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Affiliate Marketer’s Guide: Growing a Youtube Channel via Twitter

Growing-a-Youtube-Channel-Using-Twitter

As an Affiliate Marketer, you're constantly looking for new ways to promote your products.

Youtube allows you to build an evergreen attraction machine that positions you as a reliable source and attracts the right people at the right time.

The question becomes, how can you grow a Youtube channel to support your affiliate marketing efforts?

Today, we'll explore a few ways to do it.

But first, let's address a fundamental problem…

Why Most Affiliates Fail on Youtube

Actor Sam Levenson once said, "you must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself."

The same applies to affiliate marketers.

To see results, you must first learn what doesn't work. 

Before we get into the practical stuff, let's explore a few of the reasons most affiliates fail when trying to build a Youtube channel. 

In short, most affiliates fail because:

They're Lazy 

Many Youtubers think the effort implied in creating and uploading a new video every week or every month is enough, so they don't do any promotion whatsoever after that.

This is one of the most common mistakes within the video blogging community. Most YouTubers don't treat their channel as a real business.

They Hit Publish And Pray

Other videobloggers think Youtube will do all the work for them. They believe that by "optimizing their headlines," writing keyword-rich descriptions," and doing all types of SEO nonsense, Youtube will magically rank their videos at the top. 

Sadly, it doesn't work that way.

You must actively approach Youtube marketing and promote every video you produce. Otherwise, you'll waste half your efforts.

They Promote Without a Strategy 

Some affiliates understand the importance of promotion, but they don't have a strategy in place. They promote for the sake of promoting; unfortunately, this approach won't help either. 

You must ensure you're promoting your videos to the right people, at the right time.

You also need to produce videos that match your brand's voice, as well as your values. Otherwise, you won't be consistent across channels.

The 5-Step Approach to Building a Youtube Channel Through Twitter

The strength of this approach will lie in your ability to:

  1. Intercept relevant conversations about competitors
  2. Join the discussions by sharing relevant, valuable content
  3. Build relationships with engagers

This method ensures that you build a following who actually cares about what you've to say. Instead of just following random people in your industry, you focus on building relationships with people who engage with content related to your topic. 

Let's break down each step:

Step # 1: Identify opportunities

Remember, your goal is to intercept Twitter conversations about your competitors, so you first need to answer a simple question: What Youtube Channels is my audience already watching?

Here are two ways to figure it out:

a) Find popular channels in your industry

For instance, let's assume you run a Nutrition and Fitness Youtube Channel. In this case, the subscribers you'd be looking for should be people interested in losing weight and getting healthy.

What kind of videos would you be watching if you were one of those people?

Probably they'd fall into these categories:

  • Videos about diets
  • Workout routines
  • Nutrition tips

Just perform a quick Youtube search for one of the above terms.

By taking a look at the results, you'll find a bunch of relevant Youtube Channels. Some of them might have an active Twitter audience, too. 

Screenshot of a youtube search for work outs.

So create a list of at least 20 of them (you'll use that list in the following step).

b) OpenSlate

OpenSlate lets you quickly identify Youtube influencers in your niche by keyword searches. 

For instance, if you want to find gaming Youtube Influencers, you'd need to type in the keyword "gaming" into the search bar, and OpenSlate will search through all the registered channels.

It will also show you the most relevant ones based on social media influence and the overall channel's performance.  

This is obviously a simpler alternative to option b, but there's a catch. You need to have at least 5,000 subscribers to access the tool. 

Step # 2 Shorten Your List of "Opportunities"

In this step, you'll separate the wheat from the chaff by identifying competitors with an active Twitter audience. 

Notice I said "active," not big. 

Many people think a huge following means more reach, but that isn't always the case. A small but engaged audience is much more valuable than a massive audience of ghosts. 

A quick Google search is the easiest way to find a competitor's Twitter account. 

Just head over to Google and enter one of the following search strings:

  • Influencer’s name + Twitter
  • Channel's name + Twitter
  • Company’s name + Twitter
finding a twitter profile using google search, screenshot on how to do this.

If your target influencer has a Twitter account, that will be enough to find it. 

Once you find it, make sure to analyze two things:

  1. Engagement
  2. Size

As I said earlier, engagement is crucial, and you should always prioritize it, but if you find a competitor with an active, huge following, that's much better.

Now create a list of 10 competitors with an active Twitter following. 

Step # 3 Intercept Relevant Conversations 

Once you have a list of "opportunities" in place, it's time to intercept conversations. Don't worry. 

It's really that straightforward.

First, you need to head over to Twitter's Advanced Search – a tool that allows you to sort through all the Twitter conversations based on keywords, dates, accounts, hashtags, and other criteria. 

Now, grab one of the Twitter handles you found in the last step and enter it in the section called "to these accounts."

Then, click "Search," and Twitter will show you all people's conversations about that competitor. 

This tells you two things:

  1. Those people tend to engage with Youtubers in your industry
  2. Those people are very likely to engage with you, too

In simpler words, they're the kind of followers you want to get. 

So, follow the people involved whenever you intercept one of those conversations. According to some experiments, around 20 to 25 out of 100 people you follow will follow you back.

Bonus tip: Twitter's Advanced Search is a very sophisticated tool. I highly recommend reading this guide from Zappier to learn all its functionalities. 

Step # 4 Promote your channel

At this point, you should have started intercepting conversations and getting some relevant followers. Now it's time to leverage those followers.

How?

Promoting your channel with your Twitter audience. 

First, you must turn your videos into at least 100 different phrases (and include a link to your channel each term). You'll use this list of words to self-promote your channel without seeming too repetitive.

Here are three ways to do it:

a) Benefits

Just create a list of all the benefits people will get from watching your video and turn those benefits into phrases.

For example, if your video helps people lose weight, I can see at least three different benefits:

  • Health
  • Sex appeal
  • Comfort

Now, how can you turn those benefits into a phrase?

Simple: Tell people what they want to hear. 

See:

"Get healthier with these unexpected tips" + Link.

"Learn how to be admired by men and envied by women with these amazing weight loss videos" + Link.

"This workout routine will help you fit into your old clothes again." + Link

b) Direct quotes

Another option is to grab quotes directly from your videos. 

For instance, let's say you interviewed an authority in your niche. You could turn that invaluable video into dozens of different quotes and share them with your followers. This way, you'd evoke curiosity, and they would be more likely to click your links. 

Once you have at least 100 different quotes, jump to the next step.

Closing Notes

As you can see, building and growing a Youtube Channel is not that hard when you have a proven strategy in place.

But here's the thing:

Even a proven strategy is worthless when you don't apply it.

In simpler words, if you want to get the most out of this method, you need to actually work on it. 

So, what are you waiting for?

Start implementing these tips today!

Joran Hofman
Meet the author
Joran Hofman
Back in 2020 I was an affiliate for 80+ SaaS tools and I was generating an average of 30k in organic visits each month with my site. Due to the issues I experienced with the current affiliate management software tools, it never resulted in the passive income I was hoping for. Many clunky affiliate management tools lost me probably more than $20,000+ in affiliate revenue. So I decided to build my own software with a high focus on the affiliates, as in the end, they generate more money for SaaS companies.
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