When he first entered the YouTube arena, he was left dejected after getting a small audience, even though he turned every stone out there. At first, he used his primary interest -Taekwondo – as the focus of his channel and named it Iron Wood Productions. Jake Tran was enormously under the influence of YouTubers like Marques Brownlee and wanted that level of engagement. However, nothing of the sort transpired.
He skipped YouTubing to pursue studies. However, after college and a subsequent job, he resumed his grind on YouTube, this time with a self-named channel. Inspired by Graham Stephan, Jake tried his hand at publishing videos on personal development videos and then followed the style of Graham himself, but to no avail.
But as it is believed, challenging times sometimes bring us the fruits of life. The constant failures brought Jake to a book named Blue Ocean Strategy and after reading the book, his YouTube career turned the other way around.
“After reading the book and practically implementing the strategy, I was able to create engaging content and grew a significant audience at a very fast pace,” shares Jake.
His first video, published on 5 September 2019, was a sort of dedication to Graham Stephan in which he shared why he was killing the YouTube algorithms. The video went viral, got thumbs up from Graham himself, and then, there was no stopping the success of Jake Tran on YouTube. He shares a few of his secrets with us today.
Publish less content but of high-quality
Sometimes scarcity is sufficient to get the job done. According to Jake, if you go through the most successful and engaging YouTubers, you’ll see they don’t publish frequently. They share content with gaps in between – some publish only thrice a week and some publish twice a month!
And that is OKAY, as long as your content has the element of uniqueness, and information, and is interesting to watch. Frequent content makes it a little boring for the audience, and they might love it at first, but gradually, when they get to know you well, they might just scroll down your videos, “WATCH OUT FOR THAT!!”
The audience first, always!
Ask yourself, for whom are you publishing, and you are halfway there. You are in big trouble if you think providing a window to your life will give you the audience you need. In this fast-paced world, no one has that much time to pause a bit and watch someone else’s life while their own life is on fire.
People watch videos for themselves – they find what’s in there for them and how they could benefit from it. So before hitting the ‘publish’ button, make sure it’s audience-friendly, not some self-centric video.
Be unique, BE YOU
The chances of someone like you being out there are probably one in a billion. To put it succinctly, there is no one like you. And that’s what makes you unique.
Uniqueness in your content is going to make you stand out among the crowd. So, go out there, see what can you offer that others are not offering already and how can you make it interesting by giving it your touch.
