I have had my YouTube channel since 2009, and for a few years it was used for sharing videos to my family and friends.
Wanting to learn more about video editing, I ended up spending quite a bit of time editing movies about our trips, events, and even making music videos of the songs I wrote. I would spend hours learning 2 camera editing with synchronizing sound and all that.
As I expected, I hovered around 100 to 150 views per video.
Then I got the idea to record myself while I was fixing my keyboard and car mirror and post it as a “How-To”. While I spent some time creating and editing these how-to videos, it was far less time than some of my other videos. Further, I needed to fix these things anyway, so the video was not staged or anything…it was capture something I did in real life in hopes someone else could benefit from it.
You know what?
My channel just passed 100,000 views…mostly thanks to these how-to videos. Now, I realize this is a far cry from many hit videos, but it’s far more than I ever planned and I am quite pleased.
How did these videos become popular? I can think of a few reasons:
- I created content to help someone else
- I envisioned a larger target audience than just family
- I captured a moment that many around the world also experience and created an emotional connection to
The last reason is why I think my other two videos have a lot of hits (my girls getting their ears pierced, and my youngest’s first day of getting on the bus)…
…those videos helped nervous young kids around the world see that other kids ‘did it’ and that they would be fine.
Maybe creating a successful video is actually a simple formula:
Create Content to Help Others
Come to think of it, maybe creating a successful life is even simpler:
Live to Help Others
Take a peek at my channel and my popular videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GregHint/videos?flow=grid&view=0&sort=p
What do you think?
