Hel0jen | Crafting an Online Identity
About
Hel0jen is John Lee (my name) rearranged. It’s the moniker that I use for all of my music-related projects. Music has always been an integral part of my life, but gave it up in college because of a mix of self-doubt and outside noise. Around age 30, I decided to put all of those doubts and the noise behind me and just do what I really want to do.
Music makes my creative identity whole. Music allows me to express myself in a way that I can’t with design. I am irrationally and unabashedly proud of my musical projects.
Through design and visual art, I can communicate complex thoughts and ideas. Through music, I can communicate emotion.
One core strategy to the growth of my channel has been thoughtful branding.
One of my goals in creating my YouTube channel is reaching and engaging people. A good brand helps achieve that goal, and it helps people connect with the face (or in my case, a guitar) on the screen. It’s what establishes the ethos of the product or person behind the brand, and creates an opportunity for your audience to latch on to that ethos if they align with it.
Here are the core elements that I’ve established for the Hel0jen brand.
Visual Elements - My clothes, my guitar, composition of the video, the lighting
Audial Elements - My tone, my sound, my technique
Personality Elements [Under development] - My voice, my face, my personality, my values
Quality of the product is more important than the brand.
My design side’s pixel perfect OCD bleeds into my videos. I strive for the highest quality in terms of both creative quality as well as technical quality. In my videos, there are 3 key components that lead me to a high quality video (not including branding).
Mastery of my instrument
Mastery of audio production
Mastery of video production
Honing these skills are key to creating a product that my audience will love. When I add branding on top of these components, I get a product that the audience will recognize and a product that they will keep coming back to.
My Tools
Understanding social media strategy has been annoyingly important.
Social media at it’s best is a place for creative people to share their work and find community. I won’t go into what it is at its worst because we all know.
In my journey, social media has been that place to share my creative work with those who share my interests and tastes. And understanding the guts of social media — its “algorithms” and the behaviors of its users — has been another crucial part of my channel’s growth as well as my personal growth.
A distinct turning point in my journey was when I started to utilize YouTube’s analytics platform. Analyzing and understanding impressions, views, dropoffs, and click-through-rate all has given me the opportunity to fine-tune design decisions based on what audiences like, further increasing engagement.
Finally
There are struggles. A lot of them. From my skill level to monetary constraints, time constraints, there’s a lot of things that just want me to put this down and just say, I can’t do this. But I am already doing it, and I will continue to do it. I wholeheartedly love this shit, and I’m not going to stop. In the words of 2023 Washington Commanders Offensive Coordinator, Eric Bienemy: