YouTube is arguably the most disruptive marketing platform of this decade. Yes, it’s been around since 2005, but only in the last few years is it starting to impact Madison Avenue marketing campaigns. Companies are using YouTube to put their brands in front of hard-to-reach niche viewers and are also finding ways to creatively make their own videos to spread their marketing message and enhance their image.

If you are the marketing director of a Fortune 2000 company or are an entrepreneur starting a small business you should dive into YouTube and video in general and learn how it can be an effective marketing tool for you or your brand.

Recently, some video gamers on the YouTube platform and part of the Youtube Creator Academy made a short video offering some advice on how to build a unique audience. This is from gamers perspective, but I think you will find the tips useful no matter what industry you are in.

“I built a community by being a really family friendly channel,” said Zach Letter of Aviator Gaming. “I do mostly story based content in Minecraft. I like to consider my channel the soap opera of the Minecraft world so that kids come to watch an in-depth story that has some drama, has some romance and has that tension they deal with everyday at school or in their real life. I think that is how I built such a tight
-nit community that loves my scripting, loves my role play but also loves me.”

Letter commented, “When I try to engage my audience I use a lot of the YouTube tools but I also use parts of my voice. I will try to engage them for likes and comments, just to see where they’re at in a certain series.” For instance Letter might ask, “What do you thinks going to happen next in the plot?” “That actually inspires me to write certain things in the script. If a lot of people want this certain thing to happen I might go back in and change the script and change up the episode. I think it’s alway smart to engage comments especially when it’s related to your content because it allows you to tailor content that your viewers actually want to see.”

“Whether it’s submissions on social media or in the comments sections they let me know that, hey, we really want to play this game, or hey, try out this game that’s coming out,” commented Garrett Sutton of JoblessGarrett. “Staying up on the trends and hype trains in regards to new releases of games really helps a child’s world as well.”

“For us it’s hard, because our main body of the episodes are very heavily scripted, but we use the intro paragraphs, we use the end cards as ways to actually communicate with the fans.” Matthew Patrick of The Game Theorists said. “People have been asking for us to cover films, TV and anime for a really long time, so Film Theory, the Channel, made a lot of sense. Hey, it would be really cool to see you play games and see what you do in real life, so the live stream happened.”

Patrick added, “First off the way they behave on camera will really dictate the way their fans behave. If you are responding to haters all the time those are going to tend to filter up in the comments, whereas if you are responding to that thoughtful comment, it shows that you as a creator is active in that community and is someone who is listening and is excited to engage.”

Check out the full video below: