- I'm going to let you in on a little YouTube secret today.
One that's been earning our channel
hundreds of thousands of views per month,
and will likely earn us millions of views in the future.
Thought you'd be interested in this one.
Let's do this!
(upbeat music)
- [Woman] vidIQ
- [Man] vidIQ.com
Hello folks, I'm Rob and welcome back
to vidIQ educating you on your YouTube journey.
And let's kick off this video with a question for you
the awesome community.
Have you ever had a video that just keeps churning
out views, months, even years, after you've made it?
Do let us know what type of video that was
and how you made it in the comments below.
And the reason I ask that is because those are
the types of videos you can build entire channels off of.
And that's exactly what we've been doing here
at vidIQ over the course of 2019.
And the best news is this has nothing to do with
PewDiePie versus T-series, Yeah!
The story starts back in July of 2018
when YouTube introduced a new hashtag feature,
and the moment we heard about this,
we decided to make a tutorial video on the topic.
Now it turns out that a lot of people wanted
to know what these hashtags were and how to use them,
so much so that this video a year later
has over a quarter of million video views.
Now that's pretty cool isn't it.
A simple tutorial on something that turned out to be
a bit of a bust, but here is the craziest thing.
A year after that video was made,
it is still generating between five and six hundred views
every single day, that's more than 3000 views per week,
15 thousand views per month.
And it's been like this pretty much all year,
yes the daily views have dropped maybe 25 percent also
but most YouTube videos do not do this.
They sink without a trace after the first month.
So, obviously there's a question here,
why is this video still being served up to viewers
a year after it was made?
Well first of all it's a fantastic thumbnail,
wouldn't you agree?
For once I'm not actually joking,
the click through rate on this video is ten percent,
which is at the top end of the typical average.
And one of the reasons why this is happening
is because from the moment we launched this video
it has sat on the top of the search page
for YouTube hashtags.
And we know just how important being
at the top of these search rankings is,
because we have a second video all about hashtags
which we launched a few weeks after the first one
which has a fraction of the views
and click through rate to match.
And how did we immediately find ourselves at the top
the search rankings?
Well it was because we were the first channel
to make a video on YouTube hashtags on the platform
and get it out there before anyone else.
Obviously it goes without saying,
if there's anything new in your topic of interest,
if your the first onto YouTube and video content
you have a distinct advantage.
And if there's a lot less competition,
like there was with YouTube hashtags,
which is a relatively minor news story,
then you can dominate the search rankings
and be the authority.
And now here's where there's a really important
distinction between two different types of content.
Yep that's just weird.
On the one hand we have trending news,
that's here today, gone tomorrow.
It's all about shock and awe, aiming to be
in the right place at the right time for a viral video.
And on the other hand we have brand new information,
not trending news per say but
something to add to a knowledge
base that people may need to learn about for weeks,
months, even years to come.
We've got a word for that,
it's called evergreen content.
Evergreen content is content that is always
relevant or at least relevant
for a very long period of time.
We often joke that the gold standard
of evergreen content would be to rank
a video number one for how to change a car tire,
or how to unblock a toilet.
It doesn't matter how old that information is
it's still relevant today.
And yes, if you are brave enough to do
a search for this term, and yes I have blurred out
some of the thumbnails, you will find videos
made over ten years ago with millions of views,
that still get 70 views per hour today.
So ranking on YouTube for evergreen content
could potentially be your super power.
The problem is and forgive the very intentional pun,
it is very difficult to unclog existing evergreen content.
Unless of course that existing evergreen content
suddenly becomes obsolete and is replaced by something new.
You can see where we're going with this one folks.
Over the past decade this screen has become part
of the daily fabric of my life,
and it helped transform my career path.
But it's time is coming to an end, if not already,
replaced by you tube's new creator studio.
This is a monumental change, hundreds of screens,
analytics, channel setup and video management
all changing from something we're all very used to
to something new, arguably improved but quite different,
and unfamiliar and this isn't just effecting me
it's affecting every single one of you watching this video
and millions more besides.
Every single video creator on YouTube.
IT's a bit like saying, I know we've been learning about
the Marvel universe for the last ten years,
but going forward we're going to learn about
the DC universe, it's kind of the same
but everything is different.
And I've just incurred the wrath of the entire
comic book universe.
So if everybody on the platform needs
to learn something new, who's going to teach it to them?
(ding)
Let me give you a very simple example.
How to delete a YouTube video,
a basic function you might need to know,
and the top video on this search result
has one million views, nicely done.
But sitting in the number two slot right now
is a video we made in the beginning of 2019,
which shows you how to do it
in the new creator's studio.
Now doing a keyword research for this was pretty simple,
it was the first thing that came into my head.
How to delete a YouTube video.
Everybody's searching for that term
if they want to know how to do it.
The thumbnail is pretty straightforward
as you can see, my key concern was to make sure
that it stood out against the rest of the thumbnails
and looked different in some way.
And no text certainly helps that.
Now that is all standard YouTube practice,
but here are where things get a little more
complicated when it comes to evergreen content.
Evergreen content is often solution based
in it's nature, answering questions
to commonly asked questions.
And more often than not those asking the question
just want the answer as quick as possible, nothing else.
And that can lead to a
counter intuitive YouTube video strategy.
On purpose I made the video relatively short,
under three minutes and showed viewers
how to delete a video in the first 30 seconds
of this video, all the value was up front,
the rest was saved for detail and a bit of
bonding with the vidiq community.
Of course the common mantra is that watch time
is the most important metric on YouTube.
But what YouTube is also telling all of us more and more
is too stop making videos for an algorithm and
make videos for your audience.
Time is one of the most valuable currencies in the world
and when a viewer spends it with you
they want value from it.
I can't and will not try to fool a viewer into
a ten minute video on how to delete a YouTube video.
And in this particular scenario YouTube completely
agrees with me.
The second thing you need to appreciate with this strategy
is your video will almost definitely perform worse
to begin with, you just need to have unshakeable faith
in the system.
Through the vidIQ video comparison tool
we can see that the blue line that represents this video
on how to delete a YouTube video underperformed
against channel expectation which is the pink line,
at least to begin with, given time as the video grinded
it's way through the algorithm,
more people searched for it, clicked on it,
got value from it, by the end of it's first 28 days
this video was performing well above expectation
from the channel.
That's what a cumulative view kind of looks like,
but the daily view count graph looks even more impressive.
It is not uncommon for evergreen content to tank
very quickly after it's launch.
It's usually not a sexy topic, a small number of
people may be searching for the keyword,
but the power of evergreen content
is that the same number of people
will likely be searching for the term tomorrow,
next week, next month, next year,
and if your video delivers the value
the expectant audience wants
this is what can happen.
Almost as many view per day as the day
the video was launched.
Already that video's doing pretty well,
but if I'm honest with you I expect
it to do even better in the future.
At the moment YouTube are currently running
both the classic studio and the beta studio,
but at some point they're going to turn off
that classic studio, which means all of those videos
on the old method of how to delete a video
will be obsolete and whose video is
be there waiting in second place to take the top spot?
Yep, it makes perfect sense now doesn't it?
So that's one evergreen piece of content up and running.
But hang on I just said that
the entire YouTube creators studio is changing,
that gives me an idea.
This has been our side project throughout 2019,
creating simple tutorials to do
important things in the new YouTube creator studio.
As you can see some videos have been more successful
than others, but each and every one of them
is still getting views today and fingers crossed,
those should be guaranteed views for years to come.
And then there is this little gem or black sheep of a family
I haven't quite decided yet.
It has over half a million views,
but that deserves a video in itself to
explain what went on there.
To date these new creator studio beginner guide videos
have collectively brought in over a million views
and we still have dozens more videos on the list
we need to make.
Admittedly this is a rare occurrence,
for absolutely everything in a topic,
YouTube analytics and channel maintenance
completely change and that has given us
a rare opportunity to dominate a huge topic
as if it was starting all over again.
But this type of thing in smaller doses is happening
all the time.
When a new season starts in a sport,
such as basketball, baseball, NFL,
there's always potential evergreen content
that could last you 6 to twelve months.
When a new version of a phone or a new operating
system for a program is released,
again there is evergreen content potential.
It could last you 12 months even two years.
New games, beauty products, back to school,
these all have potential evergreen content.
And when you do identify these evergreen opportunities
in your topic, if you apply some of these basic principals
you could be onto thousands, tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands even millions of views,
over the course of a very long time.
Something to build your entire channel on.
And if you are migrating to the new YouTube creator studio
make sure that you have vidIQ installed
as we do have already tools in there
that will help you research YouTube,
analyze every single video on the platform
or at your channel and take actual steps that will help
grow your channel.
There is a link in the video description
that is free to download.
For more YouTube tips, tricks, guides and strategies
just like this video check out our playlist over here
and to see all of those beginner guides
on how to get used to the new creator studio
we've got the playlist down there.
It is bringing us in a lot of views
and you can do the same thing for your channel.
Enjoy the rest of your video making day,
bye for now.