I got YouTube to recommend the exact same video,
one of my videos, to every single person that I asked.
Because every person I asked to send me an image
of what YouTube was serving them as the up next video,
all sent me back the same result.
The video that I wanted YouTube to serve them.
For instance, Alex, Bernadette, Brian G. Johnson,
Debra, Dee Nimmin, Doug Hewson, Hank Hamilton, Iggy,
Jessica, Karen, Lee, Matt Gielan, Paul, Phil Starkovich,
Pia, Roberto Blake, Cheryl, Steven, Zach
and even more. Now you might ask yourself, well,
how did you manage to pull that off, Daniel?
Stick around. I'll show you how.
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So recently I published a new video onto my channel.
It wasn't a particularly explosive video.
In fact, I think it ranked about number three
in the last 10 for that time period.
But it drove a few thousand views in the first day.
And that was enough for YouTube to start
understanding that video and who to serve it to.
Now, there was another video on my channel
that I want to YouTube to recommend
in the up next and sidebar suggested spots.
That was this video. So what I did was
I employed a technique that I talked about
extensively at last year's VidSummit Worldwide.
I used all the spots that YouTube gives us
to recommend more of our content to potential viewers,
those four places are cards, End screens,
link in the description above the fold and pinned comments.
Now, I think most people get this wrong.
They think that each one of these things
are individual spots that somehow
should be tracked for their individual data.
I've had creators come to me and say,
"I've looked at how many people click my cards and it's not
that many." So I don't like using them,
or I've seen people say,
"I've seen how many people click my end screens
And it's not so many views that I think
I should be using end screens.
what I think a lot of creators really miss out on
here is the overall impact of these things working together.
So, you have to understand that YouTube
is a platform of prediction.
It's trying to figure out what to serve a viewer
at any given time to satisfy that viewer
and keep them watching video content.
And the way that YouTube does that is
it uses traffic data from people actually
interacting with videos. Are they clicking?
Are they watching? How long are they watching ?
And what are they going on to watch next?
So knowing that I had a brand new video
that I had just published that YouTube was most likely
trying to learn more about and understand
which viewers to serve it to and potentially
what to serve them next.
I took all four of those places card, end screen,
link in the description above the fold and pinned comment.
And I use them to push people towards only one specific
video. Now this is really important.
Let me explain. I've seen creators put multiple cards
in a video or use several end screens best for viewer,
and then another choice. And then in the description,
they might link some videos,
but they're buried way down underneath the show more.
So that a viewer wouldn't even see it unless they
clicked and opened up the description.
And a lot of times they don't even use the pin comments to
pin another piece of content, right up top,
where viewers will see it whenever they're putting comments.
Because a pinned comment always stays at the very top,
no matter how many comments come in.
So by putting the exact same video in all four places,
no matter what any viewer did, click the card,
clicked an end screen, clicking on a link in the description
or clicking on a link in the pinned comment.
They all sent the exact same traffic signal back to YouTube.
People who watch this video, the one I had just published
seemed to be going on to watch this other video,
the video that I want them to watch.
Now, before you run off and just start putting videos
in those spots and expect miracles to happen,
there's more to it. And I need to explain .
Todd Beaupre from YouTube actually explained once
that YouTube isn't bringing viewers to your videos,
it's kind of the opposite.
YouTube is trying to better understand viewers and their
interests and then trying to bring videos to those viewers
that they think are relevant
and have decent performance metrics
that show signs of those videos being
a good fit for the viewer.
So me just putting that video into those spots alone,
wasn't what made it start getting recommended by YouTube
as well. What made that happen
can be seen here in the analytics of that video.
That video was only driving a handful
of views at any given day.
It had pretty much flat lined and YouTube
wasn't recommending it much anymore,
but the minute I started getting people to click
on all of those spaces, you can see that
right then and there, that video jumped up
and started driving more views than it usually did.
Now, this wasn't a ton of views,
we're only talking about an additional,
maybe 80 views at the peak per hour,
but that was enough of a signal being
sent back in the form of traffic data
or viewer behavior for YouTube to start
understanding that this video
might be a good fit for an up next,
for anyone who was watching
the current video I had just published.
That strategy actually got YouTube to recommend
that video enough, that it added thousands
of views onto a video that had kind of stalled out.
The trick here was I knew that that video had
decent performance data and was relevant to
the video it was being recommend from.
Now I've reached out to a few people I know,
including my new friend, Nate, from Channel Makers,
asking them to try the exact same thing on their channels
and see what kind of results they get.
I recommend you try the same.
Be intentional about where you push viewers.
If you can get viewers to watch your original video,
that's the first trick, and then go on to click
and watch another video that you're recommending.
You start sending back the right traffic data that YouTube
can interpret and implement on their end
and start influencing their recommendations as well.
I used a slightly different technique to get YouTube,
to start recommending one of my videos
on the homepage of YouTube in browse.
If you're interested in learning that technique as well,
let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to share it.
If you want to learn more about how
to make better video content, uploaded to YouTube
and start growing your YouTube channel faster.
click on the video that's on screen now
or the one I'll link down below. Peace.