Distributing Your Content So Others Will Find It

Key Takeaways

if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it makes a sound did it still make a sound I don't know but if you create a video or a song or do a design and nobody ever hears about it that sucks so today I want to talk about distribution which means taking the content that you've created and distributing it so that other people can watch it see it and find out about it [Music] [Applause] [Music] so it's been a good morning productive meeting with the new school guys it's so so hard develop a new product and I'll share some of what's going on with prospr later on this week but today I want to talk about distribution last week through one of the comments I found out about a really super great YouTube channel called vid the designer I'll put the uh the link in the description below be sure to check it out hey David and this is really amazing Channel with great videos around design and the guy only has like 40 subscribers and literally almost no views and that's really just breaks my heart because it's such a great content and David I totally feel you because I think i' I've told this story um in in another video like a few years ago I've created an iPhone app and I've been working for months to create it and then launched it and nobody ever found out about it and it was really just like not a waste of time but I really understood the value of distribution and marketing and getting your stuff out there because even if you create something something super wonderful and super you know useful and nobody knows about it then there's almost no value because nobody will ever get to see it so I want to share some of the you know uh methods that I've been using to grow my my YouTube channel over the last year but the points here is even if you don't have a YouTube channel even if you have a blog or even if you just want to promote your portfolio or something I think this is still a valid method or kind of framework of thinking how distribute your work to other people so for me first of all YouTube is a bit different because YouTube is in itself a distribution platform there is a chance that they will show your video on other videos but it's very unlikely if you're just small starting out so what I've been doing is I've been putting my videos in other places where designers watch for example I've been putting them on designer news I've been sending them over to some kind of content aggregator for designers such as mole and other newsletter and been hoping that sometimes they've been published there or been voted up I've been asking my friends to vote them so that other people will see uh my content you see you have to find out where your audience is already and kind of not push it but put your your content there in a you know in a helpful way if you think that your video is answering a question to that some people ask in a Blog or something then you can add a comment with a link to your video and then you know some people will see it and will you know check out your videos or like David was doing David was just commenting on my channel and it intrigued me to check out what he's been doing and I've been doing that as well anyway actually when I really really started out I think perhaps after only uh launching the first video I found out uh McKenzie's child's um Channel and I was so inspired by what he was doing that I actually wrote him an email and I said dude you're a great inspiration I'm just starting my YouTube Channel right now I've got zero subscribers and you've been a really a big inspiration for me so I didn't really ask him for anything and I wasn't really expecting anything because I just wanted to say shout out dude you're doing an awesome work but it kind of got him to check out my work and see what I've been doing and he wrote me back he said he loved my stuff and he even tweeted about it which made Travis notice my channel and later on I've met Travis become friends with him and we just did a collaboration together another way that I've been using to distribute my content is Twitter every time I upload a video I kind of write a short tweet and if I've used a service or I mention a person or kind of I don't know a book or something then I try to tag those people on Twitter and sometimes those people actually notice me and watch the video so for example I've been doing a lot of videos on webflow and I've been tagging webflow on Twitter and they've disc discovered my channel and follow up and started actually retweeting the videos to Their audience and actually reaching out to me asking me to do an interview and stuff like that so by kind of helping and bringing value to other people and let letting them know about it using Twitter um I get those people if they want of course and if they found my videos valuable to share them with their audience and therefore kind of distribute my content further so of course the first step is to make awesome content but I think some of you guys are doing really great stuff whether it's great design work music videos websites whatever but you really should put more effort into thinking about how you can distribute it and where the people who might find interest in that content uh are I got to be super honest I'm not really pushing for distribution in this YouTube channel at least not enough um I think I should really hustle more to try to grow it but but it's not I don't know like the distribution is not on my top of my priority and that's that's why it's not maybe growing fast enough but I don't know I think it's maybe I should put more effort to it but anyway I wanted to do this video kind of as a shout out to David because I think that he's doing wonderful work David I think you should hustle more on distribution and you guys should definitely check out David's Channel there's a power outage in my building so there's no internet and no air name which means it's not very suitable for work so I'm going to work from a coffee shop [Music] I could not concentrate at the coffee shop too much talking that gets into my head much rather prefer working here in the forest tomorrow I'm giving a workshop in Jerusalem about time management and pricing and all sorts of cool freelance stuff and it's a workshop that I haven't given in about two years so I'm pretty excited about it I hope I won't be rusty I've been going over the materials for about 2 hours now and yeah I'm feeling pretty good and excited I'll hope I'll do a good job anyway hope you guys have a great day I'll catch you tomorrow [Music]