When we dive into digital it’s easy to get intimidated by the amount of competition. This is especially true on YouTube where an estimated 500 hours of video content is uploaded every minute, 2.6 million long-form videos are uploaded daily and 12 million YouTube shorts are uploaded daily. Standing out on that crowded of a marketplace can seem impossible, but it isn’t, especially at the local and regional level. Step one is to fully commit to consistently creating YouTube content.
Successful YouTuber David Pakman, who has 3.29 million subscribers, puts it this way, “The advice I give everyone is to figure out how often you can do it, daily or weekly, and then fully commit. This is more important than which camera or light you buy, how to do ad sales or anything else because it all flows downhill from there.” This approach is backed up by so many other success stories on YouTube. The production value of Joe Rogan’s show was pretty rough initially, but the volume of his content was consistent. Same with Theo Von who started his weekly show in his closet as a solo show but never missed a week despite being a touring comic. Same for Your Mom’s House with Tom Segura and his wife Christina Pazsitzky who began in their apartment. All of their production value only grew as they began making money and bringing in sponsors.
This invest-as-you-go model works even better now because we’re all carrying around a 4k camera in our pockets, our smartphones, high quality web cams are small and very affordable (Here’s the one I use from Osbot) and professional USB mics are much better than they were a few years ago. Here’s one I recommend from Shure and one from Rode, both with built in processing. Plus, there’s tons of affordable tools to make recording, editing and producing video content a lot more user friendly and less time consuming. We use Riverside to record audio/video podcasts, their built-in AI to produce reels, Captions and Quso.AI to create even more reels, Google’s VEO 3 to create very specific b-roll footage and a few others, all of which cost us $30 a month, or less, each.
If you’re reading this thinking, Andy YouTube has been around for 20 years now, how can I possibly be first in my market to commit to it? Trust me you can because there’s a good chance your local competition hasn’t. When we audit radio markets to assess our client’s competition it’s shocking to see how many radio stations don’t even have a YouTube channel and most of the ones that do haven’t uploaded a new video in years.
To be clear, I’m by no means saying to only create video content for YouTube. That’s just one piece, stations should also upload video directly to their station website because we own that and can control the advertising on it. Plus, we should all be uploading short form versions of our video content to all social platforms and using that to drive traffic back to the long-form versions on YouTube and our station websites. But, we HAVE to be on YouTube because that’s where everyone in the world consumes the bulk of their video content now.
Finally, we can’t create content on YouTube for a few weeks, or even months, and expect to blow up. It takes time, consistency and commitment. Shorts (reels) are key because that’s the first thing we’ll see traction on because it’s a lot easier to get someone to commit to watching someone they don’t know for 30 to 60 seconds then it is to get them to watch them for 30 to 60 minutes. On YouTube I believe making it work organically first before deciding to put money behind it is the best approach. Save that budget for boosting content on social that’s getting the most engagement organically to add fuel to the fire.
What do you think? How have you committed to YouTube and how has it worked for you and your stations? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com.
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