3 Secret Weapons Bloggers Have on YouTube

In this post, I will show you how bloggers have 3 secret weapons when it comes to YouTube... 3 unique, special traits that, as a blogger, will help you grow on YouTube faster than just the average Joe looking to start a YouTube channel. These are your unfair advantages!!

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I started posting weekly on the VidProMom YouTube channel back in January of 2015, and I didn't reach 1000 subscribers until nine months later. I just recently, as of this recording right now, I just crossed over 21,000 subscribers, so it's been three and a half years to get me to 21,000 subscribers.

I recently published a post on how I reached my first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, along with a YouTube video explaining 7 things I did right when I was just starting out on YouTube. In this post (and podcast episode), let me tell you what I did wrong and how I would do it differently if I was starting from scratch today.

Listen to Episode 10: 3 Secret Weapons Bloggers Have on YouTube

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Secret Weapons Bloggers Have on YouTube

So let's talk about your unfair advantages as a blogger when it comes to establishing yourself on YouTube. These are 3 secret weapons, if you will, that as a blogger, puts you in a much, MUCH better position on YouTube than the average Joe looking to start a YouTube channel.

Before we dive in, I want to let you know that this week on the VidProMom YouTube channel, I am publishing the second installment in my YouTube Playbook for Bloggers series, and it's all about how to come up with video topic ideas for YouTube. It will piggyback on this episode a little bit, so be sure to subscribe to the VidProMom youtube channel and ring the little bell so you get a notification when it goes live!

Also... have you grabbed my YouTube for Bloggers Cheat Sheet and Checklist? Click here to grab it now so you can get the most out of YouTube's algorithm every time you upload!

What are Unfair Advantages?

So what exactly do I mean by secret weapons and unfair advantages? This is something that Pat Flynn talks about on the Smart Passive Income podcast and he wrote about it in his book, Will it Fly, which is an excellent book, by the way. Basically your unfair advantages are exactly what they sound like: your traits, skills, and characteristics that put you at an advantage over other people trying to do the same thing as you.

I don't think they are truly unfair... life provides different opportunities and experiences to each of us. We're born into different situations, so when it comes to starting a new project, putting an idea into action, starting a business, or a blog, or a youtube channel... it's really not a matter of fairness.

You can and should absolutely use everything you have to your advantage!

For example, one of my unfair advantages as a blogger is that I know so much about web design. I know HTML like the back of my hand, I enjoy tweaking CSS, I understand what javascript is, I can design my own logo and branding, and create my social media images easily. These are not normal everyday skills that everybody has, right? So for the average Joe wanting to start a blog, I have an enormous unfair advantage. I could start 100 blogs in the same amount of time it would take one average joe to start just 1 blog!

I'm not trying to brag, I'm just saying... we all have these unfair advantages and bloggers specifically 3 unfair advantages, these really powerful secret weapons for succeeding and growing a presence on YouTube that the average Joe just doesn't have.

Quick note: this applies to more than just bloggers... if you have an established and engaging Instagram account, Facebook page or group, or Twitter following, or maybe you wrote a book or created a product... you have some form of unique content that you have created and put out there into the world. These secret weapons will apply to you too, to some degree.

So, are you curious what puts you, as a blogger, SO far ahead of the YouTube game? Let's dive into these unfair advantages and secret weapons!

Bloggers Already Have Content

If you have been blogging for a while I hope you have some organic traffic on your site, meaning traffic that is coming from Google search results. You can look at your analytics and you know what's working, you know what's ranking, you actually can see right there in front of you what your top trafficked pages are on your site. What your most popular posts are on your site. Now, I am talking about organic traffic. So, if you look in your Google analytics and you go and you look for your content, and then your pages you can put a filter on your analytics to make sure you're only looking at organic. If you are a blogger who spends a lot of time on Pinterest and you have a lot of traffic coming from Pinterest it gets really important to at least be able to sort out whether you're looking at organic traffic coming from Google search results and traffic coming from Pinterest. Now, I know that Pinterest is a search engine, I get that, but YouTube and Google are the same beast. So, I just want to make sure that we're kind of looking at what's ranking on Google so that we can sort of get some ideas of what might also rank on YouTube.

So, the fact that you already have content is your first secret weapon. And content takes time to create I know that you know that. I know that you know that. It takes time, it takes energy, you have to do a little bit of research, have to do a little bit of planning, you have to think ahead, you have to actually spend the time to create the content. And if you're somebody that writes really long detailed blog posts you know how much time goes into that. And so, if you can think for a second about the type of person that has never written a blog post, doesn't have any blog posts at all, hasn't even attempted to create any content on any platform ever and they're sitting there thinking that they're going to start a YouTube channel, they have no idea what they're getting themselves into. They have no idea what it takes to research topics and come up with those ideas, and to actually spend the time to not only create the content but put the finishing touches and the polishing touches on that content, and then to go and promote that content. You've already done all of that.

The other thing that kind of piggybacks on that is that if you do have high traffic pages on your site or high traffic blog posts, if you create a YouTube video on your channel and you have zero subscribers, nobody's ever watched any of your videos before ever you can embed that video into your high traffic posts and you'll get some views there, because you've already got people coming to that page, coming to that post and you don't even have to rely on the YouTube algorithm in that case at all for your first videos. So this really only will work if you already have high traffic posts on your site, they're already coming to that page, they're already coming to that post. So you're almost guaranteed to at least start off with a few views versus people who have no site to embed their videos on. If they publish a video to zero subscribers on a brand new channel, nobody's going to see it unless they share it with their friends and family. So, the fact that you already have content is your first secret weapon on YouTube.

Bloggers Have Already Done Half the Work of a YouTube Video

The second one that you have, and I already talked about this a little bit is that you've already done half the work of creating a video. You've already done the research and the planning. If you've got a blog post, you have a pretty fantastic outline or script for a video. That stuff takes time. Not all people on YouTube come up with a script or an outline, there are lots of YouTubers that just record videos completely unprepared. Some people can talk just right out of their head. I'm not really one of those people. I have to have at least some type of script or bullet points or something, otherwise, I'll say a lot of um's and, and's and I'll just babble, kind of like I am right this minute. So, the fact that you already have your content means you've already done half the work. So, you have the content, you know what's working and what's ranking. You've already done the work. You could probably just set up your camera or turn on your webcam right now, got to your top 10 pages and posts on your site and just record a video using your blog post as an outline. The average Joe on YouTube doesn't have that.

Bloggers Already Have an Audience

And the third secret weapon that you have, and this is a really big one, is that you already have an audience. So, this is like I said, this would apply to people who maybe have an Instagram following, or Facebook, or Facebook group, or Twitter following, or maybe you've written a book. You already have an audience. And you probably actually have an email list as well if you're a blogger. So, you can drive traffic to your new videos because you have an audience. And this is a really, really, really big deal because of the way that the YouTube algorithm works it's been said that the views that you get in the first 24-48 hours are the most important views because that is sort of a signal to YouTube's algorithm that this is a good video and people are liking it, they're engaging with it. So, let's show it in the recommended video sidebar to other viewers, to new viewers. Or let's show it in the search results. I don't know for sure exactly how beneficial it is to drive tons of traffic in the first day or two but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

So, the fact that you can email your email list and tell them you have a new video and tell them why they should watch it. You can put it out there on Facebook. You can create a teaser video on Facebook. Right now and really for a while now Facebook has really favored Facebook live videos in their algorithm. You can do a Facebook live teasing about your YouTube video and just telling people to go watch your YouTube video. You can put it out there on Twitter. You can put it out there on Instagram. All the things, all the places that you can promote your content you can promote your videos. So, if you have again, a brand new channel maybe zero subscribers or very few subscribers, you can still drive traffic in views to those videos because you have an audience to tell people about those videos. The average Joe doesn't have that. All they probably have is their friends and family on Facebook. Your friends and family are probably not your target audience.

The other advantage you have because of your audience is that you know what people are struggling with, especially if you know your audience really well. If you get questions from people, you get emails, or Instagram DM's, or Facebook questions from people, messenger questions, you know what people are struggling with. I could come up with five new videos, top videos right now off the top of my head just based on questions that I have received lately in my GoPro Enthusiast Facebook group, through my messenger, in my email inbox, because I have an audience and they know they can reach out to me. I know what they're struggling with. And if the people that are reaching me are struggling with these things then how many people are struggling with them also that haven't reached out to me or have never heard of me before? But they're going to type something into Google or into the YouTube search bar and I want to show up as their search result. So when you know what people are struggling with you have some really fantastic ideas for some videos that you can push out there and know that they're going to be found. And without having an audience already you're only just kind of guessing what people are struggling with.

The biggest thing that I want you to take away from this episode is that as a blogger you are so far ahead of the game of YouTube. And the YouTube game can seem complicated and can feel like it's over your head and you don't get it, you don't understand it. And even if you don't fully understand it, even if it feels over your head you're still so much further ahead then everybody else that's not a blogger. Even if you don't understand it you're still ahead of the game, and here's why. This is your secret weapon number one as a blogger. You already have content. You already have content that you have written, that you've created, hopefully, its unique content, you didn't copy it from anybody else. It's coming from you, it's coming from your own experience or expertise or niche.

Talk Back to Me

I am taking audio questions for this episode through the Anchor app and it would be AMAZING if I could hear from you!