- About this time a year ago, I sat here and I explained
to you how to start a gaming channel in 2020,
but as you know, a lot can change in just a year,
so naturally, it's time for an update.
(upbeat music)
Hello, I'm Dan, and this is VidIQ.
We are obsessed with creators just like you,
and today I'm speaking specifically to gaming creators,
and I have a question for you before we get started.
Did you start a gaming channel in 2020 or were you thinking
of starting one soon here in 2021?
We'll be talking about a lot today,
and whether you already started a gaming channel
or you're about to start one,
these tips should apply in either case.
First, we're gonna start with some just general advice.
How often you should upload, how many games maybe
you should play on your channel,
and some of the biggest mistakes to avoid.
Once that's out of the way, I'm gonna help you come up
with some ideas that will fuel your gaming channel
throughout the entirety of 2021
because it could be really demotivating to run out
of content ideas and I want to help you avoid that
at all costs, and you're gonna want to stick around
because after we cover all of that, I'm gonna leave you
with a tip that could earn your channel a ton
of views in a very short amount of time.
(upbeat music)
So I've been at VidIQ now for about a year,
and in my first video to you guys,
I told you to play just one game in your channel.
Now, from a YouTube algorithm perspective,
this is pretty solid advice, and to prove that,
I asked some of our community members
to share their experiences throughout the year of 2020.
These are all channels that grew pretty quickly
in 2020 following the strategy of covering just one game.
It's not just about the YouTube algorithm.
It's about having a strong focus and resisting the urge
to follow all of your passions at once.
Now, most gamers enjoy more than one game.
However, I encourage you to focus on just one of them,
your favorite one, in 2021.
Then I want you to take all of your other favorite games
and simply use them as a way to unwind.
As content creators, we only have so much creative energy,
so having a focus will make sure you spend
that energy in the right places.
Not only should you reserve that creative energy
for as few games as possible, you should also be reserving
it for the rest of the YouTube creation process.
So let's talk about how often you should upload videos.
YouTube rewards quality content, and the algorithm
has only gotten better year after year
at serving that content to the right audience.
That said, there's no need to upload daily gaming content.
As long as you're making well-researched, high value videos,
people who are looking for that information will find you.
So to start, I would aim at uploading at least one video
a week and give yourself some time to relax,
time to focus on your school or your job and also time
to come up with more creative ideas for your channel.
Yes, of course, making more videos does cast a wider net,
but you don't want to spread yourself too thin.
So it's up to you to find a balance.
Now, playing multiple games or games
that are just too dissimilar from one another
or killing yourself with a crazy busy upload schedule
are just a couple of the mistakes we see new gaming channels
make all the time, and on top of those,
there are also a few common ones we see quite a bit.
A lack of research in your titles, templated thumbnails
that make your channel look like thumbnail wallpaper,
and intros lacking a strong hook.
Before we get into the titles and thumbnails,
let's talk about those intros.
Do your retention graphs generally look anything like this?
Low retention is a key indicator to YouTube
that your video may not be delivering on its promise,
and therefore it shouldn't be recommended
over someone else's video.
Your introductions should be strong.
Try not to just sit on the menu screen of your game
and talk about what you would like to do in today's video.
Waste no time getting to the meat of your video.
The goal here is to make it impossible
for someone to click away.
The title of your video actually makes a promise
to the viewer.
So make sure they have all the confidence in the world
that when they click on that video you're going
to deliver on that promise.
So titles and thumbnails, the thing that gets your video
that click in the first place.
A good title will help your video pop up
in the search results, and once there,
the thumbnail will help you stand out amongst the crowd.
We actually have a tool here at VidIQ that I want you
to start using for every single video you make.
Before you publish your video,
you can try out different titles
and even different thumbnails
and compare them against everybody else's.
In the case of my video here,
let's try baby Yoda in Minecraft.
If we hit preview in search results, not only do you get
to see your thumbnail compared to some
of the other competition you have,
you also get to compare some of these other titles.
It's also important to look at when these videos were posted
and how many views they have, and you can even see
how your video may appear on the YouTube home screen
against videos that aren't exactly ranking
for the same keywords.
Additionally, you can view your thumbnail in tablet mode
or mobile mode just to see how it's gonna compare
in these other formats.
We created this tool because titles and thumbnails are
by far the most important aspect
of the video creation process on YouTube.
(upbeat music)
So you came up with an idea, you shot your video,
you did the editing, and now I'm telling you that you need
to spend all this time doing research
on your title and your thumbnail.
If that sounds like a lot of work, that's because it is,
but I have a tip for you to make it a little bit easier.
The next time you're about to start a new video,
I want you to think of the title before you hit record.
Get the title research done early.
This method will force you to make a video
that has a better chance of appearing in search.
Because you're keeping your video focused,
it puts you in the shoes of your viewer
who read your title and is seeking
that specific value that you promised upfront.
So if your video's called Minecraft Cow Farm, for example,
and you go into the recording session knowing
that's what you're promising the viewer,
you're going to be focused as you record that video
on making sure they know when they get there they're going
to learn how to make a Minecraft cow farm.
This simply feeds into the concept of quality over quantity.
All of this research is going to help you get discovered.
Yes, this does represent a lot of research and extra work,
but I will tell you this.
One of the biggest complaints I hear from gaming creators,
even in our own community, is that they say,
I spend all this time editing my video,
making the best video I possibly could,
and still relatively nobody's watching it, but remember
that nobody knows you have fantastic production value
if people aren't clicking on your video in the first place.
(upbeat music)
Now, if you take everything I've said to this point
and apply it to your channel tomorrow, you will see results,
but it's easier said than done.
Coming up with fresh video ideas that people are excited
about is probably the most challenging part of YouTube.
This is why so many gaming channels resort
to just picking their favorite game and playing it
over the course of several videos, a let's play series
with titles like Minecraft Survival Episode 12.
So I'm gonna share with you some of my methods for coming up
with video ideas so that you have content throughout
this entire year, not just after watching this video
and getting a couple of little bits of inspiration.
First things first, I want you to join the Discord community
of the game you've chosen to play on your channel.
A lot of games will make their own official servers.
However, you may elect to even join some unofficial ones.
Don't forget about the communities
within Reddit and Steam and places like that.
Try to find all the places fans of your game hang out.
Doing this will help stay in the loop.
Not only will you be the first to know
about big updates coming to the game
and then you can cover those, but you also get to discover
what the community at large is excited about.
Perhaps newcomers are asking questions
that you know the answer to and maybe you can answer
those questions with a video.
Next, we need to discuss trending topics.
Pop culture, holidays, these are all things you need
to be constantly looking to incorporate into your channel.
A good trending pop culture topic that you can jump
on is something you want to keep an eye out for.
I, myself, managed to do this with great success
when I saw that Minecraft released a Star Wars mashup pack
for their marketplace.
I jumped on it as fast as I could,
and it paid off in a big way.
Had I been paying closer attention to the Minecraft Discord,
I would've gotten there even earlier.
My Minecraft example is a pretty specific case,
but we have a tool here at VidIQ to help you drill down
on the topics that are trending in your niche.
Let's check out VidIQ's most viewed tool.
You can find this in a couple of places in the extension,
but I'll show you through the real-time stats bar.
If you go down to most viewed, it'll open up this window.
When you think you have your next video idea,
I highly suggest running some of the keywords
you might rank for in this tool.
You can filter any of your searches by the amount
of channel subscribers you want the results to come up with,
the views per hour, the views themselves, of course,
the category, in this case for me, gaming, the country,
and you can even filter by our own VidIQ score.
So let's pretend I'm making my Minecraft baby Yoda video
for the first time, but I haven't made it just yet.
I want to see how well it ranks.
So I'm gonna type Minecraft baby Yoda,
and I'm gonna hit get results.
When nothing pops up in the last 48 hours,
I'm getting a little nervous,
but why don't we try the last seven days?
Hmm, nothing there either.
Just for fun, let's see what it's done
in the last six months, and this is where we get an idea
of just how important it is
to follow trending topics on YouTube.
In the last six months, this video's been doing fantastic.
Now, this Star Wars mashup pack came out just a couple
of months ago, so it makes sense
there hasn't been a lot of traction.
However, you may also decide that you like to see some
of these view-per-hour numbers here, and the fact
that no one's made a video in a while is actually
a positive thing and maybe you can compete with some
of the ones that have been around for a couple of months.
(upbeat music)
Now, I did say I had one final tip for you
that will help you get a lot of views
in a very short amount of time.
If you haven't caught on already,
I'm talking about YouTube Shorts.
Shorts came out in the last half of 2020,
and they're reshaping content creation here
on YouTube as we know it.
Basically, Shorts are YouTube's answer to TikTok,
and if you want to know exactly how you can put one together
we have a video on that.
In fact, we have a lot of videos on this topic.
Shorts are meant for people watching YouTube on their phones
and those folks want to get a quick laugh
or some quick information without the time commitment
of a longer, traditional YouTube video.
These have been perfect for the gaming community.
Playing games often leads to interesting
or hilarious moments that anyone can share and enjoy,
not to mention the value you can bring
by making a quick tutorial for somebody.
My advice to gaming channels right now of any size is
to incorporate Shorts somewhere into your strategy.
We've already seen gaming channels all
over the place exploding from doing this.
Oh yeah, remember my baby Yoda video
I showed you from before?
You may or may not have noticed the run time.
Yep, that's a Short.
(upbeat music)
These are all things I wish I had known
when I started on YouTube as a gaming channel.
I would have these moments where my channel was focused
and it was doing really well, but eventually I would kind
of just get bored of the game I was playing
and a new one had my attention, and heck,
I might as well hit record on that too, right?
It wasn't until I sat down and really focused my channel
that I started seeing a real improvement,
and now I spend more time researching
than any other part of the process.
Yes, that even goes for editing.
If this feels like too much work,
understand that you're still allowed to make content
on YouTube that is simply just you goofing off.
Personally, I cut loose with a weekly livestream.
Those streams keep my subscribers engaged
while allowing me to chat with them
in a way that we don't normally get to chat,
and your version of that may just be a simple
let's play series where it's just you
and your audience enjoying a game,
no research, no headache, and that's fine.
However, if you're looking to stand out on YouTube,
it's really important to take at least some of this advice
to heart and apply it to your strategy somewhere in the mix,
whether it's for every single video you do
or just every so often you make one that knocks it out
of the park and invites a whole bunch
of new eyeballs to your channel for the first time.
This video had to end somewhere but if you are still looking
for gaming channel advice, we have a ton of videos
in the playlist over here.
I hope you check them out, and don't forget to subscribe
for more videos like this all the time here at VidIQ.
We'll see you in the next one.