[Richard Wiseman: Creator] Hi there, I'm Richard Wiseman. I run the Quirkology channel.
And today we're going to be talking about how people find you on YouTube.
[YouTube: How people find you on YouTube]
[What is the best way of getting discovered?] I think the key thing is to actually make videos
that people want to share with their friends.
It's as simple as that.
If you made a video that somebody watches and that's the end of it,
well, that's going to get an x-number of views.
But if they go, oh, hold on a second, so-and-so will like this,
and they start to send it round. You build up people.
So I think just, you know, videos that people want to share.
[Do you know which videos will do well?] I would love to be able to say that when I make a video
I just know that that's going to be the one that gets passed around
or whether it's not going to do so well.
And I do have a gut instinct about these things,
and that instinct is normally wrong.
There are ones where I've gone, this is it. This is going to be the biggest one ever.
And it does kind of okay.
And there's something else you'll put out, which is, ah,
we just took an hour. Let's just stick it out and see what happens.
And suddenly this thing takes off.
And so I think it's more about, sort of, spread betting.
You put out things that you know are above a certain quality
that you find interesting,
and then you just hope that other people do as well.
So I think it's really difficult to double-guess other people.
It's much better to come from your own perspective
and say, "Well, I think it's quirky. I think it's fun. It makes me laugh.
Or it's interesting or whatever, and let's just hope there's an audience for it.
[Which video was a surprise success?] So we did a video on another channel I run—In 59 Seconds—
which was about whether or not you were a good liar.
And it's all to do with whether you—you ask people to draw
a capital Q on your forehead with you finger.
Some people draw the Q in a way that can be read by somebody facing them
with the tail on the left side of their forehead.
If you did that, then you tend to be aware of how other people see you.
You're happy being the center of attention, and you're a good liar.
And then within about an hour or so, we saw this thing just absolutely take off,
and now it's several million views.
And I don't know why it's so popular.
You know, it's fine.
I would love to look at that and go, well, the reason why it works is this, this, and this,
but that's well with hindsight.
So I think the answer is do stuff that you find interesting,
stick it out there, and see what happens.
That's the beauty of YouTube, I think.
[How do you title your videos?] In terms of titles,
I try and do something which sounds intriguing.
And so the last one we put out on Quirkology was the Tube of Mystery.
And it just sounds like the sort of thing that I would click on.
What's the Tube of Mystery then?
Or it's about you. You're going to learn something.
So the world's quickest lie detection test
or find out if you're the creative type.
I think anything which pulls people in that has that sense of curiosity,
that's got a kind of emotional hook for a small amount of investment in terms of time,
you're going to find out something you didn't know before.
I think for me, that sort of approach works very well.
[How do you maximize your videos' viewership?] I was talking about one of the Quirkology videos on a radio interview they did.
They said, "Oh, you always know a Quirkology video
because you never watch just one; you always want to then click through to the next one."
And I think that's absolutely key to it.
And giving people some sense of organization.
So on our channel we have one set
which are about bar bets that you can easily win some money using little tricks.
Another set of videos that are about illusions,
and those are quite different audiences.
And so just being able to say to people, if you like the illusion stuff,
here's some more of it, and if you like the bar bet, here's some more that.
It's that straightforward—a very simple organization, I think.
Keep it simple for people.
[How do you move audiences between channels?] When Quirkology started to take off
and it had over a million subscribers,
I then decided to create a second channel called In 59 Seconds,
which is slightly more serious in terms of psychology.
And then the question was how you try and pull some of these people
over to In 59 Seconds. And we did it very explicitly.
We made a video, which had 10 kind of quirky diet tips in.
These plates contain the same amount of food,
but the portion looks much bigger on the smaller plate.
So replace larger plates with smaller ones, and you'll end up eating less.
And then said, "If you want to find out more about these, come over to In 59 Seconds."
There was a very explicit, kind of, this is where you need to come for more information.
For more life changing ideas, visit our new YouTube channel, In 59 Seconds.
I think that works very well, and people should think about
ways of linking up their channels,
so that the people that are interested in this content can come over very easily.
I hope you found that interesting. Click to learn more.
Or if you want to check out Quirkology, you can do that too.
[Who should we feature next?]