Transcripts
1. Introduction: So many of us have an important message that we want to spread. A lot of us feel like we want to connect with other people about important issues in the world and building an online presence helps with that. If you are your unique self, there is always space for someone that's coming in and creating great work. Hi, my name is Sorelle Amore and I am a photographer, YouTuber, and videographer. Today's class is all about how to grow your online presence to be of a million or more. But the difference is, I'm going to teach you how to do it authentically so that you have a long term career ahead of you and not just gone in a flash. I'm going to be showing you the behind the scenes of how I create my own work. There'll be a lot of time for you to reflect on, what it is that your message is, how to package your message, how to stay authentic in delivering it. Then I also want to provide you with some very concrete tips so you can start implementing them straight away in order for your message to get out to a further audience. This class is perfect if you're just starting out on social media or building your online presence and you're not sure where to go, or if you have an audience already, a small one, that you just want to double-check that everything that you're doing is right. YouTube itself is an interesting space. You're very lucky to gather an amazing group of people that believe in what you believe in and they're your tribe. I just want to be as authentic as possible. I tried to show that I'm human. I want to bring people along on the journey and just feel like I'm a friend connecting with them. I am so very excited that you are here, we're going to have a lot of fun. There's going to be a lot of learnings. You're going to come away with some nuggets of gold, so let's get started.
2. How to Be Worth the Follow: Why are you worth the follow? It might seem a little bit intense me asking you that and I don't want this to spark uncomfortable feelings inside of you that you're not worthy of this. No, that's not the purpose. But the reason I decided to have a section on this is because I think a lot of the Internet right now is about me, me, me, me and they don't think about what value they can provide for other people. If you can establish for yourself what it is that you can provide other people and how you can help them in their lives, you've got a perfect foundation for yourself to ensure that people follow you for a long time and you build a great online presence for a very long time. The Internet can be a very distracting thing. You might seen a lot of shiny lights and decide that you want to create content hear and do this, how do I get on the trending page here and there and just build up your audience. But that is a very wrong approach to do this because it's always about coming back to what you stand for, what your audience needs from you that will provide value for them. I can attest to this because myself, I also got distracted and that's why it's super important for me to make sure that you don't, because it can become very confusing and you can lose yourself if you don't stay on track like I did. But luckily I figured it out and I turned back the sales and I'm back on track to doing the content that I love and that my audience loves as well. It's worth figuring out what value you provide to your audience, even if you have a small audience write now, because it is the perfect building blocks in order for you to grow on a much bigger scale. So here are a few different approaches of how you can figure out what value you can provide online just to get your brain kicking into this fields. Do you have something important to say, such as a message shared through writing, art or photography? Do you desire to entertain people to help them feel relief from the daily struggles of life? Do you have valuable information or education that you want to share with the world, such as nutrition, fitness, medicine or finally are you just inspiring with your actions just in itself? Sometimes just being you and standing for what you believe in is enough. What I would love for you to do now is to take the time to write down about 30 different interests, anything at all just to get your brain kicking into gear. It could be as simple as you love your cat, you love your mum, you love food. Very simple just to get it started. From there, cut down to about 10 other things that really stand out that you're super passionate about. Once you have about 10, mix-and-match and figure out different combinations of three. So it could be travel, event planning, and photography. Just figure out what feels really natural to you and something that you are super inspired by. This will then become your USP, your unique selling proposition. Having two different combinations of a USP is okay, but it's not as interesting. Having three is really unique. Lots of people have two, but that's why you're going to have three because it's going to help you stand out more. Also, it's going to help you in the long run and creating content, extra content, because you'll have different things that you can pull on to make it your own and make your channel or your online presence about that. For myself, the journey wasn't exactly easy to figure out what might USP was and it does shift and mold just so you know. But I've concluded that for me, it is mind, body and heart artistry. Why? I love art, I loved everything to do with beautiful things and I think one of the greatest art pieces we will ever create is our life. So that's why I concentrate on that. I would say the business side of me is mind artistry and since I was a little girl, I've always wanted two live a life on my own terms. Travel the world, work online and get paid to travel as well and luckily, I have been able to do that. I've showcased with my videos about digital nomads, living or how to make money online. I've showcased my mind and how you can also do that for yourself. I've helped people and taking them on a journey of how they can establish there own online presence and work wherever they want and travel full-time if they like. I hope your brain has just started to kick into gear of coming from a space of providing value rather than taking, because it is such an important distinction. If you come from a place of providing for other people, you are so guaranteed to have lasting success because anyone that can help other people on their journey to success or the dream life, you've got such a big leg up on that. So value first, then deliver and reap the rewards.
3. Build Your Credibility: The next thing I want you to look at is gathering credibility for the USPs that you've decided for yourself. Having credibility behind you will help you so much on the online world and it doesn't have to come from a piece of paper that you've graduated from somewhere. That is not what it's all about. Credibility comes in so many different formats. It can literally be that you are just 10 percent better at something than the other person that you are teaching. Say for example knitting. If you decide that you are obsessed with knitting and that's one of the things that you want to share, if you are not the best of the best in the world, it's probably better because you do understand what the beginners are going through and you can relate to them more and teach them with more precision and ease. Other ways to find credibility for yourself. Maybe you've been featured on TV for something, maybe you've had articles written about you on the topic of expertise, maybe you have helped someone, you've coached and you've guided someone on their journey to become quite good or overcome any problems, or maybe you just actually qualified to be teaching this stuff, maybe you do have the paperwork, collect as much evidence as possible and present it quite often online, whether it's on your websites, in podcasts interviews. Just keep sharing that message to reinforce that you really know what you're talking about and people can trust you. Another great way to showcase credibility if it's a little intimidating and you don't feel like you are the right person that can share this message, is to share and take people along on the journey of you starting wherever you are and transitioning into your dream goal. You don't have to have all the answers straight away. Taking people on a journey is just as exciting, even maybe more exciting than just having every theory sorted and figured out. People need to see how you started as well and it gives them trust and it brings them along on the journey with you as well. So that absolutely is a source of credibility on its own. My own credibility, it comes from a range of sources and I started accumulating everything over time. Nothing was handed to you on a silver platter, I had to work up to get all of the credibility. So just keep that in mind for yourself. It might take a little bit of time, but I'm going to break down a few of my own online projects and provide the credibility behind that just so you can see what it could look like for yourself. I teach this thing called the Advanced Selfie. It's a little bit ridiculous. It kind of started as a bit of a joke. But basically when I was traveling solo around the world, I needed to take photos of myself to showcase the amazing places I was in and I started taking my own photos. People loved that concept and so I called it the Advanced Selfie and I started teaching this. As a result of that, I actually set up my own Advanced Selfie university because also funny, and now I have about 4,000 students that I teach on how to take the perfect photo of themselves. The concept might appear a little bit vain initially but it is there to help people that might not have enough money to hire a photographer. They need head shots for their business. Even marketers, dentists, everyone needs photos of themselves these days in order to have a great online presence and help their business. Or there's the other side of the coin that people just want to feel good about themselves, so the Advanced Selfie also helps to raise their self-esteem. Then I've also developed the #advancedselfie and there's about a 150,000 people that follow that hashtag and contribute to it. So that's also a great credibility for me. When I first started becoming the source of all things online and how to work online and travel full time, I think the first times where I was getting credibility for that is just creating endless videos about my journey of getting there from the start, the struggles, and then it just propelled forward. I had so many videos and so many people coming to me as a source of knowledge for that. So it wasn't anything big. No one wrote anything giant about me at that stage but I created my own credibility because of the knowledge that I've accumulated over time in living this crazy and awesome lifestyle. I want to show you a couple of examples from my own channel and on my own online work that I've created to showcase this credibility. So let's go to my YouTube. Here I have a playlist that I've created on my YouTube channel with the Advanced Selfie. As I mentioned, it's super important for people to recognize that this is a source of credibility for me. I am the person to go to if you want to learn how to take your own self-portrait. Here is a display of how many videos I have on this topic. So this is credibility. It shows that I really know what I'm talking about. Initially you might think that there's no way that your topic of choice will have that much content that you can create around, but that's also when your community comes in and they start asking you to expand on certain things that you are teaching because it might not be clear to them and to you it might be second nature and it's very obvious, but a lot of people need things broken down step-by-step. So that usually there is so much you can cover it in content pieces. I can just nag it down and break it down to very simple basic concepts because you also don't want to overcrowd your videos with everything all at once. It's really nice to have little major dot points per video so that it's easy for people to digest as well.
4. Find Your Niche: Having one specific niche to focus on, and growing is very important for you because, it's much easier per se. It is very hard to be everything to everyone, and it is a short fast way to burn out, and be personally very unfulfilled. Saying that, if you are a creative and the idea of putting yourself in a small box makes you feel sick, I understand. It is so uncomfortable putting a box around you when you have so many different interests. But I know as a marketer, and having done this game, I know how valuable it is, because again, you can't be everything to everyone. It gets exhausting, and you just can't please everyone. So having one thing to focus on is really great. But this is where your USP comes in, so you have three different sections that you've identified that you are very interested in, and you want to spread that information to your followers. So you want to take one of these things that stands out the most to you, and you know that is the thing that people will know you for, but then the other two are support acts. Take for example, chelseakauai. She's one of my friends, I love her, and chances are if you loved the outdoors, and you love adventures, and photography, and exercises, you know who Chelsea is. Now, Chelsea is known as the queen of adventures. This is what she does. Everything that she shares reflects this. She does have, of course, other interests, but again, they are just supporting her. So she talks about how she lives, the food she eats, the exercises she undertakes, but that is always supporting the notion that she is a queen of adventures. If she tried to be the best at cooking, the best at exercise, the best at adventures or photography, that is way too many things to concentrate on, and it would dilute her message. So first and foremost, choose a category or a niche that you really really love, and you want to be known for, and the other things will be your support act. Here is my quite complicated way of how I figured out my niche. Just to show you a little behind the scenes and give you reassurance that it could take a little while. Some people know it straightaway. I didn't. If you scroll all the way back to the beginning of my channel, I was actually known as the Icelandic queen. There wasn't many people that were making videos about Iceland at the time, and I was living there, so I decided to make some videos about the place. They popped. Everyone loved them, and that was what I became known for. It didn't really sit well with me though, it felt a little too constricted, because I didn't want to be an Icelandic tour guide, I knew I had more to share. Then luckily, and read worked very hard to establish an online presence to be ready for this opportunity when it arose, I won a travel competition, where I traveled the world for three months, staying in luxurious homes. Amazing, and that is when I became the worldwide travel guide. I started sharing adventures from all around the world. That was stage 2. As you keep scrolling up, eventually I start sharing how I take my own travel photos, because a lot of people were amazed that the photos that I was sharing about my travels were all taken by me, because I traveled mostly solo by myself. So then I started developing my niche into travel photography or the advanced selfie, photos that looked like someone else took the photos. So I started sharing all of it's information on there, that became the next part of my evolution. The next stage came because people started asking, how on earth do I get the life that I did, traveling all the time, working online, getting paid to travel and so forth. So I started sharing information about that. Eventually, after about two, three years of different explorations, different journeys, I settled on travel photography and human optimization for my channel, and that was really great for a period of time. However recently, going through changes and travel isn't as important to me, and I want to lower my footprints, so I'm not traveling as much, and now I'm changing again after three and half years to have heart, body, and mind artistry, because I realized that you don't have to travel far and wide to have an amazing life, and concentrating on yourself is really a beautiful journey itself. So I'm working on that now. Basically, I wanted to show you how I developed what I developed, and I was still able to have a successful career without knowing exactly what I wanted to have from the start, what my online presence was going to be about. I went along the journey of this, and to me it was really complicated. I sometimes didn't sleep at night because I just thought that everyone viewed me as this complicated creature online. But then I spoke to a lot of people, and they didn't see it as complicated as me or so convoluted. It can just be horrible journey. I unfortunately went down that path of thinking was too hard, but what you can do, a much easier way to approach this is just to take your audience on a journey with you, and just take it slowly and gradually, and just explain to them that your interests are changing. Because if you create the same content all the time anyway, people could get bored of that. That's why having three separate buckets that you can be talking about, your USP is really great to come back to it, because it provides variety for people to come back, and stay engaged with your channel. The only thing that I want to note about this is, whenever you are exploring different niches and figuring out what works for you, perhaps don't try to change drastically, because that might confuse your audience a bit too much. For example, if I started doing car reviews right now, I don't think it would sit very well with my audience. So maybe the transition can be a little bit smoother. Secondly, if you are still too scared about having a specific box around you, a niche, maybe it's right now just exploring different content types, and figuring out which ones sparks joy inside of you, which one makes you happy, because that is something you should definitely pursue. If you want to be doing this online game for a long time, really, you want to be enjoying yourself. So figure out what content types, what topics that you really enjoy doing and focus on that. Things to note. If you come across a niche that you are so interested in, and you figured out that there are a gazillion other people doing exactly what you're interested in, that is okay. The way that I see it is, there isn't just one actor in the world, there isn't just one musician in the world, there's a lot because different people appeal to different people. Granted if your space isn't as saturated, it could be a little bit easier for you to break through. However, there is always space for anyone to come in. If you have a different personality, a different tone of voice, a different style of presentation, where you're located, your gender, your race, lots of distinguishing factors can help you stand out. Whatever your competition is doing, just figure out a way of how you can do it in your own unique taste. Yes, it's okay for the beginning stages for you to look at other people that are doing what you want to be doing, and you admire them, and you learn from them, and you copy little bits and pieces from it, but then eventually, you really have to figure out your own style, because that'll help you to stand out. Whether it's the presentation style or the editing style, there are different ways for you to stand out, and become the absolute best in that category, that no one else can take away the title from you of being the go-to person in that niche that you love.
5. Make Meaningful Messages: I'll be bold in saying that I think a lot of us live in a culture of more, especially online. It seems that everyone is just trying to showcase a life or brilliance and how great they are and look at me, look at me. But there's so few people that will take the time to craft a message that will change someone in some way, change their beliefs, make them feel better, make them feel something. I think the stronger the emotional reaction to something that you create, whether a video, a photo, blog, anything online, the more likely that people will engage with that, whether that is through likes or comments or supporting you, becoming attached to you in some way. Or it could also be just spreading a message, sharing it, that is a huge thing, which is obviously going to help you skyrocket your platform because the more people share it, the more people will see your work. Now, the masters of this, Yes Theory. They create a great combination of meaningful and entertaining content because it is still the online, people still like to digest the information as easily as possible. We do have short attention spans these days, but what Yes Theory have done so beautifully is merged those two worlds together. They provide almost every single video a nice message at the end that people can take away and feel something to it, whether it's crying, sadness, laughter, anything. Now, I wouldn't say that creating meaningful content is exactly easy. It's like asking a musician to produce a hit song, week after week after week. As content creators, online personas, we are required to produce a lot more work. We have to keep up with the algorithm and the more content you produce, the better for your growth. Just keep in mind that it's actually okay. You don't have to have everything that is amazing and that works great because I think if you have a meaningful message every single time that you put anything out, it can get a little bit tiring and people that do it on repeat, they often have giant teams. So I wouldn't put myself in that category straight away. I know a lot of channels that have a video or a piece of content that pops every now and again and the rest there in the background and they're chugging along and helping the algorithm, of course boosting your online presence. But it's once that pop every now and again, we'll give you a viral spike and will help your platform to grow. So don't put too much pressure on yourself to create a meaningful message every time. It's important to find a nice clear balance so that you don't bore your audience. So I've just come up with a short exercise to help you figure out a way of creating your own meaningful messages. In this exercise, there is a downloadable form that you can use to follow along. First of all, let's think about the desired outcome that you want from the message. That could be planting an idea, could be changing perspective, or taking an action. Next up, you will figure out your approach on how to deliver this message. Here, I've listed a whole bunch of adjectives that you can pull from or if there's any other ones that you want to add to your own list, that's completely fine. I just want you to get thinking on different ways of delivering this message, whether it's through vulnerability, or inspiration or sadness. Sadness works sometimes as well. Essentially, what I'm getting at is you want to figure out the tone of approach for the content piece that you're creating. Lastly, it's about figuring out how you want people to feel after they've watched your video. This is so powerful. See down below, I've listed a whole bunch of emotions that you could use for yourself when you're delivering your own message, of course add anything else that you might think of. Whatever you've chosen from the list for people to feel after they've watched your video, it's really great to have one primary feeling that people walk away with because that is pretty simple for them to digest and understand the message. Sometimes having too many fields can convolute the message a little bit. So I would try to stick to one maximum three different feelings that people could feel after watching your content piece. This is just a basic template that could help you in creating a meaningful message. But now let me show you how I use it in my own life, in my own world to deliver meaningful messages wherever possible. Here is my first example that I want to show you, and it's called The advanced selfie isn't as it seems: The unexpected life changing story of an accidental creation. My desired outcome for people watching this content piece is for them to take action and then the approach, the tone of delivery is vulnerability. Then finally, the emotion that I want people to feel is inspired. In this video, I share a lot of deeply personal reasons as to why I created the advanced selfie and also the amazing benefits that it seems to have trickled through the whole worldwide system of helping people to feel more confident in themselves through taking photos of themselves. Seems counter-intuitive, but it just inspires people to find out that they can actually take a really great photo of themselves amongst a world where everyone seems polished online, I give them a glimmer of hope through my work. The next video I'll talk about is, I tried Krav Maga for 30 days. This was a really fun video, but my desired outcome was planting a new idea. The approach or tone is educational, eye-opening, and the emotion I want people to feel is hopeful. Now, I personally believe that the world is a very safe place, but traveling full time by myself, I do believe that you could just have something in your pocket like a tool or a skill to help you navigate the world in a safer place and feel more confident in the world. So with this video, I was just simply showcasing my journey of trying this self-defense system and how it went. It was light-hearted and hopeful, and planting the idea in people's heads that maybe they should just try self-defense as a means of getting fit, and as a bonus, you get a life-skill. Finally, the last video is What I wish I knew before starting minimalism. Now, the desired outcome is changing perspective. The approach or the tone is light-hearted and the emotion is motivated. The reason I created this video is the world of minimalism is sometimes showcased as quite boring and often tailored towards men. So in this video, myself, being a female and loving to look good and have nice things, I wanted to help change the perspective on this idea of living with less things but having quality things because it helps the world and it makes for mental clarity as well. If you are a minimalist in case you're not one and I considering it. So finally, just to recap everything here is how you can figure out how to create a meaningful message. Step 1, remember your niche, don't be everything to everyone. Step 2, figure out your desired outcome. Step 3, what is the approach or the tone you're going to take in this video or this content piece. Step 4, how do you want to make people feel that is very important. The stronger their emotional reaction, once again, the further you message will be spread, and the stronger the connection you'll have with the viewer. Step 5, research on Google or YouTube to see if anyone else has created this content piece. Study it and see if they have done something that you really liked or if there's a way that you can improve on that message as well with your tone of voice, your personality, and so forth. The next step is to look at the message objectively once you created it, and just see it as separate from you because sometimes we're just too close to ourselves and maybe ask some of your friends as well to understand the message and study it and see what they feel as a result, if it makes sense. Lastly, just remember that original ideas bake in. If you can create original ideas, they're going spread the most because anything that is original always leaves an impact on the Internet. So that is a great way to approach it. But just know this isn't exactly the easiest thing to come by. But wherever possible, if you can, create original ideas. I do personally believed that a great way to go online and have a long-lasting career is share an opinion and share something that you really believe in. It can be a little bit uncomfortable at times to go down that route, but I just think that lots of people who are creating mindless content right now, that doesn't really mean anything or stand for anything, they'll wash away very quickly, but longevity is the name of the game and what I'm trying to teach you about this. So try to spread a message of value. You will attract an audience that will absolutely support you and be just so thankful that you're willing to put that opinion out there and they'll support you as much as possible. Note, there will be people that feel very opposite to whatever you're sharing. So you need to be prepared for that. I believe it's very important for you to ground yourself, in fact so that way when someone comes to you and doesn't agree with your opinion and you might get a little bit of backlash for something, you strongly believe in what you have researched and you know the facts of everything, so it doesn't affect you as much. When I first started the journey, I was a little bit nervous about sharing different things that I believe in because it can be nerve-wracking sharing an opinion. However, I just sprinkled it here and there and just saw how people reacted, and overall the response was quite positive. So I was willing to keep going and expanding on that and building a tribe that believes in what I believe in and it just let me ignore anyone that wasn't quite believing in the same thing as me. I want to concentrate on my tribe, the people that follow me, and the people that I adore, and we provide value for each other, not the people that disagree with me.
6. Balance Authenticity Over Beauty: As humans, we're wired to desire aesthetically pleasing objects, even though it's not necessarily important for our survival, somehow we've been granted the gift to enjoy beautiful things. After all, a vital part of life is pleasure due to it not being a necessity, but just rather in addition, anything that you can make online that is beautiful is going to help you so much more for people to fall in love with your work. It just shows that you've put a little bit of an extra effort into creating something, and even if people don't necessarily agree with the message that you're sharing fully. If it's 90 percent, they're still more likely to engage with you through comments, through likes, through shares, if it is beautiful and you've put an extra solid amount of effort into creating the content piece. These days, beauty is almost like a bare necessity for creating content online. You really need this in order to stand out. It comes in lots of different ways, so it doesn't have to be technical, I'll get into that in just a second. But I think also we have pushed this beauty thing a little bit too far and it's become a little bit too streamline some times, and it takes away the rawness of being human, personalities or sometimes stripped away, it's just very generic and predictable. So that's where authenticity and beauty and finding a perfect balance between these two comes in. Authenticity. I often get questioned whether or not you have to have a large personality to be online, and the answer is no, you absolutely don't have to be. Is it more common to see people that do have large personalities, and are over the top on the Internet, yes. I will put that down to the fact that I would say most of the people with a large personalities are extroverts, and I just love the idea of having their face plastered all over the Internet, is not so comfortable if you're an introvert to have the same reaction to being online. I just want to reassure anyone that is deciding to come online that it is okay, no matter what your personality is. I'm mentioning all of this because I don't want you to ever have to act a certain way, because you think that is the way it's going to help you to succeed. The thing about being authentic online is that, it's very obvious if you are faking it. Again, I feel like I've made so many mistakes, but at least I can make them and you don't have to. I have definitely gone through a stage where I put on an extra mask because I thought that was necessary of me, and actually the feedback wasn't positive from that, and people were trying to remind me to please be yourself, and so I learned from that experience. I think it's appropriate to drop in the quote here. It is better to be hated for who you are, than loved for who you are not. Really, this couldn't be closer to the truth. It is very exhausting actually putting on a mask, and the amazing thing about the Internet is that there is someone for everyone, I've mentioned that before. Everyone's looking for a different person to get inspiration from or learn from. So don't put a mask on, that is basically what I'm getting to. It's going to take you a little bit of time to become comfortable in front of the camera. I can tell you that right now what you're seeing, the person that is pretty comfortable on camera, this isn't how it started, it was awkward, it was messy. So go easy on yourself and overtime, as you become more comfortable, just slowly start unraveling who you are, and if you think you're boring and you don't really have anything interesting to add, I dare say that if I spoke to your best friends, they would absolutely clarify that you've got unique traits about you that are interesting. So you want to showcase that as well because people online, they will fall in love with you. It is absolutely the value that you deliver, but if you can also add it with your personality, it helps people to fall in love with you, and that is the most important thing to have a long-lasting relationship with your audience. In a world where there are a lot of copycats, and people are quite afraid to stand out and be unique, authenticity really is king. However, being authentic doesn't mean that you're not willing to improve your game. For example, if you want to promote yourself online, it is quite common that you have to have photos of yourself out there. If you are petrified of the camera and just no-go, you might have to work on that a little bit, and you might have to hire someone to teach you how to pose and what angles are best for you, how to make you feel comfortable in front of the camera, or you can study it say through the advanced selfie university. There's different ways to do it, but you just have to improve at that area. I will just look at your strengths and weaknesses, and see if there's anything you can change or improve. I would only though focus on your weaknesses if it will help to get your goals or desires fulfilled, I wouldn't necessarily invent problems where there are no problems, or you could outsource it, or sometimes you can use your weaknesses to your advantage, and I show you how next. Let's talk then about how to mix authenticity and beauty perfectly and seamlessly together. I think it would be such a shame for anyone to sacrifice an authentic moment for making it into a beautiful moment. Those candid moments make you a beautiful, relatable person online. So let me show you a couple of examples of some of my favorite people that mix these two elements so well together. First of all, we have Chris Hau. One of my favorite online personality is my friend, he's amazing photography, film, travel, tutorials. The thing that he does so well is he is the king of B-roll. He does B-roll so well. He showcases beautiful elements in his video, but then he also has moments in his video where he hand holds a camera, and he just walks around and it's shaky and it's raw. Mixing these two elements together, doesn't make it into like a commercial, it doesn't feel so staged. It's very raw and you can connect with Chris very strongly, and then another amazing human, Jennelle Eliana. She's the new kid on the block. She popped up out of nowhere and her YouTube grew immensely in a short period of time, which should be hopeful or for you as well, because all she uses is iPhone to film and edit. So you don't need all the gear to pop online, and have a giant online brand. The way that she incorporates authenticity and beauty is, she doesn't have the best film gear, but what she does have is a beautiful van, because she does van life and her wardrobe is outrageous for someone that lives in a van. She's got a giant teddy bear and now she's got a pet snake. She's just an interesting character, but she infuses beauty into her videos through beautiful things that she earns. But her personality is super raw, it is wild, she's a strange human, she's extra entertaining. So the two elements they're balancing each other out beautifully. Being authentic online can be sometimes a little bit difficult because you probably will start researching other creators, or on brands and you'll see how they're presenting, and then you might think that you have to copy them. It can get a little bit confusing, and if you start researching a lot of copycats, people that do the exact same thing, they find some unpopular and then they try to mimic it, which is a little bit wild, because it's not going to really work for you long-term. I will admit though I have myself have also done this for a short period of time. When you're learning, it is good to have moments where you're copying other people just to get better at your craft. I did this with Peter MacKinnon and Casey Neistat, I admired certain aspects of what they did and I took that out, and I made it my own eventually. So I just ditched what I didn't like and kept the things I loved about that presentation style. Another great way to ensure that you stay authentic online is to visualize that you're talking to someone that you know very well, like a brother or sister, on the other side of the camera. Because it is easy to forget that it is someone else on the other side of the screen, and you become a little bit intimidated by seeing a camera. But if you continue memorizing and remembering that it's someone that you know, someone that is going to get value from the content that you're sharing, it's a lot easier to stay yourself. If you are a little bit nervous about showing your quirks or who you are because you are shy, just try sprinkling it here and there and see how people react, and then you can just keep dropping it in, as you become more and more comfortable. You don't have to explode with a weird personality straight up, if that makes you too nervous, small baby steps is fine as well. So how I decided to figure out my beauty and authenticity mix. I first of all looked at my strengths and weaknesses, and my strengths, I knew I could play up on beautiful backgrounds because I was traveling so much. So there was backgrounds, galore that I could choose from, and then my presentation skills online towards a camera are pretty okay. I've done pretty well over time, so I'm happy with that. There are two things that a new stood out that would be a little bit of a problem, but I decided to use them to my advantage. The first one, I speak very fast. You might see this by now, but what the online platforms have done for us these days is that you can just simply turn down the playback speed to be 0.75, and apparently, at that speed I sound normal. So I decided to keep that because it's also a talking point in all of my comments section. So I just left it be, and the other side of the coin, I think I have a short attention span. I think that a lot of us do this days, but what I've done to combat that for myself, so I don't get bored watching my own videos plus for the audience members, I switch up my background quite a lot in my videos when I'm creating them, to keep it visually appealing so people don't get bored as fast. Mind you however, finding the right balance of what I was happy with and my presentation skills overall and how I presented myself online, it did take me still awhile, and I would say about two years before I figured out exactly how I wanted everything to work, and what worked for me, what didn't, what weaknesses I had to work on or change, or use to my advantage. For example, my other weaknesses can be in marketing, being really, really good at marketing in certain areas like Facebook ads. So I outsource that because I did not want to go down the route of learning all that. So sometimes with your weaknesses, you can outsource that as well. So when you are growing your personal brand, just keep in mind that it's not just the overused term of, just be yourself. Sometimes you have to tweak things, and adjust things a little bit in order to help you grow, sitting back on your laurels and just expecting everything to work might not be the best strategy. Let me show you a couple of examples from my own personal journey of how I've mixed authenticity and beauty. One of my videos, how to take your own travel photos. It mixes the two. I have elements of great setup, the location is beautiful, the backgrounds are beautiful. The end results of the photos that I show on screen are pretty nice. I'm very happy with them. But then I also have the raw personality and my sprinkled and crappy jokes that I make as well. Then this is the other video that I really love, and actually a lot of people also fell in love with this video, and it's had a drastically improve your art, finding inspiration for creativity, and this was just a random video. I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts of my journey of exploring creativity in myself, because four years ago I didn't think I was autistic in any way, shape or form, which is crazy because now it's just everything that I do. But in this video, again, beautiful locations, different frames, keeping it engaging through the visuals and also the things that I'm saying. So as previously mentioned, beautiful footages, basically are given these days. You have to present your content as beautifully as you can to the scale level that you can. Don't let that stop you from starting, even if you're not perfect right now, that's okay. But try to make it as beautiful at all times as you can, and Skillshare has a great range of photography and videography courses as well that you can undertake to get better at this craft. Then the second thing for beauty-wise, for Instagram for example, I use an app called Unum and it allows me to curate the upcoming posts that I'll be putting on Instagram to make sure that it all aligns really well together. So that is a nice balance there with these two strategies of how to make sure that your authenticity and beauty mix is spot on.
7. Make a Plan to Execute: The execution and implementation are some of the most important components of making your online platform succeed. So that comes down to the consistency, the frequency of posting, the deliverability, the platforms used and so much more. So this is what we are going to be covering in this lesson. First of all, let's talk about the different types of content that they're available to you. You can have stand-alone videos which you can put up on Facebook or YouTube, or TikTok. You have Insta Stories which can also become YouTube stories. You have tweets, you have blog post, you have IGTV, you have stories, podcast, interviews, the list goes on. Then we have the frequency of posting. So for videos, when you're starting, I would recommend at least one video a week. I personally grew from posting two videos a week. Then we have people such as Peter McKinnon who post three times a week and [inaudible] the king of YouTube, he posted for seven times for I think two years. Find the frequency of posting that you can commit to without compromising on quality. Next up, we have photos. So I grew by posting once a day on my Instagram and I would recommend the same if you can upkeep the quality once again. Then there are people such as Aggie who grew by posting twice a day for 18 months. Solid commitment. Please do keep in mind that quality is key. So if the photo that you're posting won't somehow stop the viewer and attracts, it might not be worth posting. The posting has to be worth a follow. So make sure that the quality is there. In case that sounds a little bit intimidating, I'm just talking about the minor differences of, for example, if you're taking a selfie, make sure that it's well-lit or it's got a nice background or there isn't rubbish or garbage in the background. Just a little bit of extra effort to make sure that the quality is there is going to help you stand out so much more. A thing to note about photos is, obviously, it's a lot less of a commitment to create photos and upload them to your Instagram. The thing that you'll probably forget is that you also have to add on caption which can take an extra hour or two. It does happen to be a lot of work as well. So with the photos, I would try there for posting three times a week at the start and seeing how that works for you and how your audience responds to that as well. See if they are engaging well, see how the data speaks. Test also what photos are performing the best or what kind of content that you're posting, whether it selfies or lifestyle shots or your travel shots where you're behind the scenes or videos. Use stats such as the likes and the comments as a guide to see what people respond to most. Then just increase the frequency of those things that people adore the most. Next step, consistency. It is one thing to post frequently. However, if you post quite a lot for one or two months and then you just disappear for a while because you got tired, you might lose a viewer that way because it just becomes a little bit frustrating. The consistency is very important for the viewer because if you say you're going to post a video on Monday and Fridays, and then the person goes to your platform to try to find your video and it's not there, they get more and more frustrated. Eventually, they might just stop coming back and checking on your channel to see if the video is there, viewer lost. You can use this to your own advantage because it is very often that a lot of us go through spikes of where we love creating a lot of content and then we want to rest a little bit. So if you're feeling extra motivated one month and then you create a whole bunch of content, I would just stop yourself from releasing everything at that one time because the next month you might feel a little bit slumpy. So just keep to your consistent schedule to ensure that you have content all along for the next few months and there aren't blank spots where there's nothing available to your viewer. Then finally, it is the platforms that you choose to post on. I would recommend diversifying a little bit so that in case the algorithm is a little bit iffy on one of these platforms, the other ones are still holding up strong and you can bounce back by using your other platforms to help boost up the other one. You just want to play the game a little bit but, don't spread yourself out too thin. A lot of people try to be on every single platform but then everything just looks quite weak and you're not in control of the platform or how it looks. So concentrate on a few platforms. I concentrate mostly on two platforms that I love. They bring me the most joy and that is YouTube and Instagram. After posting for about a year or two consistently, you might start thinking that you're running out of things to say. This is great than to come back to your USP, the three buckets of content that you want to be known for. I would also use your subscribers as a resource, or for help so you can read the comments section and find out if there's anything there specifically asking more from you. Or you can ask them on social media, on Instagram "Hey, I need help, what else do you want from me?" Then there are pages such as answerthepublic.com that would give you an idea of what else you can cover topics related to what you've already talked about. As you're a beginner to this whole online scene, you might not be thinking about taking time off just yet, but I just want to prepare you for this for in the future. It will probably come because you will need a small rest. This is completely okay and should be scheduled into your calendar. However, I would actually pre-plan and have content created for when you want to take time off so work a little bit extra hard before you want to take a month off and have contents still running and still being put out there while you're taking time off. But realistically, from where you are, probably just starting this online journey, it's probably going to be 6-12 months until you can have a bit of a break. So just strengthen for that. A few concrete tips to help you with the execution and implementation. Number one, create a schedule for each of the platforms that you want to be posting on. So for YouTube, figure out when you want to be posting and what topics. It'll help you keep on track whenever you're feeling a little bit low or don't have any ideas you can just turn to your schedule and I'll keep you on track. Secondly, it's really nice to look at your social media and the online presence as doing sprints. So I've been on social media as my own personal brand for about 3.5 years. But in that time, I would say that my growth happened from two solid 6-8 months sprints where I just posted like a crazy person. I went over the top and this is what really helped me. Outside of that, I was able to dial back a tiny little bit. I still have to be frequent with my postings and I'm still on the platforms, but I can just take a small breather. However, looking at the social media as sprints instead of like a never ending game is a lot more digestible and it keeps you on track and motivated to create more. Then thirdly, have specific times when you post for the algorithm sake and to keep you on track as well. So for videos, I would just say exactly the same time every single week, you are basically like a TV show. So see yourself as that. Then for photos, research where most of your followers are located, the times that they are most likely to be online and post during optimal times. There is absolutely no use to be posting in the middle of the night because that is not going to help you or the algorithm.
8. Final Thoughts: Wow. Congratulations, we have completed the class. It has been an amazing journey. Thank you for trusting me in taking you through at this process and giving you some of the tips that I've worked out for myself on my journey of growing my own online presence. I'm now super lucky to have created a beautiful life that I adore, ready to travel whenever I want, wherever I want. I get paid for it and I work online. It's a really great life and throughout all my strategies, I hope that I can share that with you and you can create a dream life of your own as well. Down below just to remind you, I would love to see all your social channels so post them down below and anything else you're working on. Please I would love to see it. We're all going to be engaging, this is going to be the best community on Skillshare. Otherwise, if you want to seen how I'm doing everything on my own social platforms, checked me out, I'm Sorelle Amore across Instagram and Twitter and YouTube, so I would love to see you there as well. Thank you so much for having me and until next time guys and girls, peace.
9. Bonus: Project Feedback From Sorelle: Hi, friends. It's Sorelle here again. I am here with a bonus video where I'll be reviewing your projects. Thank you to everyone that has submitted a project for me to review. I cannot get through all of them, but I have seen so many and I'm so impressed. Obviously, since you've taken this course, you're very interested in growing your audience online and having a beautiful presentable YouTube channel. I really hope that with this feedback, it helps to propel you forward on your journey to living a beautiful dream life. Let's get straight into reviewing some of the projects. I have just landed on a project of Tortor Smith. That is a very cool name. Stop motion channel, Animatortor. Amazing. It's good to see that you have been consistent for the last six months, this is very good. When you started, you had 742 subscribers, and now, you have over 3,000, which I love to hear. The first thing I need to point out is the profile picture. With the profile, that's not standing out, especially with the hat is a similar color to the turtle, so you can't really see what is going on, and the thing as well is that most people on the internet, what we're attracted to is human faces. The fact that you don't have your face here, I think you're missing an opportunity for people to feel more personal with you because it's not you, and since your face is in the banner, people want to get a little bit more connected to you. I can see you're including yourself there, but I really think you should put it in your profile picture so that when people see a new videos popped up, they know straight away that that is you, they can instantly recognize you. Moving on, I'm going to see what your main video is because this is obviously the one when someone lands on your channel, this will be the video that they see, so let's see what you have here. Speechless, you're so good at what you do. My gosh. The thing about YouTube is people get attached to you as a personality. I would love to potentially see an intro of you and your face talking to camera and explaining what you're going to go through. Have the opening of the dogs and then cut to yourself and be like, "This is what I created. It took a really long time, it was quite hard work, but we made it happen. Let me show you how." You're missing out on an opportunity for people to get attached to you as a personality, and that is the way that you grow a very strong YouTube community, and that's when your business can propel further and further because they feel like they're watching a friend. I miss that connection in this main video that you have here. Cook Jungle. I'm in the jungle right now so I'm excited to see you, and I love cooking. Kelvin says that if you want to start a YouTube channel, you have to start it now and not wait. I think a lot of people want to acquire lots of skills before they start their journey. I completely understand with what Kelvin is saying right now, it's, "Do it, start, and then start learning from your mistakes, because this is going to teach you the best." When you have people watching your work, when you are putting yourself out there, when you're getting feedback from the world, even if it's one or two people watching, it makes you want to present the best version of yourself online. I completely agree, don't wait until you acquire too many skills, start now and you'll definitely learn from the process. Cook Jungle, your banner is unreal. It makes you look very professional. Now, looking straight at your uploads, "How to increase the shelf life of your tomatoes by over." I don't know what by over because it cut out. When it comes to the length of your titles, the way that I judge if it's working or not is I go to my own video page on my YouTube and then I see if it's cutting off any important information in the title before it disappears. Some of my video titles do go on for longer, but I keep the most important information in there. How to increased the shelf life of your tomatoes by over a month. The fact that you put a month and there is that's shocking to me, and I couldn't see that on your video page, so that's missing a really important element. If there's a way for you to decrease the length of your title to include "a month", I think you'd actually have a lot more clicks and views from that, because a month is like, what do you mean, you can have a tomato for a month? Whenever I launch a video myself, I instantly comment at the top to get people engaging. So you are missing the capability here to have other people seeing your comment. You asking a question in that comment, a short little comment like, "What did you guys think? What's your favorite part?" Then someone might be like, "Oh, she's actually intrigued. Let me add my comment." Because the more comments that you have on your videos, the better it is for Google at the YouTube algorithm, so they're going to push the video forward to more people. You have to play the YouTube Google game and lift up your engagement as much as possible, and this is just one small way to do that. Keep it up, to be honest. I am excited to see what else I can learn from you with your cooking videos. Hello, Nick, this is awesome. The three pillars of music. I like that you have niched yourself beyond and chosen something quite specific within the music industry to talk about the music scene, YouTube scene could be quite saturated, I don't know because unfortunately, I'm not quite musically talented. But I like that you have hyper niched yourself. The profile picture is spot on, I love it. I would get your banner professionally created. Mondays at 3pm. Also, don't worry about the time when you upload. Yes, it's good to be consistently uploading at the exact same time, but you don't have to tell people when it is. Because 3:00 PM where? Where in the world is that? I don't know where you are located. Let's see your most popular videos. This is where I often go. When I find a brand-new channel, I like to see what their most popular videos are because it gives me an idea of what your niche could be. There is a music gadget that you're comparing that I can see. In this thumbnail, it's actually quite lucky that this is the most viewed video of yours, and I think you probably jeopardized your chances of being seen by even more people because there is just so much going on in this thumbnail. Thumbnails should be as simple as possible to convey the message of what the video is about as fast as possible. There is just so much going on in most of your thumbnails. The writing that you have, you can't really read that font. So if you're going to have font on your thumbnails, it has to be pretty readable straight away and obvious. Nick, keep it up. Simplify your channel, simplify the way that you present your information, and I really think it's going to help you get a lot more views and a lot more subscribers, but well done. Alex's YouTube Channel. Alexandria, medical student, mental health advocate, amateur cheap powerlifter. Who are you? You're awesome. There's so many things about you that is just so interesting. Well done for having so many interesting niches. I love that your banner has a photo of you at graduation. Instantly, I'm like, "Okay, this person is someone of authority, I have to listen to them." I love that you have your niches very clearly in your banner. Awesome. I love that your profile picture is you with a cup, you look so relatable. I know that I'm going to fall in love with you for your personality, that is your primary ingredient of your YouTube channel which oftentimes, it should be. Honestly, that is why people follow YouTubers. I would split up your uploads into more categories. You are using playlist which is awesome. For your uploads, it's just a little bit too cramped so maybe split those up a little bit more to make it easier to view. I'm going to go to your most popular and see if you're doing evergreen videos because it's really important. Yes. Okay, cool. Yeah, you're doing it, you're doing really well. Your views you're getting, they're really good for your channel size. I think you're about to pop, to be honest. For your videos, I will concentrate just a little bit more on the editing because I can see that some people would drop off at certain points there. I know that this is like a far stretch because not everybody magically just has the capacity to buy a good camera, but I can see that you need to upgrade your camera pretty soon because you have a lot of elements that are working for you already, the thing that is missing is the quality that is going to help you elevate. I think you can already tell a great story, you're very good on camera. I think now, focusing on the quality aspect is going to help people realize that you're quite professional. But keep the shaky and the raw element to your videos because you don't want to go to polish because that's when you miss people. Quality of camera, I think is going to assist you, and looking more professional whilst still staying role as much as possible. That is all, unfortunately, that I have time for. Thank you so much to everybody that has submitted the projects in my class. If you have not had your work reviewed, or there's also an opportunity to help support your fellow students, go through all the projects and help each other out and give each other feedback. Fingers crossed, you've learned something extra from today's video. If so, feel free to update your project that you have in Skillshare. If you have not yet uploaded a project, please do so because I would love to see what you got. The more unique, weird skills you have to bring to the table, the more interesting you are as a creator and people want to subscribe. Down below, I have included a few links of other classes within Skillshare that I highly recommend you also check out. Until next time, ladies, gents, boys and girls, and everybody in between. peace.
Sorelle Amore, YouTuber, Videographer, Photographer
