- We've all been there as new
or small channel creators, haven't we?
Endlessly scrolling through YouTube,
soaking up every single piece of advice
that promises instant fame and riches.
But you do need to be careful.
Among those gems of wisdom are a minefield of terrible tips
that no YouTuber should follow in their right mind.
From the myth that posting every day builds momentum,
to the famous cries of optimize your SEO,
in this video, I'm gonna expose the worst tips
that simply send YouTubers down the wrong path.
So if you are just getting started on YouTube
and you want to avoid these big mistakes
that are simply gonna slow the growth of your channel,
stick around, because the truth's gonna surprise you.
And I think for this one, I need to sit down.
Ah.
Oh, this is much more comfortable.
When learning any new skill or craft, advice is abundant.
But the trick is finding out what uniquely works for you.
And when it comes to YouTube,
predominantly you'll find two leading types of advice
for growing your channel.
One kind is all about YouTube best practices.
And let's face it, all of this advice is quite similar,
just told in a different way by a different educator.
And after 1700 videos, we are guilty of this ourselves.
But you just won't listen what we tell you.
As for the other kind, well, it's of the harsh variety.
Your content sucks.
Yeah, not exactly helpful or motivating that, is it?
In this maze of advice,
what's often missing are practical tips.
And when you finally find something that looks to be useful,
it turns out to be awful, truly, truly awful.
For example, one common tip is post every single day
to grow your channel.
But is that really the best way to go? Let's find out.
A lot of new YouTubers feel like they need
to pump out content on a daily basis.
More videos mean more chances to be seen, right?
And there is a very valid argument
that a quantity of content
can lead to that all important experience and to skill up.
But when you want to make videos
that are better for your audience, quality content,
then posting as frequently as humanly possible
doesn't make as much sense.
Let's look at it this way.
Sure, daily posting can build momentum
when you're making quick, short content.
For example, you're making YouTube shorts
or you are making fast drawing tutorials or comedy memes.
In cases like these,
posting frequently keeps your viewers
interested on a regular, dare I say daily, basis.
But the game does change when it comes to longer,
more thoughtful and considered videos.
Making high-quality content every single day is tough,
as you well know and even the biggest creators do.
And you can't fall into the danger
of it just becoming habit,
making a video every single day just for the sake of it,
without even thinking
about whether it's good or not for your viewers.
Just because gaming channels
smash out videos every single day
doesn't mean that your travel channel should do the same.
I mean, you can't go on holiday every single day, can you?
And if you can, you've made it.
Retire. Job done.
So for just a moment, let's stop making videos
and think about how we make those videos.
For example, instead of making another video
entirely from scratch,
why don't you make some templates for all of your videos?
This could be creating visual assets,
creating a library of sound effects and music
that you're gonna use on a regular basis in your videos.
Not only will it make it easier for you
to make videos more quickly and efficiently,
but it will also raise the general standard
and consistency of your content.
And since we're talking about templates,
you might wanna consider doing the same for your thumbnails.
This can be fonts, color schemes,
general layouts of thumbnails.
It's even easier to see a lack of consistency in thumbnails
since every single one
looks like it's made from a completely different channel,
yet it's from the same creator.
If you make videos every single day, just miss one day
and create a template video project
that you can use for every day going forward.
You can consider this a very short-term sacrifice,
you know, losing one video
and the views you would get from that video
versus a very long-term game.
Templates can save you hours of time
on this YouTube journey.
Now, if you're already making daily videos
and they are of a good quality for your audience,
which is proven by the fact that your channel is growing,
great, keep doing it.
We definitely don't want to change what's working for you.
But if you are finding it hard to keep up
with the relentlessness of YouTube,
try to remember it's a marathon, not sprint.
And we should know after 1700 videos.
And after 1700 videos,
we have had some small degree of success on YouTube,
and so have many other creators
with a lot more success than us.
So is imitation the best form of epic YouTube winning?
Now, sure, MrBeast, the North Star,
is a huge hit on YouTube and elsewhere.
But remember, success doesn't look the same
for absolutely everyone,
especially when it comes to creative stuff.
Just copying what he or your favorite creator does
doesn't make you an instant star.
Think about it.
There are literally millions of other channels
trying to do pretty much the same as what MrBeast does.
So you've gotta ask yourself,
do you just want to be another fish in the MrBeast sea
when there is such a huge fish consuming everything already?
And perhaps more importantly,
will that work for your fishermen, your audience?
Does this metaphor make any sense?
Here's something to chew on.
If every single director copied the "Barbie" movie,
would you enjoy a broad range of films?
Probably not.
That's why a film like "Oppenheimer" also exists.
Different people like different films,
and so the same should go for your YouTube strategy.
Oh, and a hot take,
I actually preferred "Barbie" a lot more
than Christopher Nolan's latest confusion fest.
Anyway, think about what channels you love watching,
what draws you in.
Is it their uniqueness or their cool content or both?
Whatever answer is obvious to you,
use that same philosophy for your channel.
Simply put, make the kind of videos you would wanna watch.
Remember, YouTube is a huge place with all kinds of viewers,
around about two billion at last count.
Absolutely, short, fast, exciting videos
attract a big audience,
but there's also longer educational videos
that appeal to a more chilled, curious audience.
For every MrBeast-style channel,
there is another one that, say,
charts the history of the UK roads system,
which only you thought you were interested in
until you saw this channel
getting hundreds of thousands of views.
As a creator, definitely over the long term,
you need to stay true to yourself.
If your content and your style that you present
doesn't match your real authentic vibe,
over time, that's just gonna wear you out.
Then comes burnout.
And finally, you'll just hate what you do.
YouTube will start to feel like a job,
and nobody ever, ever wants to feel like that.
In a sense, you wanna try and maintain
that new YouTuber level of enthusiasm
for as long as possible,
and I believe I've still got it
after over a decade of content creation,
and I want you to share
that same relentless energy for creativity,
no matter how long you're on YouTube for.
New YouTubers are often told to do a lot of research,
to study successful channels
and think about titles and thumbnails
before they've even posted their very first video.
But do you really need to do
all of that research right away?
If you think about it for a second,
how can you research what will make your content successful
if you don't even know
what type of content you want to make?
Starting off with a ton of analysis often leads to paralysis
when you never actually get started
and it can erode your originality.
The main thing, especially in my experience,
is to get out there and break that YouTube fear,
get started.
Make videos for the love and passion of sheer creativity.
I think all creators to some extent
need to go through a somewhat YouTube rite of passage
to figure out whether they actually enjoy
the process of making videos on YouTube
as opposed to the idea of making YouTube videos,
because the reality is quite different to the perception.
So let's say you have a cool idea for a baking show
where you teach with your kids,
something that mixes learning and fun.
Don't overthink it, do it and see where it leads.
The research can come later when you say to yourself,
I love doing this YouTube thing.
Now I need to learn how to find an audience.
When you ask big, successful creators
what was their biggest regret,
there is a common answer: I wish I would've started sooner.
We recently ran a poll on the YouTube community tab
asking people if they had started their YouTube channels.
Incredibly, almost 20% of the vidIQ community,
you know, that's people who want to grow their channels,
haven't actually started their own channels.
But when you read the comments of the other 80%,
they have no regrets.
They're loving every single minute of the YouTube journey.
Now, don't get us wrong,
research, ideas, titles, thumbnails,
they're all really, really important,
but in my humble opinion,
they don't need to be the focus at the very start.
Your content and you should be the star.
And as you get to know your audience,
you can start to tweak the titles and the thumbnails
and perfect the packaging.
You don't want goals, outcomes, and expectations
getting in the way of the simple pleasure
and sheer innocence of pressing record and having fun.
Be patient with this concept of channel growth.
There will be time, a lot of time in the future,
if you enjoy this YouTube gig,
to put time into research and buying better equipment
and perfecting titles and thumbnails.
At the beginning, just let your creativity, your passion,
your enthusiasm guide you.
What shouldn't be guiding you is stuff like SEO,
search engine optimization.
And should it ever these days?
There is a long held belief on the internet at large
that if you want your content, whatever it is,
to be discovered, you need to focus on SEO.
But in this day and age, we need a new fresh perspective.
YouTube isn't a search engine for the majority of channels.
What's usually a lot more important is to get casual viewers
to click on your content and watch for longer.
This over reliance on search and keywords
started to be debunked by YouTube almost half a decade ago
when they basically said
that video tags weren't worth diddly squat.
Now, you can still see
what video tags creators are using on their videos
through the vidIQ tools.
But these days, it reflects more
what the creator was researching
when it came to the keywords
rather than a strict intent to rank
for those keywords on YouTube.
Now, that doesn't mean to say
that you should totally ignore SEO.
When there is a certain viewer intent,
they need an answer to a question,
you want to pitch your video to answer that question,
and SEO comes into play.
And YouTube does say when they have very little information
about your channel or your videos
because nobody's discovered them yet,
that including some keywords
helps describe the content at a very basic level.
That's why often smaller channels
do get their first viral moment
through a search-based piece of content,
but for most channels, it shouldn't stay like that.
You want to move into browse-based traffic
as soon as you can.
The main thing to remember
is that while SEO can help get you started,
it isn't the magic formula.
The much fabled YouTube algorithm
is far more interested in audience behavior
than how well you have optimized the metadata
on a certain video.
If you hold really tightly and dearly onto this notion
that SEO is more important
than the video idea, the title, the thumbnail,
the curiosity the packaging creates,
then basically you're missing out on 70%
of all potential YouTube views,
because search traffic accounts
for 30% of all YouTube views.
You'll get stuck being a utility channel
where somebody finds one of your videos,
finds it really useful,
but never comes back to anything else
because you've basically answered their question.
Instead, you need to connect on a human,
more emotional level.
Speak your audience's language, share their values
to make your channel a permanent welcoming home
to your community
rather than a one-time destination for a customer.
I don't know if this will come as a surprise to you,
but only 15% of our long form video views
come from YouTube search.
You would think that most people would discover vidIQ
through searching for how to grow your channel,
how to get more views, how to get more subscribers,
how to monetize my YouTube channel,
but that's simply not the case.
We get a lot more of our views from browse and suggested
because we've engineered it that way.
Weirdly, most of our search traffic these days
comes from YouTube shorts.
Go figure.
But while we're on the subject of numbers and data,
another thing that you shouldn't get too caught up,
at least to begin with, is the analytics.
They're a tool, not a guide.
And as we've said,
at first you should be mainly focusing
on enjoying making videos, improving your skills,
figuring out what works best for your audience.
Now, when you start out on your YouTube journey,
you might think that every single tip you hear
is the magic formula or the silver bullet.
But does such a thing really exist?
Well, here's the truth, and it may annoy you a little bit
because it's a little vague.
Everyone has their own way of doing things.
For some, posting every two weeks is the way to go.
For others, they'll swear by daily uploads.
The same goes for editing.
Some will pour hundreds of hours into their work,
making it impossible to replicate,
whereas others will sit down, press record,
and just have that magnetic charisma.
This is why quite often when we're asked a question
about YouTube growth,
we might give the rather annoying answer of,
well, it depends.
YouTube is literally a place for everybody.
You don't need a super professional video to go viral.
Sometimes a simple handheld shot
of a raw, authentic moment is enough.
Now, I would argue that all YouTubers
to a certain degree are perfectionists,
and that's why you've gotta remember
that done is better than perfect,
especially again, when you are a new YouTuber
because you don't know if your perfect
actually works with your audience.
Don't get so focused that you lose sight of the big picture.
Don't just grind away
at trying to make the perfect thumbnail
to just eek up your click-through rate a little bit
without considering whether the video idea
was a good one in the first place
and the title creates curiosity.
It can be too easy to get wrapped up
in doing what you love doing
at the sacrifice of many other things that need to be done.
YouTube is one of the most multi-disciplined things
you may attempt in your entire life,
because not only do you need an unrivaled,
dare I say unhealthy passion for something in the world,
you got to take all of that
and wrap it up into content creation,
which is a whole different skill set.
Look, at the end of the YouTube day,
it should always be about doing what you love
and connecting with an audience you wanna speak to.
That audience can be a few hundred or a few million.
The most important thing is that you make that audience,
whatever size it is, feel something about your content.
You want your content to make your viewer say to themselves,
"This video, this channel is made for me."
And if that message resonates with you,
then this video will show you
how two creators got over a billion views
and two million subscribers in just a year,
and they did it without sticking to a niche
and breaking pretty much every single rule
in the YouTube playbook.