Working with Brands on YouTube with Beth Le Manach from Entertaining with Beth – FBP010

Welcome back to the Food Blogger Pro podcast! Today’s episode features Beth Le Manach from the YouTube cooking channel Entertaining with Beth.

Last week, Bjork interviewed Jaden and Scott Hair from Steamy Kitchen. They talked about all sorts of stuff, from mastermind groups to blog business to finding your “worth.” If you want to go back and listen to that episode, click here.

Working with Brands on YouTube

We had our first YouTube-centric interview a few weeks ago with Chris and Hilah of Hilah Cooking. While that interview covered more of the actual video topics, today’s talk with Beth Le Manach gets into the other stuff – how to work with brands, what multi-channel networks are, and finding your “value” on YouTube.

This episode is sucha a great listen for those interested in YouTube, but might be a little bogged down in the details. Beth helps clear the murky water that is YouTube and gives some great advice for those looking to jump in.

In this info-packed episode, Beth reveals:

  • How to choose a multi-channel network
  • How multi-channel networks are turning into multi-platform networks
  • What metrics are important to pay attention to on YouTube
  • How long your videos should be
  • Where to find your “value”
  • Why YouTube is such a personal platform
  • How she deals with negative comments
  • What it takes to shoot her videos
  • Her advice for those who want to jump into video

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Transcript:

Bjork Ostrom: Welcome to episode number 10 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. In this episode, we’re going to be chatting with Beth Le Manach, the creative force behind the YouTube channel Entertaining with Beth and Beth also helps manage the Kin Community channel, which is a popular multi-channel network on YouTube. If you have no idea what a multi-channel network is, we’re going to be talking about that. No worries there. Bottom line, she knows and understands what it takes to build a strong community on YouTube.

We’re going to be talking about everything from sponsored content to advertising, to what’s important in the eyes of brands, what it’s like working a full time job, while also doing a successful YouTube channel. There’s just a ton of awesome information in this interview. I’m really excited for you to check it out, without further ado let’s jump in with our interview. Here’s Beth from Entertaining with Beth.

Welcome Beth to the Food Blogger Pro podcast, we’re so excited you’re here.

Beth Le Manach: Well thank you, I’m so excited to be here.

Bjork Ostrom: This is actually take two of our intro because I made what I consider to be one of the worst mistakes ever. I’m learning this podcast thing. I had a handful of almonds before I started and then my second word in I started choking. I apologize for that first intro. We’ll cut that out, and nobody will ever hear that.

Beth Le Manach: No problem.

Bjork Ostrom: Let’s jump in. Beth, I’m curious, when you meet somebody for the first time and they say, “Beth, it’s really nice to meet you. What do you do?” How do you respond to that person? What do you say?

Beth Le Manach: Oh my God, that is so funny. That is a question I get and I usually laugh and I think, “Well, I do a lot of things. Which things are you interested in?”. Then I usually starts the conversation.

Bjork Ostrom: Let’s say that I was talking to you, I said, “Okay, what do you do?” You’d say, “Well, I do a lot of different things.” One of the things I’d be curious about, what do you spend the majority of your time doing?

Beth Le Manach: Yes, thinking about YouTube is where I spend the majority of my time. Between my day job, which is working for what we call an MCN, on YouTube which is a multi-channel network which is really evolving into a multi-platform network with all of the different social networks now having their own native video players. Then my weekend job and night and early morning job which is running my own YouTube channel: Entertaining With Beth.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. I want to go back to that first part that you said, multi-channel network and then what was the other acronym that you gave?

Beth Le Manach: Yes, multi-channel networks are turning into a multi-platform networks and basically I can define that a little bit because it sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo. Basically what it is, is an MCN, multi-channel network is a business organization set-up on YouTube to grow up like-minded channels under one umbrella and monetize across them. It’s a way for creators who have YouTube channels to join a business organization that will help them make more money, get more opportunities and grow their channel. Usually it’s centered around a certain vertical. Kin Community, the one that I work for is centered around lifestyle content, so food, fashion, DIY, parenting and home.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Can you give a concrete example of how a website or a organization like Kin Community could help somebody who’s wanting to get started out or who’s growing their YouTube channel?

Beth Le Manach: Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Give me a concrete example or some type of relationship and how that would work.

Beth Le Manach: Definitely. There’s a lot of those multi-channel networks out there. It’s a very competitive space. One of the big pieces of advice that I always give to content creators is shop around, do your homework, see what each MCN is offering. One of the things that we offer is smaller, more hands-on experience for the creator. We have about a 100 creators in our network. That makes about a 150 channels, because some creators have more than one channel, where another MCN’s may have tens of thousands of channels. Looking for that real individualized attention is what we can give. When you’re new and you’re starting out on YouTube it can be a very confusing platform, because most people’s experience with YouTube is somebody sends them a cat video, somebody sends them a fun music video, and that’s the extent of it. But there is a whole ecosystem to YouTube, an inner workings that most social platforms have that you really need to understand.

An MCN can help them figure out best practices on YouTube, how to grow your channel, how to get subscribers, how to get views, it’s not the type of thing you build it and they will come, you have to water your YouTube garden on a daily basis to make sure that you are actually growing it, or they’ll be stagnant and just die. It will die on the vine.

The other thing that an MCN will do is introduce you to brands and brand content opportunities. While you may make money on YouTube through the advertisements that are placed before the video that’s not where most of the money is made. The most significant revenue stream for any creator producing videos on YouTube is through brand partnerships, much in a way that a blog works. I’m sure you know display ad is nice, but that’s not where a majority of the money comes from. It’s more through brand campaign.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s one of the things that is interesting to me about video. I feel like it’s such a great way to for brands to get themselves in front of consumers. As you know, video is a great way to do that because when someone is consuming video content it’s going to show them exactly what it is. It’s not like they’re going to miss that, like they would with display advertising, or something like that. I think video is really important, and I’m excited to talk to you because not only are you in it, and doing it yourself, and doing it really well, but you also have this broad net where you’re able to catch a lot of different experiences with Kin community.

Your role is Vice President of programming. What does that mean for you at Kin community?

Beth Le Manach: Basically, we have restructured a little bit here at Kin, and we have formed Kin Studios. What that means is that my programming department has merged with the ad sales department. We have formed one organization that I co-run with my colleague, Lauren Merrriam. Basically, how that works is we get brands to come to us, and they say, “Okay, here’s our product.” or “Here’s out campaign. This is what we’re trying to get across.” Then my team on a creative side or on a production side will ideate, come up with what the idea is for the different brand. What we do is a different talent. We’ll find out who wants to be involved, what is the best fit for the advertisers. Then we execute it for them. Everything from the beginning of ideation and development stage, all the way down to the delivery of actually uploading the video. Those videos can be uploaded on the creator’s channel, or it can be uploaded on the Kin community channel.

Bjork Ostrom: So an example is … I was watching some of your videos, which are really well done. You had worked with, was it Libby? Is that right? Was that the company name?

Beth Le Manach: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: So Libby and they have pumpkin, and you had made these really incredible muffins. That would be an example of some type of relationship where you’re representing or having this sponsored video where you showcase a product and they’re working with no only you, but also it would be other people within Kin communities to do a Kin community-wide food-related sponsorship. Is that correct?

Beth Le Manach: Yes. That one is a really interesting example to pull from, because that was an example where they had actually reached out to me directly through my channel. I said, “Oh great!”, and then I passed it on to Kin community. They were like, “Great. Yeah, we can work with that, and we have these other creators too.” It’s a way that opportunity comes to me through the channels, but because I also have a day job here at Kin community and I’m invested in seeing that company succeed, we can then make the program larger. Not only for the advertiser, but also sprinkled down to the other creators in our network.

It always works both ways. People always say, “Do you think you’ll give up the channel?” or “Do you think you’ll give up the day job?, and I really feel that having both is what’s allowing me to succeed at both. Having the channel allows me to know what the creators are going through, what we deal with on a daily basis, and the network helps me visualize the best ideas for brands because I know how it would sit with the creator. Then having the day job and understanding the business of YouTube really allows me to succeed at being a creator.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that’s great because you can speak the language, so to speak, of each area. You get what it’s like to create, but you also get what it’s like to work with the brands, and to be on that side. Which I think is incredible.

If you were to give a guess of the majority of the YouTube people that you work with, what would be the percentage break down in terms of income potential for YouTube channel when you’re comparing sponsored content, like content where you would work with a brand, versus the traditional advertising that you’d have, and that probably most people think of when they think of a YouTube channel. Is it 50/50? 10/90? What does that break down look like?

Beth Le Manach: No. It’s like the old 80/20 rule really. I mean, 80% of the income that’s going to make it worthwhile to do two channels together, let me tell you. A blog it takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and it’s not easy. There’s a lot that goes into it, and there’s a lot of expense that goes into it too. If you’re harvesting doubt and you’re actually having people shoot the content for you. I think 80% of it is going to come from the bigger brand opportunities, and then 20% is that nice fill that you get through the media that’s running the channel. In order to really make big money in media on your channel, you’re going to need millions of view every month. To put it in perspective.

Bjork Ostrom: I think that would be helpful for people that are just starting out. Could you give, and I know it’s maybe difficult to do, but let’s say if somebody is just starting out. They have maybe, ten thousand subscribers, which is still a really great accomplishment. It’s a decent amount. Would they be able to work with a sponsor, or would they have to get to a point where they have one hundred, two hundred-fifty thousand, and at each level can you give a general estimate on what they could potentially see for a sponsorship, or a sponsored relationship?

Beth Le Manach: It is a number’s game on YouTube. Obviously, the bigger the numbers you have, the more money you’re going to be able to make. While ten thousand, that is such a great achievement, and that’s really …

YouTube is really a number’s game at the end of the day. Advertisers, when they are looking for partnering with creators, they are going to look at what that subscriber number is. It’s usually the most important metric that they look at first, because they see that as potential reach. While ten thousand might feel like a great number, in the eyes of a brand it’s still relatively small. Really, fifty thousand is a good place to start. Now there are some brands that would work with smaller channels, don’t get me wrong, but the fees that you’re going to see at a channel that’s at ten thousand, it might be like $100 a video or so? Which, for a channel at ten thousand subscribers, that actually is a good place to start. It can go up from there. I’ve seen six figures given per video for certain creators.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay, and that would be a per video placement. Obviously, that person has millions and millions of followers, but that would be maybe a five to ten video with a product mention, or using the product in the video. Is that right?

Beth Le Manach: Yes. Exactly, and then it usually requires social posts to promote it and support it as well. So it might be one video, and part of that fee also includes post on Facebook and twitter and instagram.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that I would be interested in knowing. Are there other statistics that maybe other people normally don’t think about that are also important with a YouTube channel? The example I always think about is, I know a lot of websites and even lots of blogs that have a lot of traffic, but it’s people that are not very engaged. You can have a smaller community that’s really engaged, and that’s potentially more beneficial for a brand. Are there other data points that people should be aware of, or metrics, as they’re growing their channel, and what are those?

Beth Le Manach: That’s a great question. Back in the day … the thing that’s interesting is at face value it’s always subscribers, like “Oh, they have so many subscribers.” But once you’ve been on YouTube for a while you start to be able to look through that, because that’s only the curb appeal, if you will. If you can get into a channel and you can key, well how many views do you know you’re actually getting? A lot of times people might have these subscribers if they’ve been around for a long time, but then if you look at how many views they’re getting at the beginning of each upload it can be very low, and almost out of whack for the amount of subscribers they get. You want to look at that.

These are important, but views aren’t the only story, because that doesn’t tell the engagement story. The real engagement story is told through how many likes does a video have. It should have a good percentage of likes. How many comments are there? That’s just public knowledge, anybody can see that. If you see a video that has a lot of views on it but they’re not like and there’s no comments, it’s like, hmmm, what’s going on with that video. It’s like somebody has paid to have that video promoted because that’s not actually real engaged audience liking or comments.

The other thing that you can tell as a creator is, you want to keep track of your completion rate. If you have a five minute video are people getting at least 70-80% of that video, or are they tuning out after 10 or 20%. What’s so nice about YouTube is they have so many great analytic tools that you literally can right into that [cm ledge] and pull up that video, hit play, and at a little bar it’ll tell you where people are dropping off. That’s really important because that’s where you can start to see patterns. “Oh, everybody drops off right after my intro. Maybe I should lose that intro. Why does everybody always drops off every time I taste the food? Maybe because people don’t want to see me taste the food.” That’s where you get the intel to be able to iterate on your content.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s an amazing little feature that they have. I’ve used that a couple times and looked at that, but you can see where people drop off and you can watch it along with the video so you can say, “Oh, at this point, I said this and everybody left.” or a lot of people left. It’s a great tool.

Beth Le Manach: Yeah. It’s very telling.

Bjork Ostrom: I cut you off there, sorry. You were going to say?

Beth Le Manach: I was just going to also say what the big metric on YouTube right now is watch time. Where there might be completion rate, how long did somebody stay to watch one video. Watch time really talks about how much of your archive are they consuming in one session. Do they go from one video to the next? There’s a way that you can, through the use of tools, whether that be annotations or playlists that you can ‘bread-crumb’ people through your content to keep them with your content. The reason you want to keep them with your content is that the Google algorithm looks at watch time as a way to judge relevancy and keep you up into the algorithm search results further.

For example, if somebody types in french macaroons, because I have a lot of videos that has a lot of views on it that’s one thing, but that video has also been shared, it’s been embedded, there’s a good amount of watch time, that video has led to other videos that people watch. That video has just really climbed up in rank and has gotten a lot of views on it because of those important metrics. It’s an important thing for discovery really, at the end of the day.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you have a couple concrete examples of ways that people can do that, that they can encourage increased watch time?

Beth Le Manach: The most powerful way has always been a before-on camera mention. If you’re doing, say, pulled pork sandwiches for 4th of July. Then maybe towards the end of the video you say, “Now this would be a great dish to go with my blueberry pie recipe. If you haven’t seen that I’ll leave in an annotation.” A notation at that point is clicking through to another video . Then in that video, somebody’s watching the blueberry pie video and maybe halfway through you didn’t do an on camera mention because you didn’t think about it, you didn’t shoot it that way, you can still put in a text annotation. That annotation can say, ‘to watch more pie recipes, click here’, and that’s now going to a play list of pie recipes.

So you start to see how you can really keep people in this kind of maze effect throughout your content, and it does take knowing how to use the tools properly, and thinking about programming strategies before you shoot content to know which video is going to relate to that video. Or I have that one shot around appetizers for holidays so I need to be sure that I have something that’s going to coordinate and lead to that. It’s just thinking about it in that way.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you do a quick definition of what a annotation is, and how people can add those?

Beth Le Manach: An annotation is a little tool in YouTube that allows you to put a little graphic box in the video with some call out messaging. So it can be ‘click here to subscribe’, you see that a lot, or ‘thumbs-up if you like this video’. Where it’s really effective is when you can put a link. It’s the only place in YouTube aside from cards, which I hate to admit, because that’s even more interesting, but the annotation directly has been a way that you can put a link to another one of your videos straight from the original video.

Bjork Ostrom: Great.

Beth Le Manach: The problem with that, is annotations don’t work on mobile. With 50-60% of the views on YouTube coming from mobile, that was a real problem. Now they have instituted another feature called cards. The cards look a lot better. If you notice some videos, even if you notice on my videos you’ll see it because I use them a lot. In the right hand corner there’ll be a little ‘i’ in a circle, and if you click on that, you’ll see a load of series of related content. That content is usually tied to cards that I’ve put at the end of my video as a way to get people to watch other videos that could be related. The cards work on mobile. You’ll see you’ll end up getting a lot more views per video if you use the cards.

Bjork Ostrom: If I’m thinking right, I think mobile and appleTV for instance, neither of those annotations would work on either of those.

Beth Le Manach: Yeah. Right.

Bjork Ostrom: But a card would show up on mobile and it’s something that you can click on and interact with?

Beth Le Manach: Yup.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. An example is, so we had mentioned these often that you have done. At the end I noticed that you cycled through a few of the related posts or videos that you had and each one of those had a little ‘i’ that popped up in the top right corner, and if you click on that, it will give you links. That would be the card?

Beth Le Manach: Yeah. That would be the card, exactly. What’s interesting about that is that I do that at the end of the video so I don’t cut into my watch time. I don’t want to send people off too soon, because that could hurt a video.

Bjork Ostrom: I was going to ask about that, when do you suggest. The idea is that you don’t want people to leave because then YouTube will view that, or Google, or the SEO ranking engine will view that as a video that is not engaging all the way through.

Beth Le Manach: Exactly. What you can do, and this another way to use that completion rate tool, is after your video launches you can see where most of the drop off is. Let’s say it’s a 5 minute video and most of the drop of is at 3 minutes and 30 seconds, then I would go back in and put an annotation at 3:20 that says, ‘click here to see my blueberry pie recipe’. So I know that everybody is about to fall off but before they do they’re going to go over here.

Bjork Ostrom: How often would you go and do that with your videos? I know that there’s one thing to make it and upload it, and usually people do that and just forget about it and go on to the next one. Are you pretty active in your management of the videos that you’ve previously uploaded?

Beth Le Manach: If I’m having a slow week I am very active because it’s what I kind of spend the most time on, but I’m not as active as I should be, for the simple fact that I am also editing my videos every week myself. I shoot once a month, and I shoot five videos. Then I get up everyday at 4am. I know, it’s a crazy life, I tell you. From 4am-6am I edit my videos. So it takes me, because I’m only doing two hours of editing, it takes me a full week of doing that. So it leaves me with a ton of time for all this other stuff, except for if I have a lot of brain content that month that helps pays for editing, I farm the editing out which gives me a week of free time to do that time of optimization.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s one thing that I wanted to make a point of and that I think is so awesome. One of the trends that we see with people that are doing it, that are doing it well, is that there’s a ton of hustle involved. You get this polished video, and it might look like that it’s really easy, but the reality is it means getting up at 4am and working through the weekend. So kudos to you Beth for doing that because I know it’s an insane amount of work and time and energy. That’s really cool to hear that.

Beth Le Manach: And that’s the passion. Just to add to that because people are rolling their eyes, oh my God I’m never going to do that. If you love food, and you love to cook, you can visit an amazing place to connect with other people who love the same things you do. The YouTube audience is very very generous. They keep you going and they support you. You know that there is a crowd out there that is rooting you on. You feel like you can’t let them down. That’s what keeps it going, and that’s why I think there are so many people on YouTube willing to put in the hard work because the community is so amazing.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s one thing we’ve talked about often, and that we try to talk about on the podcast, is it’s one thing to build something for an end, but it’s another thing when you enjoy the work itself. It’s not easy for anybody to get up at 4am, but it’s a little bit easier when it’s something that you enjoy doing, and you’re passionate about. As much as people can find where those areas of passion are, I think I would encourage them to go to that. What’s fun to talk to you about, is usually we have this slant of blogging, which is photography and written content. Which there’s still a part of that with YouTube, but for a lot of people they might not feel like that’s the best fit for them. There’s all these different avenues you can explore. Podcast, video, written content, short form video, stuff like that. Which is cool.

One of the things that I wanted to ask you about the watch time that I’m really curious about. I fell like there is this understanding of YouTube videos where people say, “If it’s longer than 3 minutes, you got to throw it out.” It can’t be longer than 3 minutes, but when I look through a lot of your videos, like the video you referenced earlier. The macaroon video has 3 million views and it’s just over 8 minutes long. Is the timing thing a reality, or is that some fallacy that exists that we think is true?

Beth Le Manach: Such a great, great question, and I have been hearing that for as long as I have been in digital media. Ten plus years. I think people have been doing that because people really want to understand video, and what works, and there has to be a science. The fact is there really is no science, but when it comes to videos on YouTube, it really boils down to; how long can this person hold your attention? It’s the same thing if you do a lecture, or you have a class. How long does it need to be. Well, maybe it needs to be an hour. Maybe the talk needs to be two hours. Like TedTalks, whatever it is. Whatever it takes to tell the story that can keep people’s attention. With that macaroon video, I have 6 points that I had to put across. That video needed that amount of time to tell that story.

I’ve also done videos, we do a lot of long form custom on Kin that were 19, 20, one was even 25 minutes. A whole menu that you put together, but it took that long to tell that story effectively. I think the important thing is to get to point, and if you’re taking up air time, you need to be taking it up with something that’s giving value. If it’s not giving value and it’s just run on stories you’re going to lose people. If you’re keeping people’s attention, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 25 minutes, whatever it takes.

Bjork Ostrom: Related to that, what are the types of value you can offer? To expand on that question a little bit. I know that when Lindsay and I talk about video and what does that look like, we know that there’s a different type of value. There’s delivering the information so people can do something. There’s maybe entertainment. How do you view value on YouTube, and what are the different ways that people can offer value?

Beth Le Manach: Another really good question. You’re good with the questions!

Bjork Ostrom: Well that’s the only think I have to do so it makes it a little bit easier.

Beth Le Manach: I would say that you almost don’t even know what your value is until your audience tells you what fits. This is a really important point to understand about YouTube. A lot of people go into it thinking, “Ooh, what’s going to work on YouTube? Oh, I have to do this” or “Oh, I got to do that. I got to be over the top”, or “I’ve got to have a big personality” or “I have to be someone that can go viral” and that actually is not the best strategy. It’s not really going to serve you in the long term.

When I started my channel and I started to do things on YouTube I really just did it because I had something I wanted to share with the world. My view of cooking, and my view of entertaining. Then I found the people that really related to that and I was able to build a very small community that were very like-minded. I wasn’t attracting the wrong crowd, I was attracting the right crowd. It was a much slower growth than a lot of channels that can grow very quickly when they do play to that strength of YouTube, but the problem is that then you can end up with a channel that’s not really you, or that you get sick of because you’re like “Oh, I really don’t want to do this anymore. This isn’t really my sweet spot.”

When I started doing it I was just being myself and I was just doing what I cared about, I started to see patterns. The patterns were what told me what my value was. The patterns boil down to me for what I call the three P’s, and that is; I make it pretty. So spending time, really making sure that all the cutlery is nice, and it’s in the right way that I want to present the kitchen, and the lighting is good. The production value really matters to me. So that’s all about making it pretty. Then making it practical. Most people don’t have a lot of time to cook, or they’re new cooks on YouTube because they’re younger. You have to make it practical for them. We can’t whirling down reductions and flicking on the himalayan pink salt. You can’t do that because there’s not really an audience there yet on that, for that. So make it practical.

Then the 3rd P is make it personal. A lot of these recipes that I have been making for years that mean something to me and my family. My hope is one day they will mean something to somebody else’s family. That’s the feedback that I get on a weekly basis is, “Oh I made this tart when I told my parents that I got into college” or “Oh I made this breakfast for my in-laws that were visiting and they said I was a rock star.” So because I’ve shared something of myself and made it personal, it then becomes personal to somebody else because it’s helping them make memories.

That is what boils down with my value, but I only knew that because I was being who I was. So you being who you are and anybody out there being who they are, the audience will tell them what the value is. Then you just keep going in that direction.

Bjork Ostrom: I think one thing that’s easy to do when you’re first getting started, and I think there needs to be an element of this, but it’s easy to just copy what somebody else is doing, and somebody else that’s successful. The issue is that, if you try and do that, that’s probably not who you are naturally. I think you may need someone to show you the general direction, but just for people to be hyper-sensitive. Who are you, and what are you about, and what feels natural for you. So I think that’s really my feedback.

Beth Le Manach: Here’s why that’s so important when it comes to competition. A lot of people can get very competitive on YouTube. My feeling is that, there’s not another me. There’s not another you. Do you know what I mean? If you are just always being you then it’s really hard to compete with that, because people can try to copy you, but they’re never really going to be you. I love that expression of ‘just be yourself because everyone else is taken’. It’s all you can be anyway, so you might as well just do that. Then you find, what will happen is the audience will say, “I want you to do a chicken parmesan recipe.””I want you to do a red velvet cupcake recipe.” I’m like, “Does the world really need more of these recipes?”. No, but we want your version. The only reason they’re saying that is because they have bought into who I am. They know that my view of the world is unique, just like your view of the world is unique. There aren’t two people alike, and that’s what keeps people being individuals, and that’s what allows everybody to compete and still have an audience. I think.

Bjork Ostrom: I would agree. Lindsay talks about that in terms of why she is intentional about sharing her personal stories and inside look on life on her blog. Not just because it’s a strategy, it’s what she loves to do and genuinely wants to share with people and connect. Kind of what you talked about with the community element, what a wonderful thing that can be. At the same time there’s also the reality that it helps to make you unique. It helps to craft that community which is such an important thing. I think that’s great. That’s great feedback.

One of the things that I noticed with your videos Beth, and I’d be interested to hear about and I think that’s related to that, making it personal element. You’re really intentional about putting yourself in front of the camera, and talking to people, and looking at people. Whereas some people might just press record and then after, they talk over it. I’m interested to hear why you’re intentional about sitting down and looking at people and recording, versus just pressing record and going through each step, and then talking over it after.

Beth Le Manach: I just think the power of YouTube is the humanness that it provides. I feel like, now more than ever, media is as human as it gets. I think that social media has had a lot to do with that. Whereas before you would sit down and you would watch television. You would see Ina Garten doing her demo and that was great, but you wouldn’t feel like you were that close to her because it wasn’t a conversation. It was a dialogue. It was more of a monologue, and you were listening and enjoying it. Where I think the power of YouTube is, is that it’s an exchange. When I sit down in front of the camera I’m looking right in it, and I am talking to that camera. People actually feel, and they have told me this too, that I am talking right to them. Even though I could be talking to three million people, the feeling is a lot more intimate that you’re ever going to get from television, because they can leave me a comment and I can leave them a comment back. Now suddenly we have this on going conversation that is more of a community.

It’s real important for me to be on camera. I think it would feel very disconnected. In some ways it would be like inviting people to a party but then talking to them from inside the bathroom. [crosstalk 00:31:05] you’re not really there at the party, it’s like oz, from behind the curtain.

Bjork Ostrom: Interesting.

Beth Le Manach: That’s hard to do because you really have to put yourself out there and, believe me, it was not always easy for me. I look at some of those early videos and I cringe, because it’s a very strange feel to look at a lens that is not human, and talk to it like it is. That just comes with practice.

Bjork Ostrom: I feel like it’s universal. A real reality of how you can sit in front of a camera and get more nervous than you would talking to a couple people, for some people. It’s just this camera, but there’s this reality of what it means to be recorded and to have that live on forever. Along those lines, do you have a routine or self talk that you have for yourself when you go into recording, or mantras that you like to adopt in terms of you recording strategy?

Beth Le Manach: I was having this conversation with my dad this morning and he’s like, “I just looked at one of your early videos and, ah man, those were rough!” I was like, “Oh yeah, those were rough.” I think they were rough because I had no frame of reference. I had no audience. I didn’t know who I was talking to. I was just talking, literally, to a lens. Now, three years later with a community of two hundred thousand people that it has taken me daily to grow. I know those people, personally. I know that there is Laura in Brazil. I know that there is Roderick in France. I’ve seen them, and when I sit in that chair and start talking I feel like I’m speaking right to them. That’s where the audience really helps. The more you know your audience, the more you know who is out there, then you can put on the demeanor that you would put on when you’re talking to your friends, because they are your friends.

It’s a weird feeling. It’s hard to understand until you actually start to get that community going and know that they’re out there wanting to hear what you have to say. That brings a ton of confidence because you just feel comfortable.

Bjork Ostrom: How do you get to know those people?

Beth Le Manach: You get to know them because if you … well, two ways. One, if you stay consistent, and that’s a very important thing to succeeding on YouTube. You have to show up once a week. Again, it’s like inviting people to a party. If you don’t show up once a week, it’s like you’ve invited people and you didn’t show up. Once a week is really just the minimum. Some people do two a week, but I think once a week is fine. Then every time you show people who are really your fans, they will show up once a week. Then they will leave comments like,’Oh my gosh, we loved this. What do you think about this, what do you think about that.”

Over the course of a couple years, as you’re getting to know this audience, there’s subscribers that I’ve had since the beginning I’ve launched. They’re still with me, I know that they’ve had babies. I know that they’ve graduated college. I know that they’ve got married. I want to ask them, how’s the new job. They have seen my evolution grow as a channel, and I have seen their evolution grow as people. We’re both so invested in each other, that that’s another thing that makes it very personal and sticky.

Bjork Ostrom: We can relate to that too. Some people that we have met along our journey. That’s the light side of the comments. There’s also a dark side of the comments. That would be really interesting to hear how you deal with the negative. We all know, if you have 208,000 there’s bound to be some people that have some opinions that aren’t positive, about the strangest things. What is your process for dealing with those. Do you respond? Do you delete? Do you ask somebody else to look through comments and then you respond? What do you do?

Beth Le Manach: You got to take it all, the good with the bad. They say there’s a little bit of truth in every jest. Sometimes there are people out there that are just haters, and they’re going to just leave a nasty comment. That is part of YouTube. It’s the overly social platform that has a dislike button. So even a dislike can hurt, for something that you’ve worked two weeks on, so that can hurt. My feelings is that, there’s always going to be more good comments than bad comments. The ironic things is that sometimes the bad comment can out-weight all the good comments. You can’t let it get to you that way.

I always think of that movie, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, when Glenda the good witch comes down, and the bad witch is there wreaking havoc, and she says, “You have no power here, be gone.” I think of that because, this is my channel, it’s my living room. You’re coming in here, you’re being disrespectful to other users, or to myself. You have no power here, and you can delete that comment, or you can block them. Usually, if it’s nasty, not only do I delete it, but I will block them. That just means that they can leave comments on your channel, they think that you’re seeing it, but actually nobody can.

Bjork Ostrom: Right. Which is awesome.

Beth Le Manach: It’s totally awesome! It’s the most genius thing that YouTube has done in ten years.

Bjork Ostrom: I think one thing that is worth acknowledging is just how universal that feeling of discouragement can be. To know that when those negative comments come, for anybody, it would be something that would be really hard to process and too see, and to experience. In a weird way it’s like we’re all in this together. Anybody that’s creating content is runs into that. It’s in questions, everything that they’re doing, even though they’ve had maybe 300 positive comments, like you said, one negative one can really bring you down.

There’s this great oatmeal. Do you know the oatmeal comic? His name is Matthew, I forget his last name, but we’ll link to it in the resources for this. He has a comic on creating content, and he does this character development, and all these people are giving him these compliments and he’s so happy. Then there’s one negative comment and it shows the guy just weeping, like the world is coming to an end. It can feel like that sometimes, for sure.

Beth Le Manach: Oh it does! But you can’t because you have to remember why you’re doing what you’re doing. There’s always going to be those nasty little trolls. It doesn’t matter what corner of the internet they’re hiding in. The fact is you have to consider, it’s probably someone who’s very lonely, very upset. Some of them just make me laugh out loud so hard because they’re so outrageous. I think the most cathartic thing is to make friends with other YouTubers or other content creators and have a glass of wine and laugh about some of the most hilarious comments. Even the people that you admire the most that you think are not getting that. Everybody’s getting that. I just had some really funny conversations about that.It happens to everybody.

Bjork Ostrom: The good and the bad though, like you said, can both come. Let’s talk a little bit about the nitty gritty with the recording process. I’d be interested to hear how you go about doing it. First, I heard you mention earlier, you batch record your videos. Is that true?

Beth Le Manach: Yeah. I do.

Bjork Ostrom: And you do those all in one day?

Beth Le Manach: I do in one day. There was a span of time where I was shooting myself. Where I would spend all Sunday, my husband would take our kids out for the day, and it would take me all day to shoot one recipe. I was shooting two camera so I that I could have wide shot and tight shot, because it really helps for the editing. Then I would shoot my interview. I’d run my own audio. I would get behind the camera and cook the recipe. I would do all the dishes. I’d have to get all the media prepped and label all the files, it was the most grueling thing.

Sometimes I would just have spectacular snafus. Things that would make you cry. That’s the thing, video can be so hard but there will be tears. There will be a time where you will just break down and want to throw all that equipment in the trash.

Bjork Ostrom: Not that you want to relive this, but do you have an example of a snafu?

Beth Le Manach: There is one example in particular, where I was doing my four generation spaghetti and meatball recipe that takes forever to explain.

Bjork Ostrom: It sounds borderline sacred, like this is a big deal.

Beth Le Manach: It was! It popped down from my Nana, went to my Aunt, then there were a lot of story points and I wanted to make sure that I got it all because I knew that they would be seeing it. So it took like two hours telling this whole story only to realize that I never hit record.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh no!

Beth Le Manach: I mean, come on. My kids were coming home in an hour, and I was like, “Oh my gosh. What am I going to do?” I could either just sit here and cry, which is what I really felt like doing, or I can hit record, sit in the chair, and tell the fastest story ever. That’s what I did. At that point I was like, “You know, I don’t even want to do the shooting.” The shooting is just hard. No amount of great editing is going to make something that’s not shot well look good. I just wanted to be able to get to he channel. I did it for 6 months, I did that process for 6 months. Then I got the channel to the point where it was actually making enough money to at least pay for the shooting. So now I’m doing all the editing, not because I like to be up at 4 in the morning, but because I can’t actually afford to farm that out too. My goal for 2015 is to get to a place where I’m farming out all of that. It’s good to do it yourself.

Bjork Ostrom: So you have somebody that comes and shoots with you?

Beth Le Manach: Yes. I have a very talented crew of seven people. Six people. That’s what allows us to get through five in a day. It’s a very specific formula. If you want to do more, you need more people to help you go faster.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s crazy to think about the fact that you now have seven people and before you were doing all of it. Eight roles, you were doing. What do the seven people do when they come to do a shoot?

Beth Le Manach: I have two camera people. Once person is functioning as the DP, does all the beauty shots, all the tight shots.

Bjork Ostrom: When you say DP can you explain what that means?

Beth Le Manach: Oh yeah. Director of photography. They’re the ones that knows the most about lighting and composition and what not. They’re usually going to be the more serious camera people. Then I have, what they call, a second camera, or B cam. That person is doing all the footage of the food. Like the wider shots for the food. It’s really important when you’re shooting food videos to have the two angles so you don’t get into, what they call, a jump cut. A jump cut is where somebody is stirring something, but you need it to boil, but you don’t want to show the footage of it boiling so now you have a tight shot, cutting into another tight shot boiling, and when it wasn’t boiling. It just feels like a weird leap. So the better thing to do is to cut to a shot on a wider shot because that fools the eye that there’s been a passage of time, even though it hasn’t. A little editing, production technique.

There’s that. Then I have a sound person. I’ve had horrible sound issues when I did it myself, static, scratchy, hot audio, just bad. So I just wanted to make sure I had a professional sound mixer to get rid of all of that. Then I have what they call a DIP person. That’s the person that handles all the media. You can imagine, if you’re shooting five episodes a day, sometimes you can have anywhere from 30-50 clips per video. That all has to be labeled. The reason why it all has to be labeled, like take one, take two, take three, is when you’re editing you have to know is it in take two, is it in take three? It’s part of your media management. It’s just a good practice to get into your labeling it all if you ever have to go back to it and know where to find it.

Bjork Ostrom: What does DIT stand for?

Beth Le Manach: I think it’s digital something technician. Essentially a media manager. Someone who’s managing your media. Then I have a culinary PA, production assistant. That person is giving all the dishes. Sounds like a very unglamorous job, but he’s one of the most important roles. Only because, you can just imagine, all of these demos, it creates all of these dishes, and if you have to stop down to wash in between each set up, you could lose an hour, easily, between set ups.

Bjork Ostrom: So these people, there are seven people. They come and they shoot and you do four to five in one day? I’m guessing that’s a very full day too.

Beth Le Manach: Oh it is. It starts at 4 in the morning because I have to get up and get everything prepped. So get all the equipment out. I usually make some sort of baked goods for my crew because they’re spending their Saturdays coming to shoot this for me. I have an amazing crew that I’ve worked with for three years, and they feel like family to me. I always want to make sure that they feel well cared for. Snacks, rearrange the furniture so that it’s easy to work in there. Get my kids stuff ready, so my kids then have to get up and get out of the house, make sure that they’re all taken care of.

We start at about 7, then we go til about 7. So it’s twelve hours, but with the prep involving it can be a fourteen hour day.

Bjork Ostrom: There’s been a couple of days where we’ve done long video shoots whether for food blogger pro or pinch of the yum. It’s exhausting. Especially for you, when you’re in front of the camera and you have to be on. So kudos to you for doing such long days and shoots. That’s awesome.

Then you take the footage from there and then you do the editing. What do you edit in?

Beth Le Manach: I edit in final cut 10, only because I think it’s the easiest, most consumer friendly program.

Bjork Ostrom: I love final cut 10. That’s what I use.

Beth Le Manach: I don’t know it totally well. I know it just enough to spit out a video every week.

Bjork Ostrom: At this point you have a crew that comes, you have the files, you do the editing. I’m guessing you upload the video and fine tune all the different elements with that. For somebody that’s just getting started, let’s say maybe the majority of people that are listening to this. You even could be talking to us right now, because we’re just getting started with video. Where do people start? What are the most important things that they hit if they’re just getting started on their own? They can’t hire anybody right now, but they know they want to start doing video. Where do they start?

Beth Le Manach: I think figuring out the format that’s most sustainable for that. While they might want to do a video that’s got motion, and it gorgeous, and has all this such and such. Is that really sustainable week after week? Figuring out what’s the easiest format I know I can commit to week after week and starting there. I know that there has been very big food channels that have started literally with just an iPhone. If that’s all you can do, that’s all you can do. The nice thing about YouTube is that it’s very forgiving as far production quality. Where you have to succeed is really on the personality. It really has to be something that somebody wants to watch. That has a lot to do with just being yourself. So that’s point one.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great.

Beth Le Manach: Then getting to know the YouTube tools and the platform. You head a lot of people that are like, “Yeah, I do my videos, I got the video guy that uploads it and does all my metadata and all that.” That, I don’t think is helping anybody because the more you know about how that platform works, the more you can get creative on how you use it, and how to do things when things go wrong, and you don’t have to call somebody or hire somebody to fix your link that’s broken or fix an annotation that went haywire. It’s really important to understand how that all works.

Bjork Ostrom: Along those lines, one of the things that I noticed with your videos is that you have very intentional description area. I’m guessing that maybe ties into understanding the YouTube set up. Can you talk a little bit about what your strategy is with your description area?

Beth Le Manach: I think a lot of people on the outside think the description area is no man’s land, but it actually is a very high rent district. I say that because it’s where everybody, who’s used to using YouTube, goes first to get more information. The first three lines of the description that are actually teaser text, that is seen anywhere in your video that is embedded in a subscription feed. Right now I use for ‘subscribe to my two channels and visit my website’. That three line thing is such a valuable piece of real estate because any link that you put in there hot links without somebody having to click your video and actually get in that description.

That’s why that’s important. I put all of my social networks after that so people know where to follow me. Then I put any related videos there. This is all headed towards, they’re traveling down to the recipe. It’s a bit like putting up billboards on the freeway of YouTube there. I know they’re heading down there. Here are some things I want them to look at while on their trip.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. So you include the recipe, the ingredients, and the instructions? Is that correct?

Beth Le Manach: Yeah. Anything that’s relevant just because I don’t want to have to fend people off YouTube because that also cuts into your watch time. I guess it’s all about the user experience.

Bjork Ostrom: That makes sense. Occasionally I noticed that you’ll include affiliate links. Have those been something that has worked well? Linking to Amazon, or something like that.

Beth Le Manach: I really don’t think there’s a ton of money in it, to be perfectly honest. The only reason I do it is more of a service to users. If they see something that I’m using, rather than having to go back and forth in the comments about where to get it and drag up the link. I just put it in there more for their use. I, personally, haven’t seen a ton of revenue in that.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s good. I’ve always been curious about that, and that’s one of those things that I thought, “Hey, that makes sense.” Minnesota, for a long time, was banned from the Amazon affiliate program. So I thought, “What a great way now that we’re back in it because of some changes with rules and regulations. We can throw some of those in, in the YouTube videos.” We’ve kind of noticed the same thing. We have a much smaller following, obviously, so I didn’t know if that was just us, or if it was pretty universal.

Beth Le Manach: It might change. I think that there’s so much opportunity for it. I just haven’t seen it yet.

Bjork Ostrom: The last question that I want to ask you specific to the technical end, do you have your own gear for shooting video, or does the team bring that? If they bring it, what would you suggest to people that are just getting started in terms of video and audio gear that they should purchase.

Beth Le Manach: I do own most of my own gear, like the cameras, the lights, and other smaller things. When I do rent, I rent it from the people that work on my shoots. All the other equipment. All the receptors, silks, and screens and gels, and all of that. Just because that’s better to just rent to be honest. Then I always rent an extra light from them, or an extra lens for the camera. If you’re just getting started I think you invest in a really good camera that you feel can get the job done, whatever that job is. Sometimes, it’s better to invest in a affordable camera and invest in a better lens. You can get those rebel cameras, the T3, or the T5i. They’re like $600 cameras, but they get a really good 100mm $1,000 lens, which is going to make that camera look so much better, especially for food photography.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great advice. Spend, if you have $1500, don’t buy a $1400 camera and a $100 lens. Buy a $500 camera and a $1000 lens. I think that’s really good feedback. That’s great.

Beth Le Manach: Yeah, I think that’s better.

Bjork Ostrom: Do you have recommendations for audio? I know that that’s a really important element with video.

Beth Le Manach: I think the thing with audio, is don’t warm the audio into the camera. A lot of times, these cameras are set up to receive audio, but I found to have so many problems with that, as far as the quality. You get that really staticy, and you get a lot of interference sometimes. It’s not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is with a $99 external audio recording device. You get the wireless cloth mic that you can clip onto yourself, and then you want it to have a battery pack. Then that battery pack relates to this little – almost like a tv remote – zoom audio recorder and there’s a little sd card that fits in there. So when you record, you also have to remember to record on the zoom. That’s another little snafu that I’ve done. Okay, so you don’t want to do that, you don’t want to accidentally delete it, that’s the only thing. Then you can sync your audio file with your video file in final cut. It’s a really easy thing to do. You just click both and sync it. That is a much better way to record audio, I think.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. So the idea is that you have your video, which is recording audio on its own, really low quality, but then you have a second audio source, which is the lav mic running into a zoom. I think the one we use a zoom h4n, but essentially it’s like a external recorder, but it’s not recording, like the mic on there is actually recording the lav which is plugged into that. So you have two sources of audio, and then after the final cut you sync them up and you get rid of the junky audio on the camera, and you have just your good audio that’s playing.

Beth Le Manach: Exactly, the thing story connected I think it is. You can just tell the story and you keep the connected. Everything with that type of audio is do it very directional. I mean some people would even just use the camera mic on the camera. The problem with that, although people do it. If that’s all you got, then that’s all you got, and you go. Do it that way. You certainly can build a very strong following that way, but because of my production background, that type of stuff bothers me. That’s where my hang up on my day job is. I know it should sound better so I don’t want to do that. The reason why directional is so much better is because you won’t pick up all that atmosphere, pingy sound, that you get with just a camera mic because it’s picking up everything.

Bjork Ostrom: A few more questions here as we’re heading towards the end. One of the things that I was curious to know. Who are the channels, or the people that you think our listeners should be following and watching. People that are doing YouTube really well, that are doing online video really well. Does anybody come to mind?

Beth Le Manach: There’s so many great ones. Byron Talbott is a channel that’s really doing well in the food space. His videos, and he’s amazing because he shoots and edits all of his own stuff. It looks great. He’s one of the best food channels, I think, out there, Byron Talbott. Then his wife also has a YouTube channel, Rachel Talbott. She’s also great, and she shoots and edits her own videos. They’re amazing. She does beauty and DIY, general lifestyle. They’re just a great couple to know because they’re both doing it really well.

Another channel that I like, it’s a smaller channel, but they’re really doing some interesting things, and their personalities are really fun. It’s a vegan channel, and it’s called Hot For Food. Hot For Food is a good one. Domestic Geek is another one that’s being really successful right now. Her channel is growing so quickly. She does a lot of fun things format wise, so she’s a good one to look at for interesting formats. She’ll do a meal prep format, or she’ll do ‘five great smoothies’. She has fun format ideas.

Bjork Ostrom: Great. Those are awesome, and we’ll add those into resources area of the blog post if people want to see those and check it out. Take a look at that. Last question. I was just curious to know. If somebody is interested in doing this, let’s say somebody’s listening and they say, “I want to start a YouTube channel, and I want this to be my thing. This is what I want to do.” What do you think it takes. At what point do you feel like people can transition into having their YouTube channel be their thing? I’m guessing you see some of those people with Kin community where YouTube is what they do. At what point does that transition happen? When are people able to do that.

Beth Le Manach: It’s different for everybody. Sometimes it’s just a numbers game for people. They have to get a certain point that their YouTube channel is making enough money as a day job, to quit the day job and do it full time. The biggest piece of advice is to treat it like a business. Like a business where you have to show up 9-6 or whatever your office hours are, you have to show up every week with a video. Which means planning out in advance what you’re going to shoot and really treating it like a business.

Also, not being isolated. It’s really hard to be seen on YouTube if you don’t have YouTube friends. Meaning, who you collaborate with. People who’s videos you watch. Going to YouTube events. Going to VidCon every year is a huge one. VidCon is usually in the summer, this year it’s in July, and it’s a big online video conference of all the YouTube centers. There’s lectures and fan meet ups, and you really get to see the business side of YouTube, and the fan side and what it’s all about. That’s where you meet people and you have to collaborate. It’s only through collaboration that these channels grow. It’s very hard to grow, I think, without collaboration.

Bjork Ostrom: Collaboration meaning that you feature somebody else, and somebody else features you. So there’s kind of this …

Beth Le Manach: It’s very powerful because unlike a blog where … and I think it’s pretty powerful in the blog world too. I would assume that people are featuring each other, getting blog readers. What makes YouTube channels succeed obviously are the subscribers. A lot of people, if they’re not following YouTubers and they don’t really are familiar with the YouTube platform, they don’t know really what it means to subscribe. We’ve done collaborations even with bloggers or people with a social following, and it might be good for views. People might actually watch the video, but they’re not actually going to subscribe because they don’t really know how it actually works. They don’t know that they should subscribe. Whereas is you were collaborating with a channel that has a big subscribership on YouTube with another channel, those people that are going to come to your channel already know what it means to subscribe. They’re already platform users. It’s very easy for them to just hit subscribe because they’re already logged in.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. They get it.

Beth Le Manach: They get it. They just get it. I’ve had youtubers that I didn’t even know that have looked at my channel, for whatever reason really loved it and decided to shout me out. They just said, “Hey, this month on my find favorites, have you seen the food channel? It’s great.” This one women did that and I got three thousand subscribers just in the day from her doing that. She didn’t even have to do it. I even had to go to her and say , “Thank you for doing that.” She didn’t even tell me she did it. The YouTube can be so generous like that. Everybody has their story like that, so you always have to do it in return. The more generous you are with other creators, the more generous it comes back to you. That’s what helps everybody grow.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. I think that’s a great note to end on. Before we go I want to make sure people know where they can find you, Beth. I’m sure that people want to follow and check some things out, and I know that there’s a lot of value even in just consuming the content that you’ve created because it’s done so well. Where can people find you?

Beth Le Manach: They can find me on youtube.com/entertainingwithbeth, or just entertainingwithbeth.com for a website and other videos over there. I also have a garden channel called in beth’s garden. It’s actually linked from my food channel. If you get to the food channel there’s a little thing at the top that says, ‘subscribe to my garden channel’ and it will take you over there.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. I’m going to pass that on to Lindsey because she, for the first time, is starting to grow some herbs in the back yard. I’ll pass that down the line for you.

Beth Le Manach: Well good. I will keep up with her and see if she starts cooking on her blog about it because it’s quite a rewarding process.

Bjork Ostrom: Beth, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was packed full with really helpful information. Even just selfishly for me. If I had the same situation where I realized I didn’t press record, like the story that you told, there would be value in that. At least I would have gotten a lot out of it, but I know that other people that have tuned in will. Thank you so much. We’ll be sure to link that to your site on the post, and really appreciate you coming on. Thanks Beth.

Beth Le Manach: You bet. My pleasure, anytime. Best of luck to you and anybody else out there starting a channel. It’s a rewarding experience, and I highly recommend it.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Thanks Beth.

Beth Le Manach: Great. Thank you. We’ll talk soon.

Bjork Ostrom: One more big thank you to Beth for coming on to the podcast today. I sure learned a lot. Just selfishly, I love interviewing people like this because they have so much information and it’s such a great way to get it. Where we can just sit down and chat about their expertise. Beth, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Before we rap up we’d like to thank our show sponsor, food blogger pro, that’s us. Food blogger pro is a community, we have about a thousand members right now, and as you might imagine, it’s people in the food space on line. It’s people figuring out how do you build your own personal brand. Creating content on food, and publishing that online. We have three hundred video tutorials, we have a community forum, we have different tools. We have deals and discounts on certain software products. It’s an awesome community, I’m a little bit bias, but I think you should check it out. You can go to foodbloggerpro.com to get more information on that.

Second, we’d appreciate it if you jump into itunes and leave a rating for the podcast. That helps us yo do what we do here. Last, as we always do, we want to say thank you. We really appreciate your time in listening to this podcast, it helps us do what we do. We will catch you around next time, next week, same time, same place. Thanks a lot guys.

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4 Comments

  1. Hey Bjork! This episode was great. I learned so much! I’ve been making videos for over 4 years and to be honest feel kinda bad that I haven’t worked on growing my channel or blog. I’m justifying it by reminding myself that I was starting & growing a totally different business. In the meantime I just thought my YT channel would grow organically. This episode, and the one with Hilah and Christopher have really given me a kick in the butt! Thanks so much for this great resource!! p.s. I love your intro music 🙂

  2. Great podcast! Thanks for the annotation / “card” discussion. Very helpful.

    I’m really happy to hear about how much time goes into the content creation. Keeping up with that in addition to all of life’s responsibilities is so difficult.

  3. This was a great episode! I just uploaded my first two youtube videos so it was great to hear from someone with tons of experience. Please do an interview with Byron Talbott too. Keep up the good work.

  4. Great episode. We will have to evaluate our networking/collaboration opportunities 🙂 One year in and it has gone well so far but I feel like we can position our channel to grow even faster.