to take action on a post.

Voice and Values: Any influencer you work with should have the same values as your business.

You should never work with an influencer who might be bad for your reputation just because they have a large number of engaged followers.

Additionally, their tone of voice and style must match your brand.

Step 3: Find the Right Influencers

Finding the right influencers for your campaign is easy, but identifying the right ones for your campaign can be time-consuming.

We recommend using influencer marketing software to help you find, vet, and hire influencers in a fraction of the time it takes you to do it the manual way.

However, there are ways to easily find influencers without spending money on software.

Use Hashtags

You can easily find influencers by using popular hashtags that someone might use to describe your business.

In the same way that someone might type keywords into a search engine, you can do the same on social media to find posts and influencers in your niche.

For example, if you’re looking for B2B influencers, you can search for industry-relevant hashtags.

Send Out a Call for Influencers

Instead of doing all the work yourself, you can ask that influencers apply to be a part of your program.

If you want to do this for free, you can create a Google Form and ask prospective influencers provide information about their:

• Audience size
• Audience composition
• Engagement rate
• Niche
• Name
• Rates

Once you have a list of influencers who want to work with you, you can start researching their social media profiles to find the ones who work best for your campaign. 

Ask for Recommendations

Influencers frequently collaborate with other influencers.

Once you find an influencer you enjoy working with, you can let them know you’re extending the program and looking for more quality influencers to work with.

They are often willing to recommend others and help you get them interested in being part of the campaign.

Step 4: Connect

Once you have a list of influencers you want to work with, it’s time to start reaching out.

You can reach out to them directly on social media, but you may also be able to find their email or preferred method of communication.

Many influencers are bombarded with emails from brands, so they might have information on their profiles for how to get in contact with them.

Reaching out doesn’t have to be difficult. All you have to do is let them know about the campaign you want to run, your budget, and why they should join you in your efforts. 

Remember, many influencers have set rates, so if your budget doesn’t align with what they want to be paid, you might have to look elsewhere.

You can (and should) negotiate with influencers to get the best rates.

Step 5: Incentivize Influencers

Believe it or not, not all influencers need your money.

Many of them will be happy to work with brands with goals and missions that align with their own.

For example, if you donate a percentage of proceeds to pet shelters, more influencers might be willing to work with you for free to get the word out about your business. 

Additionally, if you have a small budget, you can offer influencers a free product and a product to give away to their followers.

Top influencers might not agree to these terms, but micro-influencers might be willing to work with you for these types of incentives because they understand they don’t have a large enough following to be compensated with thousands of dollars.

Step 6: Measure Results

After your influencer marketing campaign has come to an end, measure the results.

If you’re not using software to help you manage your campaigns, this can be difficult.

You can always ask your influencers to send you snapshots of the post analytics to see how well they performed, but you’ll have to include that in your contract with them to ensure they do it. 

If you’re not using software to help you manage your campaign, you can give influencers a coupon code to use on your website to track sales from the campaign.

When measuring results, think back to your goals from Step 1.

If your goal was to increase brand awareness, you can measure website traffic and the number of new social media followers and start finding new ways to increase your return on investment through influencer marketing.

By Matt Casadona

Matt Casadona has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Psychology. Matt is passionate about marketing and business strategy and enjoys San Diego life, traveling, and music.

The post 6 Steps for a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign appeared first on // 551 Media LLC.

Social media influencers are in high demand because of Covid, with brands of all sizes reaching out to them.

Because of lockdowns, consumers are spending more time online than ever and as a result, they’re tired of traditional advertising.

They crave authentic content they can relate to – and this is where the influencers come in.

But high demand for these influencers also pushes up the costs of using them. One way around that is to work with micro-influencers.

Like celebrities, influencers with huge audiences are difficult to engage and afford.

Micro-influencers, however, are more approachable, and affordable.

They also often have the added benefit of better engagement with their audiences than their high-profile counterparts.

Credibility and trust sway consumer buying and purchasing decisions, and often, micro influencers have more on both fronts with their individual readers or audience members.

For small business owners, the challenge of building such trust with your target audience is time-consuming, but it is also vitally important in this hyper-competitive environment.

What is a micro influencer?

A micro-influencer is someone with a following of anywhere between 1,000 to 100,000 people.

This can be on any platform, and many have their own blogs and websites.

Micro-influencers are focused on a targeted niche, and as noted, often come with the advantage of high audience engagement, since their follower numbers are smaller, and thus, easier for them to engage with more often.

Having smaller audiences also means the cost to compensate them is also generally significantly lower than celebrities and high profile accounts.

Where do you find social media micro-influencers?

The first place to look is your own followers on social media and on your blog. Check and see who’s commenting and sharing your content.

Sometimes these people are micro-influencers.

Now, if a micro-influencer is engaging with your brand, that person is already plugged-in to your target audience. Also, it’s likely they’re already predisposed to your brand, and familiar with your products, which will save time trying to persuade them to work with you.

When you reach out, be sure to be polite and thank them for following you and interacting with your content.

Also, be sure to follow them on their social channels and participate there – they will appreciate your taking notice and being active.

Whatever you do, don’t begin your dialog by bluntly asking them to participate in your influencer campaign. No one appreciates being sold to, and micro-influencers are no different. Be polite, it goes a long way.

Look for good quality content

Quality content and authenticity are key.

Here’s what you ask yourself: Does the influencer produce quality content (video, photos, and blog copy)? 

Think of it from the point of view of your brand:

• Is the influencer someone you want to be associated with?

• Do they produce content you want your company to be associated with?

For example, if you’re a family-friendly brand, look to see if the micro influencers use profanity or engage in inappropriate behavior.  Do they conduct themselves well and are they a good fit?

Congruence and engagement are key

If you find a micro-influencer who is a big chocolate connoisseur, for example, but your business is about following a sugar-free diet, then they’re probably not the right influencer for you, even if they are engaging with your content.

Not only should they produce the kind of content you want to be associated with your brand, but they should get good engagement with their followers – remember, engagement is far more important than reach.

Check to see how often your targeted micro influencer posts, and how much reaction it gets in the form of shares, comments, and likes.

And yes, comments are better than likes and shares. That’s because the followers let you know what they’re thinking.

So, the more a micro-influencer engages with their audience, the more influential they are with them.

Frequent posting is also good as they are more likely to be considered credible, relevant, and up-to-date with the audience’s needs and concerns. This is what you want.

Once you weigh relevance and communication styles, you’ll want to narrow down your micro-influencers by reach.

How to find influencers quickly and easily

An effective strategy for finding the right kind of influencers is to use hashtag search features, particularly branded hashtags.

If you search #YourBrandName, you’ll be able to find people who are already engaging with your brand (if they are).

This is a simple and straight-forward way of finding out which micro-influencers are already talking about you – these are some of your best bets, as they’re already acquainted with your business and will be easier to persuade over influencers who aren’t familiar with you. 

When you’re ready to expand your search, you can try hashtags for topics relevant to your brand and products. Simply type your hashtags into the Instagram search bar and a range of choices will pop up.

Let’s say, for example, your business is in the healthy food space. You’d simply type that hashtag into the Instagram search bar:

Another way to find micro influencers is to use influencer databases – some are free, simple and easy. They also provide the added bonus of statistical data on the influencers too.

For example, Scrunch is an easy to use platform which enables you to find micro-influencers quickly. You can also filter them based on category.

In the example below, I put in a search for influencers who cover the topic of marketing:

Some statistics Scrunch offers include audience size, the social platforms the influencers use, the approximate cost to have them create content for you, and the topics they post about. 

These are all provided with the free version – more advanced statistics are available when you subscribe to the pro version.

Another platform to try is Tinysponsor. This tool focuses on micro-influencers, and enables businesses to find and collaborate, regardless of location or social platform. You can even pay the influencers through it.

When you visit Tinysponsor simply click on the “continue” button and set up your brand profile, then start searching. 

The tool even allows you to search ready-made packages, influencer-by-influencer or in bulk, by platform, price, city (so you can get local), and tags, so there are lots of options to choose available.

You can add the packages to your cart, define your goals, then checkout. Sponsorships are confirmed by each microinfluencer, and funds are held in a protected account.

This enables you to collaborate directly with each micro-influencer on your sponsorship. Once delivered and approved by you, payment is instantly sent.

Anyone of these methods and tools is sufficient to quickly find micro influencers relevant to your business.

The hardest part is getting started, but once you do, you’ll be able to find influencers on demand.

Final Thoughts

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective forms of gaining mindshare with your ideal consumers quickly and effectively.

Because of their high engagement rates and cost-effectiveness, most small businesses can leverage this strategy anytime they want – but keep in mind this critical point: The size of the audience is not as important as the engagement. You want to see an active audience.

Even influencers with very small audiences can help you boost your brand’s authenticity and standing.

Now you can outmaneuver larger competitors because you can connect with a targeted and motivated audience who will skyrocket your brand.

The post How to Find Quality Micro-influencers Even if You’re New to Influencer Marketing appeared first on // 551 Media LLC.

Hiring in a well-known celebrity to hold a beer bottle, wear a pair of pants or take a bite of a burger has and continues to be a method of driving attention and traffic to a brand website, storefront or social media page. Its still a good way to reach target markets including millennials (age range from 22 to 37 in 2018), but you have to have deep pockets.

However, the world of endorsements has undergone a radical shift lately.

Because of Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and others, ordinary people have become micro-celebrities. Also known as influencers, these people may not be well known to the general public, but they are to the key target groups who follow them… like millennials.

Instagram models, video game commentators and those who have amassed a large following for what they say and do on social media are now influencers.

But it gets better:

Because working with influencers has become its own social media strategy.

What Does Influence Mean?

Influencers create and share content on social media platforms.  Their content is videos, pictures, blog posts, social media posts or a combination.  It all depends on what they like to create.

They may have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers and subscribers. They produce videos on YouTube, post images and stories on Instagram and provide content on other social media platforms like Snapchat and Facebook.

You can find them just about anywhere online — and millennials are often the influencers themselves.

No matter what, influencers normally focus on a niche such as beauty, fashion, health, fitness or technology.

They like to cover beauty products, clothing, video games, and technology gadgets… you name it. From time to time they might diverge from one particular topic to another, but for the most part, they stay focused.

For you, this means anyone who follows the influencer both enjoys the content they create and may follow their advice to buy something.

It’s because of this following that they have become so desirable in the world of marketing. Unlike other advertising or other strategies, influencers have their fingers on the pulse of their audience.

Reaching Target Markets Can Be Difficult

Some target markets can be difficult to connect with, especially millennials. Their expectations are different from previous generations, partly because they grew up when the Internet was omnipresent.

Behaviorally, they are different.  They post to social media, almost without thinking about it.

Now:

Brands marketing to millennials know this.  They know that they must emotionally connect with millennial buyers – but that’s where the challenge lies.

Advertising on Google and Facebook is complicated and getting increasingly competitive and expensive.  Unless you’re prepared to invest a lot of budget into those social platforms to locate and dial in your target market, you better look for alternatives.

This is where using influencer marketing comes into play – or in this case, influencer advertising.

Advertising with an Influencer

When you advertise with an influencer, you directly connect your brand with your target audience.

Not only is it more direct, it’s also more cost-effective.

You don’t need to create an advertisement. By leveraging influencers, you get your product in front of their followers via content the influencer creates.  This is part of the reason why millennials trust influencers.

Even better:

Unlike other forms of advertising, working with influencers gives you many options…

You might sponsor a simple post of the influencer using your product.

For example, you could arrange for an Instagram influencer to post herself wearing your fashion product like a shirt or pair of sunglasses, or using the product in an Instagram story.  You might even arrange for the influencer to do both.

The point is, it might be limited to a single post or a series of posts. That’s up to you to arrange with the influencer.  There’s no set way to do it.

Some brands have teamed up with influencers not necessarily for a set number of posts, but for a set amount of time.

Think about how you want your campaign to work and for how long.

Influencer Marketing Examples

Take a look at how other brands have done it.  Use their examples and come up with a campaign of your own.

For example:

Sour Patch Kids teamed up with a popular influencer with several million combined followers on YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.

They arranged for the influencer to share video and images of himself at the Sour Patch Kid headquarters. Sour Patch Kids also created specialty lenses and filters for Snapchat, which allowed followers to use the filters after viewing the content. Word of the campaign got shared, making it go viral for a while.

The custom filter also allowed people who didn’t follow the influencer, but who followed those who did, to find it and use it themselves. This strategy also worked on a larger scale involving professional athletes sponsored by Gatorade and Nike.

Here’s another example:

Weight Watchers teamed up with big-time influencers like DJ Khaled allowing subscribers to follow along with his weight loss transformation over a period of time.

Other influencers posted showing how the Weight Watchers lifestyle worked and what they could eat.

But what if you haven’t got the cash to sponsor a big name personality? That’s okay too.

You don’t need to have the advertising money of a Sour Patch Kids or Weight Watchers.

These are examples of larger, more extensive versions of influencer marketing. It’s not even necessary to find someone with hundreds of thousands or millions of subscribers.

Someone with subscribers in the tens of thousands can drive ROI and be cost-effective.

So find the social media influencers your millennials like, trust and follow. Then arrange to work with them.

Wrapping Up

Reaching the millennial generation doesn’t require shelling out the big bucks on a big-time movie star, performer or athlete.

These are expensive marketing approaches only a handful of brands can afford.

You can find influencers who cost a fraction of the price and who connect with your ideal audience.  They’ll be more effective than any prime-time TV commercial or magazine advertisement ever could.

That is why you need to take advantage of influencer marketing in order to reach the younger demographics.

It’s straightforward, costs less and can produce the ROI you’re looking for.

Want to learn more? Join our FREE Facebook Group: Influencer Marketing for Badasses

Guest post by James Gorski

In addition to being the editor at designrfix and writing about tech, web and graphic design among other subjects,
I love to “unplug” and be outdoors hiking and enjoying nature. If you can’t reach me,
it’s probably because where I am at doesn’t have cell phone reception.

The post How to Use Influencer Marketing to Reach Millennials appeared first on // 551 Media LLC.

I think my readers and viewers would describe me as a gadget/tech reviewer, while brands and marketing types would describe me as a tech or video influencer.

For me, though, I am really someone who loves consumer electronics and is passionate enough about it to write about the subject and make videos about them because I want to share that passion with others.

I’m just a guy who loves gadgets with a big personality!

Is Gear Live your full-time job or is it more of a passion project?

It’s both.

Gear Live is much more than a full-time job.

It’s a company in its own right, and as an entrepreneur, and video influencer, I face all the challenges that any other business owner comes up against.

The thing about entrepreneurship, though, is in the vast majority of cases, the business owner is doing what they love.

To do this, requires passion, though.

I am kind of a one-stop shop, in that, I pretty much do it all – I don’t have a staff.

Most people think I sit around all day playing with toys and then writing about them at my leisure.

Or they think that making a great YouTube video is as simple as pointing a camera at a smartphone, hitting record, and talking.

It takes much more than that to keep people engaged and interested in content.

As an example, the other day I posted a video that was about 6 minutes in length.

That video took about 4 hours of shooting, and another 3 hours of editing before it was ready to be shared.

And that doesn’t include the upload process, the social sharing, and the writing of the content that will live alongside the video!

The magic is in making something that is hard and takes a lot of time look effortless.

How did you get started building your audience?  What steps did you follow?

I wouldn’t say there was really a specific audience-building strategy, other than making content that I’d like to see.

When I create something, it has to be something that I would be interested in watching or reading.

So my audience is people who are fans of things I am a fan of, and people who are interested in the things I am interested in.

That turns out to be early adopters of consumer electronics, with a good overlap in the gaming space as well.

That was the start.

As time went on and more people found my videos, either through my fans sharing them on social networks or emailing them to friends, my audience expanded to people who were more generally interested in personal technology – after all, who doesn’t have a smartphone these days?

Just because you own one doesn’t mean you’re an expert.

When you are seeking out tips and tricks, the best apps to download, or which device to upgrade to next, my content is helpful because it’s useful from the research perspective … like when you want to make a purchase.

It’s not just entertainment for like-minded gadget fans.

In the world of YouTube, which do you consider most important, subscribers or views and why?

I focus more on views myself.

I want to get my videos seen by people who are interested in seeing them, or who would be helped by them.

The subscriber count doesn’t mean much in my opinion, because it is so easily gamed, and is also done at a whim.

Someone can hit the subscribe button and then never see your videos again simply because they weren’t on YouTube when it showed up at the top of their feed, or for other algorithmic reasons.

So, I would rather than 1 million views and 0 subscribers than 1 million subscribers and 0 views.

Do you use a marketing strategy to grow your audience? If yes, what is that strategy?

The only strategy I employ is to make sure I make videos that I think people will want to see.

Think of the audience before you make the video and plan out exactly how you will get the point across and how it would best be received.

Keep your audience in mind.

From there, I make sure to share it across the social and influencer networks that I am a part of.

All of my Twitter followers, Facebook followers, Instagram followers…just because a person follows me on one platform doesn’t mean that they follow me on all, or that they subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I make sure to go out to the people, rather than expecting the people to come to me.

That’s how a real video influencer has to think.

How important is having a video “go viral” to subscriber growth?

If you are asking how important a viral video is to getting your subscriber number to grow, I guess it would do a good job at that – but I don’t know that it is really meaningful in any way.

A video going viral is normally because of something about that one, specific video.

How often do you hear the term “viral video” compared to the term “viral channel”?

Viral videos are kind of like fads. People like them for a while and then they disappear. I am more about staying power and consistency.

Do you have a video crew who helps with your production or do you do production and appear on camera?

I do it all.

I’m behind the camera setting up shots and making sure things look good, that the colors are right and the white balance is on point.

I do the staging of the area where the video will be shot to make it look interesting.

Of course, I am on camera talking about whatever needs to be explained and showing up as the face of my brand.

When all is said and done, I am also the one at the workstation editing the video and trying to turn a couple of hours of footage into a nicely packaged 4-10-minute compelling video.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way though.

If you are great on camera but don’t know anything about editing or shooting, you can get help in those areas.

I just personally like to be involved in each step of the process because it all interests me.

How important is having the right gear to being successful at online video?

You definitely need to have the right gear – it’s important. I’ll give you a quick rundown of all the gear you need as a bare minimum in order to be successful on YouTube:

A video camera.

That’s it.

No, really. That’s all it takes.

Does your smartphone record video and audio?

Perfect, then you have the ability to shoot a video and upload it to YouTube.

No one has ever seen someone’s video and then said to themselves:

“Before I conclude that this person is a success, I need to take inventory of what gear they used in order to produce this. Only then can I determine their worthiness of success.”

No one does that.

Some of the most-watched videos were shot using a cell phone.

Don’t get caught up in the gear aspect, and it is very easy to spend a bunch of money on expensive cameras, lights, editing workstations, lenses, microphones, and the like.

Forget all that.

Just get started with what you have, and grow from there.

If you could improve one thing about your current video strategy, what would it be?

I love creating content and talking tech – and I’d love to remove any other barriers that require my attention that are also necessary.

For example, I have an accountant who handles business finances because I’m no accountant and I’d rather an expert deal with that.

Another area that would help with videos specifically is having someone who can handle my sales and sponsorships.

The process is time-consuming and takes me away from the camera but it has to be done.

What’s your advice for people looking to get started? What should a newbie focus on first?

Just start.

That’s it.

There are so many lists out there for what you need to do to get started on YouTube or in video or with blogging.

The longer the list gets, the more intimidating it looks.

My advice is to just use what you have, record something, and upload it.

Get used to doing it.  Make it a habit.  Post on a regular schedule.

Don’t worry about the views, the subscribers, the comments, or anything else.

Don’t compare yourself to other channels or other people.

Just start doing it, and get used to it, and things will start to make sense.

You’ll start to get a knack for things, you’ll see what works for you and what doesn’t.

The hardest part is just getting started!

Got a comment or question? Pop in the comments below.

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