When Kylie Christopherson and Amelia Giordano met in their Intro to Mass Media class they were looking for a study buddy, but they would have never guessed they would soon be studying how to start their own YouTube Channel. Kylie and Amelia are both juniors majoring in communication when they discovered they both wanted to start making videos. At the beginning of 2016 the girls launched their own YouTube channel, Madison Meets Vine, and are posting videos covering beauty, nature, favorites, food and everything in between.
How did you come up with the name for your channel?
Amelia: I’m really bad with this kind of thing, so Kylie came up with the name.
Kylie: It’s a mass media marketing term. Madison Avenue is in New York and Vine Street is in Los Angeles and it came from the West coast and East coast connection in media.
What inspired you to start a YouTube channel?
A: We were talking about YouTube one day and I told her it was something I’ve always wanted to try and it turned out she was interested too. We sat down talked about our ideas, wrote them down, and got started.
K: The first day we shot first films we didn’t know what we were doing. We had to Google how to change functions on the camera.
What’s your favorite part about having a vlog?
K: Sharing opinions and doing it with friends.
A: The process is fun and exciting even though we are still pretty small. Our videos are something that connects you with other people, people we would have never met.
What’s been the hardest part about starting a vlog?
K: Figuring out the talking part of it. Amelia is girly and talks a lot but I’m more of the laid back, tom boy so we’re finding the balance there.
A: Editing, right now we are using a basic program. The first one we downloaded was pretty advanced, so we switched to Windows Movie Maker. Things like jump cuts and making sure the songs are not too loud are some things I’m working on.
How has living in Wyoming helped your channel? Or is our location more of a challenge?
A: Since we do have a smaller population base building a target audience is a little harder, but I think it’s good because we haven’t found another Wyoming YouTube channel out there. We can talk about it and it helps us stand out. YouTuber in a city may have a lot of other YouTubers in close vicinity. So if you’re starting up you can do collaborations which helps.
K: I do horsemanship and I’ve featured my cowgirl boots, but we disprove a lot of the wrong conceptions about Wyoming. Like we don’t ride our horses to school and we do have electricity like the rest of the country.
What goals do you have for your channel in the future?
A: Growing our audience, which we’ve been learning how to do. There isn’t a manual for building your audience, but we’ve been learning the technology that goes with it; scheduling posts or boosting posts on Facebook.
K: If we have a greater audience we would love to ask for feedback. We want responses regardless of whether they are positive or negative.
What advice would you give someone else who may be interested in starting a blog?
A: Just do it. The hurdle we had to go through in the beginning was we needed to just make the first video. Don’t be scared to try new things. We’re doing things we’ve never done before. One of our videos was on snowshoeing and that was our first time, we actually got lost! If you really like doing beauty tutorials then do it. Don’t be scared of other people doing the same thing. That was hard for us at first, but we like making videos, and we are different people, doing it in a new way.
K: We were getting ready to start the channel a good month before we shot any video. But it was mostly getting past the being scared part. The first time you’re in front of camera, it’s oh god, I can’t see myself, and what am I doing? You have to figure out how to talk normally and naturally. Everyone hears about viral videos but it isn’t super realistic. It takes time being consistent to build a fanbase.
If you could have one guest on your channel who would it be and why?
K: Ellen because she’s just funny and I love her sense of humor. Lots of sarcasm, but she’s really positive and supports a lot of different people.
A: They’re called the holy trinity of YouTubers: Grace Helbig, Mamrie Hart, and Hannah Hart. They are all really good friends and are a good example for adult friendships. I really like how genuine they seem and they are effortlessly funny, which I want people to see with our channel.
So if you need a well-deserved study break, subscribe to Madison Meets Vine. They come out with new videos every Friday at noon. You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.