How to Grow An Audience in 2024 · Contentpreneurship.com (FREE)

Dec '23 in General

How to Grow An Audience in 2024

According to Ali Abdaal (5M subs on YouTube)

“Creating content is not so much a ‘creativity thing’, it’s more a ‘systems, processes and SOPs’ thing.” - Ali Abdaal

“I only write when creativity strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning” - William Faulkner

Ali Abdaal, among many other creatives, don’t seem to have struggles to come up with ideas. They have systems and frameworks in place to make sure they never go blank. This is how Ali Abdaal does it.

# Generating Content Ideas

Before coming up with content ideas you need to define your niche. You can do this by defining your:

Target (who am I creating content for?)
Value (what do I teach/give them?)

For example, if you’re a marketing agency owner you could:

teach other marketing agency owners how to grow their business.

target DTC brand managers and teach them how to use TikTok ads to level up their DTC campaigns.

So even with the same business you can explore very different niches.

After defining your niche you can generate ideas by answering the following questions:

What are all the different content buckets of ideas?
What’s popular on blogs that are targeting that audience?
What are the other YouTube channels in the space? Check their videos that have gone viral (Viral Replication)

*Viral Replication*

How to apply “Viral Replication” on YouTube:

Search similar channels in the same niche
Look for videos that went viral by sorting videos by views
Copy the title and thumbnail of another piece of content that worked and replicate that in your own way

# Finding Your Unfair Advantage

Go very niche down. Ask yourself the question: “How do I add value to people that I’m comfortable I can add value to?”.

Use the “10% Edge” of Amy Porterfield: Who is the audience that you’re 10% ahead of that you can show the path forward to, and be a guide rather than a guru.

When Ali started out he used the “Gary V” style, document not create. He just documented his journey and taught what he learned. Ali transformed into different niches from time to time. He started teaching how to get into med school for specific universities, then he slowly focussed on how to study for exams, and after he received tons of questions about how he manages his time doing all this, he transitioned to productivity where he’s known for today. Notice that he started very niched down, and slowly moved to more broader topics.

# How to Systematize Your Content (80/20)

On YouTube the title and thumbnail are very important. If no one clicks, no one watches. Spending a decent amount of time on the “packaging” is helpful. So much so that it’s the first thing Ali thinks about when creating a video, and if he can’t come up with a good title and thumbnail, he doesn’t proceed with the idea.

For the content he uses a simple framework: Hook (first 30 seconds) and structure (3-part structure).

For educational content on YouTube, about half of the audience clicks away after 30 seconds. So if there’s a part of the video you particularly spend much time on, try to put it in the beginning so more people will see it, and more people will stick around.

# How to Stay Consistent as a Creator

Have patience and faith: it takes a long time before seeing results, but if you do the right things and show up consistently, they will come.

Set input goals: you can’t control if a video will get a lot of views or you gain a ton of subscribers. What you can control is how frequent you upload and how much effort you put in your videos.

Have the right time horizon: as Ali puts it, you need to post a video a week for at least 2 years to let it change your life.

# How to Delegate

Doing everything yourself is a recipe for burnout according to Ali Abdaal. And, he being seen as the “productivity master”, that says a lot. In order to keep creating content in a sustainable way, you have to delegate parts of the process. Ali likes to think of his YouTube channel as if it was a franchise, and asks himself the question:

“What is the system that I’d follow to franchise out my YouTube channel?”

He created the the following system for his channel:

Idea Generation -> Research -> Writing -> Filming -> Editing -> Publishing -> Repurposing -> Analytics

He outsources everything except the writing and filming part.

How does your content creation workflow look like? Do you also have systems in place to guarantee a consistent flow of ideas?

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