From the course: Developing a YouTube Strategy

Viral vs. audience-building content - YouTube Tutorial

From the course: Developing a YouTube Strategy

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Viral vs. audience-building content

- [Instructor] One thing that you really have to ask yourself before you make a video is what is your goal with the video? Are you trying to make a viral video or are you trying to make a video that will help build a consistent audience for your channel? Because believe it or not, there's a big difference. So, let's start off by defining what the difference is between a viral video and an audience building one, starting with viral videos. Viral videos are often either shocking, surprising, impressive, weird, funny, or a combination of any of these factors. They are bottled videos meaning they don't require the viewers to have any knowledge or viewership of any of your other videos in order to watch it. They are also often pretty short in length averaging around four minutes. It's because of this that they are extremely shareable. There are so outrageous, you can't help but show them to your friends, your coworkers or even your dog. And because they are so short, they can be quickly viewed pretty much anywhere. This makes them spread just like a virus from person to person as they share the video with each other. The amazing pros of a viral video is of course the view count. You might find yourself with a video that suddenly spikes to a million or even more views but the downside of this content is that it doesn't do much to build a strong audience. Most viewers who watch viral videos aren't sticking around to watch the other videos on the same YouTube channel. In fact, most might not even know the name of the channel that posted the video, they just know the name of the video. On top of that, there's not a huge conversion rate from viral video viewers to subscribers. Check out this example. Despite this video having over 15 million views only around 8,000 of those viewers converted to subscribers. That's a conversion rate of 0.05%, not even a full 1% subscribed. So, that's what a viral video is and its pros and cons. Now, let's talk about what I'm going to call audience building videos. Audience building videos are videos that aren't necessarily trying to get a lot of views, but rather include elements that try to focus on connecting and communicating with the viewers. This helps viewers feel like they aren't just a passive viewer, but rather a part of a community where they are encouraged to participate. You could do this by asking your viewers to suggest other topics for future videos or you could have them ask a question that you can answer in your next video. These videos don't really have a specific set length but are most likely longer than four minutes. This usually means you aren't going to see the massive boom in views like you would in a viral video but the pros of building your audience can outweigh the cons of less views. Now, while you might not get millions of views you're subscriber conversion rate will most likely be higher. For example, this audience building video has only around 11,000 views but almost 300 of those viewers converted to subscribers. That's around a 2.4% conversion rate about 48 times the rate of the previous viral video example. But you're probably wondering okay, but why are subscribers better than a lot of views? Well, there's nothing wrong with attempting to make a viral video if you're just looking for the short term boost in views but audience building videos help you build a fan base who will come back for more and in some cases, even be willing to support you through merchandise purchasing and crowdfunding. Audience building videos are about building for the future while viral videos are about being the hot trending topic right now. Now that you know the difference between viral videos and audience building videos, you can choose which works best for you and maybe even do a little of both. Either way, you'll be able to understand what to expect out of your videos and better target your goals.

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