Looking at the direct sales subset to date, the numbers are encouraging. So much for the waning interest in blogging!

Holding Your Book Is a Great Feeling

The book is finally in print and this week I received my complimentary author copies.

It’s always a great feeling to hold the final product in your hands after investing so many hours in a project.

When I received them, I grabbed a copy and immediately opened a random page and started reading it. I had a wow, this is actually good moment. I know the book is good based on early feedback, but I tend to be a perfectionist and hypercritical of my own work.

Yet this edition feels right. From the cover (which I prefer over the dated first edition) to the actual content and how it’s formatted in the book.

I’m Starting a YouTube Channel

Following my own advice in the book, I decided to get a little more serious about video. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do but for one reason or another, never did.

I’m happy to announce a brand new YouTube channel I’m starting, called Tony on Tech. The plan is to use this channel for both technical and marketing topics. Hence, you can expect videos on programming, tech, content marketing, and social media.

If any of these topics interest you, I recommend that you subscribe now (use the bell to get actual notifications from YouTube).

In a way, video is not the ideal media for me. I learned English in my twenties, so I speak with an accent. Unlike carefully crafted words on paper, when I speak on the fly, I’m more likely to introduce a few mistakes here and there.

Yet, I like being able to make a stronger connection with my audience by expressing myself through video. I also believe that video is going to become more and more critical in the future. Always go where the audience is and give them content in the manner they prefer. And most people binge watch video content.

My First Video Is a Promo for the Book

A nice side effect of me experimenting with video is that I’ll get to share everything I learn about producing and marketing through video with you.

Incidentally, my first video for this channel is a promo video for my book. I find this video very unpolished, but it’s a starting point. The good news is, I can only improve from here, audio and video quality wise.

(If you are the very generous and forgiving kind, a like would be very much appreciated.)

I Will Share What I Learn About Video

Truth be told, I’m sort of running an experiment in which I’m launching three channels (perhaps biting off more than I can chew).

Specifically, I’m launching a new channel for my hobbies (related to the outdoors). Plus, I’m revamping my existing personal channel, which will be about self-improvement.

It’s not an approach I would recommend to others, but there are some benefits and a method to this madness. I’ll get to see how the techniques I employ to grow these channels affect different channels on various subjects.

It’s sort of a race between the three channels and it’s possible I won’t keep all of them forever if one manages to take off in a major way.

Subscribing to this blog (and the channels) is the best way to stay up to date with this video experiment and my future comments on the subject.

Thank you, everyone, for your amazing display of enthusiasm towards this new edition of my book.

The post New YouTube Channel and Promo Video appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Federico Clapis

Truth be told, most of his videos are silly. Going on a date with a rubber vagina, type of silly. [1] He made people laugh though and his persistence in publishing good, bad, or ugly videos no matter what, led him to attract a following of 800,000 Facebook subscribers, along with over a hundred million views.[2]

His story[3] is interesting because at the height of his success, Federico decided to quit publishing such videos. He announced that he would stop publishing silly clips and instead focus on his art. This was his 5 year strategy all along. People expected him to crush and burn. After all, out of the million or so fans who followed him for his funny videos, how many would be interested in his serious modern art?

Was Federico’s following reduced to a few thousand faithful? Surprisingly for many of his critics, Federico was left unscathed. Not only did his follower count fail to drop, but he actually continued to grow his social media presence, making him one of the most popular canvas artists online. His art, in fairness, is good and may have vast appeal, but it was still quite the departure from his usual videos.

Outside of ethical concerns you might or might not have (some people might feel this is a bait-and-switch), there is no denying that this is a legitimate marketing strategy. Establish an audience through wide-appeal content, and then publish your deeper, more meaningful content (or your sale pitch) to the audience that you have built.

I share this story here because I see some important take home lessons in it:

• Persistence does pay off. He published hundreds of videos to build his following. He experimented a lot. He wasn’t afraid to publish crap and make mistakes. Doing so proved to be highly rewarding for him in the end.
• I think it illustrates the importance of creating a large following. Once you have a huge audience, it doesn’t necessarily matter – that much, at least – what you are trying to sell them (within limits). In Federico’s case, it’s his true artistic self which is much more vulnerable and emotional than his earlier persona. A real departure in form and content, and yet it still didn’t impact his “tribe”. In a parallel universe somewhere there is an unsuccessful Clapis who started an art YouTube channel  from day one.
• It’s actually fairly hard to lose large amounts of followers once you have them unless you seriously screw up (like the FineBros did with their React copyrighting fiasco, after which people unsubscribed to them en masse in protest).[4]
• Once you reach a certain level of popularity, it becomes as much about you as it is about your content. People become loyal not just to your output, but to you as a person. You become a trusted public adviser of sorts, and people in turn are eager to hear what you have to say.

I’m not adopting his strategy, but his story has nevertheless inspired me to create more and grow my audience. I hope it does the same for you.

The post What We Can Learn From Federico Clapis’ Success appeared first on Technical Blogging.

The shortest answer I could give is that today YouTube is as important as having a blog.

Here is why:

• YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the most used search engine after Google itself.
• When a quality video matches a query that someone searched for on Google, that video will be returned with the rest of the web results… at the top. I don’t have conversion statistics, but I can only assume a sizable percentage of viewers will click on the videos both due to their location in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) and the nature of the content (watching a video takes less effort than reading an article). In other words, YouTube is an easy SEO shortcut to the top.
• Humans are highly visual animals. People are much more likely to watch a video than read an equivalent article.
• YouTube goes out of its way to promote your channel and videos if they consider them to be interesting and engaging. This helps you reach a potentially large audience for free.
• Playlists let you keep the viewer engaged with your content and message.
• Unlike Facebook, which will only allow you to reach a subset of subscribers unless you pay for a broader audience, once you have a YouTube subscriber in place, you can easily reach them every time you post a new video.
• Video can tell so much more about your product and the company behind it (even if there isn’t a product that’s being sold per se).
• With more people canceling their Cable subscriptions in favor of smart TVs, media boxes like the Apple TV or Chromecast, or even tablets, expect to see far greater numbers of folks tuning in to watch video content on such devices.
• Social media is very keen on video, as it works well for people who are in “surfing mode”. Videos also tend to be shared more often than textual content.
• YouTube allows people to link to their external sites on their channel page, in video descriptions, and even within video annotations. So you can certainly send people to your YouTube channel via your blog, but you’ll also get a wider audience to learn about your blog through YouTube.

This blog audience can be broadly divided in the following categories, which at times can overlap:

• Professionals interested in advancing their career via blogging.
• Freelancers interested in finding clients via blogging.
• Startup owners interested in promoting their startup via blogging.
• Company owners or workers interested in promoting products via blogging.
• Non-profit or open source developers, interested in promoting their non-profit projects and initiatives via blogging.
• People interested in making extra money online by sharing their knowledge via blogging.
• People interested in making a full-time income via blogging.

Replace “via blogging” with “via YouTube” and you’ll quickly see how applicable YouTube is to each one of these types of readers.

I would recommend that the same type of content you use for blogging also shows up in your YouTube channel. A freelancer for example, will need to showcase their expertise and offer solutions to problems that their customers might have. That’s as true on their blog as on YouTube. In fact, if available, calling your YouTube channel the same as your blog is definitely not a bad idea either.

You could then leverage the strengths of each type of media and opt for articles about particular problems and videos for others. A screencast is sometimes easier than trying to explain things in writing, for example.

Interestingly, while I have read and studied extensively this subject, I don’t have a personal YouTube channel for this or any of my other blogs. This, however, is something that I intend to fix soon.

On that note, one of the best courses I have ever come across on this subject is this one on Udemy, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to give YouTube a go or to take their channel to the next level.

The post Is YouTube Worth Your Time as a Marketing Tool? appeared first on Technical Blogging.