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YouTube was launched in 2005 and up to date, it’s still a relevant figure online. One of the good things about YouTube is that many people use it, so it’s a great way to make yourself known and even grow your business. What are the advantages of YouTube compared to other platforms? Nate talks about that in today’s episode, so stay tuned!
If you want to use video or social media to build a following or build your influence or even build a seven-figure income stream, YouTube has some very distinct advantages over other social platforms. I’m going to share some of the pros and cons of multiple platforms. And by the end of this video, you’ll understand why I love YouTube so much. And you’ll actually know how you can use YouTube to achieve those results, to make seven figures. We’ll cover things like the partner program, YouTube search. We’ll talk about analytics. We’ll talk about the power of video in general and why YouTube. You know, compared to other platforms. And I’ll go into depth on Facebook, LinkedIn, and podcasts discussing the pros and cons of each. And by the end of this video, you’ll have a very clear understanding of exactly what you can do for YouTube and why it stands out among all the other social platforms. An obvious and huge advantage to YouTube is search. YouTube is an amazing search engine. It’s also owned by Google which feeds a lot of traffic to YouTube. Think about it in comparison to Facebook. Have you ever done a search and tried to find something on Facebook? It’s really hard to do. I mean often times, if it’s something that I posted myself, I have to dig back through history and sometimes I’m still not able to find it or somebody else posted something that I’m like, “Oh, that was so cool. I want to find that again.” Often times, I’m remembering the wrong person. There’s this not an easy way to search and find something. And if there was a post that was made a year ago, yeah you’re not going to find it. Compare that to YouTube, you can find anything you want on YouTube. You can just have an idea oh I wonder if there’s a video that will teach me how to do blink. Now, as an influencer, you have expertise that people are searching for. And so this makes YouTube the perfect place to put your videos because people are searching for it and they’ll find you there. If people are searching for it and you’re putting your videos on Facebook, they’re not going to find it. The people that are searching for you are not going to find you on Facebook, they’re not going to find you on Instagram. On LinkedIn, if people are searching for a person with a specific skill set, they might find you that way but if they have a question that relates to you expertise, that’s not how LinkedIn works. You’re not going to be found that way. And they’re not going to search and find your articles or videos. Talking about YouTube having the benefit of search, it’s kind of commonplace. We all know how good it is. My worry is that that’ll mean that you’ll take it for granted. This is actually huge. It’s what I’ve based all my strategy upon is this foundation of search. And I’ve achieved some massive results. I mean the Kris Krohn channel that’s bringing in 5 or 6 hundred thousand dollars per month, the first 700 videos we did were all based 100% on this search strategy. Now, there’s a really cool advantage to YouTube. It’s their partner program. And a lot of people talk about it but they talk about it for one of the benefits. And they don’t even recognize what the second benefit is. So, let me explain the partner program means that you can actually become a partner with YouTube and they will share the money that they receive from advertisers. So, if an advertiser pays YouTube and then YouTube puts that ad next to your video, YouTube will give you 55% of that advertising money. That’s pretty cool. So, that’s a partner program. There really is a vested interest. Ad revenue can become significant. I mean after 4 years, my ad revenue income is personally at 5 figures monthly. And that, that is significant. But it took 4 years to get to that point. And I make much more revenue in other areas. And so I want to talk about the other huge advantage to this partner program. I look at it this way: I I make a video that makes YouTube money, YouTube video. They’re promoting my video, right? So, not only are they promoting my video, I don’t have to pay for that. In fact, they pay me. So, I’ve got videos that have got hundreds of thousands of views. Even videos with millions of views that did not go viral. They’re how-to videos and how-to videos are harder to go viral but yet, I’ve got hundreds of thousands or even millions of views because YouTube promoted these videos, they paid me for that promotion and yet these videos have a call to action at the end. At the end, we say, “Hey, if you like this video, I want to give you my book for free. Click the link below.” And they turn into leads and they they buy my services, they buy my client services. And so, just to give you an example. One of my videos, it’s gotten over 5 million views. It’s brought in between 150 and a couple hundred thousand dollars of revenue in the last 18 months. So, that’s money that YouTube has paid me. And yet, it’s also brought in thousands of leads that’s amounted to over 2 million dollars in sales. Just from these YouTube leads because that videos had so many views. That is really cool. So, that’s a huge advantage that YouTube has is this partner program. Facebook is tried to implement a partner program. They make billions of dollars in advertising revenue. And for them to give up 55% of that to people who post content, see people are posting content without that. So, they’re having a real hard time making that work. And it hasn’t worked as they’ve been trying that for the last few years. Somehow, YouTube just knew from the beginning. It was brilliant. It was genius to create this partner program. And no other platform has that. Now let’s talk about YouTube analytics. YouTube wants you to succeed and so they provide you and I all this amazing data. We can just log in and we’ll show us all these stats about okay this video is getting the most views, here’s why, here’s where the traffic is coming from. And so, we can find a whole bunch of opportunities of videos that we can create next that we’ll capitalize on that. Now, comparing that to Facebook, we don’t get really any analytics. I mean we see how many people liked it but they inflate a lot of the statistics that they’re not real. Like if we post a video on Facebook and somebody sees it for three seconds without audio, they’re just scrolling past and it happens to be on their screen for 3 seconds, that’s counted as a view. That’s kind of lame. And we don’t know how long people watch it. We don’t know what the what the retention rate is. We don’t we don’t know a lot of that stuff. There’s not really a dashboard or anything you can go to actually look at the performance of your profile. Facebook is meant to be social. It’s not meant to be performing and helping you succeed in business or helping you to make money. Now LinkedIn. LinkedIn has some good analytics. They have their social selling index. A lot of people don’t know about the social selling index but there’s five different areas where they rate you. They give you a score. Okay, this one’s at 20, this one’s at 10, this one’s at 5, this one’s at 15, this one’s at 20. So, you know areas that you’re succeeding at and you know areas that you’re weak at. But Linkedin’s analytics, doesn’t really compare to YouTube in terms of it telling you what type of content you need to create or what type of content is better or how much engagement you’re getting. Some of those things you can figure out on your own by gauging how many in there or what posts do better. But when you’re comparing YouTube analytics in the data if you get there to the LinkedIn analytics, there is a huge difference. Another advantage to YouTube is that it’s a video platform. And video is such a powerful tool in building connection and building relationships. I mean right now, I’m looking in your eyes you’re looking into my eyes. Right? I mean technically I’m looking into a camera. So, I have to practice. But when you’re watching me on video, where you’re watching somebody else and you can look into somebody’s eyes, you can build a connection there. You can actually build a relationship. So, if you make video content, you put it on YouTube, now people are subscribing to you; they’re following you; they’re watching your videos. Even when you’re sleeping, they’re watching your videos, you’re building relationships with people. People learn about you. You’re giving them value and you’re building relationships of trust with people. If you think about a pre-frame. So, when somebody takes the stage to speak, it’s often really important for the person who’s introducing them to really properly set them up and we call that a pre-frame. Like hour they introduced as like the hero as as somebody who’s really successful, who’s somebody who’s brilliant. Somebody who’s got a great track record of success. Like what was that pre-frame. Or did they set them up as like, “Yeah, I really don’t know much about this guy but I’ve heard some good things and you know hopefully we hear some good things from one another. Come on up.” The pre-frame can really make a big difference in the way that people receive that speaker. Well, on YouTube, your videos really serve as a pre-frame. And when they go to your website to check you out, maybe they want to know what services you offer, they’ve had such an amazing pre-frame because this relationship of trust has been built. They’ve been watching you for months in many cases. So on that note with video, YouTube has another advantage of longer video. You know, comparing it to Instagram or to Facebook or even LinkedIn with a maximum of 10 minutes, people don’t plan on watching long videos on these platforms. Sometimes it’s just a minute video. But on YouTube, people plan on spending time there. A 10 or 12 minute episode is expected. And people spend time watching multiple episodes. So they spend time there just like they’re spending time on Netflix. This is an advantage to you because it allows you to build that relationship. You’re making eye contact with people for 10 minutes at a time. Another benefit. And this one is pretty huge and you probably take it for granted. Because YouTube content is evergreen. You post a video to YouTube and people will be watching it years from now. Yeah, we take that for granted but you know what? That doesn’t happen on Facebook. It doesn’t happen on Instagram. Things get buried. You post a video or you post an article and if it gets a thousand views really quick. You might be like, “Well, check this out. It’s going viral.” But what’s it doing a week from now? Alright? It’s not doing anything. A month from now, nothing. A year from now, nothing. On YouTube, if you post a video it gets a thousand views, that’s cool but it’s going to get a thousand views next month? It might get 5,000 views a month after that. It might get hundreds of thousands or even millions of views years from now. It’s still working for you. It’s still getting more views and subscribers. It’s still a machine growing your YouTube channel. Now that you know many of the strengths of YouTube. I want to talk about Facebook specifically then I’ll talk about LinkedIn and then I’ll talk about podcasts. So, there are many pros to Facebook. Facebook is a very social platform which YouTube isn’t. I mean if I have a video on YouTube that I want to share with somebody, I have to go to YouTube, grab the link and then use some other tool or platform to share it. I might send somebody a text message or a Facebook message. I might post the video on Facebook. I can’t really share it within YouTube. And that’s one of the biggest advantages of Facebook is it’s very social. People communicate there, people congregate there. And there’s a variety of different ways of communicating. You can respond to a post, you can send something to direct message, you can communicate within a group. Talking about groups. Groups are actually really popular on Facebook and that’s a strength. And Facebook is always innovating. They’re always coming up with new features that compete with the other platforms. So, it’s always cutting edge. A lot of people will say that Facebook is kind of on the decline. It’s still doing amazing. It’s still massive. It’s still generating billions and billions of dollars. I think Facebook is going to be around for a long time but who knows, maybe something else will replace it. So now, let’s talk about LinkedIn. It’s a different kind of animal. It’s a social environment but it’s a lot more professional. You find a lot of businesses there. It’s in great environment for business-to-business type businesses where you can network and you can be professionally social there. Another great thing that I love about LinkedIn is your profile is business focused. Now, you’re making a mistake if your LinkedIn profile is a resume. A lot of profiles on LinkedIn are resumes. And I guess if you’re an employee that might be the best use of LinkedIn. But if you are a business owner, if you’re an influencer who has expertise and you’re wanting to get your expertise out there, then your profile can be a sales page. And the best use of that profile or sales page is to talk directly to your target audience. Talk to them and let them know what you do in terms of them. You know, so it might be… I help coaches and speakers leverage YouTube to generate seven figures or even better and start instead of starting with.. It might be, “Are you an influencer looking to generate 7 figures? Would you like to know how you could do that leveraging YouTube?” So, in that case, my profile… You know, that’s the paragraph. That’s what people see when they’re coming to find about me but yet, it’s talking to them. You can do that on LinkedIn and people check out your profile all the time. Would you like to know a ninja secret? A ninja tactic that you can use on LinkedIn? And this works 65% of the time? I’ve really tested this. Alright. So, let me tell you what doesn’t work. 2 examples of what doesn’t work and then I’ll tell the example that does work 65% of the time. If you send somebody a message or a connection request and you let them know what you do or what you sell, chances are they’re not going to reply, they’re not going to respond. They might not even accept your connection requests. Okay, so what if instead of trying to sell something, you offered them some advice or help. You tried to assist them like, “Hey, I notice what you do and I have a video that I think you’d really find value and you should watch this video.” You know what? 0 to 1% respond to that. But there’s a type of message that you can share in a connection request that will get them to not only accept your friend request but that will get them to reply to you 65% of the time. All you have to do is give them a sincere compliment. Seriously. I tested this with hundreds and hundreds of people and each time it came in around the 60 to 65% reply rate. And these were worth the reply say… Well, let me tell you what an example of the compliment first and then I’ll tell you how they replied. So, a compliment might look like this: “Hey, John. I looked at your profile and it looks like what you’re doing is pretty amazing. You’re really influencing the world for good. I love the values that you stand for. Keep up the good work.” So, it wasn’t anything in there about me. I wasn’t asking for anything I wasn’t offering my help. I just mentioned that I saw his profile and that I was impressed and that he should keep doing what he’s doing. I sent messages like that out to thousands and thousands of people actually. And here the type of responses I get. Sometimes they’ll say, “Hey, thanks for saying that.” Okay, that’s a simple response. Others will say, “Hey, thanks for saying that. I checked out your profile and it looks like you’re doing some good things too. You keep up the good work as well.” And then another group will even go beyond that and they’ll say, “I also went to your website and I also went to your YouTube channel. I’ve been binge-watching your videos and I see that you do video production. We should chat sometime.” So, just by giving compliments, you will have people reaching out to you wanting to know about your services and wanting to schedule a strategy session. That’s a huge advantage to LinkedIn. So, we talked about LinkedIn with analytics. They have the social selling index. It’s decent. It’s good. I use it in LinkedIn and I and I like it. It’s just not as good as YouTube’s. And going back to Facebook. Facebook doesn’t provide you hardly any analytics. Another thing to mention about both Facebook and LinkedIn and any podcast service out there. There is no partner program. Facebook is tried to implement a partner program but for them, they make billions and billions of dollars. For them to give up 55% of that revenue to people who made those posts, it just doesn’t make any sense, right? YouTube, I don’t know how they came up with such a brilliant idea from the beginning but it’s genius and that’s why they’re so successful. One more disadvantage to both Facebook and LinkedIn and then we’ll jump into podcast. Podcast this is actually an advantage. But a disadvantage to LinkedIn and Facebook is content has a very short life span. You put a post there and it’ll get the bulk of its views and likes and comments on day one. Day 2 is the second best. Day 3 is the third best. After a week, after 2 weeks, after a month after a year, you never see it again. That doesn’t perform. So, you might put your heart and soul and energy into creating an article or into creating a video. And you post it and it just lasts a week. We’ll say. And then you’ve got to put all that energy into creating another one and then it’ll last a week, okay? It just… It doesn’t have a long lifespan and that is so unfortunate. Because you’re creating really valuable content and you want to put it in a place that has a very long lifespan like YouTube. So now, let’s talk about podcasts. Podcasts do have a very long life span. The one thing that I wish someone would create is a centralized search engine for all podcasts because that would make it easy for this evergreen content that we’re creating and putting on podcast and make it easy for people to find. So, you can go back through the archives and see all this evergreen content and sometimes you can put a podcast into sequence. So when people subscribe, they’ll start at the beginning. But if there’s a specific episode that would really relate to someone, there’s not really a search engine that can find the right podcast for them. Now, an advantage to podcasts is it’s easier to create. Like right now, I’m you know, I come I set up a studio, I set up the lighting, I set up audio. And I’ve obviously got this camera. With a podcast, you can do it in your pajamas. All you just need is a good audio source. So, it’s easier to create. Over the last 4 months, I have been doing an experiment. I’ve been taking the audio from my YouTube episodes and seeing how it would work if I repurpose them. You know, I made some tweaks so that they’re better for podcast. The audio sounds better. But I wanted to see how it would work on a podcast platform and what I get results, what I see growth. The question that I had because there are some differences. On YouTube the ideal length is a 10 or 12 minute at so and you want to post five or more episodes per week. But in the world of podcasts, typically you post one episode per week. and they’re a lot longer. They can be 30 minutes, they can be 50 minutes. And so taking my YouTube content, posting daily. I’ve actually been posting 7 days a week. Average length of 10 or 12 minutes per episode. I was curious to see what happened. Well, each month for the last 4 months, I’ve been doubling my downloads. So, it’s pretty cool. I have been showing up in Google search engine which is cool because my keyword research strategy seems to apply to the podcast world as well. So, I am optimistic about the future. If I keep doubling month after month, this is going to go somewhere. Another advantage to podcasts is people can listen to it while they’re doing other things. They can be driving, they can be exercising. They don’t have to be looking at their screen. And so, another advantage is you don’t really have to work as hard to keep their attention. You can ramble a bit in podcast. In fact, I hear people are rambling a lot. They don’t they don’t tighten it up as much as you have to in video. A great advantage to podcasts is you can go longer. People spend more time with you. There’s more time to build that relationship. I mean that’s the great advantage of YouTube when compared to Instagram or Facebook is people watching a video on Instagram or Facebook, they’re only going to watch it for 30 seconds or a minute or a couple of minutes at most. But on YouTube, people are planning on watching a 10 or 12 minute episode. Podcasts, even longer. They’re ready to spend 30 or 40 or 50 minutes with you each episode. So, the cons of a podcast is there’s no centralized search engine. We talked about that. There’s also no promotion engine. And that’s just what I call it. Like YouTube has an amazing promotion engine. YouTube wants me to succeed and so it’ll find videos that pair well with them and will help them succeed and they’ll promote it. I get promoted all the time by YouTube. My biggest video has over 5 million views and it’s not a viral video. Viral meaning people share it and this person shirt with that shirt with that and it’s spread and went viral. 5 million views not coming from a base of millions of subscribers. Not coming from viral growth. But coming because YouTube kept suggesting it, kept promoting it for me. And in the podcast world, there’s no motion engine like that. The less disadvantage to podcast is it’s just not as popular. Because there’s no promotion engine out there, people don’t know about podcast episode as much as they know about YouTube episodes and content there. I have another video that I recommend you watch next. Because at the beginning of this video, I talked about keyword research and my leaf topic strategy. How you can find the questions that people are asking and instantly start pulling in that search traffic to your videos. So, I’ll link to it right up here. it’s my leaf strategy video this one video, I’m confident just by you watching that video will change the game of the traffic you’re getting on YouTube. You can lay the foundation of these videos that will constantly be pulling in people who are searching for you just don’t know you exist yet. So, check that video out.