Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Jim Ackerman, Founder of Ackermania Creative (Part 7)

SM: That’s exactly why I’m probing. How do you seed it? You have made a very, very clear case of how Orabrush has done a systematic job of creating content, building a channel, episode by episode, and then driving traffic into that channel through PPC advertising and driving subscriptions and so forth.

JA: If you really think about it, if you’re a musician trying to make it and become a big star, you have to realize that your music is your product and you have to treat it that way and recognize that you have to use the same mechanics and the mechanisms and the same opportunities to grow your YouTube channel and become that well-known performer as somebody would have to use your product. There aren’t really any shortcuts. You can opt out of something like pay-per-click, but if you do that, you’re going to have to ramp up the other things that we’ve been talking about. And even then, there’s going to be a limit to what can be done.

Nobody promotes anything for free, and the idea that you’re going to be able to do that … if it happens, those kinds of things are nothing short of a fluke in most cases. Again, if you’re absolutely exceptional, and you’re bound to be the equivalent of the next “American Idol” based on your writing and talent and performance and arrangements, and you just come up with the next number-one hit, you might be able to pull that off virally. But the vast number of musicians are going to have to work at it, just like anybody else has to work at it, if they want to sell their products.

SM: Any other comments? I think this has been a very interesting discussion, Jim.

JA: The one thing that I perhaps didn’t go into enough detail about is consistency. Let’s use your musician example. If you produce one music video and put it up there and promote the heck out of it, that doesn’t necessarily buy you subscribers. If you produce a song a week or produce two songs a month, but produce on a regular basis and produce with consistency, then you’ve got a chance to cultivate relationships with people via YouTube. Bring them in. Get those subscribers. And you know what? Once they’re subscribers, they may be willing to buy your album. They may be willing to go to iTunes or any of the other sites and actually plunk down money for your album once they become fans because they see that you’re consistently delivering stuff that they like. So, the consistency is an element that I can’t emphasize enough. You must be consistent in this effort.

SM: From your channel, there’s needs to be continuously interesting set of videos coming.

JA: Absolutely, and the consistency needs to come in two forms:  one, regularity and second, frequency. If you say, “I’m going to put out a video a week,” you need to put out a video a week. If you say you’re going to put out two videos a month, it has to be two videos a month, every month, for an extended period of time. If you get six months or a year into it, and you decide, “you know, I’m not getting enough benefit from this that it’s worth all the effort it takes to put these things up,” then you can bail. But if you go in there and you put up one video and two weeks later, you put another video up and six weeks later you finally put another one up and then one week later you put another one up, there’s no consistency and there’s no frequency. You go three months down the line and say, “This isn’t working,” you have sorely missed the point of YouTube and how to make it work.

SM: Great. Very good, Jim, I’ve enjoyed talking with you. Thank you.

JA: Thank you so much.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Jim Ackerman, Founder of Ackermania Creative
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