AP 0625: Is YouTube Worth My Time?

AskPat 625 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 625 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today, I appreciate you. We have a fantastic question from Matt today, but before we get to Matt's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is ZipRecruiter.com.

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Alright, now here's today's question from Matt.

Matt: Hey Pat, this is Matt Valentine of Buddhaimonia.com, that's the word Buddha and the letters I-M-O-N-I-A dot com. I am wondering will YouTube be worth it for me? Quick background, quick rundown. I have experience in video, not afraid of being in front of the camera, so I've got all that checked off, and I have a ton of successful blog as well as now podcast content which I can repurpose, so I have that checked off as well. I'm wondering, will it be worth my time? It seems like because I have this content that can be repurposed, it seems like the sort of thing that I can do in a short period of time and it's just another channel that I can take advantage of, but I don't really know how I can go about really validating that. So, I was wondering if I could get your input.

Thank you for everything. I wanted to just thank you for podcast and the blog. I get so much from you all the time, and I wanted to let you know I appreciate you as a conscious entrepreneur, somebody who's just kind and honest and transparent. Thanks a lot for that, and thank you for taking my question.

Pat Flynn: Hey Matt, thank you for the kind words. I appreciate you listening and following and for all of your support. Thank you, thank you so much. To answer your question, will YouTube be worth it for you? It's hard to tell until you try it. You had asked whether or not you could validate this, and you can. You can do it by posting videos, and it seems like even more than many other people, you have stuff set up, you have the content, you have the ability, you have what you need to post videos. This is what I would do if I was in your shoes: I would take a month to validate this. I would post once or twice a week, create high quality videos and share them with your audience on your website, and see if there's any traction there. Get a response from your followers and see if it's something that they would subscribe to and what more of. Then and only then will you be able to tell really what it's going to be like.

The cool thing is it can be repurposed for other things, too. You can embed those videos into blog posts, and I think more than anything you want to think about how you're actually using them within the existing environment that you've already created for your audience. You might use them not necessarily a completely separate channel for people, although yes you will get new subscribers, you will find people who you wouldn't have been able to reach otherwise, which is great. Especially if you start doing partnerships or collaborations on YouTube which is very popular, very very popular way to grow, which will then feed people into your blog and into your email list and into your podcasts, too.

More than that, you could incorporate the YouTube videos into stuff that you're already doing. Think of it as a value add, as a way to teach somebody something on a level that's different than what people can get with just audio or just text only. A good example of a tutorial that I did is at PodcastingTutorial.com. You can check it out, it's absolutely free. Anybody who wants to start a podcast, you can check it out. But the reason I want you to go there is to see how the YouTube videos are integrated into that particular tutorial. The YouTube videos are there for a specific reason, to enhance that content that I'm using to teach people something, and that's what you can do, too. Use YouTube as an enhancement not just as a completely separate content channel, but as something that you can use to house content that would then enhance what you already have going on.

Again, experiment with it. I would go for a month and plan out eight videos that you would do, post twice a week just to make sure that you can stay consistent, and know what those topics are, film those things ahead of time, batch process them. You can actually even do a launch like one would do with a podcast. I think a lot of people who start YouTube channels don't start them in a way like they would start a podcast, meaning, at least in terms of what I know and what I teach, when you launch a podcast, you make a big deal out of it. You make it an event. When a lot of people start their YouTube channels, they kind of just trickle videos out and they don't really make a big deal of it. Thus, missing out on the chance to get subscribers, to get ratings and reviews, although you don't get ratings and reviews on YouTube, you get thumbs up which you can ask for, but all that stuff, all the comments, that all helps in the long run in terms of SEO value.

You'll see after a month of doing this, you might find that some of those videos will do and perform better than others, and those will become great lead magnets for you or great avenues where people can then find you and lead into your podcast and your blog. You might find some topics that you do . . . I would make the range of videos that you do in that first month very different so that you can see what works better for you, but also what gets a better response so that maybe you can take a particular type of episode that you did and do more of those in the future and continue with just one or two of those types.

Like I said, it'll kind of validate which ones are actually working better for you so that you can take that with you moving forward, and you can see if it actually is making a difference or not, making sure to pay attention to the metrics, too, after that month. How long are people watching these videos? Are there any engagement? Over time, you're going to also see that you're going to begin to rank in search engines or in YouTube and in Google, and it might work out pretty well for you. So it is worth a try, is my answer. I would go, like I said, a month. Really heads down on it and just make it a good experiment that you can use to validate.

So Matt, thank you so much for your question, I appreciate it, I wish you all the best of luck. Again you can find Matt at Buddhaimonia, so B-U-D-D-H-A-I-M-O-N-I-A dot com, and we're going to send you an AskPat t-Shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Thank you. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page.

And I haven't mentioned this in a while, but if you want to check out my Wall Street Journal best-seller book, I almost said New York Times, Wall Street Journal bestseller book, my self-published book Will It Fly?, which you can use to validate and test your business idea before you put in that time and money into it. You can check that out at WillItFlyBook.com. Thank you all so much for your support, I appreciate you.

Here's a quote to finish off the day and start off the week by Peter Drucker. He said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

So I hope you guys are creating your future today in the way that you want, and I wish you all the best. See you in the next episode. Bye guys.