In today's show, I discover the power of YouTube - how to make the most of interacting with the YouTube community. I discuss methods to find more focus in daily life and how I've been letting go of some old fears. Are you confused about podcasting? After doing a bit of research, I'm revealing what methods are working for me so far! To launch the show, press the play button below:

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Show Notes

In this week’s podcast, I cover three main topics:

• Videos & the YouTube community

• Moving beyond fears and limiting beliefs to find inner focus

• Podcasting, Twitter & social media

Videos & the YouTube community

I never really investigated how the YouTube community truly works until now. I mention how getting views on YouTube is not only about having good content, but it’s also about interacting with the community.

I’m in the process of developing my YouTube profile, it is certainly not something that will happen overnight. I  can see the benefit of adding quality new videos on a regular basis while continuing to interact with members of your YouTube community. Gideon Shalwick mentioned that one of the most important things to do is to start making comments.

I initially thought the best way to get your video out there was to make sure that it gets distributed to as many video sharing sites all at once. The problem I’ve found is that you can easily lose track of the video sites, and you won’t have a chance to interact with the members of those individual sites. My challenge is to master YouTube before moving on to others!

Moving beyond fears and limiting beliefs to find inner focus

The idea of developing my own identity online was a bit daunting initially for me. I realised that it brought up some underlying fears from my past. They were:

• Fear of being exposed

• Fear of being criticized

I’m sure these same fears could be found in other people. One of the most terrifying things that I’ve now accomplished was the thought of  appearing in front of a camera. Although I’ve been a cameraman, I‘ve never been confident in front of the camera. Looking back at the footage from home videos when I was young child, I’ve realised that I was always the camera person. If there were any clips of myself, I was first to move off screen. I didn’t want the limelight – and I’m sure it was related to the above two fears. So I told myself that this was something that I needed to breakthrough. It dawned on me that my results would suffer if I didn’t make a change. I moved from a state of feeling absolutely terrified to place of empowerment. I didn’t care what others thought, it was time to be myself!

Sometimes I wake up feeling absolutely lousy. Half the time I don’t even know why I’m feeling that way. In reference to building an online business and continuing on with the challenge – sometimes thoughts like “its too hard, its already been done – there’s no opportunity left” enter my mind. In order to combat these feelings, I’m learning how to be more accountable for my thoughts.

Lessons learnt from self empowerment guru’s like Anthony Robbins have been beneficial. It’s very true that we make associations to things, and without knowing it, we can often accidentally trigger that association. I’ve found music an excellent tool to change an association, and therefore be able to change my mood quite rapidly. So if your mind just gets stuck in a negative state, practice doing something completely different. Awareness is the key. Make a decision to focus on maximising your positive emotions and gain more focus.

I’ve been listening to Chuck Bartok’s talk show on iTunes recently, as he discusses famous personal development books such as:

• Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
• The Science of Getting Rich – Wallace D. Wattles
• The Master Key System – Charles F. Haanel
• The Miracle of Right Thought – Orison Swett Marden

It’s inspired me to want to take more time out for myself to read and reflect. I often get caught up with what I’m doing online that I don’t give myself the time to read – actual books!

In his discussions, Chuck brought up some really good points that struck a chord with me.

• Constantly questing the outcome brings about doubt.
• Once you’ve set a goal, stop focusing on what could go wrong – don’t over think.
• The secret of achievement is within concentration. Stay focused.
• When we don’t face our fears, we are faced with frustrations.
• Fear is the easy way out.
• The acronym of FEAR is: false expectations appearing real.
• Fears only exist within ourselves; we can control both our fears and our results.

Podcasting & Twitter

I really didn’t have a clue how to start podcasting. I recorded a file, but didn’t know what to do with it – and wasn’t sure how it should be broadcasted. After uploading my first podcast to my server, I got a Tweet from Ray @podcasthelper. I subscribed to Ray’s podcasts about podcasting on iTunes and learnt HEAPS.

One of the most critical things I’ve learnt was that it’s important to not host your audio on your site (unless you setup a separate server for media hosting) because if your show suddenly becomes popular overnight, it’s going to chew up your allocated download bandwidth.

I decided to use an external video hosting provider – Blip.tv. Combine this with a Feedburner feed, and now I can easily change where my podcasts are stored at any time by updating the RSS feed that I provide Feedburner. For me that provides some peace of mind that I have the flexibility to change this when I like.

I then submitted my feed details to iTunes. I’ll create a screen capture video to highlight that process shortly. No doubt there are many directories that I can still list my podcast, but at least now I don’t feel as confused!

TweetDeck

I use TweekDeck as my Twitter client, but I wasn’t fully harnessing its features. Ray pointed out that one of the best features was to follow conversations based on keywords. I’ve started following what people are saying with ‘morning ritual’, and it’s giving me some ideas for my new challenge beginning next week – what morning ritual is most suitable for me? I’m a big fan of the ability to use columns in TweekDeck. How many user groups do you have? I have about 7 or 8, which is just enough for me to keep up with.

Using Twitter and social media, we can link with people who share common goals all around the world. I find the concept fascinating, and I keep wondering what the future of social media will look like in say 10 years time.  I recently saw the YouTube video “Social Media Revolution” – and I have to say it was an eye opener. What do you think?

Goal Progress

My main focus at the moment has been establishing my modes of communication – getting the blog setup, setting up podcasting, and creating a YouTube profile. I’ve also been trialling some mind mapping software to create an outline of the year to come.

One of the important things I’m learning is how to schedule my time better. In the past I’ve noticed that I multitask too frequently. It hasn’t worked. I’m learning that I need to cut out the distractions and focus on one task at a time, to see it through to completion.

Dollars Update

Nothing to update yet!

Resources

• Yaro Starak’s Blog – Entrepreneur’s Journey
• Gideon Shalwicks’s Blog – Video on Easy YouTube Friend Growing Tip
• Become A Blogger – Yaro and Gideon’s Free Blogging Videos
• Interview With Maria Andros by Gideon Shalwick
• Chuck Bartok’s Focus Society Mastermind
• Ray @podcasthelper – The Podcasters Studio
• TweetDeck Twitter Client