Hello.
Hey, guys.
How's it going?
Today I want to talk with you about evaluating your content
strategy on your YouTube channel.
I'm doing that here on my channel.
And I want to walk you through a little behind the scenes of how
I process this, how I make decisions, what content
I'm going to leave and dismiss, and what content we're going
to introduce-- and how I'm going to process all that coming up
with you guys here today.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, guys.
In case, this is your first time here.
My name is Tim Schmoyer.
And welcome.
This channel is all about helping you guys grow
your YouTube audiences, so you can
spread a message that reaches people and changes
their life, which is my mission here at this channel--
is trying to help you guys be able to reach more people
and change their lives.
But this channel has been kind of flat to declining.
I'm going to dig into some analytics
and show you guys what's happening,
and then how I think I'm going to maybe explore
some things going forward, and show you guys
how I process all that here.
So there's a few things that I look
at when I'm first deciding like, hey, you
know what, time to re-evaluate some of the stuff
on this channel and the content strategy.
The first thing I look at, personally,
is my energy level, my excitement level
for the content.
Am I still excited about making these videos?
And to be totally honest with you guys,
I think that's what you want, right?
It gets a little repetitive for me
to stand in front of a black screen and just kind of teach.
I like doing it.
It's OK.
But I've been doing that for a few years now,
and I'm kind of ready to change things up a bit.
The second thing I evaluate are the YouTube Analytics--
you know, how are the views doing,
and how's the engagement going, and what's the watch time like,
and how is the channel converting
new people into subscribers still, and all
that kind of stuff?
Well, let me show you guys just socialblade right here.
So these are all publicly available stats.
These graphs down at the bottom are kind
of what I want to point out.
So right around here you can get some of the-- these
are total views per month.
This bottom graph is total subscribers.
So you can see things were kind of going up
until around January 2016 and most of January 2016 to '17,
that whole year is pretty much flat.
I mean, it kind of grew from what
we were doing at 730,000 to almost a million,
900,000, [INAUDIBLE] of the course of the year.
But look at the subscribers-- definitely flat.
In fact, declining in that time.
Now what happened here is around this time
right here, around January 2016, is
when I really took a big step back from the YouTube channel.
My wife was pregnant with twins, identical twin girls
at the time, and they were baby number five and six for us.
Our oldest now is 7, so we had four kids ages
two years old and under when the twins were born.
Now we have six kids total.
And so I was doing about 3 videos a week
at that time, which is really fun.
But I needed to step back from the channel, which
was bad from my channel development perspective
but was very necessary for my family.
After evaluating my own excitement
level for the content and the channel,
and then as well as how you guys seem to be responding to it,
and analytics, the third thing I evaluate is--
let's revisit my value proposition
for my target audience.
And that basically means who is it
that I am going after currently--
like, who is the most ideal subscriber to this channel?
And is that someone I'm still excited about reaching?
In this case, absolutely I still am.
It's that hobby YouTube creator, that person
who's starting with like a big picture, or a big vision,
like a big mission for their channel.
And they want to grow the thing, they want to reach people,
they want to change and impact lives with the content
on their channel.
And they're just starting probably from scratch,
or they're pretty well established in growing this.
But either way, it's not like--
what I'm not going after is like all the big corporations.
Although that does pay really well, and I did
do that when I was getting started.
But I found I enjoy working with you guys a little bit more.
And then two, the value proposition,
which is what value do I propose to deliver to that target
audience, which is hopefully information,
and training, and inspiration, and help, and encouragement,
and advice on how do you grow the channel,
how do you reach the new people, and how do you
accomplish that mission that you set for your channel?
So both of those things, like as far
as I'm evaluating that on my channel,
absolutely stays the same-- that passion, nothing of that,
has changed at all.
So then number four is I need to brainstorm
new ways of delivering that value to you
guys, that target audience.
And so that's what I'm working on right now.
There's a few key things for me that
have to be true about the content strategy going forward.
One, it has to be sustainable, and it
has to be something I could continue to produce regularly
on a regular schedule, that's going
to be equally as valuable for you guys every single time
I do it.
It also can't quadruple my budget
or take a lot more time to produce
than like another normal video.
If it takes a lot more time, that's
going to be harder for me to keep doing it consistently
for you guys.
And if it costs a lot more money to do,
it's also going to be hard for me to do consistently.
So those two things are really important.
And of course, it has to be fun for me to create.
And I need to know that it's helping you guys, that it's
serving you well, that this is giving you what you need,
and helping you accomplish the mission that you
have for your channel.
I have brainstormed a whole list, a whole series
of new ideas for you guys.
And here on my computer, this is a project management tool
called Trello that I use.
It's free.
Love it.
You guys can check it out if it's something you want to use.
So I have like random ideas here that don't really fit
into any particular category.
And I thought on Monday we'd do a LiveStream with you guys,
and so these are some of my ideas
for content for LiveStreams with some ideas in here.
I thought on Tuesdays I'd do like a blog or kind
of like behind the scenes--
what's going here on here, video creators--
and more kind of like what's the lifestyle of a creator.
So here we are addressing like a question
someone asked about narcissism.
This is this video right here, process for creating content--
how I balance YouTube with family--
process that I go through revising titles,
camera gear, why do YouTube downsize being a creator, just
things like that about kind of the lifestyle of being
a creator.
Wednesday, I haven't quite figured out
what to do with this.
I do a lot of channel consultations
with different creators every week,
and so I thought that's a lot of content that I can potentially
record and use somehow with you guys--
sort of taking their entire consultation, like the hour
long thing-- and maybe hour and a half
sometimes-- and just putting it up on YouTube.
Maybe you guys would be interested in that.
You can let me know in the comments below.
And then I could swipe over to the right
here a little bit more.
Thursday would be on my more normal, standard how
to videos, you know, why you should introduce Patreon
to your community.
But all the rest of these would be more
how to like how to optimize playlists for [INAUDIBLE],, how
to find instant YouTube Analytics for a LiveStreams,
how to use groups in YouTube Analytics.
These are just kind of draft working titles right now.
And then Friday I thought maybe I
will do some comment reactions like taking
all of your comments from the videos in that week
and just responding to them-- not all
of the comments but a lot the top comments that get the most
thumbs up and responding to them,
answering those questions, giving you guys feedback,
giving follow up with some of the things you
guys asked me that maybe were unclear the previous time.
I haven't quite figured out do with the Friday thing yet.
But that would be like a week, every weekday type of schedule,
which I am really excited about.
Like that would be so fun-- that going back to my principles--
hopefully, like when I'm figuring out here,
it's ways I can still continue to produce content
for you that's valuable to my target audience that
doesn't cost me four times much more money,
and doesn't take a ton more time for me.
And this is what it's like--
Hi!
--trying to film with real people.
Hi.
I'm trying to film here, guys.
Hi.
Say hi.
Hi, [INAUDIBLE].
The fifth step for me then, after I
brainstormed all these different ideas,
is to start testing them.
And you guys, who have been around the channel
for a few weeks, have seen a few of the previous tests I've
done with behind the scenes vlogs,
and kind of talking more about the creator lifestyle,
and what that entails--
and how I process things, and manage things, and handle
things.
And those videos were a lot of fun to do.
And so this is kind of another like one of those tests.
And then assuming that the tests go well, then
number six is then I start actually implementing.
And I do it on a regular weekly schedule here with you guys,
and you continue to evaluate going forward.
Now, one of the things I'm going to be doing to evaluate things
going forward is I'm going to be taking each of these new series
and organizing them into what's called a group in YouTube
Analytics, so I can clearly and easily see how
is this series converting people into subscribers
versus this series?
And that will be another video coming up here in the future
probably in a few months as we move forward from now.
I'll show you guys exactly how I do all that
and make some decisions actually about the content
on this channel.
But until then I want to hear from you guys.
One, how do you go about evaluating the content
strategy on your channel and evaluate
how is it meeting your goals?
How is it not?
How are you going improve going forward
to continue to reach your audience
and give them the value that they want from you?
I also want to hear from you guys about what other ideas
you have for me.
If you have something about what I
should do those channel consultations,
post those down below.
If you have other series that you think
will be really cool that I should
invest into and experiment with, comment with those down below.
And then another thing I want to hear from your feedback about
is that I have a completely different content strategy
idea that doesn't even match anything I just talked about--
that I'm thinking doing, which would
be expanding beyond YouTube.
Like, I know, YouTube, that's kind of my bread and butter.
I've been doing it for over 10 years.
You know, I love it.
But I call this Video Creators because YouTube might not
always be around.
And I know a lot of you guys are investing in other video
platforms beyond YouTube.
Like, I know a lot of you guys are also growing your Instagram
audiences with video, and your Facebook pages with video,
and your Snapchat, and I know a lot of you guys
are LiveStreaming.
I thought what if like once a week, one video a week
would be about YouTube, and then one week about Facebook video,
and then one a week about Instagram video, and one a week
about LiveStreaming, and Snapchat.
Like then I brought on other people who
may have more expertise on those different platforms
than I have-- and just introducing guys,
how do you grow your audience with video
across multiple platforms?
So that was a whole another idea.
I want to hear from you guys down below.
And if this is your first time here on the channel,
you should do this right here.
Subscribe because we're all about figuring
this stuff out together.
How do we grow our audiences and serve the people well,
who are watching our content and subscribing to our channel?
So subscribe.
And I'll see you guys on Thursday
for our normally scheduled YouTube training video.
See you then.
Bye.