Follow Your Formula for YouTube Success
October 19, 2011
If you look at the most successful YouTubers with consistently high video views, you may wonder how they achieved their status. The key to success on YouTube is to discover an individual formula that your fans respond well to & continue to follow it. In addition, these savvy self-marketers always have calls to action verbally & through embedded links in the video to favorite, like, subscribe or comment to increase fan interaction and their subscriber base.
The most subscribed channel is currently Ray William Johnson. Each of his videos is extremely formulaic. He reviews up to three or four videos that he considers “viral” for that week or just funny, tying them all together into one large joke at the end of the video. He then asks a question of the day for people to comment on across a variety of social media platforms & then shows all the answers to the previous question of the day.
Another great example of finding a formula for success is the Epic Meal Time channel. Epic Meal Time started as one single upload of a pretty amateur “fast food pizza” consumed by a couple guys. The next video spiked in production value. There was now a soundtrack, a creative & unique food item, additional helpers to make the meal, and the ceremonial consumption of massive quantities of food at the end of the video. This formula has resulted in a consistently high number of videos views, making Epic Meal Time the most subscribed channel of all time in Canada and 14 most subscribed worldwide.
During a particular apex of their fame earlier this year, after they had received numerous promotional deals from major companies, the bacon-eating boys deviated from their formula briefly with several videos. These videos showed the boys going out of their kitchen into the real world at clubs, events, or visiting a traveling food truck. They still achieved a lot of views while they were riding an upswing from previous videos, but their fans reacted poorly in the comments section and other areas online. Their more recent videos have combined their former creativity in a more integrated way with their current promotional activities with other YouTubers. After one year online as of yesterday, they have successfully mastered their formula, achieving almost 800,000 views in less than two days for their anniversary video featuring Tony Hawk consuming a tribute fast food pizza.
The YouTubers who are able to monetize their video views into real world dollars refine their process, follow their individual formula for to maintain a large audience, and cross promote in a variety of ways. In my next post, I will detail some successful cross promotions used by YouTubers and major corporations hoping to piggyback off their success.
