youtube – Fiona Z – The Musician’s Five Star Assistant

6 Ways to Amp Up Your YouTube Channel

YouTube is one of the most important social media platforms you could have as an artist – almost 5 billion videos are watched every single day, so you know you can’t miss out on your fanbase there!

While we all know to update our channel banners, utilize ads for your videos and include YouTube cards to promote your album, there are even more things you can do to make sure your YouTube channel is to the max in its ability to be found by your fans and shared with the world. Let’s get to it!

1) Make a channel trailer (2 min or less):
This can either be a direct call to action for new users to subscribe to your channel or a compilation of videos from your channel. Most artists starting out do the direct call to action asking viewers to subscribe to their channel. Once you make a channel trailer you’ll be able to effectively use the channel ad feature! This can automatically play whenever anyone who hasn’t already subscribed to your channel goes to your channel, and you can also make it eligible for free advertising from YouTube!

Example 1 and Example 2

It can take some time to make a really effective channel trailer, so in the meantime you can apply the “other five”…

2) Channel Keywords – utilize and really think about what keywords you want to describe your channel. Include similar artists and/or interests that you followers are into.

3) Branding Watermark – you can make sure every video has your logo. Get your logo with white and transparent background, and upload it as your watermark. Voila! Every video is branded – don’t worry, it’s subtle!

4) Associated Website – link your website to your channel! If you have a website you’d like to use for cards and annotations, this will also help your legitimacy in search results both on Google and YouTube.

5) Connected Accounts – right under your banner, you may notice small icons to your other accounts like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Make sure all the important links are there, including where people can buy your music!

6) Subscribe to other channels – yes, you must give to receive. Add similar artist’s channels to your featured artist channels. With users spending on average 40 minutes on YouTube, they could use that time to find your channel through a similar artist!

That’s it! See, I told you they were small…yet very important in order to utilize your YouTube channel as best you can, especially if you are heavy on promoting your music there. I hope you use them and be on your way to see your channel grow!

Social Media - 06/21/2016

Where Youtube could be headed and where you can go instead (for Indie Musicians)

I hope all is well in your world and that you had a wonderful holiday weekend last week. I had a great weekend with my newly adopted dog and friends, making the trek to Prospect Park and spending the day BBQ’ing. Summer is in high gear and I’m loving it.I’m also going to be taking a trip soon to visit my 90 year old grandfather in Germany! This year for me has been about taking the time to see the ones I love, so I’m very excited to be able to go and see a part of my family that I haven’t seen in about 5 or 6 years.

Okay, back to business and why I’m here writing to you today. If you’ve been following the news, you know that YouTube recently announced they are going to be rolling out a new paid service – said to be called YouTube Music Pass – and be fully launched by the end of the year. For music videos, labels (both major and indie) will have to agree to licensing terms which apparently are not in the independent musician’s favor.

Ever since that announcement and their decision to ultimately force all labels to sign this deal, there’s been a hugh uproar and controversy to what YouTube is doing. Indie labels and the like have spoken against the move, and as a result, YouTube has postponed the move, but as this article says, I’m only wondering: for how long?

Every advancement in the music industry has been an uphill struggle with everyone (the advancement of radio, recordings, mp3s, streaming, all of it!), so I think yes, let’s let YouTube know that it’s unfair and that indie musicians aren’t getting the good end of the deal, but realize that we have alternatives – they may not be run by Google, but it doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to put your music videos out there for discovery or enjoyment.

I’m on the side of the conclusion of this article in Buzzfeed, stating:

So far, the streaming services that have been the most widely adopted and long-lasting are the ones that have treated all copyright owners fairly. And until better data is available on who is streaming what and how often, any service that plays favorites based on an old paradigm is gambling with its own life. For once, the great equalizer here may just be the free market.

“If you look at the services that are really making an impact, they haven’t pushed independents off to the side of the business,” said Caldas. “They’re putting independent artists right next to any other type of artist and letting people listen to and discover them based on the merits. That’s the future.”

While we can’t predict the future, I think it’s important to remember that there are alternative and an audience on other platforms that you can start building right now.

What are your alternatives? View below:

Vimeo
Free to register, can opt for paid account, third largest video site in the world. The Pro account allows you to choose pay per view option.

DailyMotion
Free to register, familiar layout, second largest video site in the world. You can earn money by signing up for their OpenVOD program.

Vube
Completely free to register and upload. Just launched last year and quickly grew to the top 100 visited sites. I see that they are building contests on the site to encourage higher quality contenct and no pay per view options are available (yet). Could be the one to watch.

What are your thoughts? What do you think the best alternative is? I’d love to hear from you, comment below!

Business Tips / Social Media - 07/12/2014

7 Ways a VA Can Create Your Best YouTube Trailer

(Shared on Music Think Tank)

Ah, Youtube. Where more than 1 billion unique users visit each month and over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth.

Chances are you have an account but since they upgraded all channels to Youtube One back in June of 2013, I bet you $10 you haven’t gotten around to uploading a killer promo trailer to drive in subscriptions to your channel. Did I just get a free lunch?

So, why is it important to have a YouTube trailer?

A YouTube trailer is your moment to create a new fan. And with booking agents and festivals looking at social media numbers, you want to be able to grow your following whenever you can. Plus, you could probably use this trailer to promote yourself – a video EPK if you will – which can make you stand out from the other applicants.

I am all about musician’s finding support in their careers, sharing the importance of having an assistant as a musician and how they can create time in the day for you.

Having a virtual assistant could make creating a Youtube trailer practicallypainless, quick and effective. While you are writing a new song or practicing a new riff, your VA could be taking care of this with minimal direction.

Today, I’m going to show you the best way to work with a VA to get you a great video promotional trailer in now time. With free and low cost tools like iMovie and Final Cut Pro, even if your assistant isn’t quite a pro, they are very user friendly.

Here are some tips to make the process go smoothly for you and your VA:

1. Make sure they are comfortable with a video editing program.

They don’t need to know how to create flashy effects, but make sure they can fade in / fade out, add text, and trim clips. These are the very basics and what you’ll need to make a great video. How do you make sure? ASK! If they say yes, ask to see examples. If they say no, ask them if they are willing to learn. You can ‘test them out’ by asking to clip a video you have to make it shorter, or ask to combine two videos fading in and out of each other.

2. Select what videos you want to feature.

One client I work with has over 180 videos on his channel. Another has 8. With either situation, you can create a fantastic video. What to focus on is quality, energy and what best reflects you as an artist! With my client with nearly 200 videos uploaded, we focused on the top 10 viewed videos of all time. I’m going to assume you don’t have nearly that many and we’ll go into what you need to include from the videos you do have.

3. Find the following in your videos.

Live footage – Quality is key here. Find your greatest, powerful and most beautiful moments on stage.
The crowd and/or fans – Get footage of fans excited to see you. Of crowds jumping up and down. You want their energy and enthusiasm to convert visitors to also become a fan.
Your top viewed music video – Show a successful video that made it mainstream or a well produced music video. This shows professionalism to your fans.
Your personality – Do you have any clips of you on the road, joking around with the band? How about backstage jokes or interview bloopers? Show your fans a glimpse into your personality so they can relate to you. Double points for showing something entirely unique, like a trick or special talent other than you music.

4. Give exact clip markers of what you want to use to your assistant.

Give exact time markers, for example:

“In my music video, “Seven Stars”, pull 1:29 to 1:56.”

This will guarantee you will see exactly what you want.

5. Order up the clips

If you know the order you’d like to go in with the clips you’ve chosen, give your assistant those directions. If not, let them be creative and put something together first. Sometimes it is easier to know what you want going that route and after you’ve seen something, you can arrange it to exactly what you’d like.

6. Add any text

Once you get the flow of the video down, now is the time to add any intro or outro text, press quotes within the video and/or links to your sites. You don’t want a ton of this, but if you’ve got an awesome quote from New York Times saying you’re the best show in town, you’ll want to tell that!

7. Keep an eye on the clock.

My final piece of advice is on the length of the Youtube Trailer. There’s no exact length limit, but the shorter the better. I would recommend nothing over 2 to 2.5 minutes and with that you should be able to fit only the best clips within that time frame.

Put your assistant to work and create a fabulous and unique video that you can share to get noticed!

Social Media - 02/13/2014