For this week's YouTube Q&A, I am
going to answer one of your questions
about how do you resurrect some of your older content
that's still very relevant today but just isn't really
getting the views that it probably deserves anymore.
That's coming up.
Hey, guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer, and it's Thursday.
Every week you guys submit questions to me
about YouTube and audience development.
And on Thursdays, I do my best to answer one of them for you
the best way I know how.
If you have a question that you would
like me to answer in an upcoming Thursday,
there's a link in the description
text below this video.
Or you can submit a video of yourself asking that question
to me, and I would love to feature you here
with that question and everything.
Or you can just comment below or post it on our Facebook page
or whatever, and I'll do my best to get
to that question in an upcoming week.
For this week, slidenerd asked this. "Greetings, Tim,
one of your sincere fans.
Smiley face.
How do I find old videos on my channel
that are not making much views.
How do I risk changing their SEO and trying
to see if they can come at a better rank?
Despite posting hundreds of videos,
how can I maintain the discoverability of my videos,
given the fact that my old content does not
get outdated on the niche where I am working?"
Well, slidenerd, I have a couple ideas for you.
One, yes, you can update the metadata
that surrounds your video.
Tweak the title.
Change the description text.
Write different tags.
Change the thumbnail.
Things like that.
What I usually do before I make those changes is
I will copy and paste all that data into a document
and keep the original, just in case the new update
may end up performing worse.
That way I can just go back and change it
back to the way it was.
But if your videos already aren't performing that great
and you have a whole library of them that are just
kind of sitting there, you really
don't have too much to lose.
I say definitely update that metadata.
Go for it and see what happens.
I've seen many, many times where people do this,
and it actually works out really positively for them--
especially surrounding tent-pole events such as Halloween
or Christmas videos or something that maybe didn't
perform as well last Christmas.
But Christmas is coming up again-- actually it's
not at this recording, but you know what I'm saying.
When the tent-pole event starts coming up again soon,
change your older videos around those tent-pole events.
Change that metadata, and then see how it, hopefully,
performs better when the new one-- like the annual holiday
or whatever-- comes up again.
Number two, have a really good outro slate
at the end of your videos while you're finishing up the video--
like I usually do here on these videos.
I have a couple other video thumbnails
where you can click on them that go through some of my older
content and kind of see what those are about.
And that typically sends about 6% to 8% of my viewers
to my other videos on each video that I do.
Number three, and this might sound a little obvious,
but refer to some of your older content in the newer videos
that you're publishing.
Try to interlink them.
Use annotations to direct people to some of your older videos.
You're like, hey, for more about this topic go here.
For example, I actually talked about this very exact topic
of raising discoverability of your older videos
in this video right here.
So if you want to see what I said about it there,
click that annotation; or the link is in the description text
below for you guys who are on mobile devices.
But the point is, when it's relevant, talk about some
of your older videos, and give people
the links to go see them.
Number four, definitely experiment
with creating different playlists.
Reorganize your videos inside those playlists.
Or make brand new ones that surround
different topics or themes or subjects
or-- You would know better than me
because you know what kind of content you're making.
But make those playlists, and then
publish them to your YouTube feed
so that other subscribers who are following
more than just your uploads, but your likes and comments
and anything else you happen to be sharing,
will also see that playlist show up on their home feed
on YouTube.com when they come to the site next.
And to again follow the advice of my previous suggestion,
you can click right here to see a really good tip
on how to make your other videos show up right
next to your current video.
That it makes it really super easy for people
who are watching a video in your playlist
to go find another video in your same playlist that hopefully,
if you do you playlist well, is relevant to the person who's
watching that video that they're currently watching.
And number five, with the new YouTube One Channel design,
you have a lot of flexibility over the different sections
that appear on your home channel page there.
So use those to promote different playlists,
maybe to promote different tags that you're using.
You can really resurrect a lot of your older content.
If you think it's valuable, you can
put that on your channel homepage,
and hopefully get a lot of new traffic
to those as people are kind of checking you out.
But the downside to that though, keep this in mind
as you start trying to promote some of your older content,
that it might not be getting views for a reason; right?
And it might be because the content isn't
as valuable to everyone else as you think it might be.
Now that's not always the case, but sometimes videos
don't perform well for a reason.
So sometimes it's better to actually promote
the videos that are performing well,
that have been social proved by lots of views and shares
and comments and likes and is driving subscriptions.
Usually it's a better idea to promote those videos.
But that's not to say that maybe you've
earned a great influx of new subscribers since your video
that you published two years ago,
and you really think that it's valuable.
You want to kind of test the waters out with it again,
and you just kind of resurface it-- either
by publishing it directly to your YouTube home feed
or putting it into a playlist and then publishing
that or tweeting it or whatever the case might
be that might work for you.
I think this type of question is the perfect opportunity
for the rest of you guys to help slidenerd out
and other people who are watching this,
wondering the same thing.
How do you guys resurface older videos?
Or do you think it's a good idea,
is if they're not performing well,
do think you should just let them go and don't touch them?
Maybe promote some of your other better performing content?
Or what do you guys do?
Share your advice and your tips in the comments below.
Or video responses would be awesome as well.
If this is your first time to hang out with us,
I'd love to have you subscribe.
Every Thursday, I take one of your questions
and do my best to answer it for you guys.
On Tuesdays, we take a look at what
happened in the online video world the week before
and talk about the implications that those changes and updates
have for us as video creators.
And on Wednesdays, I give you guys some YouTube tips, advice,
ideas, suggestions.
Just to help you guys out, so that the message that you're
trying to communicate here on YouTube
reaches the lives of the people who need to hear it.
Thank you for letting me be a part of that.
And I will see you guys again next week.