So how do you find and nurture your truly loyal audience, especially if you have the task of appealing to such an emotional segment as sports fans? To do this, Lava Media and MEIZU turned to the capabilities of YouTube.

The football history of Lava Media and MEIZU began when MEIZU became the general sponsor of the Krasnodar football club, and videos shot by the agency with the team’s players were shown on the Match TV channel. Lava Media and MEIZU began preparing to recruit an army of new fans of the brand with the launch of the YouTube channel “Football with MEIZU.”

The goal is to acquire a loyal audience of football fans and become an alternative media covering the country's main football event. According to the established KPIs, it was planned to reach 50 thousand subscribers by the end of the year, but this task was completed by August. A year later, the number of project subscribers amounted to 87 thousand people.

Let's figure out what principles you need to adhere to in order to successfully interact with the online audience within the framework of a YouTube channel with football broadcast content.

Rule #1 - Nativeness in the name

To avoid annoying users with intrusive advertising, do not forget about nativeness and make your channel truly useful for the audience. Name and describe it so that subscribers don’t get the feeling that they are about to be sold something. The main benefit for subscribers is information on an interesting topic, so announce it right away. If the company strives to continue to work on brand awareness, mention the brand itself in the name of the channel and sell honestly and beautifully. In the end, a gadget as a gift for winning a competitive activation on the channel is also a benefit for the user.

Rule #2 - Media presence of the presenter

A blog is a blog, so choosing a charismatic host is half the battle. In the case of Lava Media and MEIZU, the choice fell on Vladimir Stognienko, a famous sports commentator and TV presenter with fans among all age categories. By the way, the company notes that it was his figure that attracted the first pool of subscribers. To attract an additional audience, it is worth inviting famous guests. Media personalities such as L’One, Vasily Utkin, and Burly Nick came to the “Football with MEIZU” studio. Interesting fact: guests from the football field delighted the audience more. Hence another piece of advice: focus on your audience; endless scaling doesn’t always work for you.

Rule #3 - Submission

Don’t forget that digital formats are valuable for their proximity to the audience, so the presentation must match. For example, for the YouTube channel at Lava Media, stylists developed a new image of TV presenter Vladimir Stognienko: a formal suit was replaced with a casual one, and a fresh and biting language replaced the conservative television speech. It is also worth remembering about the location, decorations, lighting: they should be lighter and friendlier for a positive perception by the audience. Any graphic design, be it splash screens or rating tables, must correspond to the YouTube audience.

Rule #4 - No politics!

The author of the program must express his professional opinion, without being guided by any guidelines or subjective preferences “from above.” The channel host’s responses to user comments under the video are also an important point that will increase audience engagement.

Rule #5 - Flexibility

It's important to listen to your audience. During the development of the MEIZU channel, the main pool of subscribers “men 25–35” by December 2017 changed to the audience “men 18–30”. Therefore, it was decided to add a new presenter of a suitable age category - Denis Alkhazov. The new tandem of presenters was received positively by subscribers.

Rule #6 - Experiments

In a competitive environment, it is important to be open to experimentation. Therefore, MEIZU, at the request of a changed audience, offered to return the TV program “Planet Football” in the format of a YouTube section. Thus, “3rd half away” and “3rd half away” were added to the main playlist. Cities of the World Cup,” where presenters travel throughout the country and the world.

Rule #7 — Gifts & Product placement

The presenter often appears on camera with a MEIZU smartphone and reads news from its screen. Don’t forget about competitions: large prizes for activity - for example, an interesting question to the presenter, a correct bet - and consolation gifts for subscribing. At the same time, this will increase the number of channel subscribers.

Rule #8 - Efficiency

If you want to be a media outlet, especially a digital media outlet, you have to react quickly: quickly collect and post information at lightning speed. In the case of video, work is carried out at an even higher speed than with text or static visual content. For example, for MEIZU it was decided to rush to Manchester for a prompt comment from Alexander Zinchenko, and then quickly edit the material right on the spot and release it on YouTube.

Rule #9 - Promotion

No matter how great the content is, YouTube is a highly competitive environment that dictates its own rules, so you shouldn’t forget about promotion. And here the approach must be individual. For the promotional channel, Lava Media used seeding on social networks, pre-roll campaigns, collaborations with thematic channels and PR through the name of the presenter on information resources. There systematically appear news about Vladimir Stognienko’s channel, his trips, and comments.

Rule #10 - Burn!

And this is the most important thing.

You can see how they created a YouTube channel for this project at the link.

You can always contact us for professional help. Lava Media specialists will help you effectively set up advertising or will promote your channel for you!

Read our articles on how a business can develop its YouTube channel:

‍

Six mistakes in promoting a business channel on YouTube

How to Find New Customers on YouTube: Lead Generation Tips

‍

To capture the attention of a loyal audience, today many brands turn to bloggers. However, it is clear that simply being featured by an opinion leader is not enough. In addition, the love of influencers is fickle: today an influencer is loyal to your brand’s product, and tomorrow – to a competitor’s product.

‍