From Content Creation to Marketing: My Start Building a Brand

This will be my first blog post tracking all the information I have marketing my personal Brand. I've been running my Video Editing Agency Media360 Productions LLC for about six months now and I've only made about $1300 so far. Using the word "made" very lightly because if you incorporate all the start-up costs and paying my Editors, I'm certain I'm in the hole. I started my agency because for one, I obviously needed money and who doesn't want to work for themself? The other reason was because I was able to find editing jobs and have many connections to talented editors, and I'd like to spend my editing time working on my own personal content.

About a year ago I took off in a van to travel to every state in America and film them with a 360 camera to create virtual reality videos to preserve what the US looks like in the 2020's. The thought being when I'm sixty years old, I'm sure it would be pretty cool to see the clothes people wore in the past, what the cities looked like, the current culture and energy of the time. Well, I spent all my money in six months of travel and only covered the Midwest and the Northeast Coast. My Van broke down in Charleston, Virginia and I've been racking my head on how to make money fast online to get back on the road.

I worked a couple TV commercial jobs as a Production Assistant in Chicago. They were great experiences, I worked on Caitlin Clark's Gatorade Ad and some Xfinity Commercials, which paid well but film work is too inconsistent for me to fully commit. So, while working off and on gig jobs and editing my VR videos, I decided to start my video editing agency on Upwork. I currently have an Animator, Short-Form content specialist, Audio Engineer, an amazing client acquisition editor and a Motion Graphic/VFX specialist. But as every editor knows, the freelance market is saturated and criminally underpaid, so while things are slowly picking up it's not going to feed me at this rate.

So, there's the dilemma, do you give up because things are hard, or do you eat dirt long enough until you figure it out? The plan is to figure it out through learning marketing, data analysis, and SEO techniques to bring in more clients and learn a new craft. I'm making this blog to track my progress and share all the knowledge I learn through my journey. I'll start it off by discussing my personal videos that did the best and why I think that's the case.

My most popular video to this date is a from my van trip of when I went down a street in 8-mile Detroit and saw a neighborhood of abandoned houses and things like boats left in the yard. This video got 14K views and it's still growing to this day. While I know that's nothing huge, it's my most popular video to this date and I believe I know why. 8 Mile is very popular because of the rapper Eminem, so if anybody types 8 mile in TikTok, they either get clips from the movie or get a video of what it looks like today; my video. The disturbing nature and the mystery of the abandoned boats I'm sure plays a decent role in it, but the title is what I feel really brings this video out of the algorithm.

My VR videos average about 30 views per video, but my TikTok's often receive 1000 or more from the exact same content, one's just reframed 360 footage and has a short duration and the other requires an expensive device to watch. It's not just TikTok's mysterious algorithm either, I posted a YouTube short of me just ranting at people walking on a cross walk right in front of my van at the last second in Cleaveland, and that got about 3000 views in one day on the same YouTube account I use for my VR videos. What I've gathered from this is that short form content is what the algorithm is going to favor for the time being and using keywords that are commonly searched for your title boost videos up.

It also has to do with short form content still being in its relative infancy. Sure, it's been out, but compared to other video content produced, there are still so many mediums and niches that haven't been adequately covered in short form content. Think about it, YouTube shorts has been out for maybe a little over a year, there is so much information to condense into one minute and shove it down the mass's throats. So, if I have learned anything from my content and its analytics, it's that short form is king at the moment, but because it's a new medium still being explored. There will be another new medium to exploit for engagement eventually, (hopefully VR Videos) but in 2024, if you want some engagement, make short form content, especially YouTube Shorts, because it is the newest short form media host on the market.