Three Absolute Musts If You Want Success on Social Media

When two guys with over two million social media followers between them sit down to share their secrets, it's a great opportunity to learn. This short, 6 minute video is jam-packed with helpful advice that anyone can start using immediately.

Justin Odisho is an absolute wizard with editing videos on Adobe Premiere Pro and has a YouTube channel that boasts 518k subscribers at the time of writing. Brian Barczyk, from Snakebytes TV, is an engaging animal adventurer who has almost 2 million subscribers across all his social media platforms. So when these two guys sat down together for a short, power-packed video discussing what works for them on social media, I was all ears.

Specifically, Brian Barzcyk talks about the "three C's" behind his success — consistency, content, and collaboration.

It really is important that you're consistent with posting if you want to build your followers and your relationships with people. Indeed, as life events have taken over for me in the past year and made it harder for me to post to Instagram as regularly as I'd like, I have seen a pronounced downturn in the number of business and collaboration opportunities coming my way.

Quite simply, if you're not being seen consistently you're not being found consistently. And it's interesting to hear these guys' views on the issue.

But what I really liked about this video and thought was most useful was their holistic views on collaborations. I have developed some great friendships and business opportunities through collaborations with other photographers on Instagram, and listening to these guys talk reaffirmed my belief that collaborations are a massive part of a successful business plan.

Have a look at these guys explaining the reasons why. It's only 6 minutes but it could have a big impact on the way you view, and use social media.

Iain Stanley's picture

Iain Stanley is an Associate Professor teaching photography and composition in Japan. Fstoppers is where he writes about photography, but he's also a 5x Top Writer on Medium, where he writes about his expat (mis)adventures in Japan and other things not related to photography. To view his writing, click the link above.

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11 Comments

I'd love to see cost per hour breakdown examples of how larger (ie 500k +) Youtube channels work, but over the "whole of life" of their models. It seems that consistently creating Youtube videos, which is essential to financial success on that platform, requires an enormous up-front time investment before it becomes financially viable.

Well I believe the very first question we all have to answer is, why to do this at all? If you do this only for financial benefits I would suggest to move elsewhere, as amount of work you need to put into it is enormous. However if it's mostly passion (something you would do even if there is 0 followers around), then it might and will eventually end up successfully - that's at least what I believe in uhm :)

I’m 50/50 on this. In my 40s now with a family and a mortgage, there’s no way I’d spend hours on anything work-related that wasn’t going to pay me. That being said, I wouldn’t spend hours on anything that I wasn’t absolutely passionate about either....

That's where I'm coming from, too. Of course, being passionate is a prerequisite whether you're aiming for financial gain or not.

But ultimately, video creators are the lifeblood of YouTube. I wonder what the equivalent hourly rate ends up being for the successful ones.

Photographers keep on telling us why everyone else should value their services highly, but we seem to expect Youtube videographers to simply accept whatever scraps Google drops for them. I'd be interested to know what that turns out to be worth in real dollars and cents per hour.

I second Pawei's comment. If its not something you love and have a passion for, don't do youtube. While I don't have 1m subs on yt, I have close to 120k and its one of the hardest things I've done. I don't make that much money from it, but I have a passion to do it. Without that passion, I would have quit a long time ago, there are much easier ways to make money.

Yes, that’s why 95% of channels start with a bang then fade after a few months. When the money doesn’t start rolling in they realise they’re not actually tjat passionate about the topic haha

I have 7 subs and exactly zero public content on my Youtube channel. Making YouTube videos looks like a really fun hobby, but it appears that the time required to build a serious following is way beyond what I would find reasonable for a hobby in my own life.

But whether we're uploading YouTube content as a hobby or not, all that content is the lifeblood of YouTube. I'm interested in what they end up paying, in dollars per hour, for the successful creators. Photographers rightly demand they be paid fairly for their work, and I wonder how much YouTube videographers are valued for theirs.

Awesome tips, success on social media is so important for artists of all kinds

My issue with social media is that the objectives are often very blurry. If you want followers, fine. But I want business. So far I haven't heard of a single person who was contacted by someone they did not know beforehand because of social media who then converted that contact into a paying gig. The day I quit social media and put that 30 hours a week I had spent on it into pounding the pavement was the day my income starting increasing substantially.

Really? My experience has been very different. Just in the last couple of months I’ve done substantial work for Japan National Tourism Organisation, a local honey distributor, an AirBnB promoter and a beauty salon, off the top of my head. They all came through contacts (DMs) on Instagram and then later email.

But getting out and talking to people, and meetig people and making yourself seen amongst the circles that you hope to generate work is also hugely important.

We all just need to find what works best for us and our personalities.

I believe social media is just only one of many options to promote your work. I would say it all really depends what you're into. For some of us this kind of "fame" has also value just as it is, without financial benefits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#Self-actuali...

I know many quite successful photographers with low to nothing exposure on social media, and I know like few of them with 10k+ (yea it's not that big) with no success at all. I believe that numbers of followers doesn't explicitly translate to business skills and financial results because... well let's face it. It is not that much about gaining clients. Most of people that follows me around are other photographers, models or friends. Are those paying clients? No. But why would paying client follow my instagram? What I have interesting to offer to those real clients that in everyday don't give damn #$@# about anyone doing photos? Much cheaper option would say would be to invest in local city promotion, or other targeted ads. Cheaper of course in terms of time that in fact cost money.