Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Binary Coin - Tokens At $1.05 For Now

What We Took Away from Success Incubator and FinCon – with Serena Appiah

Don’t you wish you were at FinCon with me?

In this episode, I’m coming to you live from Dallas, TX, where I’m attending FinCon 2017! With me is Serena Appiah of ThriftDiving.com, who is joining me for a fourth time on the podcast.

We’re here to share the action steps that we have gained from this conference and we’re planning to implement in our own businesses with you! It’s almost like actually being here…almost.

Intro

Listen to This Episode

This year is Serena’s second time at FinCon, and she says it’s just as amazing as last year. I always say that the best learning is what happens outside of the sessions, and Serena is finding that to be true. You get so many tips and tricks to take back to your business just from people you’re having conversations with in the hallways, during the coffee breaks, or at lunch.

By the way, we went to The Clutch for lunch. It was my first time ever eating bacon. That wrap was SO good!

Serena’s #1 Tip

Which Path?

Serena’s top tip comes from the keynote by Darren Rowse of problogger.com. He spoke about knowing who your audience is.

Sure, we hear this all the time, but Darren said something really new and really profound.

He said that once you know your audience and you know what their struggle is, you then have to figure out where you want to take them. It’s not enough to think about where they are right now. You have to imagine where they’re going to be.

The first step is to figure out who the person is. Draft an avatar and ask: what is their pain? What is their problem?

Once you, as a blogger, transform that person, how does the avatar change? What do you want them to look like after?

Actually draft your “before” and “after” avatars. Who will your audience become as they engage with you?

What’s extra cool is once you do that work, you will have a clear vision about what you should and should not take on. So if someone approaches you to promote a product, think about your avatars and remain true to them. If something isn’t the right fit, even if it’s a lucrative opportunity, turn it down. Stay true to your audience.

Leslie’s #1 Tip

My number one tip actually comes from Success Incubator, which took place before FinCon. The tip is about your homepage:

Instead of having your homepage focused on who you are, have it focused on who your audience is and what value you’re going to provide to them.

When I come to your blog, quite frankly, I don’t really care about you. Your audience isn’t worried about who you are — they’re looking for what this blog can do for them.

Take a look at your homepage and think about whether you’re really demonstrating what the value of your blog is to someone who is visiting for the first time.

Darren Rowse actually lists the problems he’s trying to solve on the homepage. He identifies the problems and gives people one-click solutions. If you scroll down on his homepage, you’ll see a section titled “I Need Help To…” followed by a series of problem areas: grow content, build a community, make money, and so on.

Darren Rowse identifies the problems and gives people one-click solutions on his Homepage.

His site is like a roadmap. It says, “Click here to see how you can solve your problem.” And that makes it really easy for visitors to find what they need.

More Tips

Call your audience on the phone

Another tip Serena is going to take home is the idea of calling readers on the phone. Pat Flynn calls about ten of his readers every month. A real phone call makes people feel so special and helps you really build a relationship with them.

Plus, the amount of information you get from a phone call is really different from a survey. For example, in Serena’s niche, people often say that they don’t do DIY because they don’t have enough time. But when she talks to people, she finds that a lot of people are actually lacking in confidence rather than time, and that’s a separate problem.

I loved this tip from Steve Chou’s session. So, he has a lead magnet, and people opt in when they come to his page.

The great part is that Steve tries at that point to get them to evangelize. His thank you page tells the visitor that if they click and share the content on Facebook, they’ll get an additional free resource. You get something extra when you share the content. How smart is that?

Steve Chou allows his audience to access more content if they click and share his other content and infos.

But how do you know that someone has shared? Steve coded his himself, but Thrive Themes has an option for this. There are also a number of plugins that will allow you to unlock content automatically if your audience shares content in a particular way.

This is a great way to leverage your thank you page and grow your list even more.

Serena is also planning to go home and ask herself, “What are your money blocks?” She picked this one up at the Internet Marketing Party, an independent get together here in Dallas.

She was talking to Denise Duffield-Thomas, author of Lucky B*tch. Denise always asks, “why are you not earning the money that you deserve? Why are you not getting more passive income?” Those are your money blocks.

One of Serena’s blocks is that she’s afraid people aren’t going to take her seriously or think she’s worthy of paying for her skills. We tell ourselves that earning good money means we should be working hard, and if we’re not working hard we feel like we don’t deserve it.

Have a tough conversation with yourself. What is holding you back? What are your money blocks?

Drip Email Marketing

Kim Sorgius hooked me up with a much more advanced trick. Depending on which email marketing service you’re using, you may not be able to do this, but I really recommend trying it if you can!

Say you have an email list of 1000 people, and you send an email to all of them. If 200 people open that email, you have a 20% open rate. So Kim uses Drip lead scoring to be able to determine who is always opening her emails. She can actually tell which email addresses belong to her most engaged list members.

But wait! It gets better! Once Kim determines who really engages with the content, she will automatically set Drip to email those people first. That first email gets a 90% open rate, or even higher.

Then, half an hour or 40 minutes later, she sends the same exact email to everyone else.

Why? By sending to your hot leads first and getting that high open rate, the email servers see your email as a high-quality message. They’ll then prioritize that email when you send the second set, which makes it more likely to land in priority inboxes.

Kim currently has 100,000 subscribers. When she started doing this, she was getting about 30,000 opens per message. But her open rate has increased significantly over the time that she has been using this trick. This then puts more and more people on the hot engagement list, which makes the tip work even better!

Even More Tips

One more thing that I am re-learning at this year’s FinCon is the importance of keeping your thumb on the pulse, riding the waves, and getting in on the trends.

For example, a couple years ago when Snapchat was first on the scene, I made a comprehensive Snapchat tutorial to help people get started on that platform. It was super popular and really successful because people were already searching for help with Snapchat.

The Ultimate Snapchat Tutorial

Keeping on top of trending topics gives you an extra boost.

How do you find these trending topics? Know your industry, and follow news sites that are important for your industry. Another great tactic is to go to conferences! There are often new products being previewed or launched that aren’t yet available to the general public.

Serena recommends going to any conferences in your niche. You don’t have to restrict yourself to blogging conferences!

Another great tip, even though I can’t remember who this one is from: look in Google Analytics and determine your top five posts.

Optimize your top posts.

Then — and this is the important part — spend one day on each of those posts and optimize the bejeezus out of it.

Optimize the images.
Make the SEO perfect.
Update it to add more resources.
Add a lead magnet.
Put in some affiliate links.
Create a pdf version, or a checklist or infographic version that they can download and take away.

Final Tip

Serena and Leslie at FinCon 2017 If you’re listening to this podcast right now, Serena and I want you to pick one of these tips and make it a goal.

Over the next days, or weeks, or months, do this one thing to help move the needle on your business just a little bit. Make this happen!

If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, you’re going to be successful.

You can learn more about what Serena is up to over at ThriftDiving.com and on all the social media platforms @ThriftDiving!

Resources Mentioned

Success Incubator
Darren Rowse's Blog – Problogger.com
Serena Appiah's blog – Thrift Diving
Pat Flynn's blog – Smart Passive Income
Steve Chou's blog – My Wife Quite Her Job
Kim Sorgius's blog – Not Consumed
Internet Marketing Meetup
Drip Email Marketing
Become a Blogger Resource – The Ultimate Snapchat Resource

The post What We Took Away from Success Incubator and FinCon – with Serena Appiah appeared first on Become A Blogger by Noemi M.

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Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Chalk Talks: Using Video to Accelerate and Close More Sales Deals

If you’re like many sales reps, you can’t be in front of your base as often as you would like to be. So how do you cut through the noise and keep prospects and customers engaged at each stage of the sales cycle?

This episode of Chalk Talks is presented by Jesse Cournoyer, the Manager of Sales for North America and EMEA at Vidyard. Covered in the session, we learn how video can shorten your sales cycle, improve customer relationships, and help you close more deals. You can check it out below:

Chances are you are facing some of these challenges throughout your sales cycle:

Relationships	Trust	Showing Value	Buying Groups
It’s challenging to build strong relationships when we’re not in front of our customers as often as we’d like to be.	If we’re not speaking to our champions in a personalized and humanized way, how are we to build trust with them?	Demonstrating value is more powerful than showing so why aren’t we leveraging all the tools at our disposal to demonstrate the goods?	Multiple stakeholders are often involved in buying decisions. It’s important we’re reaching the right people, with the right message to avoid a broken game of telephone.

Types of video to use to help overcome these challenges

Personalized video. Create quick, easy, personalized messaging that you can send out using your laptop video camera as easily and seamlessly as you would an email.

Custom screen captures. Make sure that you’re sharing the relevant information that a customer wants to see while still remaining a part of that shot.

Off-the-shelf marketing videos. Chances are your marketing team is creating all kinds of great content that you can leverage throughout the sales cycle.

Custom sourced videos. Questions and concerns often come up throughout the sales process. Being able to source internal subject matter experts to create quick videos to address challenges quickly and in a way that a customer can really understand can make all the difference.

When to use video throughout the sales cycle

Early in the sales cycle, everyone’s looking for that silver bullet. How do you get the message that you want to convey across? Customers are inundated with stuff coming at them a mile a minute. Personal video outreach is your silver bullet. It’s that compelling call-to-action that everyone’s talking about and it’s got a personalized message behind it that a customer can’t wait to hear.

If you’re like many organizations, chances are there are going to be pass offs throughout the deal cycle. Personal intro videos are a great way to create a warm introduction to that next person in the process, for instance, from a BDR to an account executive.

As you move through the sales cycle, you can continue to use video at every step of the process. Think about sending a video before a call to outline the agenda. Then after the call, create a summary video addressing any follow-up questions or deliverables.

Presentations and demos are crucially important and making sure you’re conveying the right message to the right people in the organization is pivotal to moving the deal forward. Why not create a video with the right message that can be shared throughout the org to avoid that game of telephone?

Sadly, we’ve all been to the point where we think we’re about to close the deal, and all of a sudden, the customer goes dark. Well, video can be a great way to revive the sales cycle. If email and phone aren’t cutting it, why not try something totally different and send a video message to different people that you’ve communicated with throughout the organization?

At the end of the deal, executive sponsorship is often key to actually bringing it over the line. Having your CEO or an executive within the organization create a personalized video, sending it out to one of their executives, creates a more personalized connection and can ultimately help win the business.

3 Tips for using video in your sales cycle

It has to be easy. There are so many sales tools out there that you can purchase, but if it’s not easy for people to use, it’ll ultimately fall by the wayside. The good news is tools like GoVideo are so simple to use that many people actually prefer it to writing an e-mail.
Be authentic. If you were in front of a customer, you’d be yourself. Strive for the same on video. Don’t be scripted. You’re a sales professional for a reason. You’ve got a great personality and video is just giving you the medium to showcase it.
Create shared video libraries. Create playlists of related content for your customers to engage with. Leverage existing marketing videos that are at your disposal–customer testimonials, product, and solution demos.

The post Chalk Talks: Using Video to Accelerate and Close More Sales Deals appeared first on Vidyard.

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Monday, November 6, 2017

Sales Engineers: How To Sleep Through The Demo And Still Win The Deal

All the best sales advice out there, from Entrepreneur to Sales Hacker and HubSpot, tells you to have a plan. Create a process. Stick to a strategy. But what about when a rigid structure starts to hold you back?

In today’s sales ecosystem, teams copy each other extensively. Salespeople all read the same blogs, attend the same events, and mimic each others’ tips to the point where executives bemoan “receiving the alligator email again.” Amidst this clutter, a firm process may only ensure that you get ignored just like everyone else.

As a sales consultant, help your reps and be bold—think differently—and try sleeping through a demo.

Not every customer needs a full-fledged demo

No, of course, we’re not actually advocating sleeping on the job. We’re suggesting you do less work and allow customers to consume the information whenever they please, with asynchronous video.

While your customer watches your pre-recorded custom demo, you could be anywhere, like focusing on more important demos. Which begs the question, if this works (it does), then why do we give everyone big, full-length demos anyway? For the same reason, Americans are stuck on the Imperial System or why Australia’s Supreme Court wears powdered horsehair wigs: it’s just how things have always been done.

But, as any seasoned sales consultant will tell you, not every customer needs a full-fledged demo, just as not every lead needs to be grilled by a junior SDR. Often, salespeople’s processes put prospects through the ringer and leave them exasperated, wanting to buy but unable to accelerate things.

take-my-money-vidyard

Today’s customers, who are unequivocally overloaded with messages and short on attention, demand a more personalized sales process. They don’t want to suffer endless emails to coordinate a demo time any more than the sales rep wants to push the sale back another week or you want to perform a demo that you’re not sure the customer needs.

In these moments, you can grant everyone’s wish with asynchronous video. And if the customer bites and is intrigued, they can schedule a full demo, and come to it prepared with real questions and a real agenda. And if they don’t bite, and don’t need a full demo, and move on through the sales cycle anyway, everyone wins.

Asynchronous video, used as a pre-demo qualifier, can:

Speed up sales cycles
Better qualify prospects
Save time for everyone involved
Free up sales consultants to focus on more important tasks

And here are a few ways to use it:

4 types of micro-demo video content

1. Micro demos

Micro-demos are exactly as they sound: miniature demo recordings. Prepare for them by having the salesperson ask, either on the introductory call or in an email, what features the customer would like to see. Customers don’t always know the answer to this, but it gets them thinking and forces them to do some pre-work. On occasion, however, it will lead you to strike qualification gold.

For example, if a prospect confesses, “This is actually to help convince my boss,” you can record a highly persuasive clip for that express purpose and allow them to pass it along, penetrating the account much more quickly than if you had performed a demo, learned about the recalcitrant boss, and then scheduled a second “executive” demo.

Record a miniature demo that strikes a balance between answering their questions and leaving them wanting more.

2. Webinars

If your customers need a high-level conceptual demo of something that’s been covered in a marketing webinar, chop up the webinar and send the customer a truncated version. Add custom recordings of yourself explaining why you selected these clips. Tell them beforehand why it’s relevant, add explanations in the middle—perhaps jumping to their website and highlighting features—and then end with a summary.

3. Customer service tips

Is the prospect’s concern less about the technology and more about the level of service they’ll receive? Do what you’d never do on a demo and have someone from the customer service team record it with you. Together, you can deliver precisely what they need to hear directly from the person who will be taking care of them.

4. Team downloads

If your customer is primarily concerned about technology, security, or your roadmap, rope in experts throughout the company. You need not even be present for these—if everyone’s using a simple video recording tool, you can solicit 1-2 minute segments from a variety of people throughout your organization, including executives or sales leaders, and combine them into one, powerful, company-wide micro demo. And perhaps best of all, you can save these clips and rearrange or repurpose them for future deals.

Lead with personalization, not process

Not every customer needs a demo and not every sales consultant needs to give a live one. Help your salespeople stand out and better utilize everyone’s time with micro-demos. If you perfect them and use them to weed out unnecessary demos and all the scheduling headaches that entails, you may find yourself working so efficiently that there’s nothing left to do but slip away, book a conference room, and take a much-deserved nap.

The post Sales Engineers: How To Sleep Through The Demo And Still Win The Deal appeared first on Vidyard.

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Check This Inbound Marketing Plugin for WordPress

Feel overwhelmed by inbound marketing? Many small business owners and entrepreneurs know they need marketing but lack the proper skills, time, and money to execute a complete marketing campaign. After all, every investment you make and every minute spent must have a real ROI. I’m sure many of you have found tools that could make inbound marketing a cinch, but then you saw price tag and had a minor heart attack. Let’s face it– The majority of us small business owners are busy and inbound marketing takes a lot of time. As a small business owner, I was frustrated trying to find the right plugins to help me streamline my marketing efforts.

That was until I found Inbound Brew Pro.

Inbound Brew Pro is a WordPress marketing plugin that is a comprehensive and all-in-one tool for any marketer or small business owner that needs help with their inbound marketing. The premium wordpress plugin was released last month and did not disappoint!

It’s not easy staying up to date on SEO, lead generation, Google analytics, contact forms, custom emails, drip campaigns, CTA buttons, redirects, social media, lead management… The list goes on and on! I found it to be exhausting.

Inbound Brew Pro simplifies all of those steps for you, all in one easy-to-use plugin.

Inbound Brew Pro comes packed with a lot of features that both marketers and small and medium business owners will find useful if they are too small to have a dedicated marketing department or can’t afford the other expensive marketing tools out there.

Here are a few of the Pro version features:

-Create custom “Call to Actions” to turn your users into leads.
-On-page SEO optimization lets you get the best value out of the keywords you are trying to rank for.
-Stay on top of Google updates with updated sitemaps, robot.txt files, and 301 and 302 errors.
-Connect with your social media accounts to create share buttons and posting schedules.
-Create custom landing pages and contact forms without any coding experience.
-Integrates with Google Analytics, providing you complete control over your stat tracking and easily accessible

Let’s be honest. The last thing I want to do is code when working on my website. Inbound Brew Pro solved that problem for me, providing me with several ways to customize my website without needing to worry about CSS, HTML, or JavaScript.

Another cool feature is the Google Analytics that you see directly from your WordPress dashboard, in addition to auto-post and analytics with their social media integration, prime call to actions button generators, ability to make custom forms, robust email drip campaigns, lead scoring, and a whole slew of other automated marketing tools– No code required. The best part is, the Pro plan costs $35.
Considering some companies pay entire marketing departments thousands of dollars a month to do this stuff, $35 a month seems very reasonable.

Bottom line:

Inbound Brew Pro simplifies your marketing efforts, saves you time, and generates leads.
If you are busy with the operations of your business, marketing can seem too time consuming. Still, it is one of the most important ways to advertise your business. Inbound Brew Pro is a fantastic and affordable plugin and marketing tool that will save you time and help you streamline your marketing efforts.

Original post: Check This Inbound Marketing Plugin for WordPress

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Thursday, November 2, 2017

New Research Finds Use of Video Accelerating in B2B with 71 Percent Reporting that Video Converts Better than Other Content Types

Today, 90 Percent Report that Video is Becoming a More Important Content Type for Driving Business Results

KITCHENER, Ontario – November 2, 2017 – For the fourth year in a row, Vidyard, the new generation video platform for business, has partnered with Demand Metric, the marketing research and advisory firm, to publish The 2017 State of Video Marketing report. Based on research conducted with B2B marketing and sales teams across a wide range of markets and company sizes, this year’s results showed that the use of video within marketing teams is rapidly accelerating with a significant growth in the number of sales teams now also using video:

Video Creation Remains Priority as Usage Rapidly Increases: Over 90 percent of study participants report that video is becoming more important as a form of marketing content, while 93 percent report having some type of video creation capabilities in-house to reflect those needs.
The Role of Video is Expanding from Marketing to Sales: 37 percent of sales teams are now using video throughout the sales cycle and 23 percent are now creating their own video content, both measures are up more than 50% from the previous year.
Video is Becoming More Integrated with Business Systems: 45 percent of marketers report integrating video data within their marketing automation or customer relationship platforms, up more than 30 percent from the previous year.

Video Creation Remains Priority as Usage Rapidly Increases

For the fourth consecutive year, over 90 percent of study participants report that video is becoming more important as a form of marketing content within their businesses. The percentage of participants that report that video converts better than other content types have averaged 71 percent over the four years of this study, with video remaining the favored content type. The most commonly produced video continues to be Product videos, produced by 63 percent of the organizations surveyed.

As businesses continue to create videos, budgets are following. This year, 90 percent of study participants reported having the same or a growing video budget. The usage of video across websites, social media, landing pages and sales conversations has increased year-over-year, with the volume of videos produced annually increasing to an average of 38 videos, up 31 percent from 29 last year. Today, only seven percent of study participants rely exclusively on third-party production for video creation with 93 percent having some type of video creation production capabilities in-house.

“Marketers today need little convincing that video is a powerful content form. By every measure —lead creation, conversions, SERP ranking, time on page, likes, shares and any other form of engagement—video’s power to inform and persuade is unmatched,” says Jeff Loeb, CMO at Vidyard. “With the rise of new-generation video platforms, marketing and sales teams are using video to drive more qualified leads, cut through the noise, and accelerate pipeline”.

The Role of Video is Expanding from Marketing to Sales

There has been a two-fold increase in the number of survey respondents who report using video as part of their account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. More companies today (37 percent) use video as part of their sales conversion process, up from 25 percent last year. Video creation within sales departments is also on the rise with the introduction of tools like Vidyard GoVideo and others. Results indicate that 23 percent of sales teams are creating more of their own video content this year, up from just 15 percent in 2016. Usage of video viewing data by sales teams to qualify, engage or influence deals is also up 13 percent year-over-year which indicates that video has become more accessible and desirable for personalized communications.

Video is Becoming More Integrated with Business Systems

Integrating video viewing data into marketing automation platforms (MAP) or customer relationship management platforms (CRM) like Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, Hubspot, and others enable marketing and sales teams to monitor and track video usage metrics. In 2017, 45 percent of marketers reported having integrated video viewing data within these applications, up from 30 percent each of the last two years. The percentage of organizations that have integrated video viewing data – and are exploiting it – with key sales and marketing systems jumped from 13 to 20 percent this year.

Over 70 percent of this study’s participants were in marketing roles in B2B or mixed B2B/B2C organizations that reported revenue growth in the most recently completed fiscal year. All of the organizations that participated in this study are using video in their sales and marketing efforts. Agencies and studios were disqualified from contributing to the study.

More Information:

Download the Report: http://ift.tt/2lJJzMf
Blog Post: http://ift.tt/2xqDBS4

About Vidyard

Vidyard is the new generation video platform for business that helps organizations drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Honeywell, McKesson, Lenovo, LinkedIn, Citibank, and Sharp rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewers into customers.

About Demand Metric

Demand Metric is a marketing research and advisory firm serving a membership community of over 100,000 marketing professionals and consultants in 75 countries. Offering consulting playbooks, advisory services, and 500+ premium marketing tools and templates, Demand Metric resources and expertise help the marketing community plan more efficiently and effectively, answer the difficult questions about their work with authority and conviction, and complete marketing projects more quickly and with greater confidence — thus boosting the respect of the marketing team and making it easier to justify resources the team needs to succeed. To learn more about Demand Metric, please visit www.demandmetric.com

Media Contact:

Sandy Pell, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, Vidyard

Email: press@vidyard.com

The post New Research Finds Use of Video Accelerating in B2B with 71 Percent Reporting that Video Converts Better than Other Content Types appeared first on Vidyard.

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Wednesday, November 1, 2017

How to Grow a Large YouTube Channel – Adam Ali

Could your YouTube channel use a jump start?

Ready to take your YouTube content to the next level?

In this week’s episode, I’m on the line with Adam Ali, a brand marketer living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His passion lies in motivating others to reach their personal best. He’s the founder of iWontLose.com, a brand with the sole purpose of inspiring and motivating the masses.

Listen to This Episode

Adam built his brand through motivational videos posted on YouTube and, as a result, he has been featured on major outlets like NBA TV, CBC Television, CP24 and many other media platforms. Now, runs a digital marketing agency called IWLagency where he helps online influencers and brands raise their social presence online by using social media strategically. One of his main platforms of focus is YouTube.

Adam and I connected in St. Maarten earlier this year, and I knew right away that I wanted to bring him on the show to talk about growing a YouTube channel.

Adam’s Story

Adam Ali

Adam describes himself pre-iWon’tLose.com as just an average personal trainer working in a gym. But got tired of that and felt that he wanted more out of life.

He used to go to YouTube for workout and motivational videos, and eventually he started thinking that he could make videos, too.

But Adam didn’t want just any old YouTube fitness video. He wanted to tell stories. So working with a producer, he put together a really cool four-part story as his very first video. It was high quality, even cinematic, and it featured Adam working out without being a typical “let’s focus on our chest muscles today” video.

The storyline showed him waking up around 4:00 or 5:00am to go for a morning run. It showed his dedication to starting the day with a workout. It also had what Adam describes as “crazy music” that was full of energy. The music really pushed the story and got people pumped up and inspired.

Motivation Fitness Training Part 1

That first video went really well, so Adam kept making content.

His third video went viral. Adam narrated and poured his heart out, which resonated with a lot of people. It’s still biggest video he’s ever produced.

It was called “Dear Hard Work,” and it was basically a letter to the concept of Hard Work. In the video, Adam says that he’s been afraid of hard work, but it really is a good thing because it leads to progress, gains, and results.

Dear Hard Work

This video resonated so powerfully with his audience that he started getting sponsorships from other fitness brands.

Adam wanted to top that third video to close out the four-part series. So he decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. He had never climbed anything before, and he says he didn’t even really train. He describes the experience as the hardest thing he has ever done.

For me, the take-home message here is about creativity: Adam didn’t just do what everyone else was doing. He saw what was going on, what was popular, and put his own spin on it. How can you apply that to what you are doing?

There’s nothing wrong with “how to get abs” videos, but the key is to pay attention to what people are looking for. You can be as creative as you want, but it won’t matter if people aren’t looking for what you’re making.

You’ve got to create content that people are seeking. Don’t do it just because it feels good to you. You have to fill a void. We’ll come back to this point later.

In 2012-13, Adam met his wife Latoya. She had a comedy channel on YouTube – LatoyaForever – and Adam saw opportunities to scale it.

Latoya Forever

He wanted to fuse her comedy and his fitness, so he reached out to Latoya with a crazy idea: do a video of Adam training Latoya, with her doing “all this wonky stuff.”

People still love that video! It really helped build her channel. Adam says that he learned a lot from growing her account.

Adam’s initial goal was to make Latoya’s channel sustainable so that she could quit her retail job. It’s always hard to leave a stable job and take that risk. But Adam pushed her and she pushed herself, and by the end of 2013, she made the leap.

At the time, she had about 300,000 subscribers. Now, she has over a million.

Around the same time, Latoya wanted to move to L.A., so Adam left his job at a not-for-profit and they drove from Toronto to L.A.

They had been there for 3 or 4 months when they found out they were expecting a baby. That changed everything (but in a good way!). They moved back to Toronto.

The moment she knew she was pregnant, Latoya started documenting her journey as a mother. She and Adam started another channel for this content: Latoya’s Life.

Latoya's Life

For a while, they were focusing on that family channel because they were seeing a lot more engagement there. People were sharing stories and giving advice. Vlogging was fairly new at the time, so it felt like a whole new world.

They parked Latoya’s first channel for about a year. She just didn’t feel like being goofy and funny anymore. However, after a year, Adam pushed her to revisit it.

Once they started focusing on that channel, they gained 700,000 subscribers in a year. Latoya was able to find the content that really resonated with her, that she was comfortable making in her new role as a mom.

Starting Out On YouTube

I wanted to get Adam’s advice for those just starting out on YouTube.

He says that the most important thing is to be a YouTube viewer FIRST. See what other people are doing. Live on the trending page and see what’s going on.

Be courageous and press publish

It’s okay to look at other people and see how they are doing what they do. Stay plugged in to what’s happening in the community. It sparks ideas, for content, ways of editing, and delivery.

Bottom line: you’ve got to be a passionate viewer first if you really want to be a great YouTuber.

Once you are ready to publish content, it’s important to take that leap. You just have to be courageous and press publish.

Then, tweak as you go. There’s no such thing as perfect, so just keep going. Part of the process is creating content from where you are, and trusting that you’ll get better as time goes on.

Okay, great! You’ve arrived. You are watching and learning, and you took that leap to press publish on your first video. Now what?

Adam has a few tips:

1. Consistent Content

Consistent content

Decide to give yourself a year of consistent content upload before you give up. At the start, it can feel like you’re not getting any traction, but these things take time.

Come up with a schedule that is right for you. It needs to be something you can actually keep to with your other responsibilities.

Then, once you’re comfortable with that, you can think about adding an extra day.

Be consistent with the day: teach people when to expect your content and get them into a routine.

It really takes time, especially now that the platform is so saturated. But if you’re consistent, YouTube will favor you in the algorithm.

You need to focus on longevity. It’s so easy to get burnt out.

Back in 2012-13, Adam was publishing on Latoya’s main channel about twice a week. Lots of experts say it should be three times a week, because that’s what the YouTube algorithms favor.

But we’re humans, not robots. There’s no point posting that often if it’ll just burn you out.

2. Foster a community.

Foster a community

Make people feel something or your time on YouTube will be short. If you really connect with people, they will champion your content.

Once you have that community, throw it back at them. Ask for advice and comments.

Latoya has been really successful in creating a community of passionate, opinionated people who want to dissect everything every chance they have. And that’s great!

Here are some ways that Adam and Latoya build and connect with their community:

Feature a male and female viewer every week. They call this “Viewer of the Week”. People submit their photos via an app, and then Latoya and Adam acknowledge them in the video. This is a big thrill for people, since they’re getting seen by 100,000+ viewers per video.
Respond to at least 40 to 50 comments on every video. At this point, they get 500-1500 comments per video on average. It take a lot of time, but it’s important to acknowledge your audience. Lots of YouTubers don’t do this – they publish the content and then they’re gone. But the audience wants interaction!
Screenshot favorite comments and show them in the video. This is the “Comment of the Week,” and it’s another great way to acknowledge your audience and make them feel special. .
Giveaways and contests. Throw it back into the comments and ask for input from your viewers. Adam and Latoya will do things like, “Tell us the funniest joke pertaining to the vlog or this topic,” and then do a giveaway for the best ones. It’s all about involving the audience.
Engage them in a non-spammy way. You will have to find that balance. It’s a fine line between engaging and annoying. Also, people can tell if it isn’t coming from an authentic place. They’ll see right through anything you’re doing just because you want more subscribers.

Driving Traffic

So how did Adam and Latoya get their channel to a million subscribers?

Create content that people care about

They started by creating content that people care about. You do that by looking for what people are searching. See what videos are trending.

Then, take those topics and incorporate them into the video. When you do that successfully, it brings a whole new stream of traffic from places you never even expected.

Talk about things that matter to people. Use what YouTube gives you: write the perfect title that sparks interest. Write good descriptions. The YouTube system is designed to get your content discovered via search.

Throw the word YOU in the title – “What do YOU think of X?” It makes people want to click because they want to answer the question.

Understand the YouTube algorithm. Use the right keywords, and look at what’s trending. If “Trump” is trending, and you incorporate Trump into your content and your description, then people are much more likely to find you.

Create content around tags and challenges. Spin what’s trending in a way that’s authentic to you.

Remember that the reason it’s trending is because people care about it right now. And that’s how you’ll get discovered.

YouTube used to be all about subscribers. If you had lots of subscribers, you’d get lots of view. Now, they don’t care as much about subscribers, but they do care about content.

Just because you have a million subscribers doesn’t mean you’re going to get lots of views. YouTube wants to be able to push your content to certain places, so it’s all about content now.

It’s important to understand that there are three layers of subscribers:

First, they hit the subscribe button.

Then, they hit the bell to say, “Please notify me.”

But then, they have to actually turn on notifications to be pinged when you upload a video. They have to click “always” in notification settings, and lots of people don’t do that.

Subscriber counts are metrics for brands, and that’s about the only reason they matter now.

If you’re just starting out, this should be very encouraging! You used to be a disadvantage if you didn’t have many subscribers. Now, you’re getting equal treatment from the algorithm. It’s a more efficient system for all users.

Social Media Strategy

Social Media Strategy

Adam has had a lot of success with social media, so I wanted him to talk a little bit about his strategies for using other platforms to drive traffic to YouTube.

He says it’s important for him to have a social media strategy that funnels everything back to YouTube. Why? Because that’s ultimately where they generate income, not just through AdSense but also through brands that they work with.

So every time they create a video on YouTube, they also create supporting content for all of the social platforms:

On Snapchat, they’ll let everyone know that there’s something coming out, and give a specific time. This is a teaser.

Then, they come back when it’s uploaded and let people know that they just dropped the video.

On Instagram, they do the same thing with their story.

Sometimes, they’ll also do a teaser video on the feed. They take their favorite parts and create a shorter video. The trick is to make it irresistible. Make people want to click and go there.

On Facebook, they’ll post the video snippet natively. Just a YouTube link won’t do it, since YouTube and Facebook are direct competitors. Facebook really favors native uploads.

Adam Ali Facebook Page

More recently, they have started posting the entire video on Facebook. They started doing this about six weeks ago.

At first, that sounds counter-intuitive, because the strategy is usually to drive people back to YouTube. Why go to YouTube if the whole video is on Facebook?

But Adam looked at the analytics, and only about 1% of their views come from Facebook clicks. At that level, it doesn’t really matter if it funnels to YouTube.

He’s also trying a new strategy, although he’s not 100% sure that this works. To avoid punishment by the Facebook algorithm for linking to YouTube, Adam uses a bitly link in the captions of the videos. Sometimes they also paste a bitly link in the comments.

There’s some research suggesting that bitly links and link shorteners get suppressed on Facebook, too, but it’s always worth trying out a new tactic!

They also use Keek.com, which allows you to upload 36-second videos. This platform is not as cool anymore, but they have a big following there, so they keep it going.

On Twitter, definitely upload a teaser instead of just a link. We all know that video converts better than text.

Final Tips

Reach out and Collaborate

Adam recommends that you reach out and start collaborating in meaningful ways. That will help you grow.
YouTube is such a community of creators. Build friendships and connect with those creators in order to keep growing.

If you want to know more about what Adam is up to, you can find him on the I Won’t Lose website.

He’s also on the I Won’t Lose YouTube channel.

And you can follow I Won’t Lose on social media, too:

Finally, you can check out Latoya’s channel.