Hello, Insiders! This week we have a special collab with Tim Schmoyer from
the Video Creators Channel we did a collab with him last year a lot of
people really liked it so we decided to do another one. Same style I asked him
some questions and that he provided answers to and then he did the same for
me where he asked me about click-through rate and what's up with the Studio Beta
so answers to his questions from me are on his channel and I will link below for
for that part of the collab and then the questions I had for Tim, so Tim's channel
is all about helping creators be more successful, so I have three for him and
we'll just splice in his answers to my questions. So the first question Tim is
what's the top thing you've seen creators do in general that that
generally does not work that we all know doesn't work and why do they keep doing?
Thanks so much for having me back Tom. It's great to be here. One of the big
things is that creator stressed out a lot over keywords and tags and metadata
in general I mean that's all important information but when our content is not
performing well like that's typically one of the things that we go to first
and evaluate as opposed to evaluating like the nature of our content in and of
itself. It's easy to think that the only problem with my videos that's holding me
back is just exposure if I just had exposure then this thing would take off
and the truth is that there's a lot more that goes into exposure on YouTube
than just metadata. Other things to consider it'd be like how well can you
tell a story and how well are you engaging an audience and how well you're
delivering on the value that the audience wants to consume from you?
Metadata is great for optimizing your content but the thing you should really
focus on is to optimize both your metadata and your videos for people not
robots. A second thing that a lot of creators do that doesn't really work is
that they continue to repeat the same strategy for a really long time getting
very few results from it. If something's not working feel free to change it up.
Often our hope is that if I just keep going and keep pursuing this that
eventually YouTube's systems will pick up my video and I'll hit the lottery and
this thing will just go big, but it's more predictable to actually have a
strategy behind what you're doing and consistently iterate and try new things
and new experiments and always be in your analytics to see what's working and
what's not working. Personally I like to test an idea for at least 10 videos and
then put them into a group in my YouTube analytics and analyze if this experiment
is actually reaching the goals I had set for it or not and if it's not I scrap
the idea and I move on to a new one and if it is I continue to tweak and iterate
and try it again for another 10 videos and see how that works. There's nothing
magical about doing it for 10 videos it's just kind of the number that works
well for me. Just don't get too attached to one idea and really hope it works so
sometimes it just won't have it's better to try something new and iterate it grow
to something else and test that idea and see how that one actually delivers the
value that you want to provide to your audience. Also another thing that doesn't
work is focusing more on a production value than on content value. I know it's
really easy for us as creators to get caught up and all the gear and all the
camera and the lens and the lighting and the fancy editing and everything because
that's like how we get to creatively express ourselves but we have to remember
that where the viewer is watching for isn't actually for any of those things
they're actually watching for the content value and that's where we need
to focus our time and attention. Yes absolutely
learn good production value because those are amazing tools that we should
use to deliver the value that we want to deliver to our audience but don't forget
to also learn other skills such as storytelling and branding and how to
create content that is meaningful and helpful for something for someone,
something that they can connect with on a very personal human level when that
type of emotional connection happens that's when you're gonna get a lot more
watch time and people get spend a lot more time watching your videos and your
channel is gonna start growing.
Okay, second question, Tim,
What is a common mistake for a brand-new channel to make in terms of trying to be successful and why do they make that mistake?
One of the biggest mistakes that I see brand new channels making is that they really don't have a clear idea of
who their target audience is and I think it's because it's actually a lot of work
to dig into it to really figure out like what does this person's needs and one of
their desires and what are they struggle with and what are they you know really
enjoy and like it's easy to kind of just stop at a surface level like a guy who
likes video games or whatever it's just kinda leave it at that but we gotta we
have the really know intimately who is this person on the other side of the
camera because the more intimately you know who that person is the more you can
craft content for that person and so that when that person does find your
content they're gonna be like "Oh this channel is amazing like I feel like this
video is for me," and it's because it is because you've made it exactly for them
so you really need to get very specific on who that person is.
Don't worry about like feeling like you're eliminating a lot of other people
I know that's you know the temptation is I go I want grow this to be really big
and if I have to narrow then not enough people will watch. It's not the case you
actually to get going, you need to gain momentum with someone
and the best way to do that is to make them feel like your videos are exactly
for them. The second mistake goes along with that very closely and that is you
need to know what your value proposition is for your channel. Now that's a big
fancy word that basically means you need to know why someone else should care.
What value are you proposing to deliver through your content to the person who's
watching on the other side. Because if you don't really have a good idea of what
value you want to deliver then they're gonna have a really hard time trying to
figure out why should i watch this channel, what am I gonna get from it.
The reason a lot of creators make this mistake is that because sometimes they
feel like they're making it too narrow like they don't want to eliminate too
many people so they also don't want to put themselves too far into a box so
they kind of leave it broad and open. Someone gave me a good analogy and a
different area of life in general I think applies to this and they said Tim
a train is only free when it's on its tracks and so if you want your channel
to gain the type of momentum fast moving train can build up then you
actually need to give it some rails to run on and point it in the right
direction. I know it might feel limiting and
constricting but people that are going to come to you because they want to
consume some value from you and you need to know crystal clear what that value is
and then craft all of your content to revolve around delivering that value
consistently every time to someone in your target audience. Number three I see
that a lot of times new creators get really easily sucked into these YouTube
conspiracies and these YouTube superstitions and I know it's easy like
when when our channel isn't performing the way that we think it should be you
really get sucked into some of those and they can sap a lot of energy. I think it
is far better in the long term to invest that energy actually into the things
that you can actually control. Instead maybe ask the question how can I improve
and so maybe that means like you're going to take an online course on design
to learn how to really up your thumbnail game or you're going to read a book
about the psychology behind headlines and copywriting so you can write better
titles for your videos and attract more people to want to click and consume the
value that you're delivering there. Or maybe you're going to learn more about
storytelling and map out some ideas of how you can incorporate a three-act
structure around you know in your content. Or you're gonna check out some
resources on how to build a brand that people will easily follow if those types
of efforts are much better use of your energy and will pay off big time in the long run.
Last question, Tim. What's a common mistake that you see established
channels make who are trying to sustain their growth that doesn't work and why
do you think they make that mistake.
A few mistakes for you successful channels. Number one is just the failure to reinvent yourself you've been doing this
for a while you've had success your channels grown and after a few years you
just start losing your creative energy for what you're doing your audience
starts to get bored with it because it's kind of like becoming repetitious for
them and so the mistake is to continue the things that made you successful for
too long right. You need to be in like experimenting and reinventing yourself
and trying new things and seeing what works always surrounding the you know
how do i best deliver the value of what my audience wants to them like, the value
is still going to be the same but how do you deliver it in different ways and I
think that that reinvention process needs to happen before you actually need
it to happen, so before the views start leveling and then tanking you need be
doing that so you can get momentum and then kill the thing that's working like
really great before it starts to lose momentum and have a new thing that's
going to gain momentum even after that so you can continue to grow and stay
relevant and keep people interested and honestly just for for your own creative
energy and efforts as well. A second mistake that established channels make
is that they fail to put a team in place soon enough. I've heard many of these top
creators getting to a place where they're working 60, 80 hours a week and
it's just not healthy for them or their families or or anyone so they but they
have this this feeling is like well I built this on myself this is all based
on my creative energy, I don't know how to get anyone else to be able to edit
the way I do or to shoot the way I do or to interact with the camera the way I do
or it's this the scalability thing becomes a big problem and so it really
comes down to being able to put good systems in place that allow you to
reproduce results for you know in terms of your content creation and creativity
I mean you you might have a lot of good ideas but if you can start building a
team of other people who are also pouring their creative energy into your
projects, your content should just get much better not actually go the other
way around so you really need to learn to let go of some stuff and put some
processes in place that other people can follow to kind of get to a very similar
result as you have and start growing that team so your channel can ultimately
stay sustainable for you and your audience. And that kind of leads into the
third mistake though is in order to build a team you need to have a solid
business model that allows you to earn enough
money to be able to hire people to work with you and serve your audience really
well. A lot of people have this false assumption that the amount of money that
you earn through your channel is directly tied to the size of your
audience and that's simply not true. I know of a channel that makes two and a
half million dollars a year with around three thousand YouTube subscribers.
Obviously they're not making it all the money through Adsense they have a really
solid smart business model around their channel that allows them to do that.
I have other I have other friends who have millions of subscribers and are
making a lot less than channels with half a number of subscribers that they
have and they're still struggling to go full-time and make a living even with
millions of subs so it's important to note that the amount of money that you
earn through your channel is not tied to the size of your audience as much as
it's tied to the business model and the plan that you've put in place for not
only delivering good value through your content, but capturing good value as well.
Learning about business models and systems is not something that just comes
really quick it takes a you know so skill to learn it takes time just like
anything else and so I highly recommend you start acquiring that skill learning
doing reading books and talking to people who are smarter than you in those
areas so really start learning how do i implement a good business model and
start building a team around what I'm doing so that I can continue to serve
people and change their lives with the message that you're doing that you mean
that's ultimately what I think is all about and I hope you guys go out and do it.
Thanks so much, Tim, really appreciate it the insights you've shared for the
Insider Nation. Hopefully we'll do another collab in the future and for
those of you who are interested in my answers to Tim's questions about CTR and
the Studio Beta and what's planned for 2019 go hop over to his channel check it
out and hopefully it's useful to everybody. In the meantime, keep it real.