Alright guys, ever since I found this little medium called anime, my life became a lot less boring in certain parts; mainly the content creative side of things. In the digital age content creation has become such a hot commodity among Millennials (90’s Kids) and Gen Z (2000’s Kids), because they found a new way to make income that doesn’t involve being yelled at by Ken the Store Manager. (Or Karen the Store Manager.) Believe it or not there have been so many Youtubers whose channels I’ve come across over the years, who have built themselves a fandom from the ground up. Hell, you can take us for example; when we started in January 2016 we didn’t have business cards – we had half-sheets of paper with the very first logo I’ve ever made. And we made our debut at Animore; Otakon’s replacement anime convention when it moved to Washington, DC.

This leads into what I really want to talk about; how to promote yourself organically without getting caught up in the ‘numbers game’. That’s right; the game where you want to garner the attention of the Youtube algorithm so badly, that you’ll go through any kind of extremes to do so – even with the help of third party promoters. The music industry is the same way; with independent artists like myself at the mercy of the Spotify “Featured” algorithm, that I went to a Spotify promotion website (that I thought was legit) in an effort to try and boost my streams high enough for the algorithm to take notice. Sadly what creators (or music producers) don’t realize is that even if those third party promotion websites may SAY that they’ll boost your presence online, how they do it can be pretty…suspect.

Creating content or music is one thing, but when you’re marketing skills are ‘mid’, you usually pass that onto someone who’s an expert at it. The thing is; with so many bots everywhere on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, it can get get pretty dicey when you can’t tell if the follows or streams you get are coming from real people, or a bot farm. Promotions that have been around longer may have better relations with getting people to view your video, or stream your music on their playlist; nevertheless when you’re doing ALL of the promotion and advertising yourself, it means you may have to put a little more extra care into your project(s) before releasing them. People are impressionable these days, and will only engage in music or digital content where there’s some sort of takeaway from it; like a lesson learned, or a genuine feeling.

Other times its dumb luck, and your video just happens to go viral at just the right time.

Now you’re probably thinking “Um, doesn’t promotion cost money?” and yes, it does. However, you get to control how much you want to promote, and what to promote based on your budget. The Sonic movies would’ve never gotten big as they’ve gotten had they not promoted it – heavily might I add. The same can be said for Youtubers, podcasters, and content creators; people won’t know who you are if you don’t promote and market yourself, its just that you have to be mindful that if you’re promoting online, do it with third party promoters that social media platforms trust. Chasing numbers can be hazardous to your mental health; as you may feel like everyone’s content is better than yours based on the reactions, likes, and reposts that they’re getting.

STOP!

Everyone moves at their own pace, and there is no reason for you to feel inferior just because Johnny Gameright has 650,000 subscribers and you only got 80. He had to work just as hard as you to get there. Its not about the head count on your social media platform; but the quality of the people that are following you because they like what you do, and want to continue supporting you. So don’t worry about the quantity of your numbers, but focus more on the quality of the people that follow you, as well as the content you’re producing.

Hopefully you took something away from this post, and if you did, kudos! Until next post, stay safe, and stay nerdy my friends! 😉