- Welcome.
Welcome to the world of YouTube.
It doesn't matter if you are a fitness channel,
a cooking channel or a gaming channel,
every single creator is here with a similar goal.
They're all in a rush to grow.
Some of those creators have already cracked the code
and some of them have not.
Fortunately for you,
there are some super easy solutions
to what you might be encountering
as some of the most repetitive issues
that you're coming across in your content creation journey.
From having low views to getting copyright claims,
there's just so many hurdles that creators go through.
We've experienced some ourselves.
But today I wanted to share three different fixes
that can help get you over those hurdles
and hopefully back on track.
And let's start with the number one problem
that creators come to us with in the first place
and that is having a low click through rate,
or to put it in other words,
having low views.
Let's break this down by starting with
why things might be a bit slow on your channel
when you're first starting out.
You see, as a smaller channel,
YouTube doesn't quite know who you are yet.
As such, they don't know who to recommend your content to.
The other problem, of course,
is that people themselves don't know
who the heck you are yet,
unless you're kind of coming in
as an established brand or celebrity.
So nobody is looking for you specifically.
But let's imagine that you wanna create a video,
hypothetically, about saving $10,000 a year.
Well, it turns out, at the very same time,
Graham Stephan is also making a video
about how to save $10,000 a year.
He's familiar in this space,
and viewers probably know who he is
and what he's all about
because he's been at it for so long.
So if both of you show up to the table
with the exact same video
posted at the exact same time
with the exact same title,
who do you think is going to win the click?
It's Graham Stephan,
they're gonna click on Graham Stephan's video.
- [Onlooker] Whoa, really?
No.
No way.
Dang it.
Ah, shoot.
Crap.
Ah, I knew it.
So now even though you've made a perfectly competent video,
you are getting less views
and your goal was to have your video clicked on, not his.
This results in having a low click through rate,
which means somebody sees your video,
but they don't click on it.
And then of course the people who actually do
give this video a chance and click on it,
how long are they watching?
Because that metric is your average view duration.
And if people are not sticking around
after the first few seconds of your video,
you're going to have a very bad average view duration
which means YouTube is not going to
surface your brand new video as much.
So naturally this video will fall into obscurity.
But here's the thing,
I do not want you to start by obsessing over these metrics.
I want you to get into the habit now,
early in your journey,
of using data to support making decisions for future videos
and not using data to fall into a pit of depression.
I speak from experience.
This is incredibly hard not to do.
When I have a video that I post that goes live
and it's clear that it's not doing well,
here's what I'm supposed to do.
If I have something available,
I can try changing the title and even the thumbnail.
After that though,
the best thing I can do is step back
and wait a few hours or even a few days
to see where that video finally lands.
Sometimes changing the title and thumbnail
actually works for us.
It's right about at this point we change the title
for this video to something more searchable
and even though it's not a very dramatic spike,
that video was getting double the views than it was before.
So that slight improvement counts
for quite a bit in this case.
And fortunately, we had extra thumbnails
on deck for that video,
so we could switch it out quickly.
But most creators don't have that.
And so the best course of action would be to just learn
from the data and implement for your next video.
And when you do that you always wanna go
into making that next thumbnail with one question in mind.
How can I make this thumbnail stand out?
And spoiler alert,
it's not by adding a whole bunch of random elements to it.
In fact, the more complex your thumbnails are,
the more time of viewer needs to process the information
and the more likely they're to keep kind of scrolling away.
And then the title,
think of it as kind of a teaser.
Write it as maybe a sneak peek
into this world that you've created.
Can you make your titles concise yet irresistible?
And does your title compliment your thumbnail?
And another pro tip for changing titles,
you can always start with a title that's really interesting
and juicy and dramatic,
and then after it gets to that initial surge of views
you can do something we do all the time
which is revert the title
to something that's more searchable
so the video can kinda live on
in another section of YouTube that is searched.
Another challenge that smaller creators face
is copyright claims,
especially as it pertains to audio.
And this is what everyone should be thinking about
because I'm sure you probably understand the importance
of using audio to set the right tone in your videos.
But using even five seconds
of a mainstream song for example,
is a great way to earn yourself a copyright claim
on your video.
What makes this more frustrating though
is that sometimes you'll find music on YouTube itself
and in the description it'll say
that this music is copyright free
and you can totally use it in your videos.
Here's the thing though,
unless that video provides a very specific license
that you can read into and understand,
there's a good chance that they don't actually
have the rights to that music
and therefore you can still get copyright claimed.
So of course one place you can go
is the YouTube audio library
which is full of music and sound effects
that are safe to use in your videos.
Their playlist though is fine,
but it's not very sexy
and you've probably heard these songs in a lot
of videos because there's not a huge selection
and everybody's using it.
We like to tell creators not to invest
in the most high-end gear for their channels,
but when it comes to investing in your channel
one thing that you should do is invest
in solid tools that can help your channel.
That is where our sponsor Epidemic Sound comes in.
If you haven't signed up with Epidemic Sound already,
you are missing out.
For four years now Epidemic Sound has been our go-to source
for all of our sound tracking needs
with a catalog including over 40,000 tracks
and 90,000 sound effects
that 100% guarantee you avoid any copyright strikes.
You can get your pick from any genre.
And also, this is the cool part,
you can download exactly what you need from each track.
Obviously, to help you guys get started,
we got you a massive discount if you use the link
in the description below.
And it's literally that simple.
This is how so many channels on YouTube have really
exciting sound effects and audio
without getting themselves
into any kind of copyright trouble.
So please use Epidemic Sound,
stop worrying about making content
that is going to get you copyright claims and strikes
and potentially demonetized on YouTube.
Now next we need to talk about engagement
because if you are a small channel trying to get seen,
you need to use every opportunity that you have
at your disposal.
So the YouTube algorithm
leverages engagement data to understand
how good in terms of quality your content actually is.
When we say engagement,
we're referring to the level of interaction
your videos get with viewers.
So comments, likes, shares
and the overall time someone spends watching your video.
Channels with higher engagement are more likely to
be spread around to a wider audience.
And this of course creates a snowball effect
because it leads to even more visibility
and growth on the platform.
On the other hand,
channels with low engagement might struggle quite a bit
to get more views and grow in general.
And just a side note,
I did say channels with lower engagement,
but just know that the next time you upload a video
if you keep engagement in mind,
that video has a chance to gain that traction you want it
to have even if you've never experienced that before.
That is to say,
your old content is not slowing down your future content.
And here's another secret
that big YouTube channels are using
in their video scripts to increase engagement.
They take an active role in building a community
around their channel.
By catering to a viewer's interest
it's a lot easier to encourage people
to leave those comments,
ask and answer questions
and engage with the video.
And this should be pretty easy
because when you create a YouTube channel,
ideally you are sharing your interest
with like-minded people.
So one thing you could do is leave a comment right now
and let us know how many subscribers
your YouTube channel currently has.
And I chose that specific question
because it relates to the reason you are probably
watching this video right now,
you're trying to get more subscribers.
If you're watching a cooking creator share a recipe
for some kind of awesome dinner
one thing they could ask of people in the comments
of that video is to share what dessert they
think would pair really well with this dish.
Planning questions like that ahead of time in your script
is a really easy way to start driving that engagement.
And that's the thing,
sometimes it takes really little changes
to see very big impacts on YouTube.
So instead of criticizing yourself
or maybe YouTube for not doing enough for you
or re-recording your entire video,
maybe take a step back.
What was your thumbnail like?
How was the intro of your video?
What was the first 30 seconds like?
What can you do to improve?
Start small though.
Take just one thing that we've discussed here today
and add it to your workflow when creating your next video.
And if you're looking for even more YouTube growth tips,
check out this video right here.