Today we have Amy Sangster on the podcast. She got her start in YouTube back in 2012. And she created a whole bunch of videos that amassed a ton of views and she was published in several different places.
In the first part of this interview we talk about all things business leadership, management, strategy, and how to think about your business.
Do you want to grow it?
Do you want to sell it?
Do you want to pivot out of it?
The second half of the interview is much more of a tactical side where we focus on YouTube strategy and the tactics that help you implement a YouTube strategy for your business – regardless of what type of business you have. A large business, a physical product business or an information business.
Listen to discover:
- Amy’s story and how she got started
- How to create YouTube videos that rank
- Software Tools to help title videos that rank – TubeBuddy and vidIQ
- How to identify topic opportunities
- Increasing watch time to organically rank higher on YouTube
- Edu-tainment – Being entertained while you learn
- Primal branding
When we started putting ourselves out there on YouTube and producing viral videos, we exposed ourselves to a massive amount of judgement and online opinion – and I did that at 21 years old. Which positioned me to be able to deal with that in the future. It was very hard in the beginning. I never expected that kind of judgement. There are naturally a lot of people that have negative opinions.
As a 21 year old girl, dealing with millions of people saying negative things about you online, was hard. But through coping with that so young, everything else became easy after that point.
What would you tell someone, whether they’re 21 or 41, who is either just starting to put themselves online or are afraid to put themselves online?
The best protection against any kind of external judgement is going within and working on ourselves to be able to patch those holes before anyone tries to trigger them. It’s not about avoiding the triggers. It’s about filling our buckets up with self love and self worth.
We can’t control what people online are going to say and we can’t control what our family thinks of us. We can’t control anything, in reality, other than ourselves. Learning to control your reaction and response to the external stimulus that you’re getting, is the best strategy to deal with anything on whatever scale.
“We can get 99% positive feedback on whatever it is we’re doing, and yet it’s the 1% that we feel the most. And if we believe that thing to be true of ourselves, that’s when it hurts.” – Amy
What did you do from a mentor or coach standpoint? And do you think without it you would have been to where you’ve gotten?
- I commit to reading. I listen to audiobooks pretty much every single day.
- The biggest improvements I’ve found has been investing and knowing myself more through the use of plant medicine.
- Hiring an entrepreneurial therapist. We can only get so far with our own lenses that we’re viewing the world through.
How does an entrepreneur get to 1,000 or 100,000 views?
Most people start with their own social media following. Then, they pay for advertising. But when you pay for a subscriber or a follower they’re not as loyal as people who found you organically. I’ve found that the relationship is so much stronger when you find someone organically and it’s there decision. We want something so much more when it’s our own decision. That’s all positioning.
There’s so many reasons that I love YouTube. First, is because of the positioning angle. Your ideal clients are searching all day long for answers to their questions and for the most part they’re using Google or YouTube to do it. A lot of people are using Instagram now to market themselves and their products. But instagram doesn’t have a search bar so it’s not very efficient.
How to rank on YouTube:
First step, market research. Competitive analysis of other businesses within their niche and seeing what they’re creating content around.
Most people think the first step is turning on the camera and recording. That’s the last step. That’s the easy part.
Understanding what your ideal customer is, who they are, what they want, what they want to listen to and what they’re going to click on. But also seeing what actions they’re already taking on YouTube. The evidence is there to see what you should be creating content around.
Knowing how to keyword your titles properly.
Keyword and SEO to help you rank on the first page of YouTube when people are searching for that question. That’s how you start to position yourself to start ranking for a bunch of different keywords around your niche. Then you become an authority.
“If you’re providing genuine value that’s helping solve that problem and you also have a call to action within that video to subscribe. Then you gain a subscriber.” – Amy
What we care about is building relationships with people, and changing lives is the end goal. But realistically business is business. We care about how to turn those subscribers into potential business.
Who do you want to work with? Strategy for the big brand? or helping individuals or smaller business grow their YouTube channel?
I want to work with the person who’s willing to put in the work. Whether that’s the brand or whether that’s the business. I’ve worked with both. We get the best results when we actually care about something or are invested in something. So I’m excited to work with whatever brand or solopreneur is the most excited to do the work. Ultimately what gets us out of bed and helps us be consistent with the action we’re taking – is our excitement, our enthusiasm and our why.
