This channel just passed 10,000 subscribers on YouTube!
I started The Psych Show because I wanted to give psychology away to the world while
making it fun and easy to understand.
It means so much to me that my videos have found an audience that keeps on growing.
By watching, subscribing, commenting, and sharing you’ve helped me reach this point.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
When I hit 1,000 subscribers, I did this silly dance.
With this milestone, I want to do something more useful.
I’ve already made a video about how I write my scripts, but I haven’t made a video about
how to grow as a YouTuber.
So, in celebration of reaching 10k, here are the 10 most important things I’ve learned
about growing on YouTube.
Number 1: Don’t compare your 1st video to someone’s 100th.
I hated my first video.
My 1 minute channel trailer took 4 hours to film.
Editing it took a day.
The end result didn’t have that bright, snappy, and fun YouTube look everyone else
seemed to have.
My wife told me to stop comparing my 1st video to other people’s 100th video.
This REALLY helped me.
I looked up some big YouTube channels, watched their oldest videos, and discovered their
early work didn’t look anything like their recent stuff.
Seeing their growth, knowing that people get better, that’s what helped me commit to
making videos.
This brings me to my number 2: Learn from the best.
The way people rapidly improve is through deliberate practice.
That’s the concept Malcolm Gladwell misrepresented in Outliers.
It’s not 20,000 hours of practice that makes you an expert, but the way you practice.
Setting clear goals, getting immediate feedback on your performance, and an opportunity to
quickly try again based on what you’ve learned.
I had clear goals - increase the number of people watching, subscribing, and sharing
my videos.
I learned how to interpret my YouTube analytics, experimented with different approaches to
videos, and replicated the stuff that led to more views, subs, and shares.
If you don’t have an expert guiding you, one way to replicate expert feedback in deliberate
practice is by learning how to copy expert performance.
I studied my favorite YouTubers to understand how they wrote their scripts, edited their
videos, and published their content.
This is where I learned about the quick pace of YouTube, having a narrow scope to the topics
I cover in a video, and making videos easy to discover by writing titles with broad appeal.
Getting mentored at VidCon is one way I did get expert feedback.
Derek Muller helped me practice talking in a more conversational way while Mitchell and
Gregory taught me that my multitasking video should actually have been two separate videos
- one on multitasking and one on productivity.
Number 3: Make content people are searching for.
I learned early on that there’s a disconnect between what I think people will be interested
in and what people actually want to watch.
Now when I get a new idea, I used YouTube’s search suggestions to understand what people
are searching for related to this idea and how I could mold my idea to answer that will
help people.
This is how my most popular video took off.
It helps people who are studying for a test quickly remember the different parts of the
brain.
Once YouTube figured out that this video is good at answering this question, it started
recommending it alongside similar videos.
That’s how it went from a low performing video to my best one.
Making content people are searching for is less of an issue if you already have an established
audience, but it’s helpful when you’re getting started.
Number 4: Make it visual.
Make sure there’s a reason why your content exists as a video.
Show us something that emphasizes your main point, express emotions that can’t be communicated
through text or audio, something that can only happen in video.
My favorite example of this is my video on why we love reaction videos.
You see me watching a STar Wars trailer for the first time and also me explaining the
psychology of my reactions.
This is only possible in video.
Number 5: make a variety of content.
I rotate between 4 types of videos: how to, current events, pop culture, and personal
stories.
Each of these work in very different ways.
How to videos get the most stable views over time because people are constantly searching
for things like how to overcome anxiety, become more attractive, and manage tics.
But these viewers rarely become subscribers because they move on once they’ve found
what they’re looking for.
Videos on current events and pop culture take off quickly, get a lot of views because they’re
trending topics, and then die out fast, unless that topic becomes popular again.
Look at the views on my Jeb Bush / ThisPsychMajor video - it was a firestorm and now it’s
dead.
These types of videos help people discover my channel but people only subscribe if they
see something unique about my voice and see similar content on the channel.
My personal stories are the least watched videos on this channel because they usually
only appeal to my existing audience, BUT they’re also the videos with the most engagement.
I get more comments, likes, and shares on these videos than anything else.
Personal stories help me maintain an important connection with my audience.
Number 6: Make it a routine
There’re a lot of things you have to remember when making a video, like clearing your set
before you start recording so your medication doesn’t end up in the background of your
shot.
Because there’s so much to do, it’s easy to make mistakes, and because it’s video,
it’s hard to fix mistakes in post-production.
So do what airplane pilots and surgeons do - make a checklist and follow it.
This is what my checklist looks like and I’ve got a link below where you can see all the
details.
I also use a basic outline to start each of my scripts.
Here’s what that looks like.
Number 7: Make the comments section a place people want to be
YouTube comments can suck because none of us are built to have this type of human interaction.
Here’s a video for more on that.
Because it’s so easy to be inhumane in the comments, I have to work to make sure it’s
a welcoming place for my audience.
That means having a very large list of blocked words, having zero tolerance for hate speech,
making sure I start each video with a comment that might generate an interesting conversation,
and carving out time every few days to respond to comments.
If you ignore your comment section, I guarantee it will de-evolve into a dark abyss of inhumanity.
Number 8: Collaborate with creators.
The fastest way I’ve grown is by working with other YouTubers.
Everyone I’ve worked with has taught me something new.
The Seeker team taught me how to write tighter scripts, Quincy Ledbetter showed me how a
simply story can have broad appeal, RACHEL STAR LIVE encouraged me to tackle topics I
had never considered before.
My biggest spike in subscribers have also come from working with channels who share
similar audiences, like Neuro Transmissions, BrainCraft, and Draw Curiosity.
Watching someone you trust say “yeah, if you like my stuff you’re probably going
to like their stuff” is pretty powerful.
Speaking of which, please subscribe to Neuro Transmissions, BrainCraft, and Draw Curiosity.
If you like my stuff you’ll probably like their stuff.
Number 9: Think Globally.
People watch YouTube all over the world.
Only 44% of my audience are in my home country of the United States.
The rest are all over the world with India, the Philippines, and Germany contributing
the most to my non-English speaking audience demographics.
This means I need to think about content that has international appeal and make my videos
accessible to diverse audiences.
That’s why I include captions and avoid cultural expressions that are difficult to
translate.
Number 10: Value is better than gimmicks.
I used to worry a lot about production value - having cool props, perfect lighting, cool
special effects.
But none of that stuff has mattered much.
When I made this video about Han Solo and positive psychology, I bought a green screen,
had my friend and I dress up in character, and created a Star Wars inspired intro.
But no one seems to care about this video at all.
No one has ever commented on it and few people have seen it since it was released.
What’s more important than production value is giving people something that’s valuable.
Useful information, a new perspective on something they care about, a little piece of entertainment,
that kind of stuff.
This video was filmed on an iPhone, this video has bad audio, this one has poor video quality,
but that doesn’t matter much because they give the viewer something worth their time
and attention.
If you consistently add value to someone’s life, they’ll keep coming back for more.
Focus on that, not the gimmicky stunts, just give away something valuable and things will
work themselves out.
Be sure to checkout the description below for a lot more information on the tips I’ve
shared here and while you’re there, share your YouTube tips in the comments below.