The Anti-Viral YouTube Strategy

When I think of “going viral”, I think of influencers doing entertaining, trendy content.

I think of a past client I know who has over 300,000 subscribers and millions of views because he creates viral content - and barely makes $50 a month from that audience.

I also think of the many YouTubers I know who ended up burning out or quitting YouTube because they went viral for a particular topic and now feel stuck creating content about that one thing, for that audience.

If you’re someone who doesn’t care about being a viral influencer, doesn’t like to create entertaining/trendy content, wants to convert your viewers into high-ticket clients and cares about playing the long game without feeling pigeonholed into talking about one thing and without burning out - the viral shoe won’t fit.

I see our work at Essetino Media as uplifting the voices that aren’t necessarily “loud” or “broad-audience” enough to fit the influencer mold… but MAN are they ever brilliant and have a message that can help so many people.

Voices like Jen Kem. Atima Omara. John Briggs. Maeve Ferguson. Tamara Hamai.

You may not have heard their names (and if you have, brownie points!). Just know they are doing incredible work. And I truly see what we do - putting those voices on YouTube - as a positive ripple effect that will continue to impact audiences not just now but for years to come.

The Anti-Viral strategy is not for you if you just care about “getting lots of views and subscribers fast”.

More views and subscribers do not equal more people joining your community or program.

This is about aligned attention, not just attention.

And it’s definitely not ‘fast’ because that’s not how trust works (ESPECIALLY in today’s market where we’re all being waaaay more discerning of who we give our time and money to).

The Anti-Viral Strategy runs on three lenses.

Whenever I do a channel audit, I run the entire channel through these three lenses:

Let’s run through each one. As we go through these, I want you to answer these questions with your YouTube channel in mind.

1. ALIGN. Your channel should serve a clear role in your business, and so should every single video on it. If it doesn’t align with the channel’s job, it’s just content… and our time is way too valuable to just create content. It’s gotta have a purpose, it’s gotta be intentional. What does success look like for you on YouTube? What do you want the channel to do for your business? What’s the bigger vision, and how does the channel support it?

2. ATTRACT. Your channel needs to speak directly to the ideal viewer you want to reach (your ideal viewer = the person that you best serve, ideally the person who would be a good fit for your offers). When your ideal viewer lands on your channel, is it obvious to them that this channel is for them? Are you creating videos on topics your ideal viewer is actually typing into search (queries based on real challenges or desires)? Are you using language they’d recognize? That last question is a big one – I wrote a LinkedIn post on this about translating your expertise into the language your clients actually use, in a way that makes them understand why it’s relevant to them. You might be explaining things the way YOU understand them, in your own language, but your audience isn’t there yet. They may be describing their problem in completely different words.

3. ACTION. Your channel needs to guide your viewers toward a particular action. ONE main call to action. I know it can be tempting to list out 20 different things you want them to do (Subscribe to my channel! Leave a comment! Like the video! Join my substack! Check out this digital product! etc. … don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, I see you lol). I want you to pick the one best action - is it subscribing to your Substack? Opting in for a specific checklist because that’s the best place to start with you? Is it requesting a discovery call? This call to action needs to live on the channel homepage, in every video description, and either be visually shown or verbalized in every video.

When someone tells me their channel isn’t producing, this is the diagnostic. One or more of these three is always missing.

I’ll give you an example - we had this one client who is a founder and speaker in the personal finance space. She specializes in helping women entrepreneurs manage their money, simplify investing and achieve financial security.

When I asked her some of these questions, it was clear she wanted to grow her Financial Freedom email list/community, get more opt-ins from YouTube and convert them into her high-ticket accelerator program.

When we audited her channel, over 80% of her viewers were male and mostly from India - totally different from the audience she wanted to attract.

She had 7 different links in her video descriptions with no clear signal on which one to click after watching - there were just way too many lead magnets and resources that she was linking to (essentially all competing with each other), and no call to action anywhere on her banner. ALIGN was missing (what she wanted the channel to do and what it was actually doing were misaligned). ATTRACT was definitely missing (completely wrong audience). And there was some aspect of ACTION but it needed to be simplified way down (remember we need ONE primary link or call to action and keep it the same everywhere).

We built out a new YouTube strategy for her with our recommended positioning (based on competitor and market research), gave her channel homepage a complete makeover and revamped her content strategy to attract her specific audience of women entrepreneurs with established businesses.

In one year, the channel’s reach increased by 159% and hit its highest watch time ever, averaging over 200 hours per month. YouTube became a lead engine for her - over the course of working together, the channel brought in 773 qualified leads, averaging 42 opt-ins per month, with conversion rates 67% higher than previous years - a clear signal of stronger audience-to-offer alignment. And her team closed two new clients from YouTube - generating $40,000 in (tracked) sales. A channel that had been sitting still is now doing the actual job it was built for.

If you want to see where your own channel is leaking on ALIGN, ATTRACT, or ACTION, Jewel breaks it down below for you - channel homepage upgrades and changes you can make today.

See ya there.

~ Auret Esselen

Hey, it's Jewel 💎

Auret walked you through the three lenses of the Anti-Viral Strategy: Align, Attract, and Action. Now I want to show you where all three show up before a single video plays. Your channel homepage is not a setup step. It's a live business asset, and most people set it up once, forget about it, and let it quietly work against them. I'm pulling up a real client channel to show you what each element looks like when it's doing its job, and where to find every setting in YouTube Studio so you can update yours today.

A homepage that doesn't reflect your current goals is quietly breaking your channel's credibility before anyone watches a single video.

I’ll see you in the next article/video 🙂

Cheers,

Jewel

P.S. If you prefer we just tell you what to do, upgrade to our founders tier “Custom YouTube Strategy”. We’ll build out your content strategy for your business/niche, we’ll get on a 1:1 90min YouTube strategy call, and give you a research-backed plan so you know exactly what to focus on for the 90 days.