Watch time is the most important metric on YouTube today. So if you're a small creator
and you're trying to get to 4,000 hours of watch time or if you're just trying to build
more authority in the algorithm, you need to know these seven tips for creating a binge-able
YouTube channel and increasing your watch time like crazy as well as your channel growth.
Give this video a like. You know what to do with that like button, thumbs up and we'll
get started. Tip number one is find key themes on your
channel. So if you look at my channel, you'll notice that there's some very key themes that
seem to do really, really well. And there's also ones that don't seem to perform that
well at all. So how do you actually back this with data and know what's really working on
your channel and where you can double down to create more content like that and increase
your authority and the algorithm even further and create more watch time? Well, I'm going
to dive into that in just a second. If I do a video on Instagram, if you have a keyword
you're already dominating, which for me Instagram seems to have been that for the last awhile.
And also, of course, YouTube and YouTube marketing and YouTube strategy and all those kind of
things. I've always done really well with those topics. So I know that I'm already weighted
heavily in the algorithm for those topics. So really quick thing you can do on your own
channel is see which videos will perform best for you. And you simply just need to figure
out your most popular videos and go into your analytics, which I just did a whole video
last week on your YouTube analytics and the metrics you need to be paying attention to.
So we'll link to that below and you can go check it out. You can do that on your own
channel and figure out where you can actually double down. So this is really quickly how
you find those key themes. Quick little tutorial on how to do this. So,
you want to go into your analytics on your channel. How you get there is click on your
avatar on the top right and it should say YouTube Studio Beta. I'm already in here.
So, I'm going to click on Analytics on the left-hand side in YouTube Studio Beta. You're
going to scroll down to where it says Top videos and you're going to go click on See
More. And what this is going to do is it's going to help you identify the key themes
on your channel of videos and content that performs super well for you so you can group
it as well as capitalize on it. And so, you can figure out which videos have the most
watch time, the most views, etc. Because if people are attracted to your channel
because of this content, they're going to be attracted to similar content in the future.
So, these videos are getting the most watch time and you can tell on the right-hand side
here, these are the videos and the key themes on your channel that are driving the most
watch time and the most time on the platform for your viewers, which is going to give you
more authority in the algorithm. And when you capitalize on one piece of content,
that gives you a lot of authority in the algorithm because you're getting watch time, you're
getting subscribers, you're getting engagement, you're getting a high CTR. That means that
if you make more content like it in the future, it's going to benefit your channel. So I can
see that Instagram is a really hot topic on my channel. It all stemmed from this video
kind of blowing up and going viral. And so I was like, "Okay, well, this video has accumulated
the most watch time recently on my channel, so I should make more videos in Instagram."
Which is why you've seen more videos on Instagram. Also, I know that YouTube is obviously a key
theme but again, Instagram, Instagram. So Instagram videos are racking up the three
out of the four top-performing videos on my channel when it comes to watch time. So I'm
making more and more videos on it because I know that it's only going to contribute
to more watch time, which is only going to give me more authority inside the algorithm
on YouTube. But you can see content creation strategy,
YouTube topic, personal branding, and then there's another content creation strategy
video down here. So again, my key themes are pretty simple. It's personal branding, content
creation, YouTube video, and YouTube topics and marketing as well as Instagram. So, when
I pay attention to those and I see which ones are driving the most watch time, I double
down on them, create more content like it. Then you could add them to playlists, which
only escalates your watch time and you can continue to dominate in that category.
Now here's the thing, what do you do when you actually have those key themes? It's the
three R's. That's what I like to refer to it as. So once you have key themes in your
channel and you can see what kind of content works best, you want to double down, meaning
you want to create more content just like that. What I like to say is you want to create...
Well, you want to recreate, related, or revolutionary. That's what the three R's stand for.
When I say recreate, I have a lot of videos on how to get more views on YouTube but there's
always updates and things that I can add to them. So, I'll do an updated version of that
video. That's recreating. Related means, let's say I have a video on
Instagram and I do on how to double my Instagram growth. That really took off. So I thought,
okay, well I need to make more Instagram topics. I started looking at other topics related
to that that I can create, i.e. Instagram stories or how I post to Instagram. And what
do you know? Those videos took off as well because I had that weight inside of the algorithm.
And the final piece of this is revolutionary. So revolutionary means that you're creating
a brand new video on this topic. For me, you've seen me do videos on YouTube analytics and
how to create a YouTube channel and how to get more views on YouTube, which all kind
of talk about YouTube watch time. But this video specifically is more of a revolutionary
piece of content because it's brand new. Also, another video that's a good example of that
is how I post to Instagram. I knew that I had weight in the Instagram category on YouTube
and had built authority but I had never done a video on that particular topic. And truthfully,
I haven't seen a lot of other people do video on that particular topic either. So I went
with the revolutionary route to create like-minded content that I knew I could dominate with.
Follow those three R's to double down on content that's currently working on your channel to
fast-track your growth and to increase your channel watch time. Because people will go
from one video to the next, to the next, to the next, if they're all under one category.
And if you're a new channel and you're trying to figure out how to do this and you don't
quite have all that data to look at, here's the thing to do. If you're in a specific space
or a specific niche, you want to focus on breaking your niche or your category down
into tactics and get super, super tactical. So I wanted to show you a really good example
of how to do this. If you're a new channel, this is a really
great little trick and you find a niche that you're dominating in. I always say niche down,
blow up because truthfully it's the best way to start releasing momentum. And one of our
clients, Nate, who is known as CMA Coach on YouTube, he is starting to really catapult
his growth on his channel. But he's in a really small niche. He talks about how to pass the
CMA exam. So we want to do, if that's the case and you know that you're owning one specific
area on YouTube in the algorithm, you just want to double down there. So how do you do
that? You just start breaking it into tactics. So you can see Best Study Technique, CMA Study
Material, CMA Exam Prep Course, How To Become A CMA, What You Must Know About Becoming A
Certified Management Accountant, Grading System, and How To Pass The CMA Exam On Your First
Try. He is going so micro with his content but that's exactly what you want to do when
you know you want to own one niche. Because the whole goal here is if someone is looking
at anything to do with CMA, Nate's going to show up everywhere because he's owning that
category and he's owning all these keywords in all these different areas. That's what
you want to do, that's how you fast-track your authority and also build increase watch
time on your channel. Because people are going to go from one video to the next to the next
to the next because they're all related. Tip number two is create series-based content.
I like to refer to this as the spider web strategy because it basically creates this
web on the web of all of your content. And it takes someone from one video to watching
the next to watching the next. Ultimately, they end up in a rabbit hole of watching your
content, which exponentially increases your watch time. So the spiderweb strategy basically
means that you're creating content that all relates to one another or fits under the same
category as I just mentioned. So here's how to do it.
Putting your videos into groups and playlists is an amazing way to build watch time on your
channel. Because like I said, because all of the content is related, people just start
bingeing it. It becomes binge-able content on YouTube. So you can see that I've created
a playlist on my channel called Instagram Growth Hacks. I know this is a key theme that
I dominate in, so I have all of my Instagram growth hacks and all my Instagram videos in
this playlist. The other little secret here is that you can
also add in other videos that are high-performing in this category from other channels. So I
have all of mine in here because I obviously want to keep people on my channel and I want
them to binge-watch my content that's related to Instagram. But if I want to really mete
out this playlist and beef out this playlist and have people on the platform in general,
which is another way to increase watch time, is just keeping people on the platform, add
really great videos on the same topic from other channels.
So we have Sheldon here, we have a bunch of my other videos and we're also going to add
in some other ones from other people as we go. Because I know that these videos are high-performing
when it comes to Instagram tips. And again, we're just keeping people on the platform.
So that's another little secret. You can create playlists, which is really, really important,
of your grouped categories and your grouped content. So you get people just bingeing your
content. And the best thing to do here is if you know that if you have a top-performing
content category, for me, one of them is Instagram, another one is YouTube, we have them as sections
on my homepage. So as soon as someone lands on my homepage, they're going to see, "Oh
wow, this is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm going to watch this whole thing right
now." So again, just increasing your watch time with every single touchpoint that your
viewers have on your channel. And the other really cool thing is that you
actually can rank playlists. So instead of just ranking an individual video, say someone's
looking up Instagram growth hacks for 2019, there's a bunch of individual videos that
you can see here. But you can also see that my whole playlist with all those videos is
ranking. And that means that if someone clicks on this over, let's say an individual video,
they're going to stay on my channel for a really long time and increase my channel watch
time by a ton. So, all great reasons to set up playlists, add them as sections on your
channel, all leading to increased watch time. Tip number three is add your links in the
description. This is one of the easiest things that you can do on YouTube to increase your
watch time and create a binge-able channel. This is how.
This is probably one of the easiest tactics to create binge-able content on your channel.
It's just simply giving people the links. All you need to do is if you scroll down,
you'll see the links in the description that drive to a bunch of other videos on my channel.
So you can see that we have content creation hacks, how I post to Instagram. Again, having
these in here is keeping people on YouTube and increasing the watch time on your channel.
And the other thing is I also added all my playlists as well because that again is going
to get people bingeing my content. Now, the other thing that you can do here,
which is a really great little trick is you can pin comments. And I always say pin the
comment that is going to get the most engagement. You always want to do that first. But once
the video has been out for a little while, a really cool thing to do here to create binge-able
content on YouTube is pin a comment that includes a link to a playlist that's relevant to this
video. So this video is all about content creation
facts. I talk a lot about YouTube content creation in it. So you want to grow your YouTube
channel at warp speed, check out these top tips. I'm sending people to a full playlist
that's going to, again, keep people on my channel, on the platform for a super long
time, increasing my watch time. The fourth tip is using cards. I'm going to
show you exactly how to do this and also how you can move cards to the perfect spot in
your video where you know you have peak audience. So most of that audience that is watching
that video will go to the next video that you want to send them to, creating that spiderweb
effect and binge-able content on your YouTube channel.
For the card placement, this is something that is really beneficial in creating binge-able
content. Because you can actually see when people are most engaged in your video and
place your cards accordingly. So, basically what you're going to do... And I have a video
also on how to create cards on YouTube that you can check out. It'll be in the description
below. See what I did there. Spiderweb strategy. Basically, you can go into your analytics
and it will show you their attention, which I talked about in a recent video when we dove
into analytics and why they're so important and which ones you need to know in order to
grow your channel faster. So if I go into this video here in the analytics, you're going
to scroll down to Audience retention. And you're going to click here and it's going
to show us the retention graph. So, you basically will scroll down and you'll see, okay, where
are people dropping off? When are people the most engaged? And that's where you should
be putting at least one of your cards to drive to another playlist or another video on your
channel because you have a big audience on that video at that time.
So, you can move your cards once you have this information, you can move your cards
accordingly. So you can just move them forward or backwards depending on when people are
actually dropping off. This is a great way to make sure that you actually have eyeballs
on your cards. So you're getting people to click and watch another video, go to another
playlist, and again, create that binge effect by getting people to go from one video to
the next and spider webbing your whole content strategy.
Tip number five is your call to action or your CTA. You hear me talk about this a lot
because you kind of want to alternate where you're sending people. Because on YouTube,
it is really important that you keep people on the platform. That's what the platform
is built for. So of course, they want you sending people from one video to the next.
But if you also have a business and you also want to build your own audience, which I am
a huge advocate for and it's how I built my business and how the Sunny system works, we
send people from YouTube to our email list, to other social platforms, to our conversion
sites, wherever it might be. Basically, the strategy is to alternate. So
if you can send people to a video, send people to a video. But then in the next video that
you create, send people to a freebie, a guide, an ebook, a webinar, to your email list, to
your e-store, wherever you can send them to so that you're also getting people to become
a customer of yours and a lifelong community member and not just of your own subscriber
on YouTube. It means you're diversifying your platforms, you're building your own audience
and you're getting the benefit of having an audience off of YouTube as well as having
increased watch time on the platform. Another thing you can try to do is have two
calls to action. So you can say in the middle of the video, "Oh, I'm talking about watch
time, so you better go watch my YouTube analytics video, which I just shot recently. Check that
out in the description below", sending people to another video. Then at the end of the video,
I'll give you a different call to action. Tip number six is evergreen content. And what
I mean by this is it's so much more beneficial to create evergreen content, meaning you're
creating content that can work for you for years to come. So, this video is not timely.
It's not based on a trend, it's not based on a topic that's going to fade or go away.
It's based on a topic that is going to be searched for a very long time and people are
going to need to know for a very long time. But if you're just relying on trends and viral
videos, you're not going to increase your channel watch time super quickly. So, what
you want to do is focus on evergreen content, content that is going to be searched for years
to come, i. e. I have a video on how to get more views on YouTube. It's still currently
ranking. It has almost a million views on it and it's racking up views every single
day but it's four years old. So you ideally want to create content that's
going to live on forever and need to be watched forever so that you're constantly creating
increased watch time on your channel without having to do more work or even create necessarily
more content. There is a sneaky end screen tip coming up shortly. That's the final part
of this process to increasing your watch time on your channel. But before we get there,
if you enjoyed this video and it was helpful for you, make sure you hit that thumbs up
and also make sure that you subscribe for new videos every single Tuesday and Friday.
Also, you know what to do by this point. Give this a screenshot right now.
I always do the same pose and share it out on Instagram or Instagram Stories. Tag me
and let me know what your biggest takeaway was from this video. And also big thank you
to our comment of the week. Thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for taking
the time to comment. I read them all and you seriously helped me in creating some awesome
content on my YouTube channel because I know exactly what you're looking for because you
tell me, so thank you and keep them coming. All right, last tip here. Make sure that when
you do your end screens on your videos, you keep talking because the moment that the end
screen pops up, people know that it's over. The video is over. So what I like to do is
what I'm doing right now, which is I continue talking and providing value as the end screen
pops up. I have 20 seconds to get through it before the video wraps up and then we're
good to go. So, I'm going to show you how to create end screens in the next video. I'll
see you then.