This morning I read an article about how to see who your subscribers are on YouTube.

Essentially the entire article was about logging onto YouTube, clicking the profile photo icon in the top right corner, clicking on the option for “YouTube Studio”, finding “Channel Analytics,” scrolling down and finding the most recent subscribers by sorting by date.

And you can go to Channel Analytics, choose the option for “Advanced Mode” and then choose a tab. Your choices are Subscription Status, Traffic Source, Subscription Source, Geography, Viewer Age, Date, Viewer Gender and more.

So far so good, but here’s where his advice goes off the rails:

He tells you that while analyzing the subscriber data, you should look for age groups or demographics that are underrepresented and then focus on creating content that appeals to them.

This has got to be some of the WORST advice I’ve ever heard, both for YouTube specifically and marketing in general.

Let’s say I’ve got a YouTube channel that demonstrates to teenage girls how to choose and apply makeup. Am I really going to start creating videos for octogenarian men because right now they are underrepresented in my audience?

And if my current audience is gun owners, and I really going to create content for anti-violence, peace-loving people? Of course not. I will alienate my own audience and I won’t be fooling the peace-loving audience, either.

One of the most common mistakes new marketers make is trying to appeal to everybody. But by appealing to everybody, they wind up appealing to nobody.

Marketing is a bit like getting married. Once you choose your spouse, that is the person you need to come home to every night. And once you choose your audience, THAT is the audience you need to cater to almost exclusively. If you do want to build an entirely new and different audience, then create a new persona especially for that new audience, and don’t tell your old audience you’re being unfaithful, either.

Lessons learned here:

Don’t try to please everybody.

Choose your target audience and then make that audience happy

Question every bit of advice you find online. And offline.

Yes, including mine.

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