The key to prolonged success on YouTube is understanding your audience; what they like, dislike and what they identify with.
Do you know who’s watching your videos? At first, that might be easy, it's who you have invited personally to view them, you might even know them by name. But as your channel and videos gain popularity, this will become a lot more difficult and eventually you’ll need to group your viewers together and understand them as a whole.
Knowing your audience is immensely helpful in creating your videos because it helps you to create tailored content for your specific audience, but it also lets your audience know that your content is for them.
Who do you want to discover your videos? What expectation will they have for your channel?
If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone, so its important to know who your target audience is.
Your target audience should be a group with an appetite for what you will be producing.
There are a few key elements you should know about your audience that will make reaching them easier and will give you a focus to strive for.
What age group is your audience? Knowing the average age of your viewer will give you an eye into the place in life your viewer is. Is a majority of your viewership male, female or both? Being able to know who’s needs you don't need to address will save your energy for those who do. What are their common interests? What are their common values? Finding commonality in your audience will focus how you present your information along with what kind of information you cover.
You want to speak directly to your audience and offer an authentic desire to know them, who they are, what they want, and what they are looking for.
Gaining these bits of information about your audience might not be an easy task. However, if you connect to your community, they might just tell you directly what they want. Request feedback from your viewers about your videos. What do they like? What don't they like? What did they feel was missing from your video?
Other nuanced information like gender, location and even what type of device they are viewing your content on is all available through youtube analytics.
So you feel that your videos are amazing! We’re talking spielberg level brilliance. But no one is watching. Why is that?
Many youtube users believe their work is so awesome that people should watch it just because of all it’s awesomeness, when in reality your video needs to do a little more work than just be awesome.
If you want to bring people value, your content should either be a utility, resource, or entertainment.
If your videos fall into those same categories, then your audience will find your content valuable and will continue to come back not only because your videos are awesome, but because they are worth their time.
Knowing your audience will help you choose what kind of content you want to produce.Catering it to your viewers will help drive the direction of your content and keep you on a path to making videos that people want to see.
