How Jaime French Blew Up on Facebook AND YouTube: The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 296
“I was better at making funny videos than making beauty videos.”
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Jaime French is a comedian, makeup artist, and musician with over 1.8 million followers on Instagram and 429k subscribers on YouTube.
Jaime French has always been obsessed with videos, even when she was a child. At the age of 12, she got a video camera for her birthday and started making videos and sketches, and her passion for filmmaking started to blossom. When she found out you could earn a living off YouTube, she knew she had to do it. She started off as a makeup and beauty YouTuber and was stagnant at 1,000 subscribers, but she learned she had comedic timing when it came to editing. Jaime insists that she is not necessarily a funny person, but that she had a gift to utilize editing to make something funny. Jaime’s unique editing style leaves the outtakes in and adds quick cuts to the next scene, zooms when she says something funny, and adds in pop-ups, graphics, and sound effects. Basically, anything she can add to embellish the video to make it funny, she does. Her first funny video to go viral was her Tiny Hands video, and it went viral on Facebook first. Buzzfeed reposted it and it got to 35 million views, and then more and more media outlets picked it up. Jaime invited this media exposure, but she wasn’t paid for it because it was posted on her personal page, which was not monetized. She linked the YouTube version in the description and even though Facebook doesn’t favor outside links, she got 8K subscribers from it. At this point, Jaime doesn’t know how to edit a video without making it funny.
“I felt like I was in a box, and I had labeled myself as a makeup artist with the occasional comedy sketch. I didn’t know how my audience would react if I reviewed a movie.”
Jaime’s popularity on Facebook is a lot bigger than on YouTube. She has 1.8 million followers on Facebook and 429k subscribers on YouTube, but she treats them the same as far as content goes. She uploads her videos to both, but with different thumbnails. Thumbnails that tend to work for facebook do not work for YouTube and vise versa. Jaime also uses TikTok, where she creates totally different content, and now that IGTV is monetizable, she’s going to create more there. Jaime is a self-admitted bad planner. She currently uploads once a week but would like to get back to a place where she can upload twice a week. Her ideas come from viewer suggestions and things that just pop into her head, and she recently started a Movie Review series. When she put the first one out, she wasn’t sure how her audience would react, but Bailey Sarian inspired her, and almost “gave permission” to add makeup to the equation. It worked, her audience loved it, and her channel has seen a ton of growth from them.
How does she make these videos? Here’s her process: first, she watches the movie herself and she can usually tell right away if she wants to review it. If she decides to do it, she orders the DVD, uploads it, and rips it to an Mp4 and puts it into her editing software. Whenever she has a thought or a joke and makes a marker, and then takes notes on each marker. She then decides which clips she wants to recreate and green screen herself in, which is a process itself. She does research on the film, outlines and scripts the video, and films and edits herself talking through it. Then she does the overlays and popups before filming and editing the green screen clips. FINALLY, she puts it all together. She does the thumbnail, her sister does the description, and then they upload it. It can take upwards of 30 hours of work for these videos, but now that she knows it’s going to pay off, she happily puts in all the work. It’s worth it.
“Everything is always changing and evolving.”
3 Key Interview Takeaways
- Jaime’s facebook advice: Facebook culture is different because of the share button. If you’re posting a video on facebook, share it to your personal page, and everyone on your friends list will share it if they like it. Cross-promote everything. Ask your friends to like your page, and invite everyone on your friends list to like your page.
- On titles: Be strategic in your titles. How much info can you give without writing a paragraph? Make sure your title reflects what your video is about with as much information possible using as few words as you can.
- Don’t be afraid to step outside of your box. Jaime’s channel doesn’t really have a label on it, and that’s ok! She started off as a makeup channel and it has morphed into a comedy channel. Jaime was initially afraid to do something “different” because she was unsure of how the reaction of viewers would be, but it was that step outside of the box and daring to do something different that made her enormously successful.
Mentioned in the Episode:
Connect with Jaime:
Resources
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FREE GUIDES:
Creating Content During Crisis: How to Create Impactful Content During COVID-19 Pandemic
Getting Started on YouTube: YouTube Niche Workbook
How to get onto PR lists and receive a TON of free product even if you have a small following: PR List
YOUTUBE OPTIMIZATION PLUG-IN I RECOMMEND
TubeBuddy [Use the code ErikasBuddy to get 20% off]
MY FAVORITE BUSINESS TOOLS
Course Creation: Looking to create a course? Kajabi is the BEST platform hands down. I use this for my course after extensive research on all the other platforms.
Live Calls and Interviews: I use Ecamm for my podcast interviews, both audio and for YouTube that you see here on YouTube. It makes it super easy to share my screen and create the split-screen with my guest. I’m not super techie and this software is really easy to use!
Webinars and Live calls: I use Zoom.us for my group coaching calls in my private membership group for female YouTube creators. It’s also the software I use to record my Road to 100k YouTube Subscribers Masterclass!
THE BEST YOUTUBE/PODCASTING EQUIPMENT
After interviewing HUNDREDS of successful YouTube creators, these are the pieces of equipment that hands down get mentioned time and time again. You can’t go wrong with anything on this list!
- 4k Camera: Great for starting out and vlogging
- Lens: This lens is recommended highly by many of my podcast guests, it gives the blurry “YouTuber” background look.
- Audio: If you want to upgrade your set-up, audio should be one of the first investments (after a good camera). This microphone is unanimously the favorite amongst my podcast guests.
- Podcast/Voiceover Microphone: If you are looking for a great microphone for a podcast or video voiceover, this is it! This is the one that you see in all of my videos and the one I’ve recorded my podcast on for years.
- Webcam: For my interviews, that you see in my videos, this is the webcam that I use. Super inexpensive and easy to set up!
- Inexpensive Lighting Kit: Need to pick up some lights but don’t want to spend a ton? This is a great set that will get you started and help improve the look of your videos.
- Ring light: Looking for that beauty look? Invest in a ring light! This is an inexpensive light that does that trick!
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Podcast Music Credit: Boop by x50 @x50music
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