- I came up with a YouTube strategy
that I thought would work great
for this channel, and it ended up failing.
So in this video, we're gonna go through
what I was thinking was gonna work
and what actually happened, and also we're gonna dig
into some analytics, we'll get into my back-end,
and I'll kind of show you how you want
to position your YouTube channel
so that you don't go down this rabbit hole
that I went down and end up hurting your growth.
All right, guys, let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
My channel has changed over the years.
For a lot of you who are new, there's a lot
of new subscribers here, my channel evolved
from a travel vlog channel, and then it turned
into kind of a review, tutorial channel,
and then I tried to take it in some different directions,
and ultimately, that didn't really work.
So what I want to go through is kind of my thoughts
around strategy, and hopefully through this failed kind
of approach that I went after, you will have some ideas
for your channel that's gonna help you find success.
Now, I did another video recently all
about creating multiple YouTube channels,
and I highly suggest checking out that video
after you're done here because it goes through some more
of these concepts in a different way and talks
about why you might want to have two,
three, four YouTube channels.
Don't do four YouTube channels, but I'm just saying
there's reasons why you would split off your content.
So originally, my strategy was this.
I was gonna create like a short film, something
that was story-driven, something like a documentary
or a vlog, and then I would create tutorials
and reviews around that video.
So I tried this out with my Orizaba video
that was a couple years ago.
I climbed the highest peak in Mexico.
It's like the Everest of Mexico, but nowhere near as high
as Everest and not as technical,
but that's besides the point, and from that video,
I made a bunch of different content around that story.
I did reviews around the cameras I was using at that time.
I was using the Rylo 360.
That was kind of my introduction to the 360 world,
using it in an adventure story format,
and then I was using the Mavic Air, and I did some tutorials
around the Mavic Air that really blew up.
All the footage I used for those tutorials
and reviews was pulled from that short film.
So instead of just going out and doing a review like walking
around the hillside here, I took the footage
from a short film and then centered everything
around that short film, and my idea was basically take
that model and duplicate it.
So create another short film, and then build a series
of videos that you guys would be interested
around that short film, and since the Orizaba video,
I've tried that a few times.
So I got asked by Royal Caribbean
to go on one of their cruises.
I did a whole series of videos.
Some of them were kind of story vlog style,
and then I did some tutorials mixed in,
and then more recently, I climbed a mountain up in Canada,
and I did something around the Nikon Z6 in this format,
and in December, I went to Thailand
and did a whole VR180 series with the same kind of idea.
I was gonna make the main documentary film,
and it was in VR180, and then I was gonna create all
of these other videos around it.
Now, in theory, it makes sense.
Create a project that is not just a tutorial or a review,
something that is real world, a story-driven piece.
The issue is when those pieces go on my channel,
it starts to fracture my audience,
and the reason is those short films
are not necessarily catered for the audience
that I have coming from my reviews on my tutorials.
A lot of you here are here to learn about how
to be a creator and how to find success on the platform.
You don't necessarily care about a video that I did
about this guy brewing beer down in Ecuador.
Now, that film was a cool, little film that I did
in the past, and I thought it came out pretty good
for meeting a guy just randomly and shooting a film
the next day, however, beyond my core audience,
I know who you guys are, you guys are here on every video,
beyond you guys, there is a whole group of people
who come for the education, tutorials, reviews.
They don't want all these extraneous videos
that I was making that are more story-driven
or more vlog style, and so what happens is
when I put out one of those videos, it doesn't do as well,
and yes, I'm gonna make these tutorials and reviews
and I'm gonna point back to that main video,
but it doesn't necessarily mean that people will go there
and watch, and more concerning than subscribers not watching
is the fact that the YouTube algorithm is gonna treat
those videos differently and the search algorithms
are gonna treat those videos differently
than my main videos that I create on this channel.
So let's dig into this Royal Caribbean video.
Let's just dive into my analytics.
So the first video that I did when I went
on the Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas was just a vlog
about going on this cruise ship,
and this video has over 140,000 views.
So it did really well for being a vlog about going
on a cruise ship, but the issue is that the people
that are watching this video are not the viewers
who watch my channel.
They're interested in the ship, the Symphony of the Seas,
and this was the inaugural trip.
So people are interested in seeing
what the cruise ship is all about.
So let's dig into my analytics here,
and we'll do since lifetime.
So I have 140,000 views, but more importantly,
I want to look at this subscribers.
775 subscribers, so that's people who are coming
to this video to find a video about the Symphony of the Seas
and see an experience.
That's what I created out of this video,
and then people subscribed.
It's great.
Getting some subscribers, you know, we all want subscribers,
but we honestly don't want subscribers
who aren't gonna watch the majority of our content.
So if they're coming to watch a video about a ship
and they want to see more about cruise ships,
obviously, their interests are in cruise ships.
Now, my channel is more about helping creators
and teaching filmmaking and camera reviews,
so now when I post a review or a tutorial after this video,
all of those subscribers that came for the cruise ship
aren't gonna watch the next video,
and some of them might unsubscribe which is fine,
but the ones that don't will end up causing issues
down the road because the more of these subscribers
that I get that aren't interested in the majority
of my content just basically become dead subscribers.
In the grand scheme of things, if I do this over and over
and over, essentially, it's gonna hurt my channel
and stunt the growth.
So let's dig into reach, and then I just want
to show you traffic source based on YouTube search.
So here's all the search terms
that people are finding this video off of.
Symphony of the Seas, Royal Caribbean Symphony of the Seas,
Symphony of the Seas launch, Royal Caribbean,
Symphony of the Seas vlog, Symphony of the Seas cruise ship.
All of these search terms, which are all
about the Symphony of the Seas, not one of them is
about filmmaking, not one of them is about being a creator,
not one of them is about YouTube education.
So what does that tell you?
I'm getting a ton of traffic for something
that is driving the wrong audience to my channel.
So even if this video is doing super well and it's bringing
in a ton of watch time and average view duration
and bringing in subscribers, ultimately, a video like
that could impact your channel and really hurt you.
So this is why I'm always stressing audience first.
Like who is the person on the other side of the camera?
What are they interested in watching from you?
And then start crafting your content around that.
So if I was doing a cruise ship channel,
that video would've been huge for me,
but being a filmmaking creator channel,
that video ultimately has been hurting me,
and I see those people that comment down on my videos
that complain that I have low view count at the time
of launch, and part of that is I have a lot
of these subscribers who have come in,
and when YouTube sends out videos to your subscribers,
it doesn't send it out to all of your subscribers.
It sends it out to a group, and how that group responds
then dictates how the algorithm's gonna send it out
to more people.
So if you are someone who really likes the videos
on this channel and you like all the uploads that I put out,
then you gotta make sure that you have your notifications
turned on because when it turns it on,
you're not letting YouTube decide if it's gonna send you
a notification, you're just telling YouTube,
I want to get these notifications.
So ultimately, trying to do these vlogs
and mini-documentaries paired with the reviews
and tutorials was not a good strategy to go after.
What I decided to do was to start a second channel
that is all story-driven content,
and I can do the same style of create a story-driven piece
and then build out my reviews and tutorials around that,
however, instead of having it all on one channel,
split the two channels because they're gonna have
two different audiences, and yes, there's a portion of you
who want to see both of those videos, but the majority
of people here do not necessarily want to see the vlogs,
short films, all of that, and I completely understand
that and I have no issue if you don't want
to watch my story-driven pieces.
That's why I decided to split my channel into two.
So now I have my story-driven channel
which is gonna be vlogs, stories, I have all these ideas
that I want to do, and now I can actually produce content
and play around and I don't really have to worry
about the algorithm as much on that channel
because now I have a place where I can tell the stories
that I want to create, and yeah, we'll see what happens
with that channel, but more importantly,
this channel can really focus in on what its main intention
is which is helping creators find success,
and so I'm sure some of you are wondering,
what am I gonna do with all these videos in the past
like this Royal Caribbean video or my Orizaba video
or some of these other story-driven pieces?
Well, what I'm doing now is I'm actually gonna go
through my analytics, go look at which videos are driving
the wrong type of subscribers and wrong type of audience,
and then ultimately unlist those
because if I have all those videos available to watch,
yes, it's gonna bring more people to my channel,
but it's bringing the wrong type of people to my channel.
So I'd rather have YouTube pushing the content
that's gonna get to the right audiences rather
than going back in my library and then pulling out
these random videos that's gonna bring
in ultimately the wrong audience, or worse, send it
to these new people that might be discovering my channel,
and then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, I don't want
to watch this, I'm not gonna subscribe,
and then they turn the video off, and then YouTube
never suggests one of my videos again to them.
So for those of you who have a channel going
and you have this kind of battle going in your head
creating one style of content versus another,
I want you to take a step back and really think
through what it is that you want to do on your main channel.
What is it that you want to achieve?
And then you can start working backwards and think through,
do I need to reel my content in, focus it a little bit more,
and then I could really find success in that category?
And if you need to have a second channel,
that might be the way to resolve this battle in your head
where you have these conflicting ideas and you want
to do more of a variety channel, and guys, if you want
to dig into this topic a little bit more
about creating multiple channels, like I said,
I did another video all about this and it goes
through some ideas around why you should create
multiple channels and some more information
about the YouTube algorithm.
All right, guys, I'll see you over there.