Episode 112 - How to Build a Paper Flower YouTube Channel with Kristen Kong
Kristen Kong joins us to share how she launched her YouTube paper flower tutorial channel, and how she creates weekly content to engage followers.
Videos are uniquely suited to paper flower tutorials. But they can feel daunting to produce!
Where do you start? How do you get views on a platform like YouTube? How do you avoid failing spectacularly?!?
In our latest episode we talked with Kristen Kong of Campbell Workshop. In under a year she opened a shop and started a YouTube channel with a gruelling one-tutorial-a-week schedule. How does she do it? She shared all the details with us on the podcast, giving you an insider’s look at what it takes to produce regular and beautiful video content.
Listen now to learn how she does it, but in the meantime, here’s a look at three things we discussed that will put you on the path to success when it comes to building a YouTube channel.
Here’s what you’ll learn when you listen to our conversation:
► How Kristen started her paper flower journey.
► Her process and schedule for creating weekly tutorials.
► How she makes her tutorials accessible for everyone.
► Which equipment she uses to produce her videos.
► What she offers on Patreon to her fans.
Focus on Your Strengths
Part of our discussion delved into how unique each of us are as artists and creators. There isn’t a one-size fits all path when it comes to paper flowers.
Kristin explained her love of making tutorials like this: “Making paper flowers constantly could be boring for me, because I just keep repeating the same process, making the same flowers… It’s less challenging for me. I just love making new things and keep creating things… It just depends on the person, really.”
“I found teaching quite fascinating, because very time people really appreciate it, how you teach to them and they actually achieve it as well, everybody is really happy afterwards. So it’s like an amazing thing to share my skills.”
Cranking out a tutorial every week might not be for you. If you don’t love doing that kind of work, you will burn out quickly. If you are interested in creating more videos, think about what kind of content you would be happy to put your heart into. That might mean that you post different videos than other paper florists, or that you post less often. That’s okay! Figure out what works for you and focus on that.
Know Your Target Audience
As you make YouTube videos, keep in mind who will be watching them. Do you want to capture experienced paper florists? Crafters who are dabbling in crepe? People who just want to watch something pretty be made?
The better you understand who your target audience is, the better content you can create to engage with them.
Kristen talked more about this on the episode, but in short, she keeps all of her tutorials accessible to as wide an audience as possible. How? By using tools and items that almost anyone would have around the house. She knows the level of commitment her audience is comfortable with.
Let Yourself Be Less Than Perfect
Kristen shared her tutorial creation schedule on the podcast, which will give you a great peek at what it takes to create as much content as she does. One thing that stuck out to us is that she doesn’t let the fear of not being perfect hold her back.
She didn’t have the best equipment when she started filming, and still doesn’t. She doesn’t get caught up on perfecting the details of each tutorial. She does her best in the time she has, and then she posts the video and moves on to the next.
“Everything doesn’t have to be perfect. Even in the flower world, like the real flower world, they don’t really have the perfect ones, because some of them have a little bit of burn or like a bit of tear or something like that. So there’s no perfect flowers in the real world.”
Being consistent with producing content is more important than being absolutely perfect. The truth is that you can spend months polishing a video, and it will still not be perfect. The minute you publish, someone will point out a flaw.
Kristen’s advice about paper flowers applies here as well: “Everything doesn’t have to be perfect. Even in the flower world, like the real flower world, they don’t really have the perfect ones, because some of them have a little bit of burn or like a bit of tear or something like that. So there’s no perfect flowers in the real world.”
If beautiful flowers don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to either.
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