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How to Use YouTube to Build Community

Posted: 28 Mar 2019 10:00 AM PDT

Over the years, YouTube has gone from a simple video uploading platform to a massive social media platform that boasts almost two billion active users each month. It appeals to the likes of all different types of viewers and even the most niche subjects can find a home on YouTube thanks to its diverse audience.

Research conducted by WyzOwl found that 91 percent of marketers consider video an important part of their marketing strategy. It's an engaging type of content and it's known to boost ROI. People have moved away from text and are focused on refreshing visual content. Perhaps that's why YouTube is so overwhelmingly successful, with one billion hours of video watched daily. 

The good news with these huge numbers is that your target audience is most definitely scouring YouTube hoping to find high-quality content that's relevant to their interests. A lot of them may feel like they haven't quite found that sense of community and belonging they want, and that's where you come in.

If you want to learn how to use YouTube to foster a sense of community, here are a few ways to get started.

Match your channel to your brand image

Your YouTube channel is a platform for you to showcase who you are and what your content will be about. Your image lets viewers know right off the bat if your content is something they'd enjoy. It's essential to create an image for your brand and to implement that brand image into all areas of your channel.

Consider your banner, text and links when first creating your YouTube brand. You need all these elements to represent you accurately so you get the right subscribers who are interested in your content and willing to provide engagement. Make sure the way you write your captions, alt text, descriptions and titles all match your brand and how you'd like to be represented. Match your links to your social media, website or other important sites.

You can create a custom-made banner for free in Canva if you're savvy with graphic design. If not, feel free to hire a freelancer on Fiverr who can create one for an affordable price. Review your thumbnails to make sure they're relevant to the videos themselves and accurately represent what they're about.

Create video playlists

YouTube lets you create playlists based off your own videos for a reason, and that's to keep your channel organized for easily accessible content. This boosts your reach because it provides a smooth UX for your audience and lays your content out in a simple, effective way. If it's difficult to find something, users will get frustrated, exit out the page and likely never visit your channel again.

If you haven't already, take advantage of the playlist feature and start organizing your videos by topic. Group similar content together according to themes, challenges or the type of video. Stay away from clickbait material that everyone hates. Make sure your playlists are geared towards your target audience and appeal to their tastes. They should be able to either entertain them or bring them solutions.

Encourage action

In the marketing world, we call nudges in the right direction CTAs or calls to action. They tell viewers exactly what action you want them to take once they've absorbed and explored your content. It leads them to sign up for your email list, check out your website, subscribe to your content and more. CTAs are the key to boosting your conversion rate because they specifically encourage action.

If you aren't including CTAs in your videos, you're losing an opportunity to build community within your channel. It's common at the beginning or end of a YouTube video to hear the person tell viewers to subscribe to their channel or leave a comment, and they're great ways to spark engagement.

Tell your viewers exactly what you want them to do in each video without sounding pushy or bossy. Give them actions that are easy to perform so the chances of converting are higher.

Engage with your audience

Fostering community is about feeling welcome in a group and passing that feeling on to new subscribers. That's why it's important that you make engaging with your audience a regular part of your YouTube routine. Actions such as responding to user comments or speaking to them directly in your videos show your audience you're personable and that there's a real human being behind the screen.

The YouTube comments section can be a hub of interesting, useful information if you know how to leverage it properly. Use it to build your content marketing strategy. Scour the questions users leave in the comments section and use them to create new videos with answers. Then, give a shoutout or tag the users who asked these questions. This will not only boost your content and prove it useful to your audience, but it'll give you new ideas to build on in the future.

Conclusion

YouTube is a fun platform that literally anyone can use to build their brand on. Video marketing is increasing in popularity, and with it comes a higher demand for content. With so much content already out there, it can be difficult to build a community within your brand that feels authentic. However, if you put your audience first, you'll see user engagement and views skyrocket in no time. How will you use YouTube to build community?

7 Business Books to Read This Year

Posted: 28 Mar 2019 09:00 AM PDT

Reading is an essential part of life. It's absolutely necessary if you want to keep your brain healthy, learn new things from different perspectives, and live a well-rounded life. It even has the ability to reduce stress levels by a whopping 68 percent, according to research conducted by the University of Sussex.

Besides reducing your stress levels, your business endeavors can benefit as well. It's common to hear about entrepreneurs and CEOs that read dozens of books each year, and it seems to be a positive pattern among them. Staying on top of the latest business reads keeps you up to date on the latest trends and happenings in your industry. It puts you at an advantage if you know more than your competitors.

Whether your business goals revolve around growing your customer base, improving lead generation or increasing email subscribers and user engagement, all of the following books have great value that anyone can appreciate.

If you want to be more successful in your industry, here are seven business books to read this year.

1. Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

Everyone's experienced – or at least heard a story about – a bad boss or manager who made life at work hell. Perhaps they micromanaged their employees or didn't appreciate their hard work. Then there are bosses who act as leaders of their team and put employees' needs ahead of their own. Sinek wrote the book after speaking with a Marine who told him, "Officers eat last." The book explores what it takes to be a great leader, relating insights from top business leaders all over the world. If you want to be a leader that people admire, this is the read for you.

2. Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown

Becoming a breakout read in 2017, Hacking Growth focuses on how the most popular businesses grew their customer base as well as their revenue. This wasn't based on luck; rather, Ellis and Brown delve into the techniques and tricks you can use to grow your customer base and get your business where you want it to be. The first part of the book covers growth-hacking strategies while the second part explains how to apply the information in the book to your own business. If you're a business owner trying to grow your brand exponentially, Hacking Growth is a must-read.

3. Email Marketing Demystified by Matthew Paulson

Written by email marketing expert Matthew Paulson, Email Marketing Demystified explains how you can build a substantial email list and generate revenue through your email marketing strategy. The book also teaches you how to write compelling copy for your emails that will capture and keep your subscribers' attention. Since your email list is a key to skyrocketing your sales, it also teaches you how to optimize your email marketing funnel so users are pushed through at the right pace. Regardless of the type of business you run, you can't deny that it needs email marketing to boost sales, proving this book to be a valuable read.

4. The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin

Published nearly seven years ago, The Icarus Deception is an important read, because it puts a twist on the genre of business. Seth Godin encourages readers to see the creative side of the work they do, because conformity leads to comfort, and too much comfort leads to laziness. He uses the story of Icarus to illustrate his point: If you don't heed the right advice, it'll burn you, and if you stay too close to the ground where it's comfortable, you'll never take creative chances that could change your life. Godin argues that seeing the creative side in your work is more an attitude than anything, whether you're starting a blog or launching a full-blown startup. The way you think about business can shift your mindset to one that's excited to be part of the business world.

5. The Conversion Code: Capture Internet Leads, Create Quality Appointments, Close More Sales by Chris Smith

With traditional sales and marketing taking a backseat and inbound marketing coming to the forefront, it's important that your business adjusts its conversion strategy appropriately to accommodate your audience. There's no such thing as a successful business without a conversion strategy, and The Conversion Code details how you can achieve your conversion goals and push users further down the sales funnel. It teaches you where to find leads, how to engage with them and how to present your business as the ultimate solution. Learn how to leverage your social media to your business's benefit and convert more leads into paying customers with Smith's actionable tips.

6. How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by John C. Maxwell

If you study successful people with the purpose of trying to determine one common element they all share, it's how they think, states Maxwell. If you want to be successful in the business world, you need to alter and change the way you think. Maxwell stresses that thinking successfully is a discipline that takes time and perseverance, but when you train your mind to think about your accomplishments and hardships in a certain way, it changes your life. This book is a great read if you're trying to train your mind to think positively about your career and future.

7. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

In Outliers, Gladwell interviews highly accomplished individuals to determine what makes them the brightest in their field. How do they distinguish themselves from the rest? Gladwell argues that rather than study successful leaders now after they have achieved success, we should scrutinize how they started their journeys.

Wrapping up

There's tons of great reading material out there to devour, especially about business and how to become a successful entrepreneur. Sometimes the best books about business aren't about being in business at all; they revolve around how to face the fears you have about your career and being the leader you want to be. Reading books about how and who you want to be will enable you to be the person you want to be and have the life you dream of living all while being entertained. What business books will you read this year?

Want to Become a Great Small Business Leader? Start With Your Family

Posted: 28 Mar 2019 09:00 AM PDT

My work and family life have always been intertwined.

My two kids, Blake and Annie, were familiar presences at the offices of companies I ran. And at home, our family always shared the problems we were working on. These could be work- or school-related, or more pertinent to daily life. We'd share them at the dinner table, in the car and at bedtime.

This was no random accident. It was the result of a conscious decision my wife and I made: to raise our children to have a founder's mindset.

A founder's mindset goes beyond business

A "founder" doesn't necessarily need to start a company or disrupt entire industries. I believe anyone can be a founder – as long as he or she can identify problems, determine solutions, and then put those solutions into practice. When people operate with a founder's mindset, they always view the world through this lens. 

When we started our parenting journey, it didn't take long for me to realize that many of the challenges I took on at work – truly motivating employees, fostering collaborative-thinking and prioritizing problems to solve – were the same challenges I dealt with as a father.

If you're a parent, raising children can teach you a lot about small business leadership. Running a business means taking a lot of weight on your shoulders: It's tough to delegate, make difficult decisions and be the one to provide accountability. This is a leader's role.

To my delight, raising my children with a founder's mindset helped me instill the same values in employees and colleagues, and my businesses grew as a result.

When business meets family

In nearly 62 percent of married-couple families, both parents work – meaning work is an inescapable part of family life. Despite this, we often feel discouraged to talk about family at the office. According to Bright Horizons, working parents still fear negative repercussions at work. Thirty-seven percent of parents worry they'll never be promoted again because of family responsibilities, and 22 percent worry that family commitments will cost them important projects.

This ties into the misconception that children interfere with our chances of becoming successful at work, especially if we're vying for a leadership position.

The reality is the complete opposite, of course. Being a parent can actually help us become better leaders and teammates within our small businesses. In fact, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that working mothers actually outperformed their childless counterparts at work.

This makes logical sense. High-performing, long-lasting small businesses tend to function as a family would. And because both families and employees benefit from effective communication skills, why wouldn't we want to take lessons from home and apply them in the workplace?

Applying the founder's mindset at work

Teaching children how to think like founders goes a long way in supporting their development. My wife and I have seen the founder's mindset impact our children's paths: Blake is a successful entrepreneur in the medical industry, and Annie is expanding the nonprofit she founded in college nationwide.

As a small business leader, you can instill the founder's mindset in your team. This doesn't mean you should be "parenting" at work, but it does mean that you can apply the lessons you learn as a parent to a small business environment – and your employees will thank you.

Here are three business leadership tips I learned from raising children to be founders:

1. Identify and solve the right problems

Perhaps the most important part of a founder's mindset is the ability to define the right problem to solve (or the "PTS," as I call it). Whether it's at work or at home, people might not take the time to carefully craft a problem statement.

If your children receive bad grades in math class, the surface-level problem could be that they're not doing their homework, and the PTS could be that they lack the confidence or willingness to ask questions about the class material. To name another example, addressing a curfew challenge with kids might become an argument about time rather than a discussion around driving, getting sufficient sleep or the details of an outing.

You'll find a lot of surface-level problems at work, too. And as a small business leader, it's your job to teach your team how to find and solve the right problems instead.

Let's say you're having trouble filling orders on time. In this case, it might not do much good to tell your teammates to move faster. Instead, encourage them to search and find the PTS. What's actually causing orders to be filled slowly? The solution might be as simple as improving communication practices or conducting a simple time-motion study.

To identify your PTS, be sure to consider your "why." This is crucial not only for finding your PTS, but also for uncovering a solution. Why is it necessary to solve the problem you're mulling over? What will the outcome be if the problem isn't solved? What about if it is solved? Keep asking yourself related questions until you reach a level of abstraction. This will help you examine the PTS at its core.

The important thing is that your teammates work to effectively identify these types of problems on their own. In this way, they're more prepared for the next PTS.

2. Have tough conversations

As parents, we might not always rush to talk with our kids about difficult problems at work or in our relationships. Our first instinct is to not worry our children, right? But every time you skip these conversations, you're depriving children of an opportunity to empathize with you and develop the true PTS – both of which are key parts of the founder's mindset.

Tough conversations are also growth opportunities for professionals: Udemy for Business reports that conflict management is one of the top soft skills employees can have, and CPP Global found U.S. workers spend around three hours mitigating conflicts per week.

To foster this skill in your business, you should be having tough conversations with your team on a regular basis. Talking through issues such as tight budgets, slow sales months or inefficiencies in production processes will encourage employees to take initiative and find solutions. For leaders interested in honing their conversational skills in this arena, the book "Crucial Conversations" is a valuable read.

3. Demonstrate Authenticity Whenever You Can

Do you actively demonstrate your values and live authentically in front of your children? Kids can identify phony behavior just like adults can. This is especially true once they start developing a founder's mindset, which encourages them to be inquisitive and authentic within relationships. If you expect that behavior from your children, they'll demand authenticity from you, too.

This also rings true at the office. People want leaders they can trust, and building that trust starts with authenticity. (After all, it's easy for companies to claim that they're altruistic – even when their actions are purely self-serving.) Show your team members that you're willing to be honest and vulnerable with them, and they'll reciprocate. In the long run, this makes it easier to collaborate at work and tackle problems together.

If it wasn't for my children, I wouldn't have had the same career opportunities. We spent many years teaching each other. Through raising kids and starting businesses, I've often felt that my life has been one continuous adventure – and I've enjoyed applying the same philosophy to both pursuits.

The History of the Photocopier

Posted: 27 Mar 2019 09:00 AM PDT

By now, you've likely read about the incredible potential brought on by 3D printing technology. As the ability to create objects from a mere blueprint becomes increasingly common, you can gain an enormous perspective on how far we come from looking back at where it all began: the photocopier.

Inventor Chester Carlson

On October 22, 1938, inventor Chester Carlson first used static electricity created using a handkerchief, light and dry powder to create a copy. His first experiments were literally explosive. He caused many sulfur fires, and he nearly burned down his apartment.

The inventor later developed spinal arthritis. He kept up his experiments for most of his life while studying law and keeping a regular job. He did patent his experiments though. And in December 1946, he signed the first agreement to license electrophotography technology for commercial use. It would be years before people could actually use this technology as they do now. Until then, secretaries everywhere were stuck using carbon paper to make copies.

Editor's Note: Looking for a digital copier for your business? If you're looking for information to help you choose the one that's right for you, use the questionnaire below to have our sister site, BuyerZone, provide you with information from vendors for free:

 

Xerox, a pioneer in photocopying technology

The photocopier was the transformative office tool of its time. Imagine tackling your work without it – likely having to painstakingly copy every document by hand. Before the copier came into existence, there were numerous attempts at early copy automation, yet all were imperfect. That is, until 1959, the year Xerox released the first "modern" version of the photocopier.

It was called "914," and it was bulky, heavy and hard to use. It was about the size of two washing machines, and some of them literally caught on fire.

The machine used a rotating drum to create an electrostatic copy image. The image was transferred to fresh paper using toner, and then the whole thing was sealed using heat. It could create copies in just seven seconds – not too terribly far off from the printing speeds of copying and printing machines you might purchase today. This was just the beginning of the wonder of photocopying technology, which rapidly hit offices across the country.

A forever changed workplace

In fact, the fast popularity of photocopiers took even Xerox by surprise. The company had estimated that a typical customer would make approximately 2,000 copies a month. But many customers made 10,000 copies, some made 100,000 copies. The technology had taken off.

Beyond making copies easy to obtain, the photocopier changed work cultures and workflows. Prior to the invention, single hard copies of a document would slowly make its way around the office. Keeping track of who viewed it (or approved it) was a completely manual process. The photocopier, in many ways, was the earliest tip of the sharing and collaboration boom. Knowledge – such as magazine articles, letters and news clips – could be easily copied and shared.

Why? It was more like, "Why not?" The photocopier was there, simply waiting to be used. [Interested in a copy machine? Check out our best picks.]

Competitors join the market.

It wasn't until the 1970s that other technology companies joined the fun. Companies such as Canon and Minolta released their own photocopiers – yet, Xerox continued to dominate the market. However, over time, these competing technologies improved, and consumers eventually had access to a wide range of photocopier models, including low-end units to enterprise models.

And, despite the advent of scanners and document digitization, the use of paper perseveres. In fact, one study reports that "73 percent of the 'owners and decision-makers' at companies with fewer than 500 employees print at least four times per day."

Today's copiers

These devices are now more like multifunction devices. They are often known as an all-in-one. They copy, print, fax and scan from one place. Many modern photocopiers can track usage to reduce unnecessary printing and copying. And the most advanced machines tend to come with a digital touchscreen display, wireless accessibility and other user-friendly features.

The machines can range wildly in price, and many printer companies offer numerous configuration options, allowing companies to customize their machines to meet a business's needs. And companies that don't have the cash on hand to buy a machine might lease them instead.
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