Sharing insights and stats from posting my first YouTube video, currently at 29,825 organic views

Question

Approach:
While all social media apps and channels have a role to play, YouTube is the one which interests me most as an artist. I see it as the single most powerful social platform because of the long shelf life of the content. While the others fluctuate giving huge soars of popularity (or nothing), Youtube has maintained more consistency, allowing you to build over time. This is something which is hugely important to me as I look towards a career of longevity.

I knew there was a market and appetite for full length DJ videos and mixes (citing Boiler Room/Cercle/Mixmag here as references, as well as the careers of individual DJs such as Miss Monique). So step No.1 was deciding to create content which was part of a popular niche on the platform.

Connecting back to the point on longevity, I also knew I only wanted to post something which was high quality. To make sure I was making a statement about where I can exist as an artist, and something I’m not going to want to hide down the line.

Capture: 
I connected with Australian duo Willow & James and briefed with lots of references - they got the vision completely and did such a great job :) I’m super grateful to them for allowing all my micro-feedback (mainly cutting people eating out of frame).

Creatively I also knew that I wanted an aesthetic which gave the video a feeling of intimacy, while not being quite touchable. I initially thought this would be achieved with an over-saturated grade, but for this particular video in the end a softer contrast and paired back saturation actually worked best.

Traffic Driving: 
I drove the first few hundred views from my existing following and network, from other platforms (primarily Instagram and WhatsApp). After that it was over to YT.

SEO was a big part of ensuring the video would be found. I thought a lot about the description, researching other successful videos to see what approach they’d taken and making sure to include tags which connected to search terms.

As you can hopefully see from the stats, the video had moments of rapid acceleration (usually after passing a 10k milestone) and then much flatter periods (the past 2k views for example has taken a lot longer than the 21-23k did, which happened in 24hours).

Conversion rate for views to subscribers is currently at 1%. I think good is considered closer to 2% but with this type of video, I wouldn’t expect a super strong subscriber conversion rate as its more something people will have on as they’re getting ready to go out etc. Rather than storytelling/blog style content.

Video: https://lnkd.in/gAbJeiBe

Any questions, feel free to ask in the comments! :) Hope this stimulates some thinking!