What is this now?

A letter about my strategy on YouTube yo reach 100k subscribers that can be useful for you.

Why this newsletter now?

The past weeks have been pretty intense and today I want to write about this.

I want to openly write about everything I'm doing as a Content Creator, on all different social media, especially on Youtube.

So this first newsletter written with Substack will be a sort of diary of the strategy I am currently using on my YouTube Channel (and it’s working, in the last 3 days I am getting 100 subs per day).

I hope this is not a random peak but a steady growth I can keep up.

Reaching 100k on YouTube… an impossible dream ??

Creating a YouTube channel and reaching 100k subscribers has been a dream of mine since 2011 when I created the YouTube channel.

The truth is that I have been so scared to start that I posted my first video in 2020.

But this is the current situation for the past 28 days.

But now I am getting some traction and I am not gonna stop.

In this newsletter, I will tell you what my strategy is (and what will be not)

1. My DevRel Unlocked series

A core part of my YouTube strategy will be to bet on weekly edited videos about something it’s not very hard for me to create: talking about my job as a Developer Advocate.

In this series, I talk about my DIRECT experience as a DevRel, either my personal one (I am currently the Developer Advocate at daily.dev) or people I interviewed personally. That’s it. No hearsay, no theories about what a DevRel should maybe do…

All the info I share here are the results I got on “the battlefield“

Here is the first episode on how I got a raise as a Developer Advocate.

(and if you don’t know what is a DevRel, I give a clear explanation in the series).

Why not before? This is what I have been telling myself for the last 4 weeks.

2. The 12-hour livestream challenge

A core part of my strategy will be to make a monthly 12-hour livestream. I usually get 100+ subscribers from this event, and it takes less time than recording and editing a video.

In July, I made a 12-hour livestream.

This was to follow some tutorials and stay focused on coding instead of passing my Sunday scrolling on Twitter.

I enjoyed it so much that I have been doing this since July, every month, including February 2023.

Since I am learning Rust, I built a CRUD rest API using

• Rust

• Postgres

• Docker

• Docker Compose.

I also added chapters to make it easier to follow.

3. “Talking with…“ series is getting close to 200 episodes

My strategy is to bring top-class speakers to my channel and interview them about an interesting topic related to Tech.

In October 2020, I started making interviews on my YouTube channel.

I am getting closer to 200 episodes and if you are into Devrel, you can’t miss this one with Kelsey Hightower. Really.

We talked about Open Source, DevRel, and Public Speaking.

5. Shorts

I want to level-up my shorts game on YouTube, and I don’t have a clear number of how many I will post each week, but I want to post at least 1 short per week, especially to redirect traffic to my longer format videos.

Videos will also be published on other platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, Linkedin and Twitter, Lens Protocol… depending of course on the type of content.

Here is a promo video for 2023.

5. How to learn Web3

I will post more videos about Web3 in the future, but they have to be top-quality.

I released a video on “How to learn Web3 in 2023.“ It currently has 7.6k views.

Will it one day reach 100k views? I hope so because I put a lot of effort into it.

6. Livestreams every Saturday

I will make focused livestreams on Saturday, mostly it will be me live-coding.

The last one is me building a CRUD Rest API using:

• Node.js and Express (JavaScript)

• Postgres (running in a container)

• Docker

• Docker Compose

This one has been really appreciated, with already ~1k views and 100+ likes

7. What my strategy will be NOT

A strategy is not just what you want to do, but also what you don’t wanna do.

Here are the things I will not do until I will reach 100k subscribers:

• No low-quality videos of any kind.

• No funny videos for a while (I will use TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram for those)

• No more than 1 video per day (Yes I was used to post multiple times per day)

• No random livestreams of me chatting (I will eventually use Instagram or Twitch)

• No random thumbnails. I will curate each of them

There is still a lot of work to do, but working hard never scares me.

If you wanna support me, check the link below.

Thank you,

Francesco

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