Do you regularly interact with your brand followers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc? Your content still doesn't reach the people you want to reach? We show you step by step how to create content that your followers like to share. Know your target group Each target group pursues its individual interests and must be addressed in a suitable language. A "meme" will have a harder time with a target group over 45 years of age than with young people and so on. Likewise, no young person will share that your product has received the fifteenth seal of approval. A GIF says more than a thousand words If you analyse your target group, you should find out how it communicates and above all how it consumes. Text, memes, short clips or GIFs? The proverb "A picture says more than a thousand words" has not lost its meaning until today. Just look at your own surfing habits and note which articles and contributions catch your eye. If you are unsure which media you can ideally share on which platforms have a chat with us at the end of this article. Getting to the point You have a cool picture, but need more than 1,000 words to explain it? Perhaps you should reconsider your approach. The attention span of humans has decreased in the last years and a text block can deter your followers from the beginning. Be aware early on how your target group consumes social media. You will notice that the average time a follower stays is rather short (unless he is explicitly looking for information or solutions! 😉). Keywords are the key Have you ever noticed that you often just skim over texts and only get stuck with certain words? These so-called keywords decide whether your reader looks at your text more closely or not. If a crucial keyword arouses his interest, he will probably also read your posting carefully. Shows feelings The most important component that ultimately decides whether and which contributions a follower shares are...emotions! Only if a follower can emotionally identify with your content will he want to share it. Be ready to develop your personality, or the character of your company, also on social media through engaging content. As soon as you learn about these core aspects of social media work and can implement them in your content planning, you will see changes in the behaviour of your readers. If you are looking for support in developing a success strategy for your brand, you can contact us at any time. We are happy to help you to show your individual strengths online! Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

YouTube has recently launched 3 monetization tools to help channel creators give rise to greater revenue in areas beyond advertisements. For creators, monetization in other forms carries significant importance as ad revenue is subject to many factors and is not always guaranteed. Recently YouTube has tightened up their monetization requirements for content creators. This aims to prevent the uneasiness of advertisers following things like the Logan Paul controversy, which is why YouTube have been looking to create other sources of revenue for their creators. Subscriptions Users can access exclusive content from creators through a new subscription feature. A fee of £4.99 (differing by country) will be charged in exchange for users to have free access to interesting perks offered by the creators. These perks could include things like exclusive videos, badges, early access to videos, custom emojis and badges for live chats etc. This option will be available to channels with more than 10,000 subscribers. Merchandise YouTube have also partnered up with TeeSpring to offer a merchandise ‘shelf’ below videos to help them sell associated products. YouTube said that it wanted it’s creators to be able to easily showcase their merchandise and that’s what they’ve done. From a logo on a shirt or cushion to phone cases or stickers, creators can now publicise and market their products easily on YouTube. However, this is only available to YouTube users who have a more than 10,000 subscribers, but plans have been made to expand it further in the future. Previously, creators could only post a link of their merchandise in the description of their videos but now because viewers will be able to see it, it will help creators to sell more products and increase revenue. Subscriptions A live-streaming option creates a live experience where users can go live without using an encoder which can be a relatively complicated process. They are able to go live from their webcam. Anybody who wants to stream can click on the button saying ‘Go live' and there you go! Revenue can be generated in a livestream by enabling ads on your stream and also SuperChat donations from viewers! YouTube aims to further it’s monetization plans in the future. It’s very interesting to see social platforms improving and working on new and easy monetization methods for their users. Recently, Facebook and Instagram have also rolled out new features. Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

This is one of the many questions we get asked time and time again by different people who meet us. YouTube is increasing in popularity and there are thousands of new channels created each day. Since the launch of Instagram Stories, many have become accustomed to presenting themselves in video. Actively using the Stories feature could be the beginning of a possible YouTube career. This is because it's easy to recognise whether you get along with recording yourself and your life. If this is the case and you would like to expand into long-form content, the thought leads to creating your own YouTube channel. YouTube has shown in recent years that anyone who enjoys creating content can become a 'YouTuber'. Whether a channel is successful depends on the reaction of the viewers and whether the videos are engaging. The fascination of becoming a YouTuber has already become a dream job for many young people. But, how do you start with YouTube and what do you have to consider for your YouTube channel? TIPS FOR BEGINNERS TO KICKSTART YOUR OWN YOUTUBE CHANNEL First of all, you will need a camera, some content ideas and the courage to get started. This doesn't sound so hard, but all three points have their difficulties. An accessible camera to start off could be your smartphone. It's the most important to know in advance whether you want to talk in your videos or show impressions. If you want to tell a story, it would be best to get a microphone so that the sound quality is good. You need to think about how you want to present yourself and the aim of your content before you begin. The most difficult part of making a video is not the equipment or the script, but the execution. It is never easy to sit in front of the camera (often alone) and talk or walk around in public with the camera. YouTube isn't about being a good actor, it's about being real and genuine without being boring. Once you begin, you will develop your own style a little more with each video. No YouTuber started with perfect videos and at the beginning of your journey, you shouldn't expect perfection either. With every video you make, you'll get better and learn more. Your viewers will see your development and relate to you and your personality more with each video that passes. Try to stick to consistent and regular uploads to kickstart your success! It's likely that your best video will one you didn't give much thought to, whereas a video that took a lot of time and effort might receive little attention. Try to keep your uploads as simple and regular as possible whilst still being genuine and entertaining to see the best results. You can find out some more tips and information about getting started as a YouTuber from our academy. Feel free to contact us and we will be happy to help! Have fun planning and executing your first video! Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

Today marked the start of this year's Summer in The City festival, the biggest online video festival in the UK. This is also a special event as it marks the 10th Summer in the City! No doubt this annual event will be a great opportunity for content creators and fans of online video to come together to take part in a great weekend of meet & greets and panels and to celebrate the great shows on the main stage. Content creators from across Europe will attend the event and it is a great opportunity for you to network with like-minded creators and also meet your favourite YouTubers! We have some amazing talent involved at this year's event included, ElmoFilms and Touchdalight. You can view a full list of all the amazing creators attending SiTC can here. Also, our very own Savannah Newton was shortlisted for an award at SiTC for her management services. Once again McDonald’s are back for another summer of good times at SiTC and you’ll also be able to tuck into a free a McFlurry. Grab your squad and strike a pose in their 180-degree photo booth to receive one! We look forward to seeing you at this year's event but don’t worry if you can’t attend SiTC this year - we’ll be running a live blog throughout the day and will post updates on our social media throughout the weekend! Are you attending SiTC and would like to share your best moments with us? Tag our profiles @RitualNetwork in your post and we’ll hope to share the best ones :-) Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

With social media influencers and public figures on the rise in modern marketing, it can be hard to know who will be the best to represent your brand and bring you the best ROI. If you need help to make the decision, let’s take a look at the different types of influencers and the pros and cons for each. What is a Micro-Influencer? Micro-influencers are social network figures and brand advocates who have a well engaged audience, typically in a niche area such a fashion, food, beauty or gaming. Generally, they have between 10,000 and 50,000 followers. An example of a micro-influencer could be your favourite YouTuber with 45,000 subscribers. Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. What is a Macro-Influencer? Macro-influencers, on the other hand, have an audience that ranges from hundreds of thousands into millions. These figures tend to be well known and are sometimes even household names. Think Kim Kardashian, Logan Paul or David Beckham. So now you know the difference, how do you know which would be best to represent your brand? The good thing about macro-influencers is that you’re guaranteed a large reach. With millions of followers, you can be sure that your brand or product is going to be seen by a considerable amount of people with diverse interests. This is perfect for brand awareness, but this amount of reach and impressions usually comes at a hefty price and can take up a lot of marketing budget. In comparison, micro-influencers offer a more limited (but targeted) reach and on a whole, tend to have better engagement. As they have a smaller fanbase, they are able to interact with their audience more often and build a good rapport to feel like a friend, rather than an unattainable celebrity. For this reason, their opinions tend to be taken more seriously and trusted as the consumer finds them to be more relatable. While the initial reach is smaller, a bonus of using micro-influencers is that they come at a smaller price and the promotion can be targeted to a niche audience to ensure the optimum ROI and engagement rates. It’s a great way to spread brand awareness to an audience you know will be interested and working with several micro-influencers to achieve your goals can prove really positive results. How to decide which influencer to use Ultimately, both types of influencers offer great benefit to brands. It really just depends on what your end goal is as to how to decide which type of influencer you should use. Think about what you want to achieve from the campaign; Do you want to target it to a niche audience? Are you looking to achieve new sales or brand awareness? How many followers do you hope to gain and how important is their interest in your brand or product? Get Inspired To keep up with all things #Influencer #Marketing, including #tips, #tricks and interesting #articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to start crafting your influencer campaigns. Influencer discovery can be a long and tiring process if you have to manually search for the right talent. You can use a company like us to help you with the correct software to find the right talent and ensure your campaign goals are achieved.

YouTube has rolled out a new feature called Copyright Match — an abbreviated version of its Content ID tool, which can detect identical video re-uploads and then enable rights holders to take certain actions. This new tool has started to roll out for content creators who have over 100,000 subscribers on the platform. This is a tool that is believed to have been in the works for around a year. The Copyright Match Tool finds full re-uploads of your original videos on other YouTube channels. Once a match has been identified, you can review it in your YouTube Studio and choose which action you'd like to take. Copyright Match is far less sophisticated than the content ID tool we use, even though they both use similar matching technology. Content ID offers more sophisticated features, including the ability for rights holders to monetise and/or track the analytics of infringing works. Furthermore, Copyright Match is intended to nab identical video-for-video re-uploads, while Content ID can detect audio or video infringement occurring within a shorter segment of a clip. Here's how it works: When you upload your original video to YouTube, it will begin scanning all of the videos that are uploaded after yours to see if any of them match. It's important that you are the first to upload the content to YouTube as a public video, since the video upload time is used to decide who should see matches. Ensure that you check back regularly to keep an eye on any new matches that are found. What do you think about the new copyright match tool? We think this is an amazing feature that could really help content creators around the world as long as it's not misused. We still think that the content ID tool we use as a large content owner is much better than this and we still recommend all of our partners to use our content ID system. Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

The buzzing power of content marketing in today’s era has taken the globe with a storm, this swift shift in the field of marketing has strengthened the bond between consumers & brands. Influencing is the art of changing someone’s way of thinking or behaving, while marketing is an action of promoting a certain brand or service. To break it down, influencer marketing is an act of promoting a product through an influencer who entails the potential of affecting the mind or behaviour of the consumer. Dissecting how do influencers impact the consumers is as easy as this, they use the formula which entails their profile statistics, contextual credibility & creative sales strategies. A simple example of influencer marketing is seeing your favourite makeup artist using a brand in their daily get-ready-with-me or snap story. Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. Push marketing might have gotten the consumer segment’s attention earlier but with changing trend & vast usage of social media, the consumers psychographics have evolved greatly. For your brand to sustain today in this competitive ever growing eco-system, you certainly need to understand the vitality of this whirling trend until it's too late, for the following reasons: Influencers reach out to the potential & existing consumers in the most subtle way possible, while not pushing the product. Rather pulling the audience's interest towards your brand. The followers trust the verdict put out by the influencers & take it rather seriously as compared to celebrity endorsement. The influencer broadcasts the message to a relevant audience where the mind-likeness plays its magic. Influencers utilize the product themselves & gives the users an ultimate head-to-head encounter with the product with the most honest words. The level of trust & credibility of their judgement is higher than all celebrities. Brands can urge the influencer for endorsing the product in creative ways. The influencers understand their audience more than anyone else hence they completely know what needs to be said or done in order to create an impactful buzz of your product. Most importantly influencers engage with the followers individually & mostly on real time. Influencer marketing is as strong as the word-of-mouth by a peer or friend of the consumer The ROI is 11 time greater for brands if they use influencer marketing Influencer marketing is cheaper than the traditional marketing tactics while providing higher engagement & effectives in numbers. Influencer marketing is one the newest & the most powerful forms of marketing. Use this unique marketing tool in order to drive your engagement, increase customer loyalty & raising awareness of your brand. Get Inspired To keep up with all things #Influencer #Marketing, including #tips, #tricks and interesting #articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to start crafting your influencer campaigns. Influencer discovery can be a long and tiring process if you have to manually search for the right talent. You can use a company like us to help you with the correct software to find the right talent and ensure your campaign goals are achieved.

Viacom has announced that they plan to bring VidCon to the UK in 2019. Viacom is planning a number of ways to expand their brand and that includes bringing VidCon to the London Excel Center in 2019. The three-day event is planned to run from February 14-17. VidCon has announced this in addition to the three existing VidCon events VidCon US which are held in Anaheim, California, VidCon Europe which is Amsterdam, Netherlands and VidCon Australia which is hosted in Melbourne. Viacom acquired the event in February 2018 and have already announced some exciting expansion plans. This is really exciting news for the UK based YouTube content creators and influencers and it's a greatly welcomed event addition to London. We will make sure to keep you all updated with news related to the VidCon London event. Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

If you are a social media influencer, you should know how sponsored content works or at least be aware of it. Getting sponsored on social media means getting free products, PR gifts, financial payments and much more. In return, the brand gets to use your audience as a gateway to promote themselves. If you are able to affiliate yourself with the right sponsor/brand, it can potentially help you in gaining expertise and increased credibility in your niche. So here’s your 101 guide where we break down steps that can be taken to get sponsored on your social media. You know what they say, content is king so bringing more contributing voices to the topic at hand is an effective way of turning your blog into a thriving online community. Brand Yourself First things first, become a brand yourself! Start by thoroughly defining your personal brand—what it is, what it is not, and what is your goal. Get yourself a signature, align your tone with your goals, post frequently, engage with your viewers/visitors/followers in creative ways and give them something to be excited about. That said, don’t be afraid to experiment with different types of content, and then critically analyze what works and what doesn't. It's all about trial and error. Keep It Real Honesty is SERIOUSLY the best policy. Be true to your audience, do not over hype about anything that you wouldn’t buy/utilize yourself. Your followers are your asset and gaining their trust is your ultimate means of success. You should always be thinking about the long game, pick and chose your brands wisely as your audience know what is genuine. Concentrate on New Products Companies are on the lookout for people who are willing to use and advertise their products when they're looking for new consumers. This usually happens when a brand launches a new product or service. If they are well established and everybody already loves and knows about their product, what service can you offer them? Reach Out To Relevant Companies With a Solid Proposal Contact relevant companies and present them a solid CAPTIVATING proposal. Present them with a creative idea on how you plan to help their brand. Do your homework present your proposal with a brief introduction, solid backup, statistics, and ideas. Find out what the brand is looking for and help them achieve their goals! Don't Sell Yourself Short When making a proposal, do not appear desperate or make promises that would be unlikely for you to fulfil. Give them a solid proposal concept and express confidence that it would be mutually beneficial if you worked together. Try to share examples and build confidence in the brand! Remember, Numbers Matter! Social media is all about the NUMBER games, so make sure that the odds are in your favour. Your credibility is directly proportional to your number of likes, comments, views, and followers/subscribers, so ensure there is a constant increase in your number and try to keep your audience as engaged as possible at all times. Getting sponsored and having brands want to work with you on your social media takes a lot of time and commitment. You need to focus on your audience and keep their engagement at the top of your priority list. Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

For the past couple of years views on videos of the topic “clean with me” on YouTube have spiked around spring time. This presents a great opportunity for video creators to connect with a new audience that are actively searching for specific content. Just by looking from a distance at the platform, you can clearly see that views of spring cleaning related videos have increased significantly around this time of year. People are beginning their spring-cleaning during early March through summer, and they’re looking to YouTube videos for inspiration and advice. According to TubeFilter, In 2017, views of videos with “clean with me” in the title or description got close to 50 million views on March 4 and this year on March 15, there were over 100 million views of such videos. Clean with me videos are easy to create and are a great way to add a little extra fun to that dreaded cleaning you have to do. Some of the industry-leading channels are featuring these cleaning inspired videos. Check out this unique take on a spring cleaning video featuring Creative Calm ASMR. Some of the biggest stars on YouTube are creating 'Clean with me' videos and it is a great opportunity for you to take advantage of the spike in views and potentially connect with a new audience. Here is a more common example of a 'Clean with me' video which features a step by step video cleaning in a vlog format. What do you think about Clean With Me videos? Will you jump on the seasonal trend? Let us know! Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

The measure of success for any YouTube channel depends upon their number of subscribers and views. Typically subscribers accumulate to the number of views you will get on your videos and the generation of ad-revenue for your account. While the amount of subscribers also greatly impacts the credibility of your content and your influencing power, having a good count of subscribers on YouTube also means you get to connect with your target audience as YouTube sends them updates via email and alters your subscriber's homepage with your content. So here’s your go to quick guide to gain your first 10,000 subscribers on YouTube: Understanding Your Audience Be very clear about who you are creating the content for. Create a generic demographic and psychographic profile of these viewers. This will help you visualize what tone & topics need to be addressed, which will lead to individualizing your content according to your target audience. Include Verbal Call to Action A fun, interactive, captivating call-to-action can always enhance your subscriber list and their loyalty. Especially a use a verbal call-to-action in order to influence the viewers more. You can drop in links, create graphical representations or even have a signature sassy call-to-action tagline for making the viewers HIT that subscribe button. Be your own judge (Analyze most viewed/least viewed) Examine your channel critically, you can use the help of YouTube's Analytics, or tools through an MCN like Ritual Network. Analyze which video were the most viewed and liked and which one received the least views. Further to that, give close attention to viewer’s comments and judge where, how and what can be improved. Ensure high quality videos Assure that the quality of content being broadcasted is good enough. This entails the video quality, graphics, sound quality, and language. You know what they say, content is king. You should be viewing yourself as a media company and producing and distributing as much content as possible. More content, more eyes, more opportunities. Collaborate with influential YouTubers Cross promotional content actually gives a strong push to not only your subscriber list but your credibility of content. Make sure you choose an influencer or youtuber from a similar industry so that you do not get diverted from your core purpose. Optimize your YouTube Metadata The game of keywords is one of the key reasons leading to a relevant high number of subscribers. Make sure that you use keywords and phrases that would entail being relevant for the metadata fields on your channel. Create Consistent Content Be extremely clear on your goal and the objective of your content, and ensure that you stick to creating videos which entail these goals. Non-consistency in content leads to disruption and fluctuation amongst an audience. Work on your design, watermark THUMBNAILS, and profile. Invest your valuable time and mind in your artwork, watermark, thumbnails of videos and profile descriptions. As minor as it might seem, time invested in these essentials pays off and shows your honest dedication. Finally, just take a deep breath if it gets overwhelming at any point, just DON’T give it up. Stay true to your passion and give it time, with hard work and smart work no goal is impossible! Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

Having a strategy in place is vital to any step your business takes, but it is crucial that you have a strategy in place for influencer marketing if you want to deliver them ROI shattering results. The first step is just like any marketing strategy, you must first set out your goals. This will allow you to make sure your influencer marketing strategy is achieving your overall marketing and business goals. The goals you set out will also help you to set out your performance metrics and define what would be a successful campaign. Some examples of your goals could be to drive traffic to your website or to raise awareness about a new product launch. It is also so important to identify the influencers who best represent your brand. The identification strategy will vary for each brand and campaign, which is why targeting them based on their interests aligning with yours is crucial. For example, you don’t want to be working with an influencer who has an audience of 13-year-old girls, if you are trying to sell a complex home security system… Be original, show off your style, and tell your story. You want to also make sure that your influencers are relevant. It is important that you find influencers in your niche who have an active following. You need to take into account the number of followers an influencer has, while also monitoring that they get real and active engagement. You can find out more about an influencers engagement by checking how their audience interacts with their content through likes, shares, and comments! The final part of putting your strategy together is ensuring the influencers you work with can deliver actions. Can they provoke actions that work towards achieving your goal? Can they deliver a buy? Can they send people to your website? The answer is usually yes if you put all of the above into your strategy. Get Inspired To keep up with all things #InfluencerMarketing, including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to start crafting your influencer campaigns. You can also join our world leading FREE academy where you will receive industry leading training and material on everything influencer marketing. Influencer discovery can be a long and tiring process if you have to manually search for the right talent. You can use a company like us to help you with the correct software to find the right talent and ensure your campaign goals are achieved.