- Hey, everyone.
This is your easygoing YouTube expert, Derral Eves.
Now, it's not every day I get to travel to San Bruno and hang out at the YouTube headquarters,
and let me tell you, this place is cool.
There's a lot of cool things going on.
They create this amazing atmosphere that's very playful, very fun, very energetic.
There's a lot of cool things.
Now, a couple things is they actually have a slide that goes from one floor down to the
other.
Now, I've been here four times, and I've tried every time to go on that slide, and I've gotten
shot down.
I'm not an employee.
So I guess for the liability or whatever, but there's a lot of great things that are
happening.
There's some amazing food.
It's very energetic here, but the thing that I like the most is that you're surrounded
by super smart people.
You might be talking to people about YouTube.
These are the people that actually work on YouTube every day, some engineers and so on.
Now, in this recent visit, I went with one of my clients, Studio C. Some amazing talent
at Studio C, and they were selected to be a part of an accelerator program at YouTube,
and that's an awesome thing because we sat in a room and strategized on how to actually
improve their channel.
Now here's the thing that I wanna tell you guys is I've been there four times, the headquarters,
for the same type, and I found that YouTube teaches and preaches five key areas that they
want every channel creator on YouTube to do.
So if you're interested in this, this is the video for you.
We're gonna learn all about those five things that YouTube wants you to do for your channel
to get more exposure, more views, and a lot more engagement.
Let's do this.
After going to YouTube and sitting down with strategy teams several times, I found that
they always focus in on five key areas really to improve your presence on YouTube.
Now, the first of those areas I believe is the most important.
I know a lot of you struggle with this, which is getting your videos found, so the first
area is discoverability.
Now, with discoverability, it's broken into three different parts.
The first part is making sure that your video's optimized.
Make sure your meta information is done correctly, your titles are done properly, also your description,
your tags, and you're uploading a transcription to do closed captioning.
Now, if you're interested in how to do this, I made a couple videos on that.
You can find them in the links below.
First, how to properly upload your YouTube video, and, second, how to properly tag your
YouTube video.
Now, outside of the meta information that really helps you get found, the second area,
which is improve your thumbnail.
Now, you might not think that it makes a big deal, but for this specific client that we
went to YouTube for, over a year and a half ago, we actually changed their thumbnail strategy
where we put the logo on every single thumbnail video that was actually coming out.
And, secondly, we actually made the thumbnail a little bit more engaging.
Their view rate doubled.
Doubled every day, and the reason why it happens is because when someone's watching a video,
they really like the content, they're gonna see over on the right-hand side related videos.
And when they see a thumbnail that is consistent, they're like, "Oh, good.
I wanna watch another one," and it increases their user watch time.
Now, the third area of discoverability which YouTube preaches and teaches, which is collaborations.
Now, collaborations can make the biggest difference in the world.
If you find a channel that has similar audiences, and you're able to get them to do a collaboration,
and what we'd always encourage is what you do for one for one where you upload a video
on your channel, they upload a video on their channel, and you cross promote.
When that happens, magic happens.
You're actually able to grow an audience fairly quick.
Now, with Studio C, we actually did a collaboration with Brooklyn and Bailey.
We've done other collaborations with too, but with Brooklyn and Bailey specifically,
we got over 50,000 subscribers in a short amount of time that actually joined the channel
because Brooklyn and Bailey suggested that they did, and there was some really, really
great content.
Now for the second thing that YouTube always focuses in on, which is getting people to
watch a video.
Studies have shown humans have less of an attention span than goldfish.
I know it is for me.
When I go on to a specific video, I have about a tolerance of five to seven seconds before
I jump off and see something else.
So, in those five and seven seconds, you wanna be able to hook that viewer.
When you can hook the viewer with the content that is engaging, visual elements, whatever
it may be, you have a little bit more wiggle room, about 20 to 30 seconds, so during that
time, make sure that five to seven seconds you hook 'em in.
Then you have about 20 to 20 seconds to really engage them and pull them in to that video
content.
The reality is this.
It doesn't matter if you're a gamer, a vlogger, or if you do informational videos, it doesn't
matter if you're a musician.
You have to hook 'em in.
You need to engage them within the first 20, 30 seconds.
Now, the third thing is to engage the viewer.
Now, I know a lot of you are like, "Wait a minute Derral.
'You were just talking about engaging the viewer."
Well, yes I was with the video content.
This, "engage the viewer" is outside of the video content and is more on the tools and
also the set systems that YouTube wants you to do.
Now, the first thing is annotations.
Put annotations everywhere.
This is a way that you can really engage the viewer to take action within the video.
Now, there is also an element that you can do outside of annotations, which is YouTube
cards.
I would encourage you to use YouTube cards as well to really engage that viewer to take
action, to go to the next video, or to subscribe to this specific channel, or to watch this
specific playlist, or to buy this merchandise.
That's what it is.
You want to engage that viewer as much as you can.
It also comes back down to your schedule.
Make sure that you have a schedule of release and time of when your video actually comes
out.
If it's daily, it's the same time every day.
If it's weekly, it's the same time every week, and so on.
There's another element that a lot of people don't really look at of how to engage a viewer,
which is your channel art.
Making sure that your banners look good.
Making sure that it's very clear to people that are viewing what the channel's actually
about.
Now the next area is to create the fans.
We're actually having a good conversation.
You're connecting with me.
Now the best way for the content creator to connect with the people that are viewing the
video is through commenting.
Comment on your videos.
Make sure that when someone leaves you a comment, you comment back.
And when you actually upload a video, like I actually get a lot of comments on my videos
and there's no way that I can actually go through all the comments in a day.
I like to set aside time when I actually upload a video to comment on every video.
Now, my friend Shaun McKnight and Brooklyn and Baily termed the phrase, The Power Hour.
So they actually set aside one hour of their day when they upload a video to actually comment
on every single video.
Now here's the thing.
People love to hear feedback.
There are people says, "Oh, I can't believe that my favorite 'creator's commenting on
this.
This is great!"
That's how you create fans.
And the more that you can engage the fan, more that you can engage the viewer to be
involved in your growth of your channel, the more your channel will grow because you're
going to get more people really engaged.
Now one of my friends Peter Hollins does this amazingly.
I've never seen a creator do it as well as he does.
He actually takes requests from his fans on the music that he actually produces and he
pretty much does that almost every single time.
Because why?
It engages a community.
Creates fans, and he's able to produce content.
Now, the last, but not least is be consistent.
Consistency is the biggest thing that you can do on YouTube.
Be consistent in your branding.
Be consistent in your message.
Be consistent in your schedule time.
Be consistent in the types of video that you actually create.
That's what YouTube focuses in on.
Those are the five tips that YouTube wants all of us to do, but all this is for a reason,
and I want to tell you the number one factor that YouTube actually has in ranking channels,
ranking videos, which is viewer watch time.
And also session watch time.
So what that means is when someone comes on and watches a video, you get some points for
that, okay.
If someone watches a video and then goes on the YouTube binge where they watch a video
after video after video, that's really good for your channel and the great thing is, this
is what people don't really understand about viewer session time.
Is when someone comes in and finds your video and you're the very first video on YouTube
that they watch, when the go to Peter Hollins channel and watches 40 videos, you get credit
for that session watch time because you initiated that person to come on YouTube and to watch
that video.
That is a secret that a lot of people don't talk about and if you can get people to be
engaged on YouTube for a very long time, that increases your channel authority.
And that's it.
I mean, those are the areas of focus.
I'm going to go ahead and dig deep a little bit further in upcoming videos on really how
to optimize and focus in on those five key areas.
If you're interested in optimizing your videos, and also getting the right titles and tags,
look in the description below.
And honestly, guys, I really love this.
I love talking about video marketing.
I love that you guys are watching this video right now and supporting me by subscribing
and watching other videos, so if you have a tip that YouTube focus in on or you want
to elaborate a little bit more on one of these five keys areas, go ahead and put it in the
comments below and if you haven't subscribed yet, what are you waiting for?
It's time to subscribe and it's time to get involved because honestly, as we grow this
community, it's going to really help a lot of you grow your own communities.
Thanks.