Going Viral with Jon Youshaei

Whether you want to score brand influencer deals or promote a small business, a successful social media strategy needs to reach your audience in their favorite places. Teresa Au speaks to marketing expert and creator Jon Youshaei for tips on making social media content creation pay off for you. Jon shares insights from his years working for YouTube and Instagram and now running his own new media studio. Hear what Jon says is most important for creators to focus on, where the algorithm can help you, and the power of engaging your following. And if you want to go viral, Jon tells you how to plan for it–and what to do before and after.

What you’ll hear on this episode:

• How the pandemic made Jon question his career plan
• The importance of taking your destiny into your own hands
• The definition of “influencer”--and knowing what you can and cannot influence
• Jon’s goal: to create the best educational content on YouTube
• What Jon learned at YouTube and Instagram that he can finally share
• How to manage social media in 2023
• Yes, you can plan to go viral–but should you?
• The importance of also making content that is not meant to go viral
• The best way to grow your audience is to poll your audience
• Your audience is your focus group
• Why it’s so powerful to bring your audience along with you as you create
• Create goals based on what you can control, not what you hope will happen 
• Tips on how not to get caught up in chasing “likes”
• What makes metrics most meaningful
• Behind every great creator is a great partner
• How Jon diversifies his revenue stream
• The difference between Stephen Colbert and James Corden on YouTube
• The importance of trying new things
• Putting the algorithm to work for you
• How to determine the best platforms for your content
• The hot features within Instagram and YouTube
• Being realistic about how much content you can produce
• Looking outside your feed for inspiration
• On creating the viral “24 Hours with Danny Duncan” YouTube video
• What makes for the best interviews with famous and not-so-famous people
• Knowing exactly what your goals are vs. not knowing how high your ceiling is
• Jon’s unexpected next big project
• How Jon is using Gen AI via Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill feature to streamline his workflow
• The best ways to use AI
• Jon’s One Word for 2023

Jon Youshaei

One of few marketers to work at both YouTube and Instagram, Jon Youshaei has been featured in Business Insider, Time, and Inc Magazine for "cracking the code to going viral.” During five years at YouTube, Jon was Head of Creator Product Marketing where he worked with YouTube's top creators and brands to grow their audience and their incomes. During his three years at Instagram, Jon helped build their creator team to empower even more creators to grow and monetize.

Now a creator himself, Jon has garnered 500K+ followers, 300M+ views, and has interviewed Logan Paul, Paris Hilton, Terry Crews, Charli D'Amelio, Danny Duncan, Mark Rober, and more. He is also a sought-after advisor, investor, and speaker who serves as a Head Creator Advisor for TubeBuddy (analytics platform used by 9M creators), and was recognized by NPR as one of the best commencement speakers since 1774 alongside Steve Jobs, Oprah and John F. Kennedy. He has also been Forbes 30 Under 30 and LinkedIn named him as one of their Top Voices on the platform.

Teresa Au (@tautastic) is an executive for community engagement at Adobe. Her career spans diverse creative fields, primarily in New York’s fashion industry, as well as architecture firms, and now Silicon Valley tech companies. She has always prized working with distinctive design and the interesting people behind it–from designer Elie Tahari to start-up CEOs. 

Learn more about this podcast, and find transcripts and links, at adobe.ly/inthemaking. In the Making is brought you by Adobe Express and Adobe Creative Cloud. 

Past episodes of Wireframe can still be found in the show archive within this feed, or online on Behance. 

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