Branding, Demographics, and You

Fudgetruck

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Hello everyone,

Today i'll be sharing some of my thoughts and processes when creating, and building a YouTube account. There are many aspects to take into consideration when creating and building your YouTube channel. Today i'm going to touch on some of the more intricate subjects and points.

Brand, we all know what it means, or do we? That's something you need to ask yourself before actually trying to make something your brand. Lets get down to some basics.

Brand is the "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's product distinct from those of other sellers." Initially, branding was adopted to differentiate one person's cattle from another's by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the animal's skin with a hot iron stamp and was subsequently used in business, marketing, and advertising. A modern example of a brand is Coca Cola which belongs to the Coca-Cola Company.

So lets break that down. Your "Brand" needs to be something that sets you apart form the others. For instance if you are someone that create Minecraft videos. What part of your brand will make you appear different or more exciting to others who like to watch Minecraft videos? Someone who is a Minecraft fan for instance. Are they going to click on a picture or thumbnail that is a rabbit with a hat? Or will they be more inclined to click on a picture of a creeper with a hat? The answer is obvious of course. As you will likely see a traffic increase simply because the character you've chosen can be related to. Now for simplicity sake, i'm not saying to make that your brand, but just using it as an example. Creating a bran that people can relate to is a very good way to bring in more viewers.

So you know what branding is, lets talk a bit about demographics. Knowing the demographics of your content is important. Knowing who is seeing your content can help determine your success. As we age, our thought processes and visions of various things change. Obviously most of the adult populous isn't sitting around waiting for Sesame Street to start at 7am in the morning so they can get their fix. What is a demographic exactly?

Demographics are the quantifiable statistics of a given population. Demographics are also used to identify the study of quantifiable subsets within a given population which characterize that population at a specific point in time.

Generally speaking, studying the demographics of others, or even your content will help you get a better footing on how or what to create. For instance, lets talk a bit more about Minecraft. By now, everyone knows that the largest age group for Minecraft is 15-21. Content that is tailored to this audience may do much better than content that isn't. What is popular for this age group? While we talk about age group in this example, that is not the only factor to take into account, another is gender. Gender takes a fairly large role as well in determining your demographics.

Male and female opinion can be vastly different from each other. If you find that most of your viewership is coming from a female audience then the topics that you may be covering may be of more interest to the female audience, take makeup for example.

Another great example of demographics to pay attention to is location. Where do people see your content? Each market and culture is different, and interestingly enough our content might do better in another culture. Is that bad? Not really, but figuring out how to tailor to that audience will help ensure that you keep them after just one video.

Obviously there is much more to discuss about this topic. YouTube offers creators some very good tools on helping you pinpoint the demographics of your channel. I've just scratched the basics here. Please feel free to comment with your thoughts and experiences on demographics.
 
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Fudgetruck

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It's been some time since this post, however since the Twitter Promotion thread got so much attention, I believe this one may be well deserving of the same merit. To that end I will be working towards a more comprehensive version of this article in the near future.
 

Michael

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Thanks for sharing this with us, something I have been thinking A LOT more into is how your content forms a part of your branding, for example whatever you say at the start of your video and end can be utilised to effectively get your brand across to the audience. A great example is Jared Polin AKA FroKnowsPhoto, he introduces and ends his videos with his full name which is his channel name/website and then ends it with the same so you're greeted with his branding/website URL and then sent off with it. I cannot think of any creator that does it more effectively in their content.
 

Samantha Brown

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Great post. Thanks. If I can add something it would be that when you tailor content to your audience, you should also consider things such as colors, sounds, basic emotions into the equation. There is a reason why young girl toys are mostly pink, purple and/or white and all faces are smiling, that McDonald's arc is red and yellow, that the hulk is basically an expression of anger & frustration, with the sounds to go with it.
 

Rhodri Powell

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I did Business studies for a number of years in school and my absolute favourite parts of the course was branding! Looking back I should have gone into some sort of branding course/career.

I love the idea of creating a brand around yourself as a YouTuber, I'm currently spending a lot of time creating banners/logos/channel art for my various outlets haha! Love it!

Great post by the way, very informative!