What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Minecraft and ArcadiaCon
Our son loves to play Minecraft. He and his friends get together on Facetime and then go into a Minecraft server to play together.
The other thing these kids all do is watch other people who play Minecraft. They can sit for hours watching their favorite “YouTubers” and Twitch live streamers. I thought this was so strange at first. Then I figured this was better than watching television shows. And now I am amazed at how much money these Youtubers and Streamers make. This is a real business. 
This weekend we brought our son to ArcadiaCon which is a two day conference with the famous Minecraft YouTubers and Live Streamers. The highlight of the event was the “Meet and Greets” where all the kids get autographs and photos taken with these stars. You think people stand in Disney lines a long time?
As parents we are interested in understanding and knowing what our children are interested in. This is very important in parent/child relationships especially when the kids become teenagers. We show interest in his interests.
In my mind I was wondering what I am going to do to keep from being bored? I don't play online games. I don't have time to watch videos even though I make it a point to watch some with our son so that we know what he is watching.
I decided that I would enjoy learning! I love to learn! And I was sure there would be some tips we could pick up that I could pass along to you as well as implement in our own businesses.
The entertainment was hosted by some of these YouTubers. Then there were panel discussions and lots of Q & A sessions!
I love to learn about different businesses. So I was interested in the panel discussions.
They had panel discussions on YouTube video production and creation and Live Streaming panels. I also went to the Women's Gamer panel because there are very few females in this gaming space in the monetization areas. The best panel was about “How to Build a Community”.
One of our son's favorite YouTubers is @BajanCanadian who is 21 years old now and has over 4.8 million subscribers to his YouTube Channel. He is a great content creator. He along with other YouTubers create their own story lines in Minecraft and edit their videos.
They usually post 2 times per day and we are not talking about super short videos either!
He has over 1,267,610,142 video views!
How do you like those numbers! His earnings potential on YouTube are over $3 Million a year which is through YouTube's revenue sharing. He is also involved in merchandizing which is always a very smart move when you have fans, especially kids! I posted a video of Bajan Canadian with our son below.
My greatest takeaways from Arcadiacon ( Minecraft event):
1. Community is everything when you are marketing yourself or your product online no matter what business you are in.
2. Creating your brand and tying it together with your community helps engagement and builds brand loyalty.
3. Care about your fans. Your fans love and adore you. Recognize them. Be humble and make their day better by interacting with them in your chat and replying to their comments.
4. Like kind attracts like kind. People who are like you will be attracted to your brand, your product, your service.
5. Network on line with fellow gamers. So in other businesses, reach out to your peers! There is enough business for everyone and then some!
6. Livestreaming tips: Send out tweets that you are live streaming. Periscope is great for business live streaming. Twitch is what most gamers use. Show your live stream schedule on your website page, your YouTube channel page, your tweets, on Instragram, etc.
7. Content creation is KING!!!!
8. Be consistent.
9. If you can create content to sell to kids- you have it made:)
There are parallels in the online gaming business with any other business that you are doing on the internet from selling real estate and blogging so that buyers will contact you as a real estate agent, mortgage brokers who are sharing information about the loan markets, consultants, information marketers, authors, bloggers, e-commerce businesses and so on. The list is endless.
In my consulting and digital marketing strategies business all 6 of these takeaways are important. In my husband's real estate brokerage business all 6 of these takeaways are important.
Nothing helps your credibility more than to build up a community of loyal fans that rave about you and their results! Community is everything! Build your community. Respect your community and add value most of all to your community.
For instance, today in Listing Experts Academy which is one of my most popular courses and membership programs one of my students asked a question in our private Facebook group that is ONLY for members of the Listing Experts Academy.
In order to answer her question, I needed to look a few things up in incognito chrome window so I thought it would be better if I created a video to answer her question. I recorded the video and it was short, less than 5 minutes to answer her specific question. Then what I did was uploaded the video straight to the Facebook group so that she would not even have to click on a link to YouTube to get her answer.
She was so happy that I posted that video. It made her feel special and important. Is that not what most all human beings want to feel? Important and valued. She even wrote a testimonial of the service I provide to the group. I did not post the video answer for her to get a thank you from her. I did this to add value to her life and business. In what ways can you add value to your clients' and customers'?
The YouTubers told the aspiring up and coming YouTubers not to worry about how many subscribers they have when they start posting videos on their YouTube channels. This was a very important tip. I agree so much with this no matter what business you are in. Creating and uploading YouTube videos takes a lot of time and we would all like to see results right away. That does not usually happen with YouTube. YouTube likes those channel creators that stick around for a while too so it benefits you to be consistent! Post on a regular schedule.
One of the questions that was asked over and over again in the Q & A sessions was technical questions like, “What mic do you use?”. While I understand kids asking this question when adults ask this question it is a sign that they are procrastinating or they are suffering from perfectionism paralysis. Good is good enough. Use your Mac's internal mic. Use your iPhone earphone mic. It does not matter. Just start recording video! You should hear some of my podcasts! I record podcasts while I am driving using my iPhone earphone mic and my iPhone podcasting app. You can hear the A/C in my car running. But it does not matter because my fans want to hear from me. If the only chance I get to podcast is while I am driving, then that is what I have to offer and good is good enough!
Consistency gets hard when you get busy. It seems to be the one thing that gets left out when we are moving our businesses forward myself included. This is where delegation comes in. You must learn to scale your business by delegating. Even if you don't want to scale your business, delegating frees up your time so that you can spend it doing other things like spending time with your family.
Create an editorial calendar and then create the systems you need to put in place that can easily be delegated to your virtual assistants. If you don't have virtual assistants, I will set you up with my awesome virtual assistant team we use for our tasks that we can delegate.
Care about your readers, your fans, your followers! Add value! That is a no brainer across all markets and businesses but SOOO often this is overlooked and ignored. If you don't treat your fans like gold, they will become disenchanted and move along. If you don't treat your customers like gold, same thing. If you don't respect your prospects by answering their questions, those prospects will not convert to customers.
Content creation is king! It always has been and becomes more so with each passing Google algorithm change, with each new market that is created and with each medium. We know now that Google does reward content pages with more than 2000 words of quality content. But that can't be junk. So make sure your content adds value to your readers, your prospects, the searchers and your fans.
For video content, videos still need to be short and to the point unless of course you are a gamer. And of course it is determined by who your niche audience is. Bajan Canadian can create a 3 hour long video and millions of kids will still stay there and watch the video. But someone looking for a house to buy is only going to watch a video for about 30 seconds. Someone who is wanting to learn how to build a wordpress website is going to watch a longer tutorial than a house for sale video. Remember attention spans are very short.
I suggest that you create short intro videos to whatever your product or service is and have those who find your video and are interested to optin to your email list. Then you can start engaging them in a conversation through email and link to longer videos that are specific to their interests.
When these gamers are live streaming on Twitch, they are playing games and interacting on their chat rooms with their fans by talking to them live. They are creating a loyal following while they are creating content. They are content creators. Just like you and I are.
Live Streaming is a new media. We have video and now we have live streaming. This new media is full of potential for any business owner and entrepreneur who wants to take their business to the next level. This is where we are headed. Those who get in on the ground floor of this media will be able to make for themselves a strong foothold. It was so interesting to learn about this media.
How do I know that live streaming is something every real estate agents, business owner, marketer, producer, e-commerce owner, entrepreneur should be paying attention to and getting involved in?
When companies like McDonalds are sending their marketers to learn about live streaming in order to find the ways in which they can get their product in front of those consumers of live streaming… pay attention! The big companies are sponsoring these live streamers. They would not be doing that if they did not think that they can effectively market to those consumers.
Check out the app called Periscope on your iPhone. You can download the app for free. It is super easy to set up. You can then start live streaming right away. Set your Periscope settings to save your live streams to your photos. This then gives you the ability to upload them to YouTube for future product creation and content. If you don't set this in your settings, Periscope only saves the live streams for 24 hours. During those 24 hours, all your followers can view that stream but they won't be able to chat with you or send you hearts:).
Name a business and I will tell you how they can use Periscope! How about a dentist? How can a dentist use periscope. He can do live tutorials on caring for your teeth, how to brush them correctly, how to floss correctly. Not only that but he can set the stream to private and teach other dentists from all around the world his expertise. You can set your privacy settings on Periscope.
We do strongly urge you to NOT use the location service on Periscope especially if you are live streaming from home. Don't tell people exactly where you are for security and safety reasons.
Like kind always attracts like kind. If this is the only take away that you get out of this article, you are so far ahead of your competitors! If you want to learn more about heart centered marketing and working your business from your passion, let me know in the comments below. I would love to create content for you about Passion Driven Business Success Strategies.
Networking 101: Always be networking! We get clients from networking on Facebook. We get business from paying it forward on Twitter. We get to help others find their way and making another person's day by reaching out on social media to help. You can network in person or online. Networking online is great for introverts because they tend to be more assertive online. If you are too shy to meet and greet people in person, get involved in online communities in your niches and start networking. You may be pleasantly surprised how much you are appreciated. Remember my rule on networking: pay it forward first. Connect people together with other people outside of yourself. Allow them to chat with you and you ask the questions. This will make them feel important and they will love you for it. They will refer business your way.
And my biggest take-away is that it does not matter how young or old you are right now- you can make $1 Million a year or $1 Million a month in something as seemingly simple appearing as gaming, mainly by creating videos of you and your friends playing Minecraft or whatever game you are passionate about playing or by live streaming the same. Imagine the possibilities!
There are a million ways to make $1,000,000 online so find what you are passionate about and go for it!
Drive your business with passion. Do what you love and the money will follow!
As always, to work with me or join one of my programs text me: 561-502-1577 with your name, phone number again in the body of the text and your email address.