Auto news on Youtube Nov 7 2017

I can't imagine if when I was 12 years old a Backstreet Boy had tweeted at me

and said, "Hey, I really like what you're doing". I woulda lost my mind.

So, I like to think of that every time I leave a comment, I think you know what

I'm someone's Backstreet Boy.

Today's episode is about building a community.

Hey my name is Meghan Tonjes. I'm Tonjes, here on YouTube, and I am a

musician, and body-positive activist, who makes daily content about news

and culture. Basically, I have an opinion and I share it all of the time. So when I

first started making YouTube videos I was 19. I had no idea what I was doing. So

I was just making videos for my friends and that's kind of how I started out. I was

making videos about my life, what I was going through, what I was thinking, and

that kind of grew into more of an understanding of who was attracted to my

videos. Over time, I definitely started to realize there were similarities with the

people that were attracted to what I was making. So a lot of times I find in my

audience people who are struggling with their weight, struggling with their

self-love, their sexuality, maybe have issues at home, and just kind of feel a

little left out, a little left of center. And I tend to attract people like that

because I went through that when I was growing up. I think sometimes we get a

little in our heads about okay who's watching me and what are the

demographics, and we can go into analytics and we can look at those

things and we can see these numbers that, you know, make sense to a certain extent

are good when you're doing branded stuff. You understand who you're reaching, but

ultimately if you're interested in the audience that's watching you, I encourage

you to actually reach out and jump in the comments, and jump in the conversations,

and research the people that you keep seeing showing up on video after video. I

mean people are you know really easily putting their information out there as

far as their age, and where they're from, and what they like, and their pronouns,

and what shows they watch. And so if you take the time to really invest in

learning about the people that watch your content, you're gonna get a lot

more information and very layered information about who likes your stuff.

Anytime that people feel like they're being seen

they are going to engage more. So a lot of times, I will heart comments, I will

pin comments, because you can't respond to every single thing, but you can

respond to a few bigger things and you can kind of acknowledge and validate

everyone else that's leaving a comment. Let them know, "Hey I see you, you're

important to me." And that really is as simple as using

those tools. You're also gonna find other ways to engage with them, and interact

and that's gonna be inspiring to your content. If all of a sudden I notice

there's a lot of people from Australia that watch a very specific TV show and

they really like these other YouTubers, maybe I'll start watching that TV show,

make a video about it. Maybe I'll collaborate with that YouTuber they all

love. Not only are you gonna find people that are going to inspire content, whose

conversations in your comments are gonna push you to make better stuff, but

you're also going to find other people who are making content that want to work

with you. The most important thing that I do, is I

pay attention. I really pay attention to how I view things, how I consume content

how I interact with other people. And so if I see another content creator putting

something out there and I automatically feel the desire to respond, or to share, I

pay attention. I lock that away in my mind for later, because there's something

there. There's some kind of little bit of magic, that I need to reverse-engineer

and figure out for my own channel. When I was moving to Los Angeles I drove here

with a friend and we would kind of annoyingly call each other Bebe, bebe. So

eventually when it came to, you know, I need a name to call these viewers,

because I don't always like using subscribers, or viewers, or fans. And

everyone has like a really cool last name and they have all these really cool

ideas for what they can call their like army, or their family, or whatever it is. I

didn't really have a great last name that I could just like turn into a cool

group name, so the Bebes are what we call them. What up my big beautiful bebes, it's

Meghan Tonjes, and it is Sunday, which means it is....

It's a gender-neutral, it's easy, it applies to everyone, and it's really just another way of me calling

them a friend. In Episode one, we talked about building your community. How by

simply watching the shareability of your videos, and the engagement by your

audience, you can figure out the things that you're doing right, or

not so right. Like what you learned? Don't forget to subscribe by clicking the

button below, and make sure to check out similar episodes.