Mission #1: A Movement for a world with more peace, well-being and happiness begins when you invite all your most positive and proactive friends to join us!
For one, just post it to various relevant subreddits asking for community to help put resources in their area.
Another is to pick one or two places in various cities, add them manually to your map, and cold email them asking for help. Be very brief and to the point in your request, just tell them in 1 sentence what the map is, say that you added their site as a resource because you respect what they do, and ask them if they could add 1 or more sites in their area they would recommend. Right now you need more resources for users to find it useful, so growing that list is key. I’ll add some I know in the NYC area, too.
“Heartfulness” is a pretty cool thing to check out, it’s a form of Indian meditation that has centers all over the world, all run by volunteers. I’ve done it several times and loved it. Here’s their site:https://heartfulness.org/us/
And ask your friends and teammates to find centers and reach out, too. But you’re the creator right? so it’s also nice that you personally reach out to people as well. This is something you could do like 1 cold email a day, or in bulk every Friday, etc. Consistency over time is key for that I think.
BANNER IDEA: It feels very stock photo and corporate, not right for your branding. Get a good group shot from a community!
Regarding your YouTube channel, I have some thoughts:
You should a trailer for your YouTube channel on your homepage.
Also, on your about page YouTube isn’t connecting for some reason, figure out why
Your homepage should have a video that is an interview with you, the creator, and maybe anyone else that is a key figure, talking about what you’re trying to do and why. I found your “Intro video” and that’s basically what I’m talking about. That should be featured on your homepage so anyone who checks out your channel sees that video and learns what you are about. That one’s from 2014 though, you should make a new one every year to keep it fresh. Use key footage from videos This should be your next video endeavor, put everything else with this on pause. You can write a script and send it to me, I’m happy to offer my thoughts to make sure your message is crystal clear & encouraging people to subscribe.
Don’t be afraid to make videos about YOU. You seem like a super interesting guy and I’m intrigued by your mission and the lifestyle you live. So an occasional vlog-style video, or putting some vlogging into the videos you make might be a great idea.
Make sure to film everything horizontal, vertical videos really don’t work well on YouTube.
END SCREENS. No matter what you do, you should have end screens. Put one that shows your most recent video, and one that lets YouTube pick the best video for them, along with a subscription button. Check out this video for steps.
Focus on established non-profits that are relevant. Tell nonprofits that you are going to make a video on them because you respect what they do and ask if they’d like to participate. (Don’t ask if you can, just do it!) For example, I am thinking of going to meditation centers and doing videos having them walk me through their style of meditation, and then give a reaction to it and encourage people to try it.
Research for topics. My niche might be a little simpler, but to give you an example I try to find questions that people are asking regarding to getting their life organized & find inner peace, so I look at subreddits to find questions that a lot of people upvote, that means a lot of people want to know the answer to that question. If you are talking about homelessness, what are people saying about homelessness right now? What’s the ongoing dialogue, and what do you have to say & contribute? That sort of thing.
Really think about your audience. Who are you trying to reach? You can’t reach EVERYBODY, unfortunately, you have to choose. But when you choose, you have a bigger impact on a smaller amount of people. Over time, your influence grows and your videos
Gotta think about your youtube channel like a business. That doesn’t mean you have to make money off it, but essentially that mindset is key to growth. It’s the same of all artistic, creative people like you and me. We have to kind of reprogram our brain to think differently about growth. But don’t worry, you won’t become cold hard calloused lol. But IMO there is a compromise there, you have to compromise a bit of your idealism for a bit of realism, but the end result is you are reaching a broader audience and having a bigger impact. That means studying business and sales, and then applying those principles to what you’re trying to do. We live in a capitalistic society, so if you want to play the game you have to learn the rules. I’m speaking mostly out of my own revelations, so my apologies if I’m making any assumptions!
What videos gave you subs? I just subscribed today, FYI! Which videos gave you the most subscriptions? You can figure that out in analytics.
Copy successful videos. I think it’s fine if you want to grow to test out different formulas and ways of making videos. I think looking at similar platforms that have a huge audience, I’m thinking of “Now This” but anything you can think of, copy their style of videomaking. Grow grow grow your filmmaking skills and visual storytelling skills.
Find mentors. Reach out to award winning visual storytellers and ask them for tips. If there’s someone in your area, reach out and ask if you can give them a hand on their next filming. Most often people will say “No” but the occasional “Yes” will teach you so much. And at the very least, you can build a mentorship base that way. I see your videos growing over the years, but I think you’re capable of a lot more!
Don’t give up! I know you haven’t, and I’m impressed with the depth of content you’ve been making. Keep learning, keep asking for tips, keep making connections.
Consume a LOT of youtube tutorial videos. I highly, highly recommend “Video Creators” as a resource, seriously binge watch their videos with a notebook. I linked to one of their videos above.
Thanks for letting me be admin. I took a peak around and have a few more thoughts:
I noticed lately you’ve had days where you upload 2-3 videos at the same time, which is awesome! But If you have multiple videos to upload at once, SCHEDULE them at least 1 week apart.
Try to come up with a game plan to post weekly. I actually have 3 channels I make content for, and I bought a month calendar so I can visualize what I want to plan, and make deadlines for myself. Consistency is really key. Even though some of my newer videos aren’t getting subs specifically, the FACT that I have weekly videos encourages people to subscribe.
Where have your views been coming from? On Monday January 28th, what social media stuff did you do? I see a spike for views then. Was it just the reddit post or were there other places?
i posted on Reddit, and our Facebook channel which auto-posts to Twitter. I was also sending the video directly to people at The World Economic Forum. I think the small boost at the beginning also brought in viewers directly from Youtube.
We have lots of footage. I am not good enough at video production to turn them into videos worth posting.
We can get around that if:
I do some personal videos, talking about our project.
we seek video productions students to join in and play with/use our footage to create vids and post them. They can also use our Public Happiness ideas to film their own footage.
I also have footage explaining most of the activities we do - how to guides - but the audio had too much background noise. I can re-record the audio and post one of those a week for around 10 weeks.
oh, we also have a lot of connected and supporting groups with far higher viewership. I’m not totally sure how to leverage that, maybe someone could organise interview us via livestream and we could post it to our channel and share to theirs??
@mrnickle feel welcome to make changes and improvements to the youtube platform. For the beginning, unless it’s an obvious one, can you explain the change here 1st so i can make sure the channel moves forwards in a direction which aligns with our vision
@mrnickle if you click on the Trello link you’ll see lots of fairly outdated tasks. We can use this space to begin coordinating a plan. You videos sound perfect for sharing on the channel, send them over to me 1st before posting them on the focallocal channel though please.
also, if you see any of our vids that would fit yours feel welcome to share them to your channel
@mrnickle the login on focallocal.org is fixed thanks to Tom. In future builds we’re going to embed a video player above each page/event/group which should naturally massively boost our videos viewage stats. That will likely be a few months away though.
No, but we can easily create one in Trello (where we do project planning, until we can built into this platform). Next i was going to follow up on last weeks video, and also begin posting event how to guides i filmed a while back.
totally open to ideas though
i just need to voice over them as the wind was terrible
@ndajiya Here’s the old board from before i shut the team down to focus on the website build (which is launching right now, and why i begun focusing on the youtube channel).
It’s more for those making videos. Not sure if that’s the best one to use, or create one specifically for Social Media.
the events listed are for past events we have footage from but haven’t created a video for. we have thousands of hours of past footage (mostly not great filming quality though) which was never turned into videos
My initial thoughts are to turn @mrnickle’s suggestions into a working plan and schedule on Trello, of course with space for your input.
I think improving the appearance of the channel would be the most helpful 1st task. I’ve recorded an intro for our documentary, but i’ll do it again on film to give new visitors a welcome.