Creating a business takes a lot of time and work. It's very important to build a good foundation for your business and that starts with a plan. That being said, to know if you are on the right track to building your brand you need to you need to ask and answer some a set of important questions that will make sure you are on the right path to what you want to achieve. As there are many ways to build a business, this article focus on the questions you should ask yourself in different areas, as these are common to everyone building a business.
QUESTIONS YOUR SHOULD ASK YOURSELF
Why does your channel exist?
This comes down to the reason why you created your channel in the first place, what was your motivation, and what kind of content you are going to focus on to create your business.
What do you deliver?
What is your "product" (can be content)? If you have other produts or services, that can help your business as well.
What more can you do with your channel?
When you are creating content, it's a good idea to have a road map for the content that you will be producing in the short, mid and long term as it will facilitate the creation of a solid plan for the business.
YOUR CHANNEL'S MISSION
Define the value and purpose
What is important for you, your company, and your business to happen? Your should be able to also answer what does your channel stand for and what are the values you want to instill for your channel and business.
Set goals
You should be able to write down exactly what you want to accomplish with your channel so you can transform it into a business.
BUILDING THE CHANNEL'S FOUNDATION
What do you do?
Defining your value proposition and what makes your channel special. This is when you will ask yourself what you want to do with your channel and product, and what you will do to make money with it.
Who do you reach?
At this point your target audience and people you are looking for (kids, college students, etc) should have already been set. You will need to check if your current audience is the right one for your business or if you need to make ajustments to your content so that you target the right audience for the product you want to build your business around.
How to you reach them?
Having a YouTube channel already gives you a way to reach out to your target audience, but you will need to think if there are other ways to reach them, for example, using social media or other websites. You will need to find where your audience is spending their time so you can reach out to them in those places as well.
How do you interact with them?
The comment section of your videos are a great way to interact with your audience, but you can find other ways to communicate with them, depending on where your audience is.
How much will you make?
A crucial question even though you may find yourself lost in you're just starting out. However, it needs to be answered so you can understand if your business is successful. You should also think about the sources of revenue for your business, which can include the advertising revenue generated by your videos, Super Chat donations, any merchandise sold, and more.
How much will it cost?
Before starting a project or business you need to ask yourself how much will it cost to create and maintain it so you can understand if there is profit in running the business and how much there is.
What are the things you will need?
You need to have a list of the things you need to run your business. For example, for your channel you may have the camera and microphone to record, a computer and software to edit the videos, you may also need to have artificial light, depending on your recording environment. Other aspects of this can be your intelectual properties, branding, financial needs (capital to start your business).
How will you do it?
This is about if you have the knowledge to create the videos or product you want to sell or having a plan to produce that product.
Who will help you?
Having key partners or friends that are able to pick up some of your work or fund your productions will be of great help on building your business foundation.
SHOWING WHAT YOUR BRAND IS ALL ABOUT
Channel icon
It should be as easy as possible for someone to look at your icon and find out what your channel is all about. This is important because your icon shows up in several places across YouTube. For example, if you are leaving comments in someone else's videos and the target audience of that video is the same of your channel, there are more chances they will visit your channel for more of that content if they easily understand that's what you offer as well.
Channel art
Your channel's banner is a great way to show the visitors what your channel is all about. You should be very clear about the message you want to send with your banner to avoid loosing potential targeted viewers that couldn't figure out what your channel is about.
Channel description
This will provide additional details behind you and your business, including links to other pages your audience may be able to find you in. It's also a good place to add an email of your preference so that you can easily receive emails from both fans and business inquiries.
Channel trailer
Your channel trailer tells the audience what kind of content they will be able to find in your channel. This should be brief and simple, as viewers don't want to see a 10 minute video to find out if they want to spend more time browsing your content for videos they may be interested in. Viewers appreciate when creators can do a channel trailer under 2 minutes.
GUIDELINES ON HOW TO CREATE A BRAND NARRATIVE
Brand narrative is a way for your audience to know what kind of person or entity you are, for example, it can be a friendly brand, for small actors, etc.
Be there
People like to see watch content on regular basis from their favorite creators/brands, so if you disappear from the radar from extended periods of time, it's likely that they will leave you to look for content/products elsewhere. For a brand to remain relevant, there should be regular updates, as much as possible (daily).
Build a pattern
Look at your channel, and think about what will your audience remember you for after they left. if you have something you can do on every video, a catch phrase, an unconventional greeting, a motto, or anything like that, that's something that can get your audience to remember you by, and thinking of you after they leave your channel.
Be different
Part of building a brand is knowing how you can stand out from the other brands, so you should think about your value proposition. You can reach out to friends and family to brainstorm ideas on what you can do.
Make what you love most
Your videos should be about what you love the most, this will make sure that no matter the circumstances, YouTube is a place you revisit frequently to create content.
Create unique assets
This can be your intro, outro, channel banner, thumbnails and anything else relevant to your channel and business that you can use to differentiate from other videos/channels/brands.
Make sure to check out the video below for additional details.
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