Search Engine Optimization, analytics, algorithm, ad campaign data set, meta-information, thumbnails, tags, triggering trends; all fancy words you can use to impress your future in-laws.

Have you ever realized that you only really go on Google to ask a question? ‘How to tie a bow-tie’ ‘Best pho places near me’ and ‘How to kiss…’ What makes Google stand out and stand alone is their search, one more time: SEARCH. Google is the master at search and houses large campuses all over the world (and underground) to store gargantuan volumes of data. In 2006, the same year Bird flu came around and Pluto was downgraded, Google made a bizarre purchase from three former PayPal crew, Jawed Karim, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley who developed a platform that can quickly and with a large enough bandwidth show your video: YouTube

Did you know in the early days of YouTube there was no subscribe button? No Monetization? Seems impossible now right? All that’s changed now. There are currently almost 2 billion active logged in users every month. About 400 hours of video are uploaded to the platform every single minute. Future forecast shows that nearly 80% of all online traffic will be video! So, the power, the secret sauce in all of this comes when content makers, like myself on Mom Gamers, make a video and puts more information on the video so that YouTube will know how to categorize and inform its viewers. How to win at the game of YouTube is to…think like YouTube.

My videos and content at Mom Gamers are geared towards a mom audience. Every single video I put out must have the words ‘mom’ or something closely related. Google Trends, a great website tool, helps add in related query search that comes close to the word mom, perhaps ‘Pinterest’ for example. A metaphor would be that you’ve now created a donut shop that’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week that can draw crowds from all over the world with bright lights. You now have an amount of influence.

Tips to what makes great videos, great content. Your content must, harder than you initially think, must hit the end user. You must provide information that saves time, money or information. Most important, if you are serious about making a channel, you must keep producing content even if no one is watching, something I can relate to. You will never know if you trigger the algorithm that will make YouTube start promoting your channel to viewer’s homepages.

I’d like to end on a story. Being a mom to growing boys, we are heavily involved in the Boy Scouts of American program. Scouting is a very involved activity and I wanted to be involved in my sons’ progress. MCQbushcraft, Ray Mears and Primitive Technology on YouTube all helped show me how to tie knots, orienteer, and learn light backpack skills that I can now use with confidence not only with my children but now as a den leader for the next growing generation of cub scouts. Thanks YouTube!