Leveraging the Share Button

Interestingly, I have a rather unconventional approach as to how creators should approach YouTube with their content. And to understand this, we all first have to understand where the crowd is, really.

Currently, Facebook has over 2 billion active users. That places them as the number one most visited social media platform and so far, the most affordable place to buy ads to a content. And while other platforms also boast of good traffic; Facebook literally wields a superior power when it comes to reaching wide range of demographics and geographics at the same time, at a click.

Unlike YouTube where it is strictly a place where the majority go to consume a content and leave, people stay back on Facebook to do other things. They practically live on Facebook and Instagram and only head out to YouTube to consume a content of interest and then return back again.

This truth could be such a huge and powerful magic wand in the hand of any independent filmmaker seeking to explore the digital and virtual audience for their film projects.

My suggestion for leveraging the share button on Facebook is simple:

"If you can build a share gang of 50-100 people who are readily available to tap the share button everytime you post a content, you can be rest assured that you won't have problem redirecting a large number of people to YouTube where you can now earn off subsequent projects"

In Building Your Share Gang, I detailed this strategy referencing how you can build guerilla, foot soldiers using WhatsApp. To build your foot soldiers whose fingers are always on the share button, you will have to explore WhatsApp BC or Telegram GROUPS.

This means, you might have to put the first few of your content on Facebook and build yourself a good audience base before moving them to YouTube. The share button helps your content to travel deep and wide the Facebook space, spanning the friends and friend of friends of your original audience. Up until this moment, it's only Facebook that has that feature of share where once you tap it, a new set of audiences are introduced to the content directly.

Other social media platform often pops up with a link to share and you know the stress of clicking links with Nigerians—is it that they hate clicking links or I'm just over thinking?

This holds true that:

The number of views you'd be able to garner on your content is largely dependent on the number of shares the content garners. And most importantly, the activeness of the audience of the people sharing the content.

So, don't rush to YouTube. You will still come back to Facebook. Instead, leverage all the tools you can find on Facebook, build massive audience there and when you're sure you've got these audiences by their throat with your content, you can start redirecting them to YouTube where you can earn off them. And trust me, people will follow what interest them greatly to anywhere

Same way you followed that girl to a vigil even though you don't know how to pray. It wasn't the vigil, you bad boy! It was somebody's daughter!

To Your Blockbuster—

Daniel Olas