- A few weeks ago I asked you guys to send me your questions
about how to rank better on YouTube.
How to get started.
How to get discovered.
How to grow, even if you are a small channel,
and you're not getting a lot of watch time and views yet.
Well I took your questions and went straight to the source,
and I have a YouTube employee here
to tell you guys exactly how it's done.
You're in for a real treat.
(upbeat music)
Hey guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to Video Creators.
This channel is all about helping you guys grow
a YouTube audience so you can spread a message
that reaches people and changes their lives.
You can't reach people and change their lives
if you're channel's just stuck, it's flat,
and it's not growing.
I know a lot of you guys feel frustrated.
You feel discouraged.
So today let's change all that,
and give you guys exactly what you need
in order to take your channel to the next level.
Now, if you're not already familiar with Tom,
he runs the YouTube channel Creator Insider,
which is a great channel for getting all the sneak peeks
behind the scenes looks at what is happening on YouTube
as a platform.
I highly recommend you go, subscribe, and check it out.
In the meantime let's dig into your questions.
How do we, smaller channels,
rank our videos if we don't get watch time?
I put keywords in my tags, titles and descriptions,
but no one is finding me.
How?
- One approach is to focus on content
that isn't well-served by other channels today.
So if you're making videos in a very crowded category,
it could be difficult to outperform the competition.
If I were to start a brand new channel today,
and I said, "Oh, I'm gonna make a bunch of videos
about reviewing phones."
You know, that's probably a pretty crowded category.
I could do it.
I just have to make sure my videos are amazing,
and really provide a bunch of different perspective
than what's currently out there.
Then once you kind of find that niche
where you can establish yourself,
then you can always expand from there.
It's always better to start more narrow
then kind of go broader.
Sharing your videos with friends and acquaintances
in relevant forums across the internet,
not just on YouTube, is very helpful.
This topic of helping small channels grow,
and get discovered,
is a very high priority for us here at YouTube.
I've actually been in many meetings with folks
from the search and discovery team,
and the creator team,
trying to think about how do we make sure that,
if a creator has a lot of talent,
and is really working hard and producing great content,
how do we make sure that they're getting as many chances
to be discovered as possible?
So, just wanted to let you guys know
that this is a hot topic,
and something that we're thinking a lot about.
- Archit Nadkarni asks a really good question.
How to properly write tags (and metadata in general)
in 2018 to rank in search?
- We recommend prioritizing your titles and thumbnails,
followed by your descriptions.
That's sort of the order of priority.
Now tags can be useful to help us handle misspellings,
but beyond that, they're not very important relative
to the importance of titles and thumbnails.
- You guys are asking some great questions.
This next one comes from Tommy Knows Everything,
except he probably doesn't know everything,
or else he wouldn't be asking this question (chuckling).
Is is actually better to upload as frequent as possible?
Would uploading every day be more beneficial than
uploading three times a week,
or does it depend on the niche?
- Well, it depends really on the audience,
and what content they want, and what you're creating.
All else equal, every video you create is a chance
for you to connect with your audience.
It's a chance for you to be discovered.
You also don't want to waste a lot of effort
creating content that your audience isn't interested in.
So just lots of videos on its own,
is kind of not going to be sufficient.
There's always gonna be this trade off between
the quality of the video
and the quantity of the videos that you upload.
You have to find the right balance that works for you,
and for your audience.
Even if your audience would love a daily video,
if trying to keep up with that reduces the quality
of your videos, it's not obvious that you should do that.
You'd probably be better off producing good quality videos,
maybe on a weekly basis, let's say,
than low, low quality videos every day.
The other thing to do is experiment.
You can get feedback in the comments,
and monitor your YouTube analytic metrics,
to see whether more videos are generating enough value
with your audience, to justify making them all the time.
You might wanna spend a week or two,
maybe uploading more frequently,
and then see if those two weeks of performance
differed very greatly from the previous period
where maybe you were just doing it weekly.
- This next question is one that I know a lot of you
guys think about when you're considering how to rank
your videos in search, and it's from 24K Vines
who asked this.
Is it okay if we don't make 10 minute long videos?
People say YouTube algorithm doesn't promote short videos!
- We looked into this,
and we were able to find many many examples
where very short videos, even less than two minutes,
got many views.
Many of the them, the majority,
was from 'watch next' and 'search.'
So, having a short video doesn't at all preclude you
from getting recommended.
What really matters is do viewers love these videos?
If you have a long video, and no one likes it,
it's not going to get recommended.
But if you have a short video, and people love it,
and they watch most or all of it,
and they like it,
and they share it,
and they comment,
and our signals seem to suggest
that it's a good quality video,
and maybe they respond to customer satisfaction surveys,
that indicate that this video is really working for people,
then we'll recommend it even if it's a minute long.
- [Tim] Does livestreaming reduce channel authority
since they get less views than normal videos?
Also, will it be bad algorithm-wise to put the livestreams
as 'unlisted' then placing them on a playlist?
- If you produce one video that isn't engaging,
that's not going to make the algorithm
treat your channel differently.
What you should really focus on is what your audience wants.
If live streaming is driving value for them,
then you should do it.
The 'unlisted' status shouldn't affect the discovery
of live streams in any significant way.
If your audience likes live streaming entirely,
or some live streaming,
just make the viewers happy and everything will be fine.
- Another great question from Coop Wiiu on Twitter, asks,
Do "likes" on YouTube work like "up-votes" on Reddit Posts
and the end result is the post/video being shown
to more people in recommendations?
- Likes are one of many signals that our recommendations
systems consider, because they help us understand
how much the audience is enjoying the video.
It's not the only signal,
but it is one of the many signals that we look at.
- Tom actually asked me for my best advice,
for going from 1 to 1,000 subscribers,
to 10,000 subscribers,
to 100,000 subscribers, and what I'm working on now
is how to get to 1,000,000 subscribers.
So if you wanna hear my tips,
as well as my advice for Tom,
a YouTube employee,
about how he can grow his channel faster, (chuckling)
click the interactive card that pops up around here,
link into the subscription below,
and go check out that video over on his channel.
If this is your first time here, at Video Creators,
we'd love to have you subscribe.
Every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, we have new videos,
just to help you grow your YouTube audience,
so you can spread a message that reaches people
and changes their lives.
Tom thank you so much for joining me and serving Creators.
- Thank you so much Tim, for the opportunity to be helpful.
Thanks also for your advice for our channel,
on the other half of the co-lab, on Creator Insider.
Keep it real.
(beeping)
- Now, if you're not already familiar with Tom,
(beeping)
Now, if you're not already familiar with Tom,
(beeping)
Now, if you're not already familiar,
(beeping)
Now, if you're not already (laughing),
(mumbles) What is going on?
Now if you're not already,
'Kay, late.