Audio Version

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/qTjCJUf4RJY

What’s going on guys? It’s Mark from Prime Branding back again, video number eight. Today we’re talking about everybody’s favorite subject, money.

When do you start asking your viewers, and your readers, and your audience to start doing things that are gonna earn you income?

Let’s get going. All right, so this video isn’t about earning money directly from YouTube through ad roles. We all know you have to have 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 hours or something like that right now, it might change by the time you’re watching this. To earn the petulance that YouTube will give you for running and placing ads on your video, roughly between a dollar, $2 sometimes higher per 1,000 views depending on the type of video you have, the time of year, and how many ads can be shown. You know, safe bet, assume you’re gonna make a dollar, between a dollar and $2 per 1,000 views once you’re able to enroll. And when you start realizing that, when you only get five to 10,000 views a video over the course of a month, that $5 isn’t really adding up to much, at least not until you get into the, I’ve got 600 videos on my channel that are earning me $5 a month, then it adds up. But that goes back to posting as often as possible.

Now, what I’m talking about is, when do I start telling my audience to go here and purchase an item that I’m promoting, to, maybe I’m selling art because you’re watching an art channel, and if you wanna purchase this, you can get it on my Etsy. Maybe I’m reviewing gadgets and gear and I want you to go buy them from Best Buy or Amazon. Or maybe it’s just as simple as I’m selling a package, I’m sending you to my Patreon. There’s many options, we’re gonna go over a couple of them. And when should you start promoting them?

Just like a lot of things on this channel, the answer is as soon as humanly possible. If I go 300 videos and I’ve never asked you to do anything for me as the audience, and all of a sudden I’m like, and today I want you to buy this journal, buy this journal. You’re like, geez Mark, where’d that come from? That’s out of the blue. But if I always tell you like, hey, go down to the description. I’ve got links to all the gear that I use on my channel. So if you liked the look of this, there’s a link for the laptop, there’s a link for the camera, the link for the lights, there’s a link for the backdrop, there’s a link for the desk. They’re non-intrusive, right? You don’t have to sign up, but I hope you’ll be interested enough, or go, oh, I kind of liked the sound of his audio. Maybe I wanna find out what wireless mic he’s using, into which recorder, links are in the description below, you click it, it’s gonna take you over to Amazon. It’s gonna take you to the page of the product, I’m telling you that it’s an affiliate link, which means that you, as the consumer click on it, you purchase it, I earn a small commission, usually between two and 3% of the sale. You don’t pay any extra as the audience, but I make a little something just for listing it as a commission from Amazon or different websites.

Now, how do you sign up for those? Amazon’s probably the easiest and the most popular one that you’ll see. If you go to amazon.com, which we got up on the screen here and it’s all your normal selling stuff and you don’t see any information about that. But on most sites that are reputable and that offer it, if you go all the way to the bottom here and you’ll look, second column was at three down, become an affiliate. So you can go through here and fill out all the information signed in with your Amazon account, and all that obviously. And it’ll explain how it works. And the gist of it is, the reason people like Amazon so much as well, depending on the time of year, sometimes you get more than that 3%. And sometimes what happens is you clicked my link to purchase this microphone that I’m wearing, and you decide not to buy the microphone. But while you’re logged in, within the timeframe that Amazon gives you, if you purchase something else, maybe you decided to pick up a new television, a blender, could be anything, a pair of socks, I still get a commission because I’m the reason that you went to Amazon for that time. Different sites work differently, but they’re all pretty similar.

One of the channels I work with is a painting channel. This is not his art, but the idea is that you watch him create the art, and then we offer prints of the art for sale through a couple of different options as well as then affiliate links for the different materials that he uses. So again, these are non-intrusive, they can be worked organically into every video that you’re doing, so that there’s a potential for the video to generate you some income even though you may not be part of YouTube’s ad revenue services yet or Facebook’s video ad services yet. Granted, if you are, I’m gonna grab this piece of art again ’cause it is so pretty. I’m not even sure which way is up. Now if you are an artist that you’re promoting your prints and stuff, or your originals, right? You always sell your originals for more, you sell prints of it for a little bit less. A lot of those can be done through distribution.

The same reason why you see a lot of people doing print on demand. Hey, get this on a T-shirt, get my other design on a T-shirt, get channel merch that has my logo to show your support, or a cool catchphrase that maybe I came up with, you know, Teespring, Redfish. There’s a bunch of ’em out there, same kind of thing. They charge 20 bucks or $18. You can charge 20 so you make $2 off of every sale. Those work but not as well as selling your original stuff because I think the audience has gotten smart enough to know that if I end up on primebranding.teespring.com to buy a Prime Branding T-shirt, you know it’s a print on-demand shirt, and it’s gonna take three weeks for you to get it. So you have to be a pretty strong fan. Whereas, if I’m selling original art, or maybe I’ve paid the money to have the T-shirts pre-printed and I have them in my back room, you know, I can usually ship out in two to three days. So keep that kind of stuff in mind too.

If you’re asking your audience to purchase things, how soon are they gonna get it? ‘Cause if they know they have to wait there’s a better chance that less people are gonna through the hassle, especially when you’re small. Other things you can do is, you know, talk to local businesses in your area, or friends, or collaborations with people that maybe you have a larger audience than they do, or, you know, times are rough right now with COVID and everything else. So maybe you hawk your favorite restaurant down the street and tell them to give you a promotion code. Hey, use, you know, coupon, MARK, it’s in the description, or there’s a JPEG link that you can take to the local Italian place and they’ll give you a kickback for that. We keep thinking that all these big YouTubers even are doing brand deals, right? They want you to have this illusion that they go out, and they’re hitting the streets, and they’re hustling and bustling, and they’re going, ah, man, use Skillshare, use Masterclass, use Avis Car Rental, use Delta, any of these companies, that they really hard hawk. Some of them may have special unique deals, but you’d surprised how many of them are just pushing the traditional affiliate link. Anything that you think you’re willing to promote in terms of somebody else’s service. Look if they have an affiliate link first before you talk about it because you might as well earn a couple of percent.

Now, the other one that we haven’t touched on yet is signing up for, like a Patreon account, something where you’re going to offer your audience a secret look behind the scenes, maybe extra content, bloopers, exclusive merchandise, things of that nature. When you’re starting out, it’s hard enough to get your initial following, let alone get them to sign up to pay you extra money, to watch more of your stuff. If you’re gonna ask people for money you should probably develop something or provide some extra level of service or entertainment to make it worth their while. Patreon’s nice, it’s got the tiers. You can do a dollar as a thank you. You could get access to stuff. You can do a hundred dollars, but it’s never too soon. I mean, that’s the basic concept.

It’s never too soon to start providing ways for you to earn an income off your videos from day one. The income, just like your views and your subscriber base are gonna start small. But it’s there for when you are larger later and new subscribers decide to start going back through your back catalog of content. There’s already things, which again, it’s a good idea. I’m gonna do it on my future videos, and even gonna go back, ’cause I haven’t done that many yet. So now I can go back, use my Amazon account, use my different accounts and set up those affiliate links. So like I said, you wanna buy my camera, or you wanna buy my phone, my laptop, anything that I may or may not have in the video or I recommend, there’ll be links even in the past ones now that, hey, if I make five bucks, I made five bucks.

Otherwise, thanks for watching. Hit the Subscribe button, hit the Like, hit the Follows. Check out my daily Instagram posts and things of small inspiration as I develop what I’m gonna do more with this channel. If you’ve got any comments or questions, leave them below. And of course, thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time.

Affiliate Links – I receive a small commission if you sign up using these links. The products and services do not cost you any extra.

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Audio Version

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/1NwsXlU7vgw

What’s going on guys. It’s Mark from Prime Branding back for video number seven, lucky number seven. Today, we’re gonna talk about engaging with an audience. Engaging with an audience, that’s talking to your commenters, that’s responding on your different social media accounts. Maybe you posted it on Twitter, shared it in a Facebook group, Reddit wherever you’re sticking your content you should be engaging with the people that take the time to leave a comment.

In the very beginning, it’s important to respond to all of them and all of them quickly. Don’t wait three weeks a month to tell somebody, hey thanks for watching. Those are the simple ones, right? The people that are saying nice things, hey you’re doing great, keep it up. Wow that’s amazing thanks. It’s real easy way. Thanks so much. Thanks for watching. And that’s the minimum you should be doing, telling anybody that takes the time to comment on your video, no matter where it’s at. If you took the time to post it somewhere and someone watched it and they took any time out of their day to watch and comment you should be responding.

Later on when you get to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Okay now you can start skipping and picking and choosing. Does it mean you’re kind of a dick? Yeah, I think so you should be trying to respond to as many people always because they’re the reason you got to where you are, but it gets harder. I get it right? It’s hard to respond to 300 comments every day when you’re posting videos. ‘Cause then that’s all you do. And at that point, we’ll get to, hiring somebody just to respond, thanks.

You should be engaging with your audience no matter what, but what do you do when it’s a critical comment? And somebody says something mean especially when it’s just blatantly mean, right? Comes out of nowhere. Wow you’re stupid. You’re ugly. You got a dumb voice. You don’t know what you’re talking about. What makes you, what gives you the right to post videos about this? Wow who made you the expert? Those are the ones that sting, right? Those are the ones, especially starting off can knock you down a peg can hit you in the fells and make you wanna go, oh maybe I shouldn’t be doing this.

Maybe they’re right. Those are the ones in the beginning, bare minimum, just type “Thanks”. ‘Cause the algorithm is going to help bump that video, right? If they put it on their YouTube and they write this big nasty mean thing that’s not even relevant to your video. If you just write, “Thanks for watching, I’m glad you enjoyed your time while you were here”. It’s kind of funny. It’s not rude, but now YouTube sees there’s a conversation be the same thing on Facebook, right? Somebody leaves that nasty comment. You leave it there. We all know somebody leaves a comment. Your video gets bumped to the top or your post gets bumped up because there’s interaction. And they’re gonna look like idiots, right? Even if they come back afterwards, like, oh good comeback stupid, oh way to go dumb ass. You’re like, wow I really appreciate the amount of time that you’re spending on my little post, on my video. Thank you so much. Eventually they’ll quit, and they’ll go away.

Then the people that are just watching, ’cause you get people that just watch for the comments, you’ll get the people that they’ll even post positive comments that’ll come back to see there was interaction, what’s going on? And they’re like, wow well he handled that well. That guy was a douche bag that said those mean things and glad he’s gone. Eventually your audience will even stand up for you. But in the beginning it’s so hard not to want to defend yourself to argue with the haters, the mean trolls. You don’t get into those pissing matches, you’re gonna lose, and you look like an idiot and it doesn’t do your community any good.

In the beginning, respond to everybody, respond nicely to everybody. Definitely 100% respond to the positive people. Negative people. I’d respond to those too just to keep that algorithm going. Once you’re bigger then you ignore the negative people. I don’t ban them. I don’t block them unless they say something super vulgar. They start dropping profanities and attacking other people in the community that are watching. All right that guy’s just a, or girl I should say, that person is just toxic and they need to go. But the normal trolls, the everyday trolls the everyday haters, they can just be ignored though. They’ll go away because they won’t waste their time when they don’t get the acknowledgement. But you don’t ignore them until you know that you have enough positive comments to keep that algorithm going back and forth keeping those conversations going. And like I said it’s real important to do it where you post the stuff. So don’t just only respond to comments on your YouTube or only comments on your Facebook or Instagram or wherever you’re posting. But if you took the time to post it in YouTube creators group on whatever platform respond there too, but also don’t just spam your content in those groups, right?

You want people to engage with you. So when you see somebody else in those groups post something, be sure to engage with them give them reassurance, give them some positive feedback an encouragement to keep them going as well. ‘Cause a lot of times, so many of us are just starting off and we’re not quite sure what to do yet. And those little tidbits of positivity go a long way. So stay engaged with everybody and enjoy what you’re doing. And after that it really doesn’t matter what anybody says anyway, does it? just keep it up, like, subscribe, comment to this video. I will definitely respond. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

Audio Version

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/ZVw0819rZRg

What’s going on, guys? It’s Mark from Prime Branding back here. We are on video number six. I don’t know how long I’m gonna keep counting the video numbers, but anyway, it’s early, and we are gonna talk about intros.

So when do you start looking for an intro? Does it make you more professional? When does it hurt your videos? First off, there’s nothing wrong with having one, right? It’s a little extra branding. It’s a little extra recognition for people. Maybe you just wanna show your logo. Maybe it’s got a little tagline, but it should always, always, always be short.

We’re not half-hour shows most of the time. Some of you might be, but most of us aren’t producing network television or movies with long lists of credits and different legal obligations that we have to fulfill. It’s literally a spot just to go, “Hey, look, it’s my video.” “Isn’t my logo cool?” “You know it’s coming from me now. “Let’s get into the content.”

Breaks up the little generic intro where I tease you what I’m gonna talk about, and the actual meat of the content, and a rule that I like to abide by is never, ever, ever let that intro be longer than 10 seconds.

You ever go to watch a video? It’s a five-minute video, and the intro is two minutes, and it’s the freaking Marvel Cinematic Universe movie opening. It’s flipping, and all the different colors and things, and it’s really cool the first time you see that. Well, if I’m watching video after video of yours, and every video’s got a two-minute-long intro that I guess I could sit there, and scroll over, and try to skip it, and hurry through, but now you’re annoying me. I don’t need that long of an intro. I already know what your video is because I went from your channel to your channel to your channel. Make sure that you’re keeping that in mind for the viewers. Keep it short, keep it simple, get it on, get it off the screen so the viewers can get to the content.

Now, where do you get that, right? ‘Cause not every one of us is a professional video editor that knows how to use After Effects and can tweak and make all kinds of crazy graphics. Well, I use a site called Envato Elements. There’ll be an affiliate link in the description. Whether you use that or Google search, I don’t really care. They’re who I use. I like them. I spend about $200 a year. Gives me access to video assets, music, stock photos. There’s a variety of different services, but we’re gonna go through some of their video bumpers that are pre-made that then you just have to have some basic editing skills to manipulate it to work for you, and if you’re looking for software, there’s a lot of free stuff, but I’m a fan of the Adobe software. Otherwise, there’s DaVinci Resolve, and Sony something, and there’s a bunch of other free ones out there. You can look and go find those, but I use the Adobe stuff.

Envato Elements, like I said, link: https://elements.envato.com/. I can either click Video Templates or All Items. I’m gonna select Video Template, and I’m gonna do bumper, so now I’m gonna get a bunch of different concepts, right? So I can go through the site here, and go through the categories, or I can pick certain programs that I’m using or not using. Now, I use Premiere Pro even more than I use After Effects, so I’ll select that. It narrows it down, but just as a quick search here, it gives me a bunch of thumbnails that if I keep my mouse over, I can get a preview of what it’s gonna look like, so I can sit and think, “Ah, this one running, “okay, it’s an athletic style, “but I’m gonna change all that.”

They don’t give you, necessarily, all the assets, and you were gonna use this. You’d have to put your own footage in there, or you can download the footage from them, ’cause I’m sure it’s in their stock library as well, which is why I like Envato Elements, again. Everything’s under one roof, so it makes it real easy, and a lot of these guys that are offering this, like I’ve got the sound off on the computer ’cause I don’t wanna get flagged by YouTube just yet. The video probably has music in it, and a lot of times these guys will tell you, “Hey, I used this song. “I used these video clips,” so you could go and download specific ones as well. Otherwise, it’s usually just a generic template, but I watch these.

I go through the thumbnails, and I see this one here with the popcorn. This might be good for a video channel that reviews movies, and music videos or something, something where that would be relevant. Easter Egg Opener, ‘kay, something more seasonal where you can change out, food ones. I mean, they’ve got all kinds here, but you can kinda watch and see, even on this, it gives you the timer, right? So it’s gonna show you how long this intro’s gonna be, and if I’m getting bored watching it in the little preview, then I’m probably not gonna wanna watch it on somebody’s video.

We’ll go into editing these and whatnot, but they’re usually pretty cut and dry. You click on it. You’ll do download, or you can pick the project that you wanna associate it with, and that’s for copyright issues, so that later on you can show, “No, I have the license to use this,” and you can send that to YouTube or whoever’s filing it. You do Add & Download, and then it’ll send me a zip file. I can watch it bigger here. I can go full screen if I want. Just play one, so that’s kinda cool. Having the logo flow in. Whole thing is about eight seconds. The one that you saw for my video’s opening is where I got this, was on Envato, so lots of options.

Like I said, you can go through, click, check out the music. On the music side, something I watch. When you click on the song, you’ll see here No YouTube Content ID registration, so what that means right here is that whoever recorded this didn’t register this through a music royalties company or a, you’ll see AdRev. There’s CD Baby. There’s a handful that usually, if you get flagged for using music you’re not supposed to on YouTube, it’s coming from one of those companies, and some of these on Envato Elements are already registered. Doesn’t mean you can’t use them, but what happens is you’re gonna upload it. It’s gonna get flagged, and then you’re gonna have to submit that you have the approval, so it can add a little bit of a delay in terms of you eventually collecting any ad revenue off that video. I try to skip that off the get-go by picking songs that haven’t been registered. Just takes one step out. Doesn’t mean they won’t get registered later on. I’ve had that happen too, two years down the road. All of a sudden, I get a notification that I’m not making any ad revenue off this video anymore because the artist decided to license through one of these different royalty companies that double-checks to see who’s got rights to it, and then I’ve gotta go through all the paperwork, and in the grand scheme of things, for most of us, it’s not even worth fighting ’cause what’d that video get? A couple thousand views, so they’re gonna take the future $5 that I might get from the video?

Other things to consider with doing the intro is make it, again, keep it relevant to your channel. If I’ve got some crazy extreme sports video intro, and now you’re looking at me, and I’m just sitting behind a desk, doesn’t really make sense, or if I’ve got cakes, and pies, and food items, and I’m talking to you about tech and gear, it doesn’t really make sense. Go check out Envato Elements. Find yourself an intro. Keep it short. Keep it relevant.

We’ll go through actual editing, and working on that in a future video. This is probably way longer than it should be. If you wanna see more content, make sure you hit that Like button, subscribe, follow, wherever you’re seeing this. If you’re watching or reading, thanks for that too. I’m hopefully putting this in many, many places for you to find it, and we’ll see you next time. See you.

Audio Version

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/p21qXVN1jJQ

What’s going on guys. It’s Mark, from Prime Branding back for episode five, and what’s better than to give you five quick tips to help you grow your YouTube channel, or any social media for that matter when you’re just getting started. So let’s begin.

Number five, get started. If all you do is read books and read articles and watch YouTube videos about how to start a channel, you’re never gonna start. If all you do is pine over gear on Amazon and Best Buy, Oh one day when I get that camera or that microphone or those lights that’s when I’ll get started, you’ll never get started, right.

Most of us have one of these, a phone. We talked about this in the first episode I did, and I recorded the first four episodes I did just with a cell phone, right. The audio is not the best. The picture quality is not the best, but they’re pretty good nowadays. And if you’ve got a good light source, like a big window, you’ve got all you need to get started or go stand outside. I’ve seen people do it in their cars. There’s no excuse.

If you have a phone, you’ve got a recording device. If you don’t have a phone, you go buy a used one on Amazon, go on E-bay, on the local party store. I’m sure they sell something. Get a GoPro, borrow a friend’s. But somebody, or you have a cell phone that can record video. And as long as it’s 720 quality or better, you’re good. So you got your phone.

Next thing to think about is posts often, post regularly, right. Right now I’m doing a once a week video release and then a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday photo inspirational posts across my social networks. So the idea is to stay in front of people. If you can do more than once a week, if you can do once a day, if you can do multiple times a day, you’re going to grow faster, right. Right now, I’ve got a very small following started at zero. Not a lot of people know about me. I need to get content out there and as fast as humanly possible, so people can find me. if I post one or two videos, and then don’t do anything for six months, I’m going to get lost in the algorithm, YouTube is never going to recommend me to anybody because there’s no follow-up, right.

YouTube likes when people can watch your video and then roll into the next video of yours or the next video or something related. And if you only have one piece of content, when there’s a million pieces getting uploaded daily, you’re never going to get noticed. So pick a schedule, stick to that schedule. And the part of the reason why you want to stick to a schedule, is so that when I do get a follower, you get a follower, They know, hey, Monday mornings at 10:00 AM, Eastern time, they can tune into Prime Branding, there’s going to be a new episode. Rest of the week, I get a little inspirational stuff, and later on, when I can do every day at 10:00 AM, I’ll do every day at 10:00 AM. I’ve got clients that do every day at 10:00 AM, Monday through Friday on YouTube and post 15 to 20 times a day between Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, because you have to stay in front of your viewer base, your customer base, your audience. And if you stop or slow down, you’re going to lose some of that attention. So you’ve been posting regularly. You’ve been on a set schedule, you’re keeping it up.

Now’s the time to tell people, tell your friends, tell your family, that’ll help get you some of those initial numbers that you need just to not look like a sad puppy with zero constantly on your accounts, right. Most of us have a traditional Facebook page for ourselves and our family. Hey, look at me on vacation, look at the new car I bought, right? Once you’ve got a series of videos produced or podcast produced, or you started that new Facebook page, and you’ve been sharing regularly.

Now, tell your friends and family, right? There’s a back catalog of content. So you’re not going to go, Hey, Aunt Susie, go check out my YouTube channel. I talk about cats and Aunt Susie gets there and you’ve got one video. And she’s like, Oh, that’s so cute, you’re so adorable. And she could care less than she goes away, right. But if she gets there and there’s 15 or 20 videos, now, all of a sudden Auntie Susie, is like, wow, it takes this serious. This might actually be something. Wow, these are good videos. And then they don’t mind subscribing, right? There always be a certain number of friends and family that will subscribe out of obligation. But if there’s legit content and stuff there for people to see, now they take it a little more serious and take you a little more serious and you develop a more loyal fan base, even just out of your own family and friends. But we all have that small niche that we should ask them to grow, right.

It’s really easy to do. So I’ll show you real quick. I’ve got my YouTube channel up. Let’s switch over to Facebook. I’m on my Prime Branding page. You can see it on the screen, right? And it’s something as simple as hit the three dots, you go down, you hit invite friends, you select all, send the invite. Something went wrong, but you get the message, right? That quick, that simple, all those people would normally get, Hey Mark, wants you to like his business page. And that’s fine because I’ve been sharing the same YouTube videos and a slightly modified other content on my Facebook. So if I can get them to one of my social channels, then I can introduce them to the rest of them or where else I’d like them to look out later. But it’s super simple, super easy. There are share buttons on YouTube. So if you want to share through your Twitter, maybe you’re more of Twitter, you can share the links out on anything technically, but get it out there, but make sure you have a back catalog first. If you’re wondering what I keep looking down for, I wrote notes.

The next thing. Ask for subscriptions, right. I didn’t do this, I haven’t done this yet. But down here, usually on YouTube in the bottom left hand corner, that you’re looking at the bottom right, But it’s my left, is a little click now thing. Sometimes it says subscribe, sometimes it’s the logo, somewhere on the screen that says subscribe or follow, or like, please do it. If you want to see this content more content like this, I need to know I’m trying to grow my base. And if I don’t ask, a lot of times people just ignore it and move on, right.

So it should have been the first thing I did, it should have been, Hi, Mark from Prime Branding. I’ve got five quick tips for you, for Instagram and YouTube and LinkedIn and wherever. But before we get started, make sure you hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, follow me on whatever network platform you’re watching this on and let’s get into it. And I didn’t so shame on me, but you need to ask. So do me a favor, click that button wherever it is down there. And I’ll see you in the next episode too, and go check out the old episodes. Cause there is some.

The number one thing that you need to do on your videos, is to take some time and optimize them, right? I’m going to go back here to my YouTube channel. When you make a post or make a YouTube video, there’s content, you got to fill out, the title, the description, keywords. What’s the channel about, it all takes time, but all makes a difference. If I just upload a video and I don’t fill out any of the information, YouTube doesn’t know what it is. My viewers don’t know what it’s about. And it’s useless. I wasted all the time of filming and uploading for nobody to know anything.

So find a title, make it something that’s relevant to the video. Relevancy is important. If I say win a million dollars in this video as the title, and I never talk about giving away money, you’re just going to be mad at me. So make sure it’s relevant. It’s not super click baity deliver, deliver on your promise. So that goes for the title, that goes for the thumbnail, a catchy thumbnail. Don’t just grab a frame from the video, do something to add at a bigger text, add some color, something to make it stand out and keep those thumbnails consistent so that when you do build a fan base and they’re scanning through their page on the homepage, it’s real easy for them to notice your thumbnails versus somebody else’s.

So you go through here. First one on the screen here, there’s a cartoonist Kayfabe. Great example, they always have that little yellow icon with the book open. I know it’s one of their videos. I don’t even have to read the description, I’m a fan. I just collect, and I see what the next episode is. And that goes for a lot of these, right? These guys… some of these guys have a certain look and you can tell who it is from what they shared. Your descriptions important. I mean, all that stuff needs to be filled out, but don’t just ignore. Do those and ignore everything else. Go all the way down to the bottom. Hit that show more, and go through the tags and add some tags that talk about again, what the video is about. It doesn’t have to be direct words lifted from the description or the title of the video. You can embellish a little bit more.

If I say, Hey, I’m unboxing this new Google phone in the tags. Make sure you put unboxing, unbagging, reveals terms that may or may not be using the description, you can put them there as long as they’re still relevant to the content of the video, right. I’m not gonna make a video about unboxing the phone and then call it Disney princesses going on vacation, right. It doesn’t make any sense, it’s not relevant.

Now I know, or maybe you didn’t notice ’cause you didn’t watch the first couple of videos we’re in a new set, right. Christmas, is coming up or it’s really close anyway, can’t use the upstairs, can’t use the window. So I set up a little thing. Show you guys just a quick spin of what I’m looking at before I give you the bonus tip. So here’s my laptop that I’m recording on, my little notebook, got a camera in the background there, you can see yourselves, and some giant lights, and we’ll go through all this in the future video. I just wanted you guys to have a quick sneak peek, but a bonus tip time. And then the reason I did a bonus tip is because, Hey, top six tips, didn’t really sound that great. So top five always works.

So six tips, it’s a kind of taboo. It’s not something that people talk about a lot on YouTube. Everybody’s very gung ho about I’m gonna go viral. I’m going to do it organically, I don’t need any help. I can do it, I can do it. This is going to be great. And then they wonder why they didn’t grow. Especially if you’re not posting that often, but a secret, a tip, a trick, I guess it’s not really any of those, but people don’t want to talk about it.

Advertise, pay to boost your views, right. I know, I really don’t appear to have, you’re not buying views, right? There’s people that like, don’t ever buy views, those are bad. Yeah, don’t go to Fiverr and find the guy overseas that says, he’ll guarantee you 5,000 subscribers, if you pay him 20 bucks, because a lot of those are fake they’re dead people, they’re fraudulent and YouTube will eventually catch up, boot them all, and you’re gonna be no better off than you were. And because they’re not real viewers, they’re not watching your content anyway.

What I’m talking about is once you’ve got a catalog of content, again, you go on the screen and pull it up real quick. So you see I’ve got the four videos right now. Find one that you like, you got the three dots, click that, click promote. It’s going to take you to the ads section. Let me see, get started, takes a second to load. And it’s going to give me the option to pick the video that I selected. Now, I can either choose it to be a pre-roll. We’ve all seen those pre-rolls right. Hey, five seconds hit, skip, or I can do it as a thumbnail next to related videos. So what that means is, sometimes on the homepage, you’ll see the very first box. We’ll say, let me pull it up. So you can see on the homepage here, we’ve got a FEMA is hiring in your area, right? So that’s an ad, but it blends in with the rest of the content on the homepage. So I can pay to have my video there as well as in sub categories and areas. So if you’re looking for other marketing and tech advice, you might see my thumbnail has a brief description and I’m hoping you’ll click on it because you might not have ever found it otherwise, especially when you’re starting off.

The other option, like I said, is the pre-roll and we all know the pre-rolls they come on. But if I’ve got a six minute video that I want you to watch, running a pre-roll where most people are just trying to get to the content they actually want might not be the best choice.

I like doing the one makes it’s an ad, but it appears just as a thumbnail amongst everybody else’s videos, because that I’m hoping the merit of my thumbnail and the brief description I can put in will entice you to click. And I can get some earlier views, I’m not forcing you, I’m not tricking you. It’s not being shoved down your throat. It’s there as an option. It’s relatively inexpensive. Google will allow you to set your budget on how much you want to spend a day, pick your categories, pick your age demographics, locations, and hit submit, right. If you were going to do a pre-roll, then I would recommend filming a separate video that only is a five or ten second highlight reel, something where I might flash a couple of different videos and say, to learn more about social media marketing, follow me and click the ad. And hopefully it drives them to my channel, and then they subscribe.

I would never take this video or another video that’s five to 10 minutes long and send that as a pre-roll knowing that nobody’s ever going to watch it all the way through. And most likely they’re just going to be upset with me, whereas this thumbnail option where they call it the related videos and on the homepage. I think that works out pretty well.

So hate it like it, I don’t know. Give the video a thumbs up, thumbs down, leave a comment. If you want me to talk about something specific. If you’ve got some extra insight about this video and the topics in it alone. And thanks for watching, stay tuned. We’ll be doing more, see you.

Audio Version

Transcribed from: https://youtu.be/gHSQ9zGnX5A

What’s going on guys? It’s Mark from Prime Branding for episode four. I got the numbers right this time. You know, my little secret? If you don’t go back and check episode two, and then I mentioned it in three briefly, but two’s the one where you need to find out.

Today I want to talk just a little bit about content. What kind of content should I make? Where should I put my stuff, because I need the attention? My business needs the attention. My personal brand needs the attention. I need to get the word out about what I do, who I am. We all got a story, whether it’s for your business, whether it’s for your personal, we have more opportunities in this day and age than any age before us.

My grandparents couldn’t have done this. They didn’t have the tools or the opportunity. My parents couldn’t have really done this. They didn’t have the tools or the opportunity. We are living in an age of nothing but opportunity. Whether I’m here just to promote myself and grow who I am because I’m ultra cool and good looking, and I want to be a blogger, Instagram sensation, or if I want to market my business, cause I’m a real, a real, man words are going to evade me. I can not wait till we get to an editing part in this series. So I can cut out all these little blurbs that don’t make any sense, ’cause I bumbled a little off the tongue.

Whether you’re a realtor, a banker, a store, a marketing person like myself, there is so much opportunity, but where do you start? Where do you go? What kind of content should you do? I don’t care. Do whatever you’re comfortable with. I can’t write. I always write like a third grader, see spot, see spot run and all that. That’s about the extent of how I wanna write. Anytime I have an opportunity to write a proposal, write this, write a description. I’m like, crap. I need to go to my writer friend, and my writer employee, and my writer coworkers, and have them help me out because I can verbalize it usually better, and get my thoughts out through my mouth faster than I can put them on paper.

Maybe you’re, the writer though, maybe that’s your niche. Maybe you’re comfortable with that. Maybe you’re a photo guy or girl. Sorry. Don’t wanna touch on anybody’s. Yeah, that’s stereotyping, but maybe you’re a photographer. Maybe the still image is your medium of choice. Maybe you’re an audio person. Hey, I love sitting in my car, and listening to podcasts, and I think I have a great voice for radio. Cause I have a face for radio. So you have to go together, or in general you can do video.

I like video. Video was my favorite. And I’m gonna tell you why, because video can feed all of those other ones, right? So for example, I’m gonna take the content that I’m creating this channel and I’ll go into depth about it later on, but I’m creating these videos. And I’m going to take these videos. I’m going to put them on YouTube. I’m going to put them on Facebook. And if I get a cool snippet that I really like, I’m going to put a little bit of it on Instagram. So I’m covering three platforms. Three? I might actually do four. I might do LinkedIn too. I haven’t decided yet. LinkedIn, I’m still on the fence. But it’s getting there. So why not though? I already created the content, right? I filmed this. I’m making this now. It’s gonna done when I hit that stop button for the most part. I might as well share it everywhere.

I’m gonna talk about that in a future video too. But the best part about video, in my case in my issue, I’m not hawking a product right now. I’m not buying, saying, go buy this pillow. Go to Amazon and all them places, Buy a pillow. I am giving advice. I’m doing more talking, and you’re staring at me from here to here, or you’re not because it doesn’t matter. But it’s very easy to take this content, and create it into an audio only format.

Maybe you’re listening to this on the podcast, and you’re like, Mark, you keep talking about video, but I’m on the audio thing. So sorry guys, if you’re an audio listener, thanks. Thanks for subscribing. Hope you’re listening to it in your car. ’cause that’s my favorite place to listen to podcasts, ’cause when I’m home, I’m focused on something else. But I’m also gonna take it and have it transcribed.

There’s a couple of companies out there. rev.com R-E-V dot com, would be in the description. I believe they do like a buck or two, or like three bucks a minute, something like that. I’ll double-check. You can double check. I don’t want to lock them into prices they don’t have. I’m not affiliated. I’m not sponsored, unless I can get an affiliate link, and I’ll put that down there. But go check them out either way, whether you use my link or not, but I can have this transcribed. And now it becomes a blog post as well with a still frame from some part of the video.

So by filming a video first, it gives me an audio podcast format. It gives me a blog format and it gives me the video itself. So I get three different mediums, across as many as four or more platforms that I want to share it in. So why wouldn’t I do it that way? I know friends that are are podcasters. That’s what they love. They like having that radio mic right in front of them, and sitting in the sound studio where there’s no weird echoes, like you get in my living room. And that’s cool.

I’m like, dude, just set up your phone in the corner or set up a DSLR, or whatever you have available, and record it while you’re creating it. And just even take snippets, because then YouTube might feed your podcast audience, or Facebook might feed your podcast audience, or wherever you’re willing to share that video clip. But you don’t have to do the entirety, ’cause maybe, maybe you’re still not comfortable on camera enough that you want somebody to watch you for two hours or an hour, or however long your podcast is. But if you are already creating the content, if you’re willing to make something, no matter what it is, you might as well use it for as much as you possibly can.

Just spend the time once. Don’t do it once and done. I only put this on YouTube and that’s all I care about. Well then you’re cutting yourself short, because the YouTube demographic, and the Facebook demographic, and the Instagram demographic, and the Pinterest demographic, and the LinkedIn demographic, they’re all slightly different. There’s some overlap, but you know, it’s, it’s not the same audiences. So just because you might be watching this on YouTube, somebody else is watching it on Facebook, or watching just the snippets that I picked from Instagram, or not watching it all. And that would make me really sad. So I hope this is something, I hope it gets you off your ass, and go do something.

I will probably periodically swear during these, because the more involved and more excited I get, the looser my lips get, and things come out that I’m sorry, you may want PG or PG-13 ears. And I might hit a hard R every now and then. I don’t know. I’d have to check how those ratings work. But either way, subscribe to the channel, give it a like, leave me a comment. If there’s something you want to hear me talk about, or you have questions about anything. And thank you, appreciate you. See you next time.

Audio Version

Transcribed from: https://youtu.be/blFgYiLGYOA

What’s up guys, it’s Mark from Prime Branding once again, it’s episode three, three, and still filmed on, well, I’m not telling you the secret, watch. If you watched episode two, you know what the secret is? You know something, I helped tell you a little bit about time management and go check that one out. And those of that you do know, you know. But, today I wanna talk about video length, right.

There’s a lot of speculation. There’s a lot of algorithm talk all the time, Oh, how long should my videos be? Do I need them to be 30 seconds so they can go viral? Do I need them to be 10 minutes, so they get that extra YouTube ad boost, that extra placement in there? How long should the video be? Tell me, tell me, I need to know how long to make this, and it’s driving me nuts.

I know people, they do hour-long videos that are, just the analytics are ridiculous. They get so much ad revenue and the retention rate is great. And they’ve got a billion little kids that watch it constantly. But then again, this guy over here’s viral video that’s 45 seconds has 10 billion views ’cause everybody’s shared and it’s exciting. So what do we learn from that?

Context. However long the subject matter, the main meat, the important parts of a video, however long it takes, that’s how long you make the video.

You can worry about well, Facebook likes three minutes or three and a half minutes because then they’ll put ads on it and I might make an ad revenue. Well, starting off, you’re gonna make $1 if you’re lucky, 1,000 views is maybe a buck, maybe two depending on what kind of content you have and who’s running ads that week if the adpocalypse was coming.

So it’s the wrong way to think about it. And am I supposed to drag a video out that I can explain to you in two minutes in to 15 minutes just so I can get an extra ad role in there or an extra boost. Can I actually entertain you and inform you long enough for that to happen will you actually stay there that long? Or are you gonna get tired of the content anyway?

Statistics will show us that like a five minute video you lose half your audience after five minutes. So, but Facebook and YouTube likes, Facebook likes three and a half minutes roughly YouTube wants 10 minutes or longer.

What’s gonna get the algorithm? And I don’t want you thinking about that, especially right now. You’re just starting. I’m just starting again. I need to do, you need to do is the context, the educational brings some value to your viewers. If that means a 30 second video or a two hour video, as long as the context is what is important, the context. Why am I having trouble with that word today? I don’t know. Context, context, context, context, not content. They say content is king. Produce a lot of content. Yes, but if the context, I’m gonna get it yeah. If the context is crap, nobody’s gonna watch anyway. So have good context.

Hopefully you learned a little something here about stop worrying about how long the video is ’cause you’re only gonna make that extra buck and is that worth it and then you’re gonna your audience off and they may not come back anyway. He just rambles for hours for no reason, it’s annoying. Get the message, it takes as long as it takes to honestly do it and worry about time and algorithms and that kind of crap later, ’cause we’re just starting and we need to have a baseline. We need to be used to the camera. We need to be comfortable in front of the camera and we have to be given good information and however long that takes it takes.

Thanks guys. Subscribe to the channel. Follow if you like this type I see them bumbling, but we’re not to the editing stage yet. So I’m believing it all in whether you like it or not. Leave me a comment if you’ve got suggestions, things you wanna me to talk about in the future, maybe I’ll film the next episode other day right now, I haven’t figured it out. Not worrying about it because my audience is small as it’s supposed to be because I’m just starting out and we’ll see how fast it grows. Hopefully you’re doing this with me. Go back and check out the first two episodes if you haven’t. But thanks for watching. I appreciate you. And I can’t wait to see where we go from here. See you.

Audio Version

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/Az-oPq_wPQE

What’s up guys, it’s Mark from Prime Branding and we’re at Episode Two. Today, we’re gonna talk about time management and workflow a little bit, but mostly time management and how to get the most bang for your buck in terms of creating content when the opportunity arises.

So I spoke last video, which should have released I think, roughly about a week ago. I haven’t quite figured out what the release schedule on these is gonna be but I’m pretty sure it’s been about a week now since Episode One. And I wanna touch on something is, like I said, I don’t have time, Mark. That was a big part of Episode One, one of the excuses that keeps people from getting started. So maybe you did start, but you’re gonna find out that I can’t do a daily release yet. I can’t do, you know, three times a week. I just want to start with once a week. But even finding that time to film once a week can be tedious. It can have a little bit of a backlash depending on what your schedule is and how easy it is for you to find the time.

One of the tricks is, shh, keep this to yourself, when I filmed Episode One, I filmed this Episode Two at the same time. ‘Cause I knew I had a window of time where I didn’t have to work on a client’s thing, the family wasn’t around, it’s relatively quiet, I got some nice lighting coming in from outside. So I took advantage of this, and I went, hey, but I look a little different. You’re right. I changed shirts, I changed the camera angles slightly just to break up the flow so it didn’t necessarily look like they were filmed at the same time.

One of the things I do with a lot of clients is if you have a uniform, wear your uniform, and you’re in the uniform in every video so nobody has any way to tell how much time has changed between video filming. Maybe you did film every video once a day or maybe you filmed six in a day and released them once a week for the next month and a half. And that’s what I’m doing here. Here’s the shirt I wore in Episode One, literally took it off, threw it to the side, grabbed this super ultra-comfortable Adidas hoodie and started Episode Two.

Keep in mind, you don’t have to be limited to one video release for one release. One film, one release, one film, one release. No, film, film, film, as many as you might have content or information or topics that you wanna talk about and then release them at whatever schedule you want.

Now I’ve got two episodes down, they’ve been released, you’re watching them now. How many more do you think I’ll film today and release over the next month, two months, two weeks. I haven’t decided yet, guys, but you wanna see more content, make sure you hit that subscribe button hit that like button. Be sure to share it with anybody that’s thinking about starting a YouTube channel video production or any kind of marketing in general. We’re gonna talk about so many topics on this channel and we’re just getting started. Thanks, guys. Have a good one.

Audio Version

Transcribed from: https://youtu.be/yvaDaj1UxqY

What’s up guys, it’s Mark from Prime Branding, and welcome to the first video on the channel. What’s more appropriate on a first video than I wanna talk to you about getting started?

I do a lot of videos and content creation for customers, and I’m always encouraging people to market in general, more specifically lately there’s been a lot of market on YouTube, market in Facebook video and I get a slew of responses. I get a slew of excuses and that’s exactly what they are, they’re just excuses. Most of them aren’t valid. They’re things we tell ourselves to prevent us from actually taking those first steps.

So I want to address a few of those in this video. And as this channel grows, I wanna do things in a way that, I’m gonna do my channel the way that I would promote to you to do your channel and the steps that you should take. And it’s gonna start off super simple. And as we increase in viewership and in exposure and content, we’ll also grow in terms of equipment.

So being there, the number one thing that I hear about is, “I don’t have time. Mark, I can’t do this. My busy days are just so busy, I don’t know what to do.” If that’s your excuse, that’s your excuse. I’m telling you, if you go through and you take note of what you’re doing in a day, you can squeeze out five minutes, 10 minutes to create a video. “Well, I, I, but I don’t have the editing software. I don’t have what I need to actually make it the way I want it to look.” Well, not off the get go, not off at the beginning, not when you start. I am doing this on my phone, most of us have a smartphone nowadays. I’m not gonna edit it, I’m not gonna stick a intro at the beginning, I’m not gonna stick an end card other than maybe what YouTube will let me throw on, but I’m not gonna do any fancy graphics to this, ’cause I wanna show you what you can do and that the message and just doing some kind of content is more important than all the flashy stuff later on.

The next thing that I hear all the time is, “I’m not comfortable in front of a camera.” Nobody is to start. It’s experience, it’s taking the time. The first videos are always gonna be rough. Maybe you don’t show the first videos to anybody, film them for yourself, put your camera on your desk and just turn it on while you’re working so it’s running and look at it and talk to it every now and then. And you never show anybody those right? Or they become cool outtakes for 10 years from now when you look back and you’re like, “Wow, I was so awkward on camera the first time. I stuttered for 15 minutes and I don’t do that now now I turn the camera on, take a pause to con… ” See I’m screwing up already and I’m leaving it in there. Take a second to gather my thoughts and get going. If you gotta write notes, write notes. If you can do it off the top of your head, do it off the top of your head, but just start doing something and you’ll get more comfortable as you go. Maybe by video five, you’ll have your rhythm down, maybe by video 10, maybe it takes a year, I don’t know what. If it’s not for you, personally, your personal brand, but it’s maybe for your business, then maybe find another employee that is more comfortable in front of the camera than you are and let them be the face of the business for awhile, let them be the spokesperson.

So we’ve touched on, I don’t have the time and I’m not comfortable, next excuse is, “I don’t have the equipment.” Well, I’m using my phone. Like I said, I touched on it real briefly. Most of us have an iPhone, an Android phone, a GoPro. And if you don’t, you know somebody that does, “Hey, can I borrow this?” You dump it into your computer. Editing software, like I said, all I’m gonna do on this is I’m gonna take it into my phone, it’s already in there. My phone has basic editing, I’m gonna cut off the beginning where it’s a little bit of dead air and I’m gonna cut off the very end of it if I happen to take too long to hit the stop button, and I’m done. I’m gonna upload, I’m gonna fill out descriptions, I’m gonna schedule, and that’s all this video is gonna get. And that’s all you need most of the time.

Going on from that, things that I hear all the time is, “Where am I gonna do it? I don’t have a studio space. I don’t have an area, everything’s dirty, everything’s cluttered.” I’m on my couch. I didn’t go anywhere fancy. I didn’t go find something that you know, I could have did this in a coffee house, I could have did this in my car, I could have did this at my desk, I looked around in my house and I went, “You know what? It’s pretty clear. I can be the focal of the video.” You can see the little cactus. There was a bamboo plant here, I got rid of that thing. Took me all of five minutes.

Is the audio the best on this video? Well, you tell me in the comments but, typically, a phone audio isn’t the greatest and maybe that’s gonna be one of the first things I’ll upgrade in this series of videos, is some kind of a shotgun mic or an external recorder, but we’ll get off to that, this is only about getting started. And if you don’t get started, you won’t get anything done, right? What’s the worst thing that happens if you do nothing? Nothing happens.

So those were the couple of quick tips. This is some suggestions. I really hope you guys take this, when you see it. Maybe you don’t see it right away, maybe, you know, you’ll find this in a year or two once I get going and putting out more content but I wanna take the journey with you. I wanna tell you exactly what I would do, how I do it. And I’m gonna show you the proof in the pudding right? As they say. I’m gonna do it with you as we grow.

So thanks for watching, subscribe to the channel, like this video, leave me a comment if you’ve got any questions or things that you wanna know. This channel’s gonna touch on traditional marketing, social media marketing, digital, little bit of everything. How to build websites, what to do for a business card, tips and tricks I’ve done for years to help move things along so that you can either do them yourself or have enough knowledge to hire the right professional to do it for you. So links are in the description for where you can find more about me and contact me, and thanks for watching, see ya.