NFTs Without Videos are Like a Day Without Sunshine
This week’s newsletter tells you not only WHY you should have a YouTube channel for your NFT collections, but HOW to do it!
“A Rising Floor” is a free newsletter & Discord mastermind created to bring NFT collection owners and founders together to grow, learn… and raise the floor! Join here: https://arisingfloor.com
- YouTube NFTs or Bust
- NFT Kittens FTW
- Keywords, Keywords, Ooh, Ahh
- Keep it Simple, Silly — K.I.S.S.
Last week I wrote a complete guide for artists (or anyone really) to use to launch and market a new NFT project. If you missed it, read it by clicking here!
If you prefer to listen to Nick reading this newsletter on our video/podcast, you can click here to watch instead of read!
YouTube NFTs or Bust
It might sound a bit odd to some people to create a YouTube Channel and start making videos to promote a “normal” NFT collection.
Afterall, it’s not a game, there usually aren’t any moving parts, it’s just a bunch of PFP pictures… you can’t really “do” anything with them. Are YouTube videos really something you should spend your valuable time on?
Heck yeah, they are!
In fact, I’ll spend the rest of this week’s newsletter telling you not only WHY you should have a YouTube channel for your NFTs, but HOW!
Creating a YouTube account and videos can be a valuable strategy for an NFT collection in a lot of different ways. There are some “considerations” too, and we’ll talk about those as well.
Pros & Cons(siderations) of Creating NFT Videos
Here are a lot of great reasons to take videos seriously:
- Increased Visibility: YouTube is one of the largest video-sharing platforms with a vast user base. It’s also the busiest search engine on the planet. Creating NFT videos can help you reach a broader audience. You never know where someone might search for info, so this greatly increases your odds of being discovered!
- Teaching Opportunity: You can use videos to educate your audience about your NFT collection, the technology behind it, your “story”, and the value it offers. I’ll share more specific ideas about this later.
- Engagement: Video tends to be more engaging, and can help build a deeper connection with your audience when created properly.
- SEO Benefits: YouTube videos can rank in search engine results to drive traffic to your NFT collection website or marketplace. Just the links from YouTube alone increase the ranking algorithm for your website.
- Community Building: Videos allow you to interact with your community, answer questions, and create a sense of belonging among your supporters.
- YouTube Videos stay up forever. I have videos on YouTube that I made 10+ years ago. Every now and then I get a reply, question, or email from something I don’t ever remember making! You never know where that one whale might come from.
Cons and Considerations:
I know I said “cons”, but I honestly don’t feel there are any actual “cons”. I honestly can’t think of any downside… so let’s use the word “considerations” as we move on.
- Time and Resources: Creating quality video content can be time-consuming and can require additional resources, such as money for equipment and maybe software. IMO, it’s well worth investing in both.
- Competitive Landscape: The YouTube space is competitive, so building an audience can take a while. I still don’t consider this a “con”, because we’ll create specific “types” of videos that we’ll send people to directly, without the need to be “found” by someone browsing.
- Skillset: You might need to learn some new skills like editing and such, or you can hire a sixth grader to help you out. However, today’s tech is extremely easy to learn.
- Privacy Concerns: If you’re “not doxxing”, you need to be cautious about sharing personal information. This is easily avoided, but I think not doxxing has a lot more cons than whatever you need to do to make sure people don’t hear your voice or see your face.
- Most NFT projects don’t even consider making videos. YouTube might be a platform with less competition from within your niche, and truly surprise you.
That’s about it, really. Maybe I’m missing something but I really can’t think of any genuinely legitimate reason not to create videos about your NFTs.
In the long run, the decision to create videos and a YouTube channel is up to you. If you’re on a shoestring budget and doing everything on your own, I get it… I know how easily things can get crazy.
If you believe that video content can enhance your NFT collection’s visibility, engage your audience, and help tell your story effectively, you should find a way to do it… even if you start later on after the launch.
NFT Kittens FTW
So let’s talk more about the types of videos to make. Keep in mind, that a boring video will get about 5 seconds of watch time and they’ll move on… so what are we going to do to get them engaged enough to hang around?
Kittens!
I’m kidding. Unless, of course, your NFTs “are” pictures of kittens, lol. In that case, you’re golden. If not, here’s some other ideas:
- Videos that simply show your collection. Assuming your artwork is incredible, some background music playing while your NFTs are flipped through can be enough. Vary their positions, backgrounds, etc.. If you or someone narrates something on top of the music it can add another really nice element.
- Tell your personal story on camera. People won’t care as much about how perfect you come across on video as they’ll care about your sincerity. Talk about yourself and how you ended up in the NFT biz. Write a script, but use bullet points to sound more natural.
- Tell the story of your collection’s beginnings on video or using a series of images. Document the process and record the minting, the steps you took as the artwork was drawn/made and early images, explain the changes, decisions made, and the journey to launch.
- Create informational videos that highlight and use your NFTs as examples. For example, make a video that shows how to launch an NFT collection, how to mint NFTs, or how to make money investing in NFTs, and then have your collection shown throughout the video as examples.
- Interview someone in the industry who has a decent size following, and use their influence as leverage. They’ll invite their community, you can advertise it in advance and gain followers this way. It doesn’t need to be a mega-influencer, just someone who you know will help generate a high-quality video that people will want to watch. I choose quality here over quantity.
- Create some type of a contest that involves your community and get them involved. “We’re giving a WL spot (or a free NFT or whatever) to whoever comes up with a great idea for a video that promotes the collection. You might come up with something incredible!
- Be creative! There are many more great things you can come up with to create videos about. Use your noodle.
I really can’t stress this last one enough. There are countless things you can make videos about. The video doesn’t need to be “about” your collection, it just to be
about something interesting in the blockchain niche, and “include” your collection.
During the years I was the CMO for a web3 game, we had a video coming up on the first page of Google in the top spot. The search term it was on page one for was something like “how to send Ethereum to Metamask”. The article was on our blog to help new players... doh... send Ethereum to Metamask.
Readers would google looking how to send the $, read the article on our blog, (which also talked about how fun the game is), and “poof”, a certain percentage became players.
They were blockchain users who needed help with their wallets. They were not “looking” for a game, but a good number took the time to read on and look around, and were sold. Find ways like this to “backdoor” people into looking at your collection if you run out of ideas. (and even if you don’t!)
So let’s talk about some of the “hows”.
We can talk for hours about tips, strategies, and how to make money using YouTube, but my goal here is to explain why to do it at all, and then give you some simple strategies that work, you can do on your own, and that you can implement easily.
Like always, if you have questions, come on over to the Discord and ask. https://discord.gg/hSkF2bvSUx
I’m not going to write about how to make the videos because there are already a gazillion videos and blogs that cover it. (and most people are making them already using their phone, for Snapchat, TikTok, and Facebook)
One thing I “do” want to share about is when I record the video: Most of you know that I write this newsletter to post on Friday or Saturday, and then I read it out loud a few days later and create a video from the newsletter. I elaborate, talk about things I may have forgotten at the time, and expand.
When I do this, I record myself using Twitch instead of my phone or YouTube. This way, the video is on Twitch, and I simply push a button to upload the video to YouTube automatically, so I kill two birds with one stone and am likely to be found on either.
In addition, Twitch has a complete suite of editing tools built in, so if you want to edit something out, shorten it and such, you can.
I also want to cover some of the things that add a little bit of “oomph” to getting found and that are likely to get more eyeballs to your video. Know that these things change often, but are good practices to use today and likely into the future as well.
I’ll write a complete newsletter at some point that will share how to use keywords, where to find out how many people search for specific phrases and terms, and more. For now, just know that you want to try and use words that people are likely to put into Google when they want info.
Phrases that start with “how to” are great. Also, a great tip is to open Google and start writing a search term into the search field. Google will automatically SHOW YOU what the best terms are. Use these when I mention “keywords” or “KW’s” below.
Keywords, Keywords, ooh, aah
Before You Upload Your Video:
- If you are uploading your video and not recording live, change the name of your video file to your keywords before uploading — this will help tell Google what the video is about, to help your rankings.
- Rename your thumbnail image file to use keywords for the same reason.
- Include your keywords in the first part of the title phrase of your video.
- Have a “CTA” (call to action) in the video title. Include “Watch Now”, etc..
- Include your keywords several times in the video description. Don’t “keyword stuff” though, by repeating it over and over. It worked in 2002, but will get you penalized today. Consider using AI to write your title and description. When you input the directions tell it to use proper keywords and it will!
- Add keywords in the YouTube tags, but stay consistent so YouTube knows what the video is about. AI is great for this as well.
- Get the free app “VidIQ”. It will help you through these steps as you create, as well as show you other ranking tools and strategies.
10. DO NOT include links to your website, Discord, or other videos in your YouTube description. Wait 24 hours so YouTube’s algorithm learns and focuses on the video first, and then add them the next day.
Within the First Few Hours:
1. If you have an email list of followers, let them know you just uploaded a new video. If you do NOT have an email list, you should very seriously consider getting one. There are two newsletters teaching this at https://arisingfloor.com/articles , and I can create this for you as well.
- “Like” your video. If you have multiple accounts, like it with them as well.
- Add up to two end screens linking to other videos on your channel.
4 . Play the video from start to end at least four or five times. As above, if you have multiple accounts, do it with these as well. - Share your new video on Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, (X) Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, TikTok, and anywhere else you post. Remember to also use keywords in the titles of the posts, in tags, etc..
- Add playlists to your channel and add the videos to a playlist or two.
There are plenty more, but this will get you up and running.
After a week or so:
Go back and add additional links at the bottom of the video description to all of your videos in the playlist. I have read this in several places and learned it’s quite powerful.
Keep it Simple, Silly!
I hope that I’ve convinced you how important it is to make videos for your NFT collection. If for no other reason, than that it’s not done by many creators and you might have an edge.
Like I said above, there are entire books and hundreds of hours of training written about this, but my goal was to explain to you WHY to do it, give you ideas of WHAT kind of videos to make, and then show you some simple things to do to get off and rolling.
In the future, I’ll put out a newsletter that goes more into advanced strategies but for now, I JUST WANT YOU TO GET STARTED.
‘Nuff said! If you need help ask for it. If you don’t prove it!
Nick
PS — If you want to dig deeper into YouTube training, you can click here to see one of the best YouTube training courses I’ve ever bought. It was created by an amazing teen named Matt Par, who really knows his stuff.
A Rising Floor is a weekly newsletter and Discord Mastermind created for NFT and ordinal collection owners, staff, and founders, as well as NFT industry gig workers and anyone who wants to promote their NFTs. It’s a free source of news, NFT marketing help, and a place to communicate with peers for the advancement of the industry.
Follow Nick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nickcifonie
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