K atie c ouric

Collaborations Lead to Quick Organic Growth
One of the best ways to build a community on YouTube is through
collaborations with other YouTubers. Sharing audiences isn’t a novel
concept—it’s something that people have been talking about for the last ten
years—but it really does work. Your collaborators’ biggest fans will
subscribe to everyone in the collaboration group.
Phil Ranta, the former COO of Studio71, one of the largest influencer-
driven digital entertainment companies, has used strategic partnerships to
grow YouTube influencers’ followings. His team has done a lot of work
with Rhett & Link (4.4 million subscribers), who collaborate with TV host
Jimmy Fallon.
Rhett & Link created “Good Mythical Morning,” a YouTube talk show.
Rhett & Link and Fallon’s shows have similar styles but reach different
audiences. Fallon has an older, more traditional fan base, and Rhett & Link

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have a younger, scrappier fan base. To collaborate and share audiences, they
started appearing on each other’s shows. Fallon does episodes of “Good
Mythical Morning,” and Rhett & Link make appearances on 
The Tonight
Show
. It has been really advantageous for both parties. Working with Fallon
has brought Rhett & Link to the mainstream, while at the same time has
helped Fallon break into the digital world.
Collaborations also work well for people who are just starting. Ranta
has seen people start out time and again with only ten subscribers and then
generate more than two hundred thousand new fans a week through
collaborations. Growth from optimal collaborations can happen swiftly on
YouTube. For example, Ranta was running channel partnerships at
Fullscreen when YouTube personality Shane Dawson was in the network.
During this time, he observed that Dawson was an expert collaborator who
could launch careers. He watched Dawson take smaller creators under his
wing and collaborate with them in a bunch of videos; oftentimes they’d
become huge stars even before they started posting their own videos
aggressively. Dawson’s collaborations have helped internet personalities
like Shanna Malcolm and Alexis G. Zall increase their fandom.
Remember what we learned about collaborating from the Instagram
chapter—when starting out, you don’t have to collaborate with someone of
Shane Dawson’s size. Even if the person you collaborate with only has ten
thousand subscribers, there’s a chance that three hundred of their fans will
start following your channel. And if you have zero to a hundred subscribers,
start collaborating with someone who has a thousand. Work your way up
the ladder.
Chris Williams agrees that strategic partnerships and collaborations are
vital for scale and growth. His team feels that they’re an extraordinarily
efficient means of creating a “conference of cool.” Essentially, they allow
the audience to find and like you because you’re associated with something
they already gravitate toward. Collaborations drive a direct audience in a
fairly efficient way.
Additionally, Ranta has noticed that a lot of YouTubers move to the
same apartment complexes in L.A. to make it easier to collaborate.
Apparently, a lot of the top social influencers have lived in the Hollywood
and Vine building at some point (tough luck for the neighbors who aren’t
YouTubers).

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However, Koppell points out that you don’t want to prematurely move
to L.A. just for this reason. Exhaust the connections that you can make from
your hometown first. And if you have at least ten thousand subscribers, you
can film at the YouTube offices in major cities all over the world, including
Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and London,
2
one day a month free of
charge, which is a great way to make connections and start meeting people.
Do as much networking as you can before moving so the transition is easier
if and when you do decide to move.