ISTANBUL, TURKEY - MARCH 23: The YouTube and Netflix app logos are seen on a television screen on March 23, 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. The Government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan passed a new law on March 22 extending the reach of the country's radio and TV censor to the internet. The new law will allow RTUK, the states media watchdog, to monitor online broadcasts and block content of social media sites and streaming services including Netflix and YouTube. Turkey already bans many websites including Wikipedia, which has been blocked for more than a year. The move came a day after private media company Dogan Media Company announced it would sell to pro-government conglomerate Demiroren Holding AS. The Dogan news group was the only remaining news outlet not to be under government control, the sale, which includes assets in CNN Turk and Hurriyet Newspaper completes the governments control of the Turkish media. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Chicago, Illinois native Melvin Taylor II is a rising star in entertainment.
Currently a radio host at 90.3 WHCR in New York City, a writer at RESPECT Magazine moved to New York City, in a year’s time, Taylor ammassed over 15,000 YouTube subscribers.
How did he do it?
On a recent episode of the Scoop B Radio Podcast, Taylor offered tips on how to be an effective influencer and how to rack up Youtube subscribers fairly quickly.
Check out a snippet from our Q&A below:
Melvin Taylor II on how to get views from organic key words on his YouTube videos:
“Be there before the audience even knows what they’re looking for. That’s a big thing. You just have to be present when they’re looking for you and sometimes your thumbnails gotta look nice enough for you to put anything on it. Because I seen a bunch of thumbnails – I’m the type of person if I’m into something, I wanna watch all of it. So if I do a reaction video to a song or to a new trailer that comes out or do a review on a movie that I watched – not only am I going to listen to my own to make sure that I’m on my p’s and q’s, but also watching if 15 fifteen other people put theirs out, I’m checking all fifteen of those, and I’m even checking the last ones that come in within the last couple of minutes just before I finish the couple of videos that I’m watching because I want to have a simply what’s going on in the space. And being able to own that space, a large part of that is just being there where the people need to see you. Somebody’s looking for something in that point in time, you need to be there. If you wait a couple hours, a couple days, a couple weeks and then decide to do it, you may have missed your window at that point in time. That’s the one aspect in terms of being on the topical side of things on my end in YouTube. If you’re not in the know or you’re not present while it’s topical, the wave is going to miss you.”
Melvin Taylor II on his first big time YouTube moments:
“The first one was me doing a Janelle Monae video for Django Jane because she was coming out. She was still putting out music and a couple videos before the album was coming out. And I’m a big Janelle Monae fan and I absolutely love her music and artistry and this particular album was very touching; her most recent one because she had been working with Prince on some things, and we already know that he had passed and she was just coming out of that space. And as the video came out, I watched it, did my review on it, talked about, and discussed it, I put it out in a timely manner and that was the first time I really got to see how YouTube kind of turns in terms of in the space and what people are searching for and when you’re there and available. You know, you see her video go from ok four to five views and there’s a time I was like aw man look, 45 people watched my video. Like, I’m ecstatic about that, right? Because that means somebody other than me is watching this. Then it goes to 70-80 people. Ok, I’m feeling like I’m doing a good thing today. Then it goes from there to 200, 1000, 2000, 3000 – it got to one point where I remember constantly I was refreshing my phone to see the number climb higher and higher and I want to say at that point in time, I got to about 20-22,000 or so, before it started to slow down and I was like ok; You know what? – This is awesome. This is really cool. I like the aspect on how this is going, I love getting the satisfaction that people are enjoying the work, but what I love more so was the engagement and that now I was able to have conversations with so many other people that are Janelle Monae fans. People that have known about Janelle Monae’s music when she was still back in Kansas City doing music all the way to people that are just hearing her for the first time now. I’m able to see where they are and what they think about the music and engage with them and ask them what other music do they like and if it’s similar to my own taste, so that they would be able to find other things on my channel that they enjoy. That was first real moment of aw man, this is incredible! I see this is not just as a way for me to be able to get views but a lot of people are influenced. This is also a way for me to get into the same conversations that I’m having on my radio show as well, being able to bridge those two gaps. I would say the second and the biggest moment came when I did a video about ‘This Is America’ with Childish Gambino. And I remember it was right after my friends had thrown me a surprise birthday party and I was coming back home, and I remembered that I didn’t want to stay out too late because I knew that Donald Glover; who was like somebody that I looked up to within the entrepreneurial space was hosting Saturday Night Live, and I was super excited to be able to watch that and I wanted to get back home but, honestly it was my birthday party so I was staying out a little bit later. When I got back home, I watched a few of the sketches and was getting ready to go to bed and I just happen to check Instagram and I saw there was an ad for This Is America. And it always showed the first couple of seconds of behind Donald and it kind of just cut into This Is America in cursive. I know it’s late, around two to three am, but I want to do this video now because I don’t know what time I’m going to wake up in the morning because we had a lot of fun today! [laughs] and my roommate was looking me like, ‘Everybody is asleep. You don’t want to be too loud’ – I was like, ‘Dude, I have to do this right now. If I don’t do this now, I’m gonna kick myself in the morning because I’m just that much of a fan of his.’ So I ended up doing the video, and I was just so tired and my mind was just so warped from what it was I just saw, I just immediately went to sleep right after that because I couldn’t even process everything that was going on back there. So did the video and ended up going to sleep. But for whatever reason; and I thank God for this all the time, I go to sleep around 3-3:30. I wake up at 7am randomly. And I’m still super tired, groggy, don’t know what’s going on but I just wake up at 7am. And I got enough energy in me to go up and edit. And I’m trying to go back to sleep but in the midst of me doing that, I feel like I’m up for a reason. Let me just get up and put this video out. So I get up, go to the living room where my laptop is and edit the video and put the video out and went back to sleep. I wake up come back and I see ok, the video is doing pretty good; that’s good it’s like at 2000 views, and a couple comments – good. As I start to make dinner and watch TV, it takes off. Now I go from 2000 to 15,000. Now that’s a jump. I ain’t never seen – whoa! That’s crazy. That 15,000 goes to like 45 and I’m like aight, “This by far is going to be my most viewed video. I don’t – is this what this feels like?” … and at the same time, my email account is like going – off the hook! I had to put my phone on silent and do not disturb because so many email alerts were coming in of people leaving comments and also subscribing to the channel and it goes from there to 100,000. I’m like, ok. That is the best video I’ve had so far. And around all of that, I also crossed 1,000 subscribers at the same time and it keeps growing and growing. And it probably stopped around 245,000 is where it started to slow down, but at that point in time I had already got text messages from friends and emails from former professors in college saying that my kids that remembered you from school called me to say hey did you see Melvin’s video on YouTube? At that point in time, and then when you type in This Is America and you see Donald Glover’s video and underneath that there might have been two other videos right there, our video is third thumbnail to pop up. That just blew my mind to think that how all of this took off in this manner. So I know it’s kind of a long story, but just really the in-depth of what I was thinking at that point in time that was going on, that’s where I was and everything.”