- In this video, you're gonna learn a bunch of YouTube tips
that have helped my buddy Brian G Johnson gain
over 6,000 subscribers in just a handful of months.
And we're starting right now.
(rhythmic rap music)
What is going on?
Welcome to another video, my name is Nick.
If this is your first time here,
and you wanna get YouTube tips to help you grow your channel
and you wanna learn how to make YouTube videos
and all types of YouTube related stuff,
make sure you hit that subscribe button
because I'm gonna help you do it.
Okay so we all know that doing YouTube stuff,
you know, there's a lot to learn.
There's a lot of things that you learn along the way,
so Brian G Johnson is here to share with you five things,
very important things, that he's learned along the way
of gaining his 6,000 subscribers in an extremely
short amount of time.
Brian, how's it going man?
- Hey, it's me!
- It's him?
- Brian G, with Nick Nimmin.
- High five!
- Welcome to the video.
- So in the amount of time that you've been on YouTube,
which has been a very short amount of time,
you've managed to collect a huge amount of subscribers
for the short amount of time that you've been on YouTube.
Give me your thoughts on the most important things
that you've done to gain those subscribers,
and to gain the views that you have.
- Hey Nick, check this out, I increased my views by 439%--
- [Crowd] Wow!
- And I'm not talking about like I increased from five
views a day to 23, I went to two to three hundred views
on a daily basis, to well over 1,200,
and I was able to do that in a 43 day period
by participating in my own personal ritual challenge.
Anybody can do this to rocket their results,
and it's really about challenging yourself to move forward
and create a volume of videos over a 30 day period,
a 60 day period.
I went for 30 days and actually kept going for another
five or six because the growth was so exciting
and exponential.
We'll talk about why that works so good as we continue,
but ultimately, practice the art of being a YouTuber,
thumbnails, video views, engagement, and make more videos,
and challenge yourself.
Now one of the things I really focused on then,
and I focus on today, is engagement.
I hear so many people talking about retention,
and click through rate of thumbnails, and watch time,
and all these things, and when you really break it down,
all of these elements are measurements of engagement.
- That's valuable stuff right there.
So with all the people that are coming into your channel,
once you started doing this challenge,
how do you get those people, and actually convert them
into subscribers?
- You know, Nick, when I began I spent actually a few months
really, really researching, and trying to understand
how I was gonna win on YouTube,
and then I ran across this post that was literally
posted by YouTube to the YouTube Creator Blog,
and it talks about we've begun adjusting the rankings
of videos in YouTube search to reward engaging videos
that keep viewers watching.
So Nick, at that point, that was kind of step one,
and I knew what I wanted to do was create videos
that people would watch longer.
- That's awesome, man, so how do you track and improve?
I mean, like what do you focus on in order
to make everything better?
- Well that's where it began,
but then something amazing happened.
Poof!
I started really digging into my analytics,
and I was blown away when I found retention,
and specifically relative audience retention,
which is a measurement of how engaging your video is
compared to other videos on YouTube of a similar length.
So here I had a statement from YouTube saying
we reward videos that keep viewers watching,
then inside analytics I discovered relative audience
retention, which allows me to track the very thing
that YouTube has told us they reward.
- Yeah, that makes sense.
So from all of the stuff that you've studied about
the algorithm, I mean, of course the watch time is
obviously one of the most important,
if not the most important metric, what do you recommend
that people focus on in their analytics?
- So you know, today, Nick, what I really focus on
is trying to create an engaging channel experience,
from the videos, to the thumbnails, to my YouTube channel
page, I strive to create engagement,
and it's worked amazingly well.
- Awesome stuff, so what is it that you are doing
specifically to get more views,
to attract those views to your videos?
- When the click, when you have the ability to craft
that thumbnail that stands out and wins the click,
it takes us back to engagement.
And you're sending a signal to YouTube,
that people like this video.
- Real quick, Brian, let me ask you,
is there anything that you do specifically
to actually win that click?
- You bet, first of all less is far more.
Take what your video is about and boil it down
to the essence.
One of the things I do is really focus on one word
in my video title, like YouTube Keyword Tool.
If I look at that keyword phrase, what people really are
looking for is a tool, so I designed my thumbnail
around one word.
Less is more, I can create bigger words, they stand out,
and that's one of the ways that I win the click.
- That sounds easy enough.
So there's gotta be more than that.
- Yeah, there's lots more.
Contrasting colors for the win.
I've seen so many thumbnails, there's like light blue
background and the text is blue.
- Huh?
- You can't read it.
So leverage a dark background in the light text,
or maybe a light background with dark text.
Contrasting colors for the win.
Last tip is leverage the power of congruency and branding
to clearly communicate that your video
is part of your channel.
One of the things I do with every single thumbnail
is to include my splats, as well as my logo,
and that makes it super easy for viewers to understand
that that is my video.
- So you're grabbing attention by making awesome thumbnails,
once people come to your channel,
you have your video structure laid out,
and your style laid out, so that you're keeping them
engaged through the video, and you're getting that
longer watch time by making nice sized videos,
and keeping the viewers attention,
with all of that, I've seen videos with 200,000 views,
and yeah, they had a fancy thumbnail,
but they're not getting tons of subscribers
off of those views.
And I've seen channels with a lot more views on their
videos, as well, but their subscribers to view ratio,
it's not really working out like your stuff is.
What else do you got for us?
I know you're holding something back.
- For goodness sakes man, I thought we all ready
went over this, it's all about engagement!
And one of the ways we create engagement is we make
it really easy for people to understand why they
should subscribe.
What makes your channel freaking awesome?
What makes your channel different than
the other 12 billion cajillion channels on YouTube?
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!
I think it's like 11 million cajillion channels on YouTube.
But anyway, go ahead.
- You gotta ask for subscribers, but it's more than that.
You've gotta clearly communicate
why people should subscribe.
Is your channel funny, is it different?
Why should people take the time?
And it's not just enough to know that,
you have to be able to clearly communicate that in like a...
(light snapping)
(exciting rhythmic music)
World class wrecking crew.
Video.
World class wrecking crew.
Watch the (mumbles) fly.
(crazy laughing)
And that's why you wanna take the time to craft
your channel, to create playlists, to upload channel art
that clearly communicates what makes your channel different,
or educational, or fun.
So take the time and think about why people should
subscribe, and the more clearly you can communicate that,
and the assets that we all have available to us,
your channel art, your thumbnails, and your videos
is gonna help you gain more subscribers.
And for goodness sakes, don't be afraid to ask.
And let me tell you, lastly,
different goes a long way on YouTube.
Do that and watch the pixie dust fly.
Poof!
Nick Nimmon, it's been a pleasure.
- Thanks, Brian, that was awesome, man.
Thank you so much for coming on.
If you have not checked out Brian's channel yet,
make sure that you head over there.
I'm gonna put a little card up here for you,
that you can go check out his channel
and I'm gonna put a link to him down in
the description below, so make sure that you head
over there and check him out.
And of course, if you are not all ready subscribed,
make sure to hit the subscribe button somewhere
on this page so you can get more videos like this
in the future.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you next time.