- For weeks, possibly months,
you've been getting more YouTube views
and more subscribers.
Your graphs are going up into the right,
you think you've worked everything out.
Then, all of a sudden,
everything comes to a halt.
And worse still, you're making more videos
and you're getting less views
on average, every day.
What is all that about? (claps)
- [Male Voice] vidIQ.
- [Female Voice] vidIQ.
- [Whispering Male] vidiq.com.
- Hello folks, I'm Rob,
and welcome back to vidIQ.
Today, I wanted to have
a little bit of an intimate discussion with you,
all about channel growth mindset.
The first thing I wanna ask you is,
if you've been creating content as you usually would do
in the first half of 2020,
how has been your channel been performing?
Let us know in the comments below.
I'm going to assume that, for the majority of you,
your channel has experienced some significant growth.
Because everybody has been stuck indoors,
and they've all been watching Netflix or YouTube
because there's nothing else to do.
But now, we're moving into a phase
where the globe is starting to reopen.
And, of course, there's a little bit of viewer fatigue,
people can't watch Netflix and YouTube all of the time.
Well, not everyone can.
And so, for a lot of creators, you may be starting to see
a slight decrease in your view counts.
Now let me quickly tell you
how that's impacted the vidIQ channel.
We were averaging around about 40,000 views per day
coming into March of 2020.
Then, as the lockdown came into effect,
and a lot of people were coming onto YouTube,
and a lot of people were starting their YouTube channels,
we saw a massive upsurge in our view counts,
going as high as 100,000 views a day.
Which is fantastic for the channel,
but of course, we want everybody to get back
to their normal lives.
And in the first three or four weeks,
as the lockdowns have been loosened in countries,
we're noticing that our view counts
are starting to drop a little bit, by 20-25%.
So this is something obvious, really transparent,
and can be explained on many channels on YouTube right now.
But it doesn't always happen like that, does it?
There are some channels that, all of a sudden,
find their view counts going down
for unexplained reasons.
So I wanted to delve into this conversation a little bit,
and tell you why I think sometimes
your channel, as well as it might be doing,
and as hard as you might be working on your channel,
could suffer from a downturn in views.
Now if you're not interested in the detail,
this is the too long, didn't watch summary:
If you're doing all of the right things,
and you're continuing to improve
your content and your storytelling,
YouTube will eventually reward you.
Don't worry about the short-term hits
that may be affecting your channel.
Unfortunately, not all channels can be
popular all of the time.
And in many respects, this reflects life.
It's the changing of the seasons, so to speak.
I mean, let's take a really simple example,
an NFL, American football, YouTube channel.
How does it keep its audience engaged between
February and August, when there's not much
happening in the world of NFL?
You can apply this to all sorts of YouTube channels.
Cooking, for example.
They're really gonna ramp up during the holiday season,
when you've got Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
The tech industry is the same as well,
all sorts of products being released,
everybody's wanting to buy gifts.
Come the New Year, however,
everybody spent their money,
everybody is full and bloated,
they don't want to buy anything now or cook anything.
But they may want to lose weight,
or begin a New Year's resolution.
So we get educational channels
taking more of a command during the New Year.
So this is where, perhaps, you as a creator
need to think smarter, rather than work harder.
That might be an opportunity
for you to invest in some new equipment,
or learn how to use
a new editing software,
or practice presenting in front of cameras.
So you're doing things behind the scenes to improve
so that when that audience picks up an interest again,
you're ready to give them even better content.
Another thing that can have a huge impact on your channel
that you don't necessarily control, unfortunately,
are policy changes from YouTube.
The most recent one of these, of course,
was the FTC and COPPA.
As a result, YouTube were fined
hundreds of millions of dollars
and told to sort this mess out.
And when they sorted this mess out,
it passed on a lot of implications for creators.
If you make a video that is for
a target audience of under the age of 13,
you have to declare it.
And when you do, that means people can't
comment on that video,
notifications don't go out
to your subscribers for those videos,
and you earn a lot less revenue
because you can't use targeted ads on those videos.
We've also had the Adpocalypse that was
connected to Logan Paul, from a couple of years ago.
And, in general, YouTube is always tweaking their policies,
especially community guidelines.
Which, whether you realize this or not,
will have an impact on how your videos
are shared on YouTube,
and how the "algorithm" treats your content.
So that is to say that you could've been
making content in 2016
that was super popular with an audience,
but things have changed in the YouTube landscape in 2020,
which means that exact same content
might not be shared as much as it used to be from YouTube.
So from your perspective, you need to be educated on
YouTube's policies and guidelines.
Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube blog,
and just check in with any guidelines
that YouTube is sharing with you on a regular basis.
Twitter is a good place to go,
@TeamYouTube are always letting you know, as creators,
what's changing in the YouTube landscape.
Speaking of that algorithm,
all the many algorithms that YouTube uses
for helping viewers find the content that
they want to find and watch,
that is evolving all of the time as well.
When it comes to these changes, try to remember this:
YouTube is not out to get you,
the individual creator,
it is trying to create an environment
where people stay on YouTube for longer,
and they bring more of the content
that viewers want to watch to their screens.
There is no doubt that algorithm changes on YouTube
will have a detrimental impact on some channels.
But those same algorithm changes
will have positive implications
for many more YouTube channels.
Take this as an example.
YouTube changes the algorithm,
and it negatively affects five percent
of the creator community.
Chances are, on social media,
you will hear a lot from that five percent
shouting that all of a sudden their views have gone down,
and they're blaming the algorithm.
And that's fair enough.
But at the same time,
let's say that algorithm change
positively impacts 30% of the creator community.
Do you think that 30% of the community
is going to praise YouTube about the algorithm change?
Do you think they're even gonna
hold the algorithm responsible
for the growth in their channel?
Are they going to assume that their content
is just getting better, and more people are watching it?
I'll let you decide on that one.
Have you ever heard of the phrase
doing something over and over again,
and expecting something different to happen?
Well, this is kind of the same logic.
You're doing the same thing over and over again,
and being successful.
However, everything around you is changing,
and you're left behind.
We've observed this countless times
when we've been auditing channels
on our Tuesday channel audit livestreams,
which, of course, you can all get involved in.
We see a channel that was
really successful five or ten years ago
getting tens of thousands of views.
But they took a long break from the platform
and when they returned, they're doing the same thing
with their content and their thumbnails
but, unfortunately, now they're getting hundreds of views.
And that's because the entire landscape around them,
the whole of YouTube,
has changed while they try and do the same thing
years after it was successful.
Let's just imagine your channel is happily going along,
getting lots of views, doing really nicely.
But then the topic is getting
more competitive in your landscape,
creators are trying new and different things,
and all of a sudden, you're gonna find yourself
overtaken by everyone else.
So this is a warning to all of us:
Don't get too comfortable.
Always be learning,
always be innovating, testing new things.
That's why I'm trying out this video right now.
It might not work, it might do worse.
But at the same time, I might connect
with an entirely new audience,
and find that we have a new line of videos
that we can put on the channel.
You just never know if you don't keep testing.
This next one is one that I've got really used to
over a long period of time on YouTube.
And that is to consider the resting heartbeat
of the natural cadence of your channel.
For example, let's say your channel is
motoring along at 1,000 views a day.
And then you create some content
that does really well with your audience,
you get a spike of up to
6,000-7,000 views a day for a few weeks.
But then it starts to taper off,
and you go down to 2,000 or 3,000 views a day,
and you feel really disappointed
because you were able to keep that momentum.
Then a few months down the line,
all of a sudden, you get some more
traction on your channel,
you're up to 10,000, 15,000 views a day.
But again, that momentum tapers off
and you're down to 6,000 or 7,000 views a day.
What you haven't realized there
is that your resting heartbeat, your natural cadence,
the average number of views you get on your channel
when you're not having success or failure,
continues to go up into the right.
Of course, there are always gonna be outliers
that positively impact your channel,
or negatively impact your channel.
But you wanna be taking a...
Audit of your channel, every three to six months.
How was I doing then versus now.
As well as YouTube introducing policy changes
that may have an impact on your channel,
they're also playing a lot with
the user interface on desktop and mobile.
For example, a few months ago,
there was a subtle change to the way that YouTube
displayed thumbnails on browse and home pages,
whereby there used to be smaller thumbnails
but they increased the size of them significantly.
And without even realizing,
that could have a huge impact on your click-through rate,
if you're not paying that much attention to thumbnails.
Now again, there could be changes
to playlist, or notification,
or channel layouts, that if YouTube changes these things
and you're not aware of 'em,
or you don't adapt, that again could
positively impact some channels
who are taking these things on board,
but not you, because you're ignoring them
and just doing the same old thing,
and expecting the same good results.
So yeah, I think what I'm trying to say is that
up to date YouTube education
for you, as creator, is always important.
We've already talked about seasonal changes
and how they can impact
a channel over the course of a year.
But what if those seasonal changes are permanent?
For example, "Game of Thrones".
A cultural phenomenon on television over the last decade,
and there are many channels on YouTube
who have created reaction-type of content,
and exploring the lore, and the characters, and the cast.
But "Game of Thrones" has finished now,
general audience interest in the series
is probably beginning to wane.
There are always going to be hardcore fans,
but the general public is probably
moving on to something else now.
So if you continue to create "Game of Thrones" content,
specifically for the television series
because, of course, the books haven't been finished yet.
But if you're still at the television series now,
do you think you're gonna continue to sustain your channel?
Probably not.
This is a problem that many gaming channels suffer as well,
when they get really popular with a certain type of game
but they're not sure where to go next.
What do they do?
That's where you, as a creator,
have to prepare for those changes.
You have to tap into
an audience's enjoyment of "Game of Thrones"
and try to determine what they, as an audience,
are going to like next that you can cover on your channel.
Don't be afraid to always be thinking about
what you can test next.
Whether that be the next game that you wanna cover,
or the next television series,
generally speaking, I would license you to
experiment with 20% of your content.
Two billion people watch YouTube
on average, every single month.
So there's still another six billion people
YouTube want to tap into with their platform.
So they're not standing still,
they're going to continue to evolve their platform.
That means they will test many different things,
and they will tweak their algorithm.
And we've been hearing more and more
about something that seems almost impossible to quantify,
but it's quality watch time.
This isn't necessarily a metric
that's available in YouTube's studio.
But ultimately, as a platform,
what YouTube wants to do
is get you onto the platform first of all,
and then serve up the type of content
that you, as a viewer, want to watch
and continue watching that content.
Not necessarily longer videos,
although that can help,
but for a viewer to watch
a video that they enjoy,
and they see something that is suggested
that they'll go on to watch next.
And if a viewer is satisfied with what they're watching
every time they come onto YouTube,
they'll continue to use the service.
We have to accept that, as video creators,
each one of us represents a tiny water droplet
in the ocean of this video-watching platform.
And when YouTube drops something into that ocean
it creates a huge ripple effect,
and it's up to us to ride those waves in a positive fashion.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this conversation.
In a couple of hours after this video goes live,
I'll be going through the comments
and replying to as many messages as I can.
So make sure to add your voice to this discussion.
Enjoy the rest of your video-making day.