> Examination: YouTube Top Content Providers

rayw

rayw

Please visit
Social Brain Wave
@ facebook to learn more about how a group of us are
helping promote the works of the individual members to
a level that is beyond what could be done alone.
http://www.facebook.com/SocialBrainWave/info​

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This is the investigation, analysis, and dissection of the top youtube content providers defined by those with the most subscribers.
http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=44191

The intent is that by understanding what elements go into the concept, design, execution, and promotion of market valued content that we ourselves may adopt some of these practices in developing our own content.

Why would we want to do that?
Why would we even care?

For my own reason -
From the light research I've conducted in crowdsourcing at the beginning of the filmmaking process and the marketing and promotion of the completed film products the key is to come to the table having already cultivated a following.
> Cold calling for fi$cal attention is grossly ineffective.
> Bring an interested crowd to your crowdsourcing campaign.
> Bring an interested crowd to marketing and promoting your finished film.


I would like to see some of the reasons others here at IT are interested in top youtube content providers.
Zen Steve?
Lucky Hardwood?
Icba Pictures?
Paul Griffith?
Any one else?



__________________________________________________________

http://vidstatsx.com/youtube-top-100-most-subscribed-channels

http://www.statsheep.com/p/Top-Subscribers

Looks interesting: http://willvideoforfood.com/

http://willvideoforfood.com/2012/10/19/why-are-ray-william-johnson-and-maker-studio-separating/

http://willvideoforfood.com/2012/05...ios-machinima-maker-full-screen-and-bigframe/
OVS = Online Video Studio
OVC = Online Video Company

http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Pr...eleases_March_2012_U.S._Online_Video_Rankings

www.reelseo.com/online-video-studios/

http://newmediarockstars.com/2012/09/which-youtube-network-should-you-sign-with/
This looks waaaaaay more complicated than just hanging out your shingle and hassling your family, friends, and forum friends to watch and subscibe.

Getting a little off the path with this one: http://videoproductiontips.com/equipment-needed-to-set-up-a-simple-video-studio/
 
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Dang! Ya'll Are Making Me WORK Today!: Defining Our Mission & Vision Statements

I'll just cheat off the homework of people smarter than me, if that's okay widjufolks.

20121211ForbesWorldsMostInnovativeCompanies.png

(And just in case you were wondering: "The difference between a mission statement and a vision statement is that a mission statement focuses on a company’s present state while a vision statement focuses on a company’s future.")

#1. Salesforce.com
http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/mission
http://www.salesforcefoundation.org/sharethemodelsteps

#2. Amazon.com
http://retailindustry.about.com/od/...n-Statements/Amazon-com-Mission-Statement.htm
“Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”​
That's it. Impressive, eh? Meh... But it works, I suppose.

#3. Intuitive Surgical
It's in there: http://investor.intuitivesurgical.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=122359&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1272799
The company's mission is to extend the benefits of minimally invasive surgery to the broadest possible base of patients. ​
Found some more fun stuff I'll need later:
http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/company/ISI_Code_Bus_Conduct_Ethics_Policy_012010.pdf
http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/company/ISI_AmendedandRestatedBylaws_08-2010.pdf

#4. Tencent Holdings
http://www.tencent.com/en-us/index.shtml
Vision
To be the most respected Internet company
Mission
To enhance people's quality of life through Internet services.​


#5. Apple
Not a very charitable assessment:
http://retailindustry.about.com/od/...n-Statements/Apple-Inc--Mission-Statement.htm
Did find this, though:
http://drdianehamilton.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/top-10-company-mission-statements-in-2011/

#6. Hindustan Unilever
http://corporatemissions.blogspot.com/2007/10/hindustan-unilever-ltd-hul.html
http://www.hul.co.in/aboutus/ourvision/

#7. Google
http://www.google.com/about/company/
http://www.slideshare.net/enochakabobby/googles-vision-and-strategy-presentation#btnNext

#8. Natura Cosmeticos
Can't find nothing. I guess they're doomed. DOOMED, I TELL YA! :lol:

#9. Bharat Heavy Electricals
http://www.bhel.com/vision.php

#10. Monsanto
Huh, huh, huh. Everyone's favorite punching bag.
Nope. Couldn't find a mission or vision statement; just a lot of b!tchin' and gripin' about them. A LOT!
This is good, though: http://www.monsanto.com/whoweare/Pages/corporate-governance.aspx

3,057​
And... yet some morrrrrre homework for me. (Yippee, skippy!)
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_90.htm
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_94.htm <-- THIS we gotta figure out pronto!
"Me too" businesses (with nothing unique to distinguish them from their competition) are doomed to compete on price: The only thing they can do to make themselves the customer's top choice is drop price. And as other "me too" businesses do the same, profit margins become thinner and thinner.​
Good thing this central project isn't profit oriented!
Now, what can ya'll say about your own individual sites?
Yeah, THAT will be the focus of the central project's mission. :yes:
 
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Innovative Forest

Putting the IF into "What if?"
Providing the newest, most broad spectrum supply of entertainment available to modern mankind. Check daily for new shows, independent films, documentary's, comedy, and how-to's...

Or some such more well defined non-sense aimed at the intended market???? Just tossing stuff out there...

Oh yeah, off my butt and doing some timelapses tonight as I type. Did a little ant farm work and now getting some star travel. Set it to music and.. KABLAMMO.... content. Hahahaha. Gotta start somewhere I guess.
 
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My suggestion would be in fictional world if we have 5 social media platforms and 3 give you 90% of your traffic
Click to expand...

One huge thing to understand here... Social media platforms have traffic, they don't share it unless you pay for the privilege. Try getting even 1% of facebooks traffic without spending megabucks. I don't know exactly how much it would cost, but megabucks is accurate. On those platforms, we'll have to build it up yourself (or get extremely lucky with a viral video). Youtube and google is slightly different. On youtube is can come down to the quality of your work (but people still need to be told to look at your work) and google, if you're on a budget, it's all about the longtail seo and that can take a lot of time.
 
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Sweetie said:
One huge thing to understand here... Social media platforms have traffic, they don't share it unless you pay for the privilege. Try getting even 1% of facebooks traffic without spending megabucks. I don't know exactly how much it would cost, but megabucks is accurate. On those platforms, we'll have to build it up yourself (or get extremely lucky with a viral video). Youtube and google is slightly different. On youtube is can come down to the quality of your work (but people still need to be told to look at your work) and google, if you're on a budget, it's all about the longtail seo and that can take a lot of time.
Click to expand...


Considering that I've done this professionally for other subjects, I'm not overly concerned about it. You can do it good, fast, or cheap - pick two.

For reference, if you wanted to get a facebook page for Korean Pop Music 10k likes, that can be done in 2 weeks for under $200. 4 weeks later it was up to 15k with no additional spend. The site picked up 1k new daily visitors immediately, and has trended upwards since. That is no effort, non-fake accounts, and just throwing money at a problem. Less money just means more time - both from a planning perspective and from a ranking perspective.

I don't think anyone is saying that we put the "Open" sign out tomorrow and we'll be youtube famous. Over time we'll have to be very aware of where we spend our time, due to this being a volunteer activity.

Longtail seo is a game of volume. Can your content hit enough of the small search volume terms to bring reasonable traffic amounts? One article / video probably can't, 300 probably can.

For those not aware of search traffic patterns:

search-demand-chart-colors.gif
 
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Also, building the audience will be hard. That's the point of all of this, from my perspective, is to give creators a jumping off point (including our future selves).

Here are tools, advice, support to get yourself out there. Give something back and then fly away.
 
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You can do it good, fast, or cheap - pick two.

For reference, if you wanted to get a facebook page for Korean Pop Music 10k likes, that can be done in 2 weeks for under $200. 4 weeks later it was up to 15k with no additional spend. The site picked up 1k new daily visitors immediately, and has trended upwards since. That is no effort, non-fake accounts, and just throwing money at a problem. Less money just means more time - both from a planning perspective and from a ranking perspective.
Click to expand...

Totally agree.

Longtail seo is a game of volume. Can your content hit enough of the small search volume terms to bring reasonable traffic amounts? One article / video probably can't, 300 probably can.
Click to expand...

The longtail is all about competing in the spaces where the competition is weak to accomplish your goal. If you're not on the front page of the search engine, you might as well not exist. It's going to be virtually impossible to hit the front page for "Comedy" or "Drama" but it may be attainable on sub categories like "Shopping Mall Funny" or

While you may only get 50 hits a day from "Shopping Mall Funny", you're going to have no chance of getting hits from "Comedy" if you either don't have a budget, or haven't worked towards that with the longtail. The longtail helps boost up the main categories and adds to traffic in their own right.

I'm just point out that there is a lot to know in other areas and those other areas are very important.

Success in the media world is all about the marketing. Without it, we'll all just be the guy who uploaded that flick to youtube that has 10 hits. It's why movies have a marketing budget that often is similar to the production budget, if not larger. If it's that important for the big studios....
 
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Ascendancy Entertainment maybe? For the name? Also for that chart thing pointing out certain peoples jobs and what not. I could be a part of the website/blog. Although I should say I really got nothing to write about right now. All I ever post on my own blog is updates in my projects or in the website. I gotta start figuring out random tidbits from around the web film world to write about.
 
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So are you saying we need a fund to do the initial marketing?
Click to expand...

What Miken was saying is right. Either money or time. If the answer is going to be time (which I suggest it should be) it should be done a smart way. It's unlikely that any of us would have nearly enough cash on hand to do even a half-hearted adwords or facebook campaign. Everyone got $10k they're willing to throw in?

Though it does sound like whoever does any marketing is not going to get rewarded for their results if profit splits are based on viewership on videos.

At work, do you ever wonder why people put more effort into sales than into cleaning? Virtually all bonuses in most workplaces are linked to sales. You get results on things that you measure and things that you concentrate and have an incentive to do.
 
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We are getting ahead of ourselves. I don't mind talking SEO, but we need an infrastructure in place.

#1- NAME

This is the first step. With a name we can all begin building youtube, google+, website, and twitter pages.

#2- Initial Channel Offerings

We he have a couple programs that will 100% be on the channel, we can being placing portals on each of the social media sites

#3- SEO and pre-launch. We can hit the ground running by pre-building a couple pages and using long tailed keywords pre launch. We can also prepare a press release and hit up blogs for guest articles.
 
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Jenna Marbles: 5,078,003 subscribers & 881,385,971 video views

... six days and 92 posts later...

http://www.youtube.com/user/JennaMarbles/videos?view=0 Been doing this for almost three years, now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenna_Marbles
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4615307/

Drunk Makeup Tutorial Extras 10:05min, Dec 5, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8KXGiSvZUI

Format
  1. 3sec intro, professionally made, static image slide, effected title, fun dog squeaky toy audio
  2. Announce depressed state, lightly explain her seasonal situation, apologize for slapping together out-takes from a recent shooting of what appears to be a regular segment of hers "Drunk Make Up Tutorials"
  3. Goodness. Nice bridge scar. And... ... ... Alright. That's that. Cut to black.

Objective
  • Fixed camera position, decent image
  • Even intoxicated the girl can set up her own boom mic
  • Audio in the bathroom is not all that horrible
  • Micro-editing for timing in announcement segment

Subjective
  • Although this seems like she was phoning this one in (for justifiable personal reasons) it still pulled in almost 2.3million views. That's love, folks. Just read the first few pages of comments.
  • Probably having a rare 10+min episode compensated for her usual 3-6min episodes.

Zap Singing 5:59, Nov 29, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOq3M8--hWM

Format
  1. 3sec squeaky toy intro
  2. Jenna & MaxNoSleeves (http://www.youtube.com/user/MaxNoSleeves) sit on a couch and torture each other to terrible karaoke readings. Cut to black

Objective
  • Gawd awful sh!t camera rez didn't stop 2.5million views
  • Classic on-camera audio in an apartment = terrible. See above.

Subjective
  • Make folks happy. No one cares about production quality. Don't go throwing money down the toilet on Shakespeare's pen and Spielberg's camera, peepoe. :cool:

In the video's "About":
Link to video of guy shock singing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mao7lRVMgKc&list=PL47B35790AFA2A021&in...

Max's channel http://www.youtube.com/user/maxnosleeves

Hey there sparkle mouses, it's raining outside my house right now and guess what it sounds like? Pee pee. At least it doesn't sound like poop, or someone peeing out their butt. This week I wanted to do something that would give me the lols because I'm fucking selfish, you know? Sometimes you gotta just be like, hey internet I know you like cool videos that make you laugh but I want to laugh. Right meow. In this case it just so happened to include me getting shocked many many times and now my finger feels weird. Should I see a doctor? Haha doctors are for cats. Anyways Max and I actually sang a bunch of songs and zapped each other with these little gun lighter things that we found at the liquor store up the street, the guy who works there is our friend. His name is Sam. Hi Sam. Sam keeps these gun lighters right in front of the cash register so when you're going to check out you just automatically pick them up and are like, hey oh my god look at this awesome toy I want to play with it while I wait in line, and then you look at Sam and you're all like, nothing bad is going to happen if I pull this trigger right Sam and he's all like, no no hunny try it it's really cool, so I do and get my finger zapped in front of lots of people in the store and feel weird after I yelp in pain. I figured I would just do that same thing whilst singing songs in front of the internet. Then I bought a juice and some snacks and was like, see you later Sam and he was like bye hunny. He's really nice you should visit him. Nice people are nice. Marbles is a firework. Titties are excellent pillows. Jenga is a noisy game. One two three four hey everybody look at that German Shepard with his ass in that guy's face. NASA funds individuals to paint cool little spaceships on other peoples' nails and then instagram them and send them directly to Zuckerberg as long as there's a small "fuck yourself" somewhere on each nail.

Please subscribe to my channel and my vlog channel! I make new videos here every Wednesday and make vlogs during my majestical daily life.
JennaMarbles
JennaMarblesVlog

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jenna-Mourey/311917224927

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/#!/Jenna_Marbles
@Jenna_Marbles

@CharlesMarbles

@Kermit_thedog

T-Shirts (so far, sorry we're working on more!!)
http://www.districtlines.com/jennamarbles

Blog:
http://www.jennamarblesblog.com/

Tumblr:
http://jennamarbles.tumblr.com/

Instagram
JennaMarbles
Category
Comedy
License
Standard YouTube License
Show less
​

And the video's "Stats":
Audience, Top demographics
Female, 13-17 years
Female, 18-24 years
Female, 25-34 years​
Shocker, eh?
Notice that she doesn't tone her language down for her PG-13 audience. :)
Girls cuss & swear. Deal.

How Girls Fall Asleep 2:11mins, Nov 21, 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAqt-R0nJjQ

Format
  1. 3sec squeaky toy intro
  2. Going to bed skit
  3. Happy Thanksgiving bit, including light pump to subscribe, request for audience interaction. End

Objective
  • Fixed camera
  • Audio recorded later and edited to each manic paced gag.
  • Happy TG bit also edited for time, content and pace... and shot on a cr@p camera.
  • Five bucks says it has an external mic on it or she really knows how to get the room echo under control.

Subjective
  • Throwing money at production doesn't solve your popularity problems.
  • Consider your content ain't impressing anyone... Uh... I mean... (PC version) The product you are supplying is meeting the demands of a statistically insignificant market! (Was that better? Meh... )


Alright... Jenna seems pretty comfy shooting all over her place, very informal, amazingly informal you could argue.
And her program is successful as you could hope for after almost three years.
So, I wanna see what she was doing a year ago, two years ago, and about two or three months into her shtick.


What Girls Do In The Car 1:48, Sep 28, 2011 >> 27,266,538 views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i_5YBnQdac

Format
  1. 3sec squeaky toy intro
  2. Driving in the car skit
  3. Laying on the bed w/ Marbles, ask for subscription. End

Objective
  • Fixed camera on car dash.
  • Good resolution quality.
  • Looks like at least two different zoom settings.
  • She does a good job keeping the lighting right inside. (Ahem. Something I've seen too many POOR example of around... someplace... familiar... to many of us here.)
  • Good enough VO audio quality.
  • Cute little string music in the background well mixed.

Subjective
  • Is it just me, but is her makeup almost a character itself?
  • The girl likes her voice overs. Go with what you know works.
  • It seems one of her strengths is "Channeling a perky man's girl's inner thoughts." Being chaste is so antiquated!
  • Only 1:30 of actual car video. And how many views did this rake in over what her normal average is? Yeah.
  • Yeah, going apesh!t over production quality and all sorts of goofy sh!t isn't useful.
  • Content.
  • Content.
  • Content.

Make content for your market.
Identify the market you can make content for.
And then make content for them.​


I'm Blogging Hammered Today 3:06, Oct 14, 2010 >> 2,422,221 views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDZh_vumXLA

Format
  1. D@mn. Three minutes of a drunk woman. Okay. End

Objective
  • Sh!t camera.
  • In-camera audio is surprisingly not terrible.
  • I think the camera was on a tripod, legs retracted, on her bed while she and Kermit were bouncing it around.

Subjective

Alrighty... and lettuce see what she was putting out after a few months of doing her thaaaang...
How to trick people into thinking you're good looking 2:37, Jul 9, 2010 (7th post & about 5months into her thing) >> 47,348,050 views Her first monster hit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYpwAtnywTk

Format
  1. The makeup routine w/ super-snark commentary
  2. Insert a couple late teen pics
  3. Back to routine. End

Objective
  • Cr@p blog camera
  • Suprisingly not-sucky audio
  • Heinous nearly fixed camera angle
  • Lighting's a GD nightmare across who-knows-what period of time.

Subjective
  • Um... content.
  • Don't let language be a barrier to your YT success.


Know what people seem to like?
They like seeing you make an @ss out of yourself, especially a self-unaware @ss.
Just a 2peso observation.

3,274​
Up next: Freddie Wong
http://www.statsheep.com/freddiew
http://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew/videos?view=0
 
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rayw said:
Know what people seem to like?
They like seeing you make an @ss out of yourself, especially a self-unaware @ss.
Just a 2peso observation.

3,274​
Up next: Freddie Wong
http://www.statsheep.com/freddiew
http://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew/videos?view=0
Click to expand...

Looking forward to Freddie Wong comments. Seems to be the most "indie" of the list so far. Also the age and content are up there...

Thinking that "Just do something even if it's wrong." is a great motto in the YT game... short tails, long tails, or just fairy tails. Doesn't mean Jack if you ain't gottz a show to show peeps.
 
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Pick a name, please

Participating Craftspeople

Social Brain Wave

Consolidated Feats​




Unless some votes start rolling in I'll post a poll this evening and the chips will fall wherever they may. :yes::lol:
 
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