Kelly Speaks – Page 53 – Self Publishing Advisor

Advocacy in Self-Publishing, Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Marketing, Book Promotion, Book Promotion Strategy, Book Reviews, goodreads, Kelly Speaks, Social Media Marketing

An Indie Author’s Social Media Primer | Goodreads

In contrast to last week’s post, which looked at a social media platform that is less-used (might I even say underused?) by indie and self-published authors, this week we’ll be examining the other end of the spectrum–at a platform that has been mined so often and so thoroughly for its marketing potential that setting up a profile has almost become a requirement. I’m talking about Goodreads, if you haven’t already guessed, a website we’ve looked at before on Self Publishing Advisor. Fortunately for us and for you, however, it’s a website that keeps evolving, and keeps generating new possibilities. I can definitively say that most authors know some of the buzz about Goodreads, but very few know all of the ways in which this platform can be of use.

For those of you who are new to Goodreads (and don’t be ashamed if you are, despite what I just said about authors definitively knowing things–there’s always going to be some new corner of the Internet to explore!), what is this website? In short, it’s a cross between Facebook and Amazon for readers and writers and those involved in the dissemination of books. All users can create profiles, log the books they’ve read or are reading or want to read, rating them out of five stars and posting book reviews as they go. You can find your friends by interlinking your Goodreads account with Facebook or Twitter or Amazon, or by using their email addresses. (Goodreads was purchased after its stratospheric rise by Amazon, so a lot of its features (like reviews and “buy from these retailers” links) are already well-integrated into that other behemoth of the book industry.)

Authors get even a little more love, in that they can create specialized “Author Pages” that list their books (including pictures of their book covers), link to blog posts, and allow authors to create and manage book giveaways. Goodreads is so passionate about making promotion easy for authors that it has even put together a comprehensive web page describing how to best use their features–you can find that here–and have left me almost nothing to add except a little style and flourish.

No, that’s a lie. I still have a lot to say about Goodreads!

Debunking the Great Goodreads Myth: “If I have Facebook and Amazon, I don’t really need another spot to store all my book recommendations, do I?”

Oh, but there’s something so incredibly satisfying about falling into a community that shares your passion for literature, isn’t there? Amazon was created to sell things, and its “social” structures were integrated into that website after they were proven to be marketable. Facebook was created to be social, and its “profitable” structures were integrated into that website after they were proven to have social elements. Goodreads, on the other hand, was designed around the reading experience, to aid and abet readers and writers in sharing their love of literature. Both social and marketable elements shaped the platform’s earliest concepts, and so the fusion of these two aspects is 100% seamless. To be sure, it won’t replace your Facebook or your Amazon account, but it occupies a third space–and an equally compelling one, in my opinion. It fills a niche and fills it perfectly.

Top 5 Best Practices:

1. Set up an author page. Do it. There’s no excuse not to, not when the resources are literally right there at your fingertips, delivered on a platinum platter by Goodreads’ own staff. And if you’ve already published books, don’t worry–you can “capture” existing books in the system and take ownership of them, even if one of your readers has beaten you to entering the vital statistics into the system. And if you run into trouble, the Goodreads staff are always quick to respond to both emails and posts in their help forums. There’s a seemingly endless list of possible situations that the staff will troubleshoot for you. Remember all of my past references to “findability”? Setting up a Goodreads author page and filling in as many of the empty fields as possible will, without fail, make you more findable. Have you googled a book recently? More than half of the top search results for the average book link back to Goodreads–reviews, book pages, author pages, and forum posts.

2. Be a reader–an active reader. Quite apart to the other benefits of being an avid reader (which I’m sure you are, already!), being an active reader on Goodreads has some serious benefits for your self-promotion methods. The more books you review–actually review, not just leave a three- or five-star rating–the more people will see your name and follow the name back to your author page, and land on your books. Even established authors with big followings will benefit from reading and from using Goodreads as the tool it was designed to be–a platform for sharing one’s passion for the printed (or digitized) word. Other readers pick up on passion, enthusiasm, and authenticity. I have been followed by a whole host of strangers on Goodreads who see my reviews, and you can bet they form a perfect nucleus of potential new readers.

3. Encourage your readers and followers to write reviews. Elsewhere, even offline or apart from Goodreads, reviews are a wonderful–or even necessary–component of a sound marketing strategy. Whenever you click on a book page in Goodreads, you’re delivered a whole sheaf of reviews, and the ones with the most “likes” are prioritized by the website to be displayed at the top of the sheaf. Other readers and respond to reviews by liking, or by replying with their own comments. However you incentivize the posting of reviews on your own books (see my next point), make sure that you do incentivize it! At the very least, encourage your readers to check out your Goodreads author page. The more people who interact there, the more links and metadata that is generated, and the more “findable” you are through indexing search engines like Google and Bing!

4. Host a giveaway! I’ll admit it, I’m a giveaway addict. (And I know I’m not alone–FREE BOOKS?!?! Who wouldn’t be?!) Goodreads makes hosting a giveaway so incredibly easy. I will sit there for hours perusing the list of upcoming giveaways, signing myself up and crossing my fingers that I win this or that one. New readers will find you simply by virtue of the fact you’re holding a giveaway … and this is before you even let your existing fans and social media followers know that they can enter! (And again, don’t be afraid of the Goodreads forums. There’s a lot of excellent information to mine there.) You can only host a giveaway if you’re a book’s author or a bookseller, and there’s a heavy emphasis on giving away new books, upcoming releases, and new editions of previously published books. By limiting giveaways in this way, Goodreads has cultivated a certain level of respectability and credibility that you won’t find in a lot of other places.

5. Join a group. Goodreads is built around networking, so make sure to take full advantage of all of the networking options on the website–whether that’s creating a book list through Listopia, or posting reviews of books you’re reading, or posting blogs to your author page, or joining a group. The groups are where a lot of the fun happens, and you can find a group to fit even the most specific interest. There are book groups based on genres, on careers (librarians and booksellers are well-represented, as you might expect), on where you live or used to live (the LA Transplants book club group looks quite interesting), what you do in your leisure time, and, of course, a whole bunch of groups that cater specifically to you, the indie or self-published author (including this one!). If you haven’t already found “your people,” you might just find them in a Goodreads Group. You’ll find encouragement, information, instruction, and feedback. The key to a good group experience is, as with all things social media, living as authentically online as you do offline.

Most Overlooked Feature:

In my mind, this one comes down to two possibilities: Goodreads Events, and Listopia. In some ways, I feel as though Listopia is on its way out while Events is still quietly going strong and perhaps growing in its possible offerings. In essence, you can use Events to organize real-life or digital meetups, including book readings and sales or online promotions. You get to invite both current Goodreads users as well as non-users (by sharing the link), and you can manage each event to meet your personal preferences for a “public” versus “private” or “restricted” guest list. Yes, Facebook also provides options for event invitations and meetups, but they’re less specific to the book industry–and, simultaneously, less likely to be stumbled-upon by new readers. In any case, you can’t hurt your chances by trying it out!

I hope you’ll join me in building this Social Media Primer! If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line at selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com. And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of social media know-how. ♠

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com.

Elise Speaks, from the archives, Kelly Speaks

From the Archives: “How Much Do Self-Published Authors Make Per Year?”

Welcome to our new Tuesday segment, where we’ll be revisiting some of our most popular posts from the last few years. What’s stayed the same? And what’s changed? We’ll be updating you on the facts, and taking a new (and hopefully refreshing) angle on a few timeless classics of Self Publishing Advisor.

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[ Originally posted: July 13th, 2011 ]

You want to become a self-published author, but you also have bills to pay and a lifestyle to maintain. So you pull up Google (or your search engine of choice), and search for “average income for book authors” or “average income for self-published authors”. You skim the results but can’t find any solid statistics. There’s a good reason why. Ready for it? Authors aren’t paid a salary. They earn royalties based on the sales of their book. These royalties are paid to them on a set schedule – usually provided that they meet the agreed upon “minimum earning threshold”.

So, will I be able to pay my bills if I become a self-published author? That’s an excellent question. Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” answer to it. When you publish a book, you are essentially taking a “gamble” on yourself. Many authors keep their day jobs until they are able to earn enough to support themselves on their book sales alone. One dedicated Outskirts Press author made $100,000 in only 180 days (6 months). However, there are some authors who don’t earn anywhere near this amount in a year. Furthermore, there are some authors who may not sell even one book over the course of a year.

How do you know where you fall? Self-publishing is all about investing in yourself. Given that successfully publishing a book involves 20% writing and 80% marketing, you should naturally spend most of your time/money on promoting the book after you write it. If you need help, you may consider enlisting the services of a book marketing consultant.

The income of a self-publishing author is 100% in their own hands. No one can “predict” how much you will earn as that is only a result of two things: the quality of your book and substantial effort in marketing it to the right audience.

Four years (and a few weeks) have passed since Elise first posted this blog about potential profits in self-publishing, and everything she wrote about then still holds up today. But if you were looking for some statistics or some hard data to back up her assertions, consider the following information mined from a 2013 Forbes article:

20% of self-published authors reported making no income at all from their writing, with a median income of under $5,000.
traditionally published authors had a median income of between $5,000 and $9,999.
hybrid authors–those who self-publish through a company like Outskirts Press–had a median income of between $15,000 to $19,999.
of authors who self-published, 1.8% made over $100,000 from their writing (in 2012); of traditionally published authors, 8.8% made a comparable amount; outdistancing the pack, hybrid authors performed the best, with 13.2% making over $100,000 in the same year.

The Forbes article stressed that theirs was an “non-scientific” sampling, so as not to be construed as “nationally representative” or even wholly accurate. Still, when you look at the data, you can’t help but be impressed by one thing: hybrid authors are making out like bandits, comparatively! We shouldn’t be discouraged by the first point, as the numbers don’t look all that great for traditionally published authors when it comes to profit and loss.

Take a look at this article from Publishing Perspectives, which includes a beautiful little infographic breaking down earnings by price bracket. Those authors who make no money at all are fairly similar between traditional and self-publishing groups, but drop dramatically in the hybrid bracket. On the whole, hybrid publishing platforms tend to spread out the earnings, percentage-wise, whereas self-published and even traditionally-published markets clump authors together into the lower income brackets. (All but the Lucky Few, that is.)

All this to say, there’s been a shift in the last five years away from “strictly” traditional and “strictly” self-published modes of authorship. The advent of indie and hybrid publishing–the diversification of the entire publishing system–has created more opportunities and more middle ground for authors who want to remain in control of the creative process. None of this impacts Elise’s sound recommendation to stick to the 20/80 ratio (20% writing, 80% marketing)–but it does provide food for thought when it comes to offloading some of that marketing to professionals. It’s no longer a question of “Can I find a niche?” but rather “Who is going to market my book most effectively?” The answer isn’t always what you might think. ♠

Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Promotion, Book Promotion Strategy, Kelly Speaks, pinterest, Social Media Marketing

An Indie Author’s Social Media Primer | Pinterest

We’re not the first to write about the ways in which you can use Pinterest to help market your book, and we won’t be the last. Why? Because books are first and foremost a tangible object with incredible visual (and tactile) appeal, and Pinterest is a social media platform designed and built to showcase beautiful things. Emphasis on “things.” Pinterest is often described as a kind of digital bulletin board, and whether or not you actually use bulletin boards in real life, it is a powerful tool for collecting objects–most of them real and actual physical objects–together into one easy-to-access-and-modify place. It may not have been specifically designed for books, but Pinterest is definitely a book-lover’s dream … and a haven, too, for self-published authors.

How does Pinterest work? Users create profiles, find and follow their friends, and have the freedom to tag these friends when “pinning,” not to mention respond to or “re-pin” these friends’ “pins.” You can create just one Pinterest “board,” or many. You can even determine which ones are public and which ones are private, and invite your friends to pin to your private boards with you! (As with every other social media platform, Pinterest has created its own semi-exclusive vocabulary.) Depending on whether you’re using the mobile interface on your smartphones or other smart devices, or whether you’re using the desktop interface on your computer or laptop, these pins are displayed tiled across your screen in a visual “feed.” So far, you’ll note that Pinterest provides many of the same services as any other platform–like Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter–only with a more visual twist. In fact, I would say that Pinterest resonates with Instagram the most, since both of these mediums were designed exclusively to showcase visual content, and as such have attracted users of a more artistic bent.

So, how does the indie, hybrid, or self-published author take advantage of Pinterest? First, we have to address a certain … stigma … that Pinterest has acquired.

Debunking the Great Pinterest Myth: “Isn’t it mostly just recipes and wedding ideas?”

Forbes has published an article on it. So has the London School of Economics. And a whole host of marketing professionals (such as SiteLogicMarketing). In the United States, yes, some 83% of Pinterest users were female–but in the UK? That number drops to 44% female. And even in the predominantly female American user base, many big brands are making use of Pinterest to market meaningfully to men. In her Forbes article, Michelle Greenwald writes that Pinterest’s emphasis on “lifestyle” makes it prime territory for companies to “[add] brand value and [communicate] all the ways the brand can fit into its customers’ lives.” Yes, wedding companies and Etsy entrepreneurs and watercolorists have a good handle on the marketing potential of Pinterest, but so too do companies like Bit9, Go Pro, ESPN, IBM, and GE. When push comes to shove, purchasing a new washing machine or scoping out a new piece of tech is just as much a lifestyle-building decision as collecting ideas for bridal bouquets.

Top 5 Best Practices:

1. Take advantage of your own cover art. Your book is beautiful. Own it! Throwing together a Pinterest board that features your own book’s cover art should be amongst the first things you do with Pinterest as an author; the existing visual impact of your book is simply too great a resource to waste! You can fill the board up with illustrated quotations from your book, or perhaps photographs of your book in various locations–out “in the field, in its natural habitat” so to speak. And don’t forget about your book trailer, if you have one!

2. Put together an “inspiration board.” What inspires you when you’re writing? Art? Music? A really well-executed NPR interview? Set the mood for both you and your readers by putting together an inspiration board that features images, sounds, and atmospheres that evoke the world you’ve created within the pages of your book. You know those playlists that authors will put together to go with their books? An inspiration board is kind of like a playlist, only the content can be much more varied (and usually, much more visual!).

3. Pin contests and giveaways. There are all kinds of giveaways, contests, and sweepstakes running on Pinterest at any given moment, but often the most exciting ones involve books! Consider offering ARCs (Advance Reading Copies), singly or in bundles, to your readers via a Pinterest contest–and to enter, perhaps challenge each contestant to pin a picture of themselves holding your book in their favorite reading nook or space. This kind of contest turns into loads of free marketing for you, in part because it requires creative thinking and engagement on the part of your readers, and in part because for every person who enters and pins a picture, dozens more of their friends and family will be exposed to your book as it crops up in their Pinterest feeds. Just be sure you know how to navigate the fair use guidelines and contest requirements as stated by Pinterest!

4. Never underestimate the power of similarity. Those “if you like this, why don’t you try this?” ads are on to something, and Pinterest-savvy authors are taking note. One of the best things you can do on Pinterest is to dedicate a board to books that resonate with yours. Pin books (or book covers, with their Amazon listings linked in the descriptions, to be more specific) of the same genre, or featuring characters you like, or that employ plot devices that somehow exist in conversation with those you use. What purpose does this serve? As with any social media platform, you have to do a little creative manipulation to make yourself “findable” by your ideal readers. The more links you generate, the more connections you make easily accessible, the more people will find you and follow you on Pinterest. And don’t be afraid to “send” pins to or otherwise get in contact with other pinners whose interests resonate with your own; the worst thing someone can say is “no, I’m not interested in featuring your pin on my board of recently self-published historical fiction novels” … but they might be eager to pin it! You won’t know until you ask.

5. Don’t be afraid to set up or convert to a “Business” account. That’s right, Pinterest is doing its best to make it easy for you to build your brand! There are certain advantages to using a Business Profile as opposed to a Personal Profile, including access to analytics and other platform-specific tools that help you track what pinning activities are proving successful, and how to focus your time, energy, and attention where it’s going to do the most good.

Most Overlooked Feature:

If you haven’t heard of your “source page,” then you’re missing out! Pinterest sends out notifications when users re-pin your pins, but often these notifications don’t actually tell you how many users are pinning directly from your page and how many are re-pinning from other peoples’ feeds or from Pinterest’s built-in “suggestion” algorithms. Your source page is pinterest.com/yoursite.com, so if your username was “selfpublishingchampion,” your source page would be pinterest.com/selfpublishingchampion.com. Hop on over to your source page to see which pins are or are not performing well on Pinterest–it’s a good sign if users are pinning directly from your site, since that means they’re more likely to have seen more than just the one pin; they will have seen more of the content surrounding your book!

from the archives, Kelly Speaks

From the Archives: “Self-Publishing Success for The Shack”

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[ Originally posted: June 14th, 2009 ]

You can’t walk through WalMart or browse through an online bookstore without catching a glimpse of The Shack. This 256 page novel was written by William P. Young, a former salesman, and self-published with the help of two business associates. Once copied and bound at Kinko’s, The Shack is now a New York Times Bestseller.

Published under an imprint, Windblown Media, created by Young and two former pastors, The Shack had a $300 marketing budget. The three embarked on a viral marketing campaign (word-of-mouth, church-to-church, blog-to-blog) to get copies out.

The moral of the story: as a self-published author, you’ve got to know your readers, discover how to reach them and start spreading the word.

Not every self-published author aspires to be like Young, and for those who do, the chances may be one in a million. However, The Shack proves that traditional publishing is not the only path to success for authors.

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Back in 2009, when The Shack was still a relatively recent publication–and international phenomenon–we posted this tiny little blog as a kind of preface for a future blog series on viral marketing. (See those posts here, here, and here.) Little did we know just how big of a deal The Shack was going to become–after it was picked up by Hachette, it had sold more than 1 million copies as of June 2008, and 10 million copies as of January 2012. Long before it was a commercial success in the hands of a big publishing company, however, The Shack was already doing splendidly.

We already know the story–how William Paul Young wrote an early version of The Shack and showed his wife, who told he needed to share it, so he made 15 photocopies that ended up circulating amongst their friends and their friends’ friends until Young felt compelled to ask the question: “Should I make a serious attempt at publication?” And how he approached a pastor, Wayne Jacobson, for his advice–and then they ended up starting their own publishing house (Windblown Media) to print and distribute the book. The rest, as they say, is history.

Only, that isn’t … quite … everything. While The Shack certainly saw more bookshelves than it would have otherwise once it had the might and heft of Hachette behind it, that isn’t to say it wasn’t an enormous self-publishing success long before it became a commercial success. Before Hachette took it on, The Shack had a marketing budget of only $300 dollars–an amount which paid for its website and little else. Young, Jacobson, and fellow pastor Brad Cummings covered the initial printing costs and footed the bill to create Windblown Media by maxing out 12 personal credit cards. Together, they sold the first 1,000 copies directly from that $300 website, and sold the initial print run of 11,000 copies in around 120 days. Their second print run of 22,000 sold out in fewer than 60. Their third print run of 33,000 was gone in 30 days. All of these books were sold through simple word-of-mouth and the book’s website. Donald Hughes of ChristianWritingToday.com writes that despite some legal disputes over the division of funds, “these men were present at a Christian self-publishing miracle, one that brings hope to many Christian authors.”

If we’re going to talk about the legacy of The Shack, the language of faith and miracles seems on point in more than one respect. The book is deeply religious in content, yes, but its impact can provide inspiration for authors of all faiths and creeds (or lack thereof). And even now, all these years later, The Shack is still moving copies. It’s even being adapted into a movie with a big budget and a Hollywood cast headed up by A-listers Sam Worthington (of Avatar fame) and Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer (of The Help … and many other films). The Shack is what it is because it found its ideal audience, and because its author was unafraid to write the book he really wanted to write–not just the book that publishers and agents wanted him to write.

We wrote about Young and The Shack back in 2009, but in 2015 this truth remains the same: The Shack is lauded as “intriguing,” “thought-provoking,” and “compelling” because self-publishing gave it a platform that traditional publishing did not; in choosing not to eradicate what made his book different and counter-cultural, Young made a deliberate choice not to give in to the industrial forces that erase authors from their own publishing experience. If you take anything away from Young’s story, it’s to create the book that you need to create, in your voice, and to deliver it to your readers the way that you want it to be read. ♠

Advocacy in Self-Publishing, Alternative Marketing Methods, Kelly Speaks, Social Media Marketing, youtube

An Indie Author’s Social Media Primer | YouTube

You already use it to watch every video your friends send you on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and elsewhere. Chances are, nine out of every ten video links you’re ever going to click (in this decade, at least) will link to something on YouTube. It’s about time that indie and self-published authors get in on the action, don’t you think? Only, wait a minute: they already are!

But before we dive into just how you can use YouTube to launch your self-marketing campaign, let’s address some of the basics. What is YouTube? It’s a video storage and hosting service which allows pretty much anyone who signs up for a free account to upload video files for public consumption (or private; like every other good social media platform, YouTube allows its users to toggle a number of privacy settings for each individual video as well as for their profile pages). Once a video is posted to YouTube, fans and followers can distribute the link themselves, which makes it a great platform for viral campaigns. And because videos are visceral in a way text sometimes isn’t, they make a fantastic impact on viewers’–and readers’!–imaginations.

Debunking the Great YouTube Myth: “It’s all cats, cats, cats.”

While I’m not above clicking a link to a good cat video every now and again (see what I did there?), I do think we’re doing a great disservice to the platform by claiming it’s all cats, because pretty much anyone who is anyone worth knowing about has a YouTube channel. I’m talking VICE, John Green, Oprah, CNN, The New York Public Library … the list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on … ad infinitum.

Top 5 Best Practices:

1. Post a book trailer. We here at Self Publishing Advisor have written about the merits of book trailers before (here and here), but I just can’t emphasize enough how awesome a book trailer is–especially as regards your self-promotion and self-marketing agenda. A book trailer provides a bite-sized (or “eye-sized”) bundle of information about your book to new readers for easy consumption. A good book trailer will add drama and flair to your book’s public image … and it will also reach far more people. YouTube’s algorithms will ensure that its users will stumble across your book whenever they search for similar videos or book trailers by other authors in the same genre. Just make sure to take advantage of the metadata!

2. Post regularly, if not weekly. You may or may not be familiar (and comfortable) with the term “vlogging,” internet slang for “video blogging.” Authors like John Green verge on being professional video bloggers, in that they post videos of themselves with updates on their writing, answers to readers’ questions, or more generally, responses to fans, fandoms, and greater cultural trends. You may not be a titan of Young Adult Literature like John Green, but you can definitely walk away with a few ideas from his channel. Namely: provide new content on a regular basis (feed your followers!), consider tweaking your on-camera surroundings so that posts are well-lit and free of visual clutter (keep it simple!), and edit your posts before they go up in order to re-craft the posts for easy consumption (keep it short!).

3. Ask to join an existing station as a guest speaker. Many channels such as Self-Publishing Roundtable will invite authors to serve as “guests” on their YouTube channels, in part to promote variety, and in part because they welcome the opportunity to provide new authors a voice. Run a quick search on YouTube for channels to do with self publishing, navigate to that channel’s “About” page, and then click the “Send Message” button to contact the people on that channel directly. You have literally nothing to lose and everything to gain by putting out feelers for folks who might be interested in helping you launch your new (or existing) book. A few might say “No,” but there are (as my grandmother used to remind me) plenty of fish in the sea.

4. Pay attention to the details. I mentioned lighting, time length, and editing before. A good way of figuring out how to frame and film your first couple of YouTube posts is to watch a whole bunch. Not just Lady Gaga music videos, mind, but videos that are doing something similar to what you aim to do. Find those self-publishing-related YouTube channels and see what they get up to in terms of audio quality, clutter, editing techniques, and so forth. You can always choose what to take and what to leave from these videos–they’re just a sounding board, not a structured guide, but they’ll still give you ideas. You’re not chained to anything that they do! Just make sure that you’re making conscious and conscientious decisions about content and presentation.

5. Don’t overdo it … on your first video, or any following video. You’ll notice that some of the most successful author-related YouTube channels preserve an element of spontaneity, of freshness, and of personality. You definitely don’t want to scrub your YouTube videos of what makes you you. But another, less acknowledged quality of successful YouTubers is that they pay attention to length. A long video, even a long and professionally-made video, is daunting to the average watcher. In 2014, Adweek ran an article full of infographics about the ideal length of everything digital (I’m not even kidding), from Twitter tweets to hashtags to YouTube videos. And what did they find? That of the top 50 videos on YouTube at the time, the average length fell somewhere close to 2 minutes and 50 seconds. Amazing. Any longer, and the video is no longer “eye-sized” and runs the risk of losing a new reader’s interest. Once you have built up a substantial network of faithful YouTube subscribers, you can fudge around with limits and goals and things, but for a newcomer? Stick to a quick hearty blend of style and substance that will hook new readers in without taking up too much of their time.

Most Overlooked Feature:

Without a question, the most feature most authors forget about when it comes to YouTube is the playlist. What’s more, there are plenty of great resources out there that will walk you through the minutiae of how to set one up (this one, for example). It’s not an “undiscovered” feature for hearty and dedicated YouTube users, but it is overlooked by many content providers. Essentially, a playlist allows authors to group together videos to be played by others in a specific order. It creates a narrative out of your video collection, and helps a lot with the whole “findability” thing. They’re sharable on social media just like individual videos, and they’re easy to create and edit. Really, there’s no reason not to use playlists to organize your files on YouTube.

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