0-10M subs 🔓 strategy unlocked

Hey, Paige here! Back with another creator deep dive. 

While skeptics say they aren’t “true” experts, they have MASTERED the art of capturing attention and building trust, growing their YouTube audience to almost 10 million subscribers and becoming some of the most recognizable faces in the VFX industry. 

The Corridor Crew did one major thing right — and most companies haven’t learned to tap into it… yet. That’s why we’re here 😉

A vast majority of Corridor’s content is reactions to existing content. They bring in animators, stunt doubles, VFX artists, and other professionals to react with them to the best and worst clips in their respective niches. 

This is the first of two triggers Corridor gets right — they use commentary to talk about things that are already proven to draw attention from their audience.

Commentary works for a reason. YouTube’s 2023 Culture and Trends Report found that 54% of people would rather watch creators break down an event than watch the event themselves. This is why we have sports commentators and this is why react videos go viral across social media.

When an event draws attention, it gains its own audience. By offering your two cents on that event (or person), you’re actively participating with others who are already invested — you borrow the event’s attention to grow your own following. By sharing your unique point of view, you attract people who agree, disagree, and care about the same things you do.

The only way to tap into that pre-validated topic is to share your commentary. The best (and easiest way) to do that is well-developed reaction content. 

But there is a problem with creating only within the realm of reactions…

You get stuck on the bottom levels of the content pyramid, which Category Pirates has so brilliantly laid out here. If you really want to grow sustainably, you need more than reaction content. 

Corridor Crew has a balanced approach where they share commentary most of the time, but consistently create content that becomes the event people are talking about — let’s call them ‘splashes.’ 

These splashes gain massive attention, drawing people in. Unlike commentary that relies on reactions, the big moments are based on original thought and content development — they take more time and attention to create. 

This means splashes aren’t sustainable… you can’t expect to push out a viral moment every day (or week, even month). 

For Corridor Crew, these splashes include wild video moments, like AI combat robots people believed were real, or industry-shattering open-source AI that takes your recordings and pictures and turns them into animation. 

When you can master the curation and commentary really well, you can take the next step and create these splashes in your niche, drawing your audience in with big moments while keeping them around with smart, unique commentary.

The takeaway: For sustainable growth, your content strategy needs a healthy balance of relevant, timely commentary and occasional splashes that position your company as a commentary-worthy event. 

That’s it, ya’ll. Happy creating!

Paige Peterson
Newsletter Aficionado, Sweet Fish