Tutorial: Audio-Visual Content Creation Essentials & Community Building

Hi, welcome to the fifth and last video in the five video series 00:03 about Audio-Visual Content Creation. 00:05 In the last video we discussed how to distribute your content on different platforms. 00:09 And we learned about how to promote and advertise your videos 00:12 across social media pages. 00:14 And in this video, I'll explain how to build your community, 00:16 manage it and grow organically. 00:33 Growing organically on social media. 00:35 The key is consistency. 00:37 The key to success on social media is to show up every day. 00:41 So you can compete with all the millions of other posts that are posted daily. 00:44 To do so you should commit to consistently delivering content 00:47 following a clear schedule. 00:48 For example, if you promise your audience to post on Sundays and Thursdays 00:51 then you should make sure To commit to following your schedule 00:55 as this way will help you build your trust and connection with your audience. 00:58 And they're more likely to watch your content when they're waiting for it. 01:00 And they know exactly when you're going to post. 01:02 So if you're posting at 6:00 PM on Sundays. 01:04 At 6:00 PM, they will be expecting a notification from you. 01:08 For instance, I have two friends who started posting videos on YouTube starting 2016. 01:12 And on 2016, one of my friends promised his audience to post his videos 01:17 each Friday at 1:00 PM till today. 01:20 However, the other friend didn't stick to a regular schedule 01:22 and started posting his videos whenever he feels like it. 01:25 Now four years forward, the first friend has over 1 million followers on YouTube 01:31 and the second friend has over 300,000 followers. 01:34 That shows the level of commitment put in creating content 01:37 and having a clear schedule to when your audience should expect your content 01:41 makes a big difference. 01:42 Now, his audience wait each Friday for his content to be posted 01:46 so they can watch it. 01:47 This clearly shows the power of consistency on social media. 01:50 And the second friend who didn't post regularly on YouTube is me 01:53 Another way to grow your audience is to introduce incentives and competitions. 01:58 From time to time, your audience would love to join an online competition 02:00 to win something. 02:01 Not only will increase the engagement rate on your page, 02:04 but it'll also get you more followers. 02:06 For example, two months ago, I launched a competition 02:08 where I had camera accessories that I was willing to give away for two people. 02:11 So I asked my followers to go to my Instagram 02:13 and comment on the last picture I posted 02:16 and in the comments, they should tag a friend that they want to win as well 02:18 as a result a lot of my followers on YouTube went to Instagram 02:21 to follow me and comment. 02:23 So my Instagram is not big compared to YouTube. 02:25 And I usually get between 20 to 30 comments per post. 02:28 However, in this specific post I got over 23,000 comments 02:31 with people tagged in them. 02:33 This also resulted increasing my followers on Instagram 02:37 and the engagement rate and likes on my posts. 02:39 So make sure that every now and then you launch a competition 02:42 and ask your followers to tag their friends 02:45 and comment and engage on your posts. 02:47 And if your presence is really attractive through followers, 02:49 I can guarantee really good results. 02:51 Now let's move on to managing your community. 02:54 And that's the best part where you virtually connect 02:56 directly with your community. 02:58 The key to success here is to be accessible and very responsive 03:01 by being accessible is to always have access to inbox and emails 03:05 and make sure to reply to their inquiries and questions as quickly as possible. 03:08 And by being responsive is to always engage in the comments section 03:11 Audience get more attached to a brand, organization, or initiative 03:15 when you connect with them individually on a personal level. 03:17 A like, or a comment to their comment could make the day. 03:21 And believe it or not some of your audience would comment 03:23 just to see a notification from you that you reply to their comment or liked it, 03:26 especially after a campaign or advertising your posts 03:29 or working with that influencer like we mentioned in the last video. 03:32 You might find a huge number of new users and new followers on your pages. 03:37 And it could be a lot harder to engage with your community 03:40 and reply to all their messages and comments. 03:42 Thus, you might need to find a community manager volunteer to help you manage it. 03:46 As it could take a lot of time. 03:47 They can deal with all the comments, messages, phone calls, emails, 03:50 delete abusive comments and maybe block some abusive users. 03:53 Since we mentioned abuse of comments and users, 03:55 then how to protect yourself mentally from this abusive content. 03:59 Unfortunately it is inevitable. 04:01 Online users will keep posting offensive comments and abusive language, 04:04 which could definitely harm our mental health. 04:06 The truth is that you can never completely stop it, 04:08 but you should accept it as a normal online behavior. 04:11 And you can always avoid it from harming you. 04:13 And here's how, first you're not required to engage with such behaviors. 04:16 Each platform has the option to completely block and report the center. 04:19 Also, you should know that there are two types of negative feedbacks, 04:22 either abusive or constructive. 04:24 If it's abusive, then you should directly block, report the sender. 04:26 However, if there's constructive and polite feedback, 04:29 even if you don't agree with the sender, 04:30 then you should take the time to reply and explain your point of view. 04:33 And most importantly, do not take it personally. 04:35 The negative feedback that they gave 04:37 is on that content that they consume. They're not personal. 04:39 In my case, it took some time to build my own mental immunity 04:43 against abusive comments from effecting my mental health. 04:45 If my brain senses abusive comments, 04:47 I would automatically ignore it and directly go and block and report the sender. 04:51 Honestly, it took some time to learn this technique, but it keeps me sane. 04:54 Most importantly, you should apply equally to negative comments 04:56 as much as you do for positive ones. 04:58 Believe it or not, it's a lot of tempting to reply to someone 05:01 who share thoughts against your beliefs than replying to someone 05:03 who shared the same way of thinking as you. 05:06 Moving on to using metrics to measure your success rate on social media 05:09 Metrics indicate your progress in achieving your goals 05:12 and all the major social media platforms made it easy for us to track our success, 05:16 engagement levels, demographics, and many other metrics 05:19 to better measure our campaigns and create a report. 05:22 There are a few key metrics that you should focus on. 05:24 First, understanding the reach and impression. 05:27 Reach or impression is how many times your content was placed 05:29 in front of your audience while they were scrolling. 05:32 But don't get confused between video impressions and video views, 05:35 because views is the number of times your audience clicked and watched a video. 05:39 So obviously the impression rate would be a lot higher than the view rate 05:42 because not all of the users will click on the video after they see the thumbnail. 05:46 And that's why, as we mentioned in the previous video, 05:48 by creating a really attractive thumbnail 05:50 would increase the number of views compared to impressions. 05:53 Next one, creating video content, you should focus on retention rate 05:56 Retention rate is how long the video hold your viewer before moving on. 06:01 Do they watch the first minute and then move on to the next video 06:04 or they watch half of the video or do they watch the whole video? 06:07 The longer they watch the video 06:08 the higher the minutes viewed per video, 06:11 the higher the platform recommends this video. 06:13 So make sure to skip boring content or unrelevant parts of the video 06:16 to increase the chance where your audience 06:18 would complete watching the video 06:19 On the retention rate graph, look for the drop off 06:22 and determine where you should tweak your videos for better results. 06:24 Moving on to measuring engagement. 06:26 Engagement is mostly divided into clicks, comments, likes and shares. 06:30 The higher the engagement, the higher the platform would recommend your video, 06:33 the higher views you'll get per video. 06:35 So make sure to engage with the viewers 06:36 and ask them to comment and share their thoughts. 06:39 Demographics could be helpful to understand who are watching your videos? 06:42 Where they're from? Which cities do they live in? Their age group? 06:46 And maybe you're interested to know the percentages of males 06:48 and females who are watching your video. 06:50 And after measuring your success, track and analyze reports 06:53 to determine what works and what doesn't. 06:55 By analyzing the reports, you should understand 06:57 what areas that need improvement. 06:59 For example, you might notice that there's a lot of impression, 07:01 but very low number of views. 07:03 Maybe then you need to work on your thumbnails or titles. 07:06 Also in the reports, you can determine what performs well, 07:08 in that way you would know what works best and then start to producing similar content. 07:12 Then moving on to the last part, which is general tips and tricks 07:16 that would help you perform well and grow on social media. 07:19 First, you need to discover the best practice and experiment. 07:22 List your competitors locally and internationally 07:25 study their approach and style in making content, marketing, their objectives 07:28 and how they manage multiple accounts on different platforms. 07:31 See who's succeeding and why. 07:32 And it is okay to copy a few approaches that would work best for you 07:36 but you should develop it and optimize it to fit your identity. 07:38 Another way that could give you a quick push is to consider collaborating with 07:42 related organizations and projects, as it could be very beneficial for both of you 07:46 as each of you will show up on each of your social media accounts 07:49 which will help increase your followers and engagement 07:51 share followers from here and there. 07:53 You should pay attention to the length of the video. 07:55 It differs from a platform to another, 07:57 but usually the first one to two minutes, get the highest viewership. 08:00 Then it drops thus make sure to get to the point as quickly as possible 08:04 and attract their attention before your viewer swipes away. 08:06 Another question that you might have is when to post. 08:09 Of course it depends on the type of videos, your audience and time zones 08:12 but in order to find out, you should experiment. 08:15 Maybe post at 1:00 PM, 6:00 PM, 9:00 PM, and see what works best. 08:19 depending on the day of the week. 08:20 Also you can use heat maps 08:21 to determine when is the most active time and day of the week. 08:25 Now don't be afraid to ask your followers to share your posts and subscribe. 08:29 A lot of them forget, or it doesn't cross their mind to share or comment 08:32 or tag their friends, which will help you build your followers. 08:35 And then lastly, consider going live and connect directly with your audience. 08:40 You can host a webinar or Q&A sessions. 08:42 And by the way, the audience loved Q&A sessions. 08:45 So make sure to go live maybe once a week 08:47 to discuss things with your audience and then reply to their questions and their concerns. 08:51 And it is important because live videos get six times more interactions 08:55 compared to regular videos. 09:14 And lastly, I hope this video series about video content creation was beneficial. 09:18 I hope you learned a lot about how to create content, how to plan it 09:21 and produce it, and then how to market it and reach all your audience.