- If you, as a creator,
are trying to do nothing but go viral,
make long, boring intros,
focusing solely on search-based content,
and trying to beat some mythical algorithm in 2023
I'm afraid you're doing YouTube all wrong.
So today we're going to go over
all of the outdated YouTube tips and tricks
that you don't need to waste your energy on.
And we're going to start with a relatively new one,
separating your YouTube longs and your YouTube shorts.
Ever since YouTube shorts became a thing
creators have been asking,
"Should I start a second channel dedicated to shorts?"
Creators have worried that mixing shorts
and longs would damage their channel
and YouTube even admitted TV problems with shorts.
So much so that they disconnected the relationship
between shorts and longs over the summer.
But YouTube recently reversed that decision
and they have now once again bridged shorts
and longs together.
So much so they can work on the same channel.
Over the last few months,
we have posted 20 to 30 shorts on our main channel
and they have not had a detrimental impact
on our long form content.
In fact, those videos are performing as well as ever.
Admittedly, we haven't had a great success
with our YouTube shorts yet,
but we're safe in the knowledge that we can test this
on our main channel.
As well as this, the new layout changes
introduced by YouTube
now mean that videos, shorts, and live streams
all have their own dedicated tabs on the channel
making things nice and clean and easy to navigate for users.
YouTube shorts aren't going anywhere.
Monetization is coming to that part of the platform
in February, and it is one of the fastest ways
to grow your channel.
I'm afraid you can't ignore them anymore.
If you think that you can make shorts
that will appeal to and satisfy the same target audience
as your long form videos, I think it's time to experiment.
But what you don't need to experiment with
are YouTube intros.
Now, there is nothing wrong in welcoming a viewer
into the video, but what you don't need to do
is formally introduce yourself, your channel,
what the channel is about and why people should subscribe.
The moment your video starts, it should be delivering
on what was promised in the title and the thumbnail
and we call this the video hook.
According to a study from Microsoft,
people can lose interest in something within eight seconds
and that is probably the mentality
of the average YouTube viewer.
Their time is precious
and you need to honor and respect that.
So in the first eight seconds, don't waste time on you
and your channel, reaffirm the value of a video itself.
Now you can if you want to formally introduce yourself
and you can if you want to ask people to subscribe
but do it after you've engaged with the viewer
and offered something of significant value to them already.
If you look at your audience retention graphs
in the YouTube studio,
you will soon discover that you lose a large chunk
of your audience in the first 30 seconds of every video.
For most creators, that is a big problem that needs fixing
and it starts by getting rid of YouTube intros.
Onto the next one
and we've covered this many times before: video tags.
According to YouTube tags play a minimal role
in video discovery.
In fact, what video tags are most useful for today
are corrections of common misspellings of keywords
or your channel name.
So in 2023, you should be spending less
than 23 seconds on video tags.
Now, I do realize some irony in this statement
because if you have vidIQ installed
and you look at the video scorecard
you will see that we have video tags in this very video.
Now, there's two reasons for that.
First of all, it's habit that we can't get out of
and it literally takes us 23 seconds to put those tags in
by using one of our tools.
In the YouTube studio, simply type in one keyword
and refresh vidIQ's tag suggestions
to give you hundreds of keywords you can add to video tags
with a single click.
Or alternatively, you can search for a video on YouTube
reveal all its video tags, copy them
and paste the ones you want into your video.
You can get all of these tools
through the link in the description
and that took exactly 23 seconds to explain
how long you should be spending on tags.
And video tags naturally leads us into our next topic
which is only making search-based content.
Now, don't get me wrong
search-based traffic can bring in a lot of views,
especially for new creators
who are trying to get discovered.
However, over the long term, YouTube puts the viewer first
and unless the viewer has a specific intent,
a search-based content,
YouTube is based off of recommendations.
In fact, 70% of views on YouTube
are driven through recommendations.
The homepage, browse features, suggested videos.
Now if you're a how to education channel
and you're wondering how you're gonna get views
from browse features as opposed to search,
let me show you something.
The blue line here represents search views
while the green one represents browse views
on the vidIQ channel.
And over the last three years,
the traffic sources have basically flipped.
And the reasons behind this are actually very intentional.
We shifted our strategy,
especially in thumbnails and titles
from an SEO approach to a human emotion approach.
We're not trying to convince an algorithm
to show our videos through keywords.
We're trying to trigger emotional curiosity in humans
to win the click and it's working.
So even though fundamentally
we're all about how to get more views,
how to get more subscribers,
how to get monetized,
go onto the vidIQ channel and look at the recent videos
and you tell me if you see any boring titles like that.
Search based content may get you discovered.
But browse and suggested videos keep viewers coming back.
Now let's talk about the thorny issue of going viral.
Yes, it can bring explosive growth to your channel
and it is an awesome dopamine hit,
but as for it being a reliable and sustainable way
to grow a channel over the long term, uh-uh.
Now this is especially true
if you're going outside of your topic, your niche,
to create viral content.
Yes, you may get many, many views and lots of subscribers,
but how loyal are they going to be?
Are they going to return
to your regular content programming?
And the pressure viral content puts on a creator to repeat
can be unbearable.
Now, we have gone into a lot more detail
about the hidden dangers of going viral
and you can watch that video over here
after you've finished watching this video.
Now obviously in 2023 sub4sub doesn't work
but all the way back in 2018 sub4sub didn't work.
So there's nothing new here.
I'll just tell you what I told you back then.
- Hey, you YouTuber.
- Hey.
- Fancy doing sub4sub?
- Absolutely.
- Great.
(sighing)
♪ Hello darkness, my old friend ♪
- I dunno, what do you think with
(scratching beard)
or without?
So a lot of creators have a problem
and it's something to do with what they want.
They want to know how to beat the YouTube algorithm.
Now, I will admit that we have targeted that desire
in some of our thumbnails and titles,
but it's for good reason.
Because if we can get you inside the video,
we can actually tell you what you need.
And in this instance, you need to know the goal
of the YouTube recommendation system.
Now that goal basically boils down to two principles.
YouTube is trying to find the right video for the viewer
and their personalized interest at the right time
and then to keep that viewer on the platform
through more videos
and ensure they're satisfied by the experience.
And that is why you need to focus
on making videos for your audience and not the algorithm.
Once you start doing that
your videos will become far more discoverable.
And now for a little bit of a motivational push.
You are more valuable than what you think.
The creator economy is growing at an exponential rate
and brands are starting to realize the power
and influence of creators, even small ones.
So you don't have to wait
until you have millions of subscribers
to start landing brand deals, sponsorships, affiliates.
Nano influencers are creators
with less than 10,000 followers on social media.
Micro influencers are creators with
between 10,000 and 50,000 followers on social media.
And what brands are wanting to do more and more
is establish relationships early
with these types of creators.
And the reasons for this is
because these influencers
can create very personal connections with their viewers.
They tend to have higher engagement
and obviously a lower cost to the brand.
And you've already seen case studies on this channel
of creators with less than 1,000 subscribers
earning buckets of cash.
So start to think beyond AdSense sooner than you think.
You've got to turn your channel into a business
to make it sustainable
and turn your passionate hobby into a career.
Now, while these are outdated principles
of YouTube channel growth
there're still plenty of mistakes creators are making,
big ones by small channels
and this is how you fix them.