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Youtuber Secrets
Practical tips for brainstorming better, filming better and marketing better.
If you've tinkered with the idea of starting a Youtube channel, or have been in utter confusion why it hasn't been taking off, here's a reality check. Youtube is the worlds second largest search engine in the world. When starting off, wide eyes and inlove with film, I thought it would be enough to invest several hours and publish. But my motivation to make videos went down as I noticed my audience didn't grow, and often times people can find promoting their own video at first a bit embarrassing. So today I wanted to share before you the secrets I've learned to making Youtube videos.
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The key to making quality Youtube videos lays in strategy. It's a component of choosing good ideas, knowing how to film good videos and knowing how to market them well - all by doing the minimum to get to the maximum.
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The reason I point this out, is that people think the joy of making a video is directly correlated to the amount of fun it is to watch a video. Unless you've experienced the trials and tribulation of forming a storyline, being insecure in front of a camera or having to learn how to add special effects - you'd never imagine a 4 minute video could take 14-40 hours of making.
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So here are some strategies to help you out:
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Ideating:
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-When thinking of ideas to preform, always do what feels natural to you and what you feel comfortable doing. Never choose a video that's inauthentic to your personality or your style. I like to have a mission statement I've cultivated after making some videos, that serves as a northern star for the kind of content I want to make. This helps frame and constrain decision making.
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-Ideas that are worth watching are either novel, or ideas that people are searching. So see the trends of recently searched questions or words by typing in the search engine when writing a first letter to find some good ideas. You can also use the Google search engine or on Google Trends.
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-Consider the amount of effort that goes into making a video and say no to a 1000s ideas in order to stick and focus on the good ones.
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-Youtube intentionally promotes channels that have consistency in topics and upload time. Consider trying out several styles or topics, finding the one that works and uploading at the same time and day of the week. Plan out your week for this process so you'll never have to be caught off guard when posting.
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-Look at the amount of competition you have. 500 hours of videos are uploaded to Youtube every minute. So many of these are the same kind of content presented by the same kind of person. Especially in a field where you don't have the accredited trust by your followers or a big outside following from another platform to cross over, it's probably going to be really hard to break in. There are so many talented people online who have already cracked the code on how to make Youtube work. If you're trying to win over peoples attention, you have to engage them consistently, honestly and providing good value when doing so.
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-Consider that fields like gaming, gambling, and lottery type channels, are going to continuously gain traction in the next couple of years as this serves as a great investment for Youtube/Google. If you cared about gaming 10 years ago, you had to be the best in the world to earn a living from it. Now it's one of the easiest things to live stream, which is a feature many platforms love because it keeps the audience retention time long.
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-People are drawn to stories, so planning out on a high level the narrative for a video and the "arc" can help. For example I always like to use the man and the mountain analogy:
Intro to goal, character and setting - The man looks up the mountain he wants to climb.
Challenge - The man endures physical challenges trying to get to his goal, the plot.
Climax and resolution - The man makes it to the moment he reaches the summit and basks in the success.
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This serves as an "arc" for storytelling, and can be often seen in all storylines and in music pieces as well. Personally, I plan out my songs ahead of time for the edits based on folders I have that suit each one of these stages (and different emotions) in a plot.
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-If you have an opportunity to collaborate with someone who you could benefit off cross promoting, consider helping both of your reach and making a video together.
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-Research your competitors in the genre to see what is currently working, not working or oversaturated in the market.
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-Many musical artist who struggle to grow on the platform will purposefully sing covers to get collateral viewership,
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-Make videos about recent events. See here this creator who make a video the day of the Eurovision took up her average views from one thousand to over a million. Keeping up with current events and hopping on trends aligns well with the YT algorithm, that wants people do dive into a rabbit hole of content and continue watching related stuff, thus helping the audiences binge and helps your discoverability. This also explains why "spilling the tea"/gossip channels are so successful, because they always have current events updating and often serve as binge leads for one another.
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Filming:
-If your being filmed, always look directly at the camera, imagining the lens are the eyes of a person you care about.
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-Try to be stable, unless your main audience is Gen Z and then it's not as big of a priority. If you are filming yourself I do however really recommend getting a stabiliser either for your phone or camera, because it gets really annoying balancing gear.
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-Don't rely on good camera gear to make good videos, if Casey Neistat can use his phone so can you.
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-Microphones are more important than the video quality. Youtube actually scans the audio in the video to assist with SEO as well as the screen for any narrations that are written such as manually added subtitles and text.
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-If you film outside use Lavalier mics to point towards your mouth and not boom style mics in order to avoid collateral noise which could be time consuming to remove in editing.
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-Natural lighting is really useful for vids and looks a lot better than the somewhat contrived ring light. See if you have a good quiet location to film that gets good lighting and remember what time roughly of the day that happens.
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-If you don't feel like your best self and aren't a pro actor, don't go on camera. People evolutionarily are geniuses at picking up on small nuances in behaviour, and viewers will notice if you're pretending to have a good time. However if you are starting out, it's perfectly normal to feel awkward for the first couple of videos.
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-A lot of creators have seen the value of being on live streaming channels and have started recording their screens (command + shift + 5 on a mac) while streaming on Twitch to gain cross platform view ship, to show loyalty to fans and to gain financial incentives from both.
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Editing:
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-Edit in a "hook" in the first couple of seconds in a video to grab the audience and to entice them to continue watching video, without giving away the most climactic moment in the video. This would typically be the moment right before the climax or resolution happens (video terms).
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-Always prioritize watch time, this is what Youtube's key performance indicator is for a video. Look consistently at your data to understand when users drop off, to edit future videos better. Gen Z will ad a jump cut or an effect almost every 1.5-3 seconds. For older audiences that's not the case but adding something stimulating can keep people from disengaging.
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-Mentioning a comment from the last video in the latest video is a useful tip for creators who want to show their audiences that they care and read their comments.
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-Choose songs that aren't copyrighted, for example though suppliers like Artlist.
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-Remove curse words or beep them out if you want to keep a video monetized.
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-Leave a short amount of time at the end of an edit to add the "watch next" feature in the Youtube Creator Studio to promote binging. The screen for this should be at least 5 seconds long and primarily empty to allow the videos to float without looking unprofessional. It's a good opportunity to cross promote other channels or social media you have.
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-To say "like this video and don't forget to subscribe" completely turns on peoples zoning out mechanism, consider using a creative way to say it.
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Marketing:
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-Creating a thumbnail is just as important as the cover is for a book. Consider the ongoing trends in Youtube or other strategies and try making one in Photoshop, Canva or by hiring someone off Fiverr. It needs to stand out in an ocean of thumbnails and yet still convey what the video is about. Often times I make commentary videos episodic and use things like red arrows to grab attention, neon colors and other tactics to stand out.
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-Post the thumbnail or a screen shot on to your different social media platform and ad the link in the comments, or if it's a story in the Swipe Up URL. This is because platforms like Facebook have an incentive to keep you on their platform, and by you posting a URL as a post, you're already fighting against a chance of getting good reach.
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-When posting a video, see if there are any Facebook groups that their members would find interest in your video and post it there. My highest ranking videos have been ones that I created with the reach of Facebook groups in mind.
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-SEO everything you can, from your channel or the section about your video to help searchability. This includes using hashtags and again checking what people are searching.
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-Think of a video title that's short, evokes curiosity and still reflects what the video is about. For example, by making things episodic, you take a broad concept of a video and narrow it down into one scene with a catchy title. Or alternatively if it's a "tips" kind of channel say, 5 ways to do X when X. In these kinds of titles it always stands out much more if you use uneven numbers.
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-Build a playlist. 70% of the time spend on youtube is based on algorithm recommendations. Therefor, it's important to boost your content by putting in a playlist that ensures you more than just video of yours is viewed.
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-Keep an eye on the market to see best practices used by those who clearly know the platform well, or may even have an assisting hand to keep them at the top. I for example check what Pewdiepie does in his strategies since he's a longtime successful Youtube creator who supports an industry that Youtuber's mother company, Google, supports. I also notice what Cody Ko and Liza Koshy do. I want to say I check in what Logan Paul does because he is ahead of the curve always, but is channel is too painful to watch so I don't. Whoops :)
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Things you need to know:
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-You can only monetize after if you have 1,000 subscribers on your channel and have generated 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months.
-Starting a Youtube channel is incredibly time consuming and not really worth doing if you don't find creating it fun.
-Videos with certain curse words or copyrighted songs will get demonetized.
-Consider accessibility with things like language use, colors, font size etc.
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Other strategies commonly used by Youtubers:
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-Engaging with your audience in the comment section.
-Opening up several channels in case of a hack. This also helps to allow content to stay consistent topic-wise on one channel while making different kinds of content on others, and also gets several channel's financial revenue streams.
-Youtubers will remove parts of content from videos that become irrelevent. Similar things can be seen when updating years in title names like "Best Make Up Trends In 2020" will be changed to "2021" to stay relevant.
-Late night show formats work really well on the Youtube algorithm.
-Youtubers primarily make money off brand deals, ad revenue, selling merch, creating subscriptions on multiple platforms or branching out into in person events like performances.
-Many Youtubers will film 3-4 videos a day, send to editors and have content ready for the full month. Now that my friends, is running a business, like a boss.
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