YouTube Community Development: How to Build a Following With YouTube

Do you create YouTube videos?

Want to increase your audience?

To learn how to create an online community using YouTube, I interview Tim Schmoyer.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Tim Schmoyer, the author of 30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel and The Secret to Building Your YouTube Audience. His site, videocreators.com helps people spread their message via video.

Tim explores how to create a community with YouTube.

You'll discover how to make videos that will engage your viewers and keep them watching.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
YouTube Community Development
How Tim got involved with YouTube

Tim explains how one night in grad school (March 2, 2006), he was bored at home, and decided to check out YouTube. After seeing what was on there, he decided to upload his first video. It was a quick, 30-second video of him talking to the camera. He had no idea where that first experience would lead.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sbC_K0cCUI

As this was pre-Facebook, Tim says he and his girlfriend at the time made videos to show their friends and family what they were up to. They made videos of their dates, engagement and wedding, as well as when they moved, had kids and so on. Tim believes they made about 1,000 videos just sharing their story. It started as a way to communicate with family and friends. Along the way, other people started watching.

Around 2009, Tim reached out to Mark Robertson, ReelSEO, and YouTube personality Kevin Nalty, and asked them why certain things did and did not work on YouTube. When they didn't know the answers, Tim decided to figure it out himself. He said he'd report back to them what he learned.

Tim began having conversations with people who were trying to figure out the same things about YouTube and audience growth. That was the start of him turning YouTube into his business.

A while later, Tim reached out to Mark Robertson again with constructive feedback. Tim told Mark that while he had a great website about video, there was nothing being done with online video. Tim ended up taking over Mark's YouTube channel, and trained the site's viewers how to master YouTube as a platform for audience development.

After a few years, Tim started working full time for an animation studio to do audience development for their web series. A year later, after he had grown it to almost 100,000 subscribers, Tim's job was eliminated. However, they paid him full-time for six months to get his own business started.

In February 2013, Tim launched his YouTube channel, called Video Creators. By the end of six months, it was his full-time income.

Video Creators has three series on it. Every Tuesday, Tim talks about news in the online video industry. Wednesdays, he shares a YouTube tip. Then, on Thursdays he answers a question from his audience. The channel revolves around using online video as a platform to change lives.

Without spending any money on promotion, Tim has grown his YouTube channel to over 75,000 subscribers and more than four-million views. He gets tons of interaction and engagement, including about 15,000 comments a month.

Listen to the show to learn what YouTube was like in the beginning.

Common mistakes with video

The biggest mistake Tim sees people make with video is that they treat it like it's the same as television. People new to video (who don't watch YouTube) don't have another frame of reference for how to craft video content. Therefore, they make the same content they would create for television,