Why YouTube Would Never Make it in the Real World

YouTube is the second largest search engine, with over 1.8 billion users per month. It’s obvious why:

Everyone has access to YouTube.
YouTube has been around since the internet became cool.
YouTube is easy for helping grow your brand. (Creating a Brand currently has an active private YouTube community, but we’ll be launching one for the public in 2019!)

Aside from all of the benefits that YouTube brings to businesses and individuals looking to increase exposure and get noticed, it has an even stronger community. Active YouTubers love YouTube! However, that is where YouTube staff has failed.

You’re probably wondering about my title for this post. I want to explain why YouTube would never make it in the real world.

YouTube is as powerful as it is because it has been around since before social media was mainstream. They are (were) pioneers! However, if they were to launch today (the real world), they would fail. They would fail instantly.

Why? YouTube is beyond out of touch with their culture and community.

YouTube released their yearly Rewind video last week. It was awful. It didn’t reflect the community or culture that YouTube actually has. In fact, it is already the most disliked video on YouTube of all time. Every day the numbers increase. But, right now the video has 2.3 million likes and over 13 million dislikes. Way to go YouTube! If you were launching your business today, you would be an instant failure.

Can you guess what the second most disliked video is on YouTube is? (Answer below)**

A YouTube executive issued the following statement, “Honest feedback can suck, but we are listening, and we appreciate how much people care,” the representative said. “Trying to capture the magic of YouTube in one single video is like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. We also learned that creating content can be really hard and this underscores our respect and admiration for YouTube creators doing it every day. Keep the feedback coming, and maybe we’ll release a top 10 list of ‘Rewind dislike’ reaction videos.”

First off, if I were in charge of YouTube, I would fire this employee. This statement furthers my point that YouTube has no idea who their community is or the culture they’ve created.

Summarizing YouTube in an 8-minute video would be a simple task for anyone in their community.

I’m done with my rant about why YouTube would not make it in the real world today. More importantly, you need to know that this post is not to hate on YouTube. Here’s the takeaway:

Know that you will never make it in business if you do not know your company’s culture and the community built around it.

Here are three ways to ‘make it in the real world’ when you’re creating a brand:

#1. Be authentic.

There is a lot involved with being authentic, but I want to cover just one part of it. Owning up to mistakes. (We’ll cover more in later blog posts.)

Unlike YouTube’s executive who made excuses, you need to own up to your mistakes. A great example of this is Epic, the creators of Fortnite. They recently made a mistake. They misunderstood what their community wanted. However, instead of attempting to cover themselves and make excuses, they owned up to their mistake. Here it is: Epic says it ‘messed up.’

When you make mistakes, not if. Own up to them! Don’t cover them up. More than ever, your community wants to see you being authentic. People will forgive you for your mistakes if you admit to them.

#2. Develop Culture.

Culture is important. It starts with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re the leader or not. I’m not going to get too deep into this because it’s a big topic. We all need to know that culture is the most crucial part of creating a successful brand. You can read about it more in one of my recent posts, How to Create Systems to Grow a Healthy Organization.

#3. Understand the wants, needs, and value of your community.

If you ignore your community or misunderstand who they are and what they want. Your customers will leave. They will go somewhere else where they feel valued. At this point in the game, no one is leaving YouTube. But, if YouTube had just started, they would have no one on the platform. Love your community, grow it and be part of it.

Conclusion

Be authentic, own up to your shortcomings. In 2019, people want a community, not just another perfect name to follow. Develop culture. Culture is the deepest part of your business, focus on it and protect it. Be engaged with your community, understand what they want and need. They will love you for it. Get ready to make it big in 2019!

Here’s YouTube’s dreadful Rewind 2018 video… You’re going to hate it. Enjoy!