- I'm gonna tell you the most important things
to focus on right now,
so you can get your channel growing rapidly
over the next three to six months,
and we're starting right now.
(upbeat music)
What is going on?
My name is Nick, welcome to another video.
If this is your first time here,
and you wanna learn more on how to grow your channel,
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so you don't miss anything.
Okay, if you don't wanna waste the next 12 months,
making content thats not getting you anywhere,
make sure you pay really close attention,
to what I'm getting ready to tell you in this video.
Because here's the thing,
YouTube is getting more competitive,
and if you wanna get more views,
and more subscribers,
and all of the stuff that comes with it,
you wanna make sure that you listen
to what I'm telling you in this video.
And look, I'm not saying that as a trick
to get you to watch longer.
I'm saying that because it's important that you hear
the information, that I'm getting ready to share with you.
And that's because this information,
if you're doing it correctly or not,
is going to determine how you grow into the future.
We're gonna start with click through rate,
and I'm not getting ready to say,
what you think that I'm getting ready to say.
Through all the comments that I'm getting,
and all of the feedback that I get,
on all the different social media platforms,
about what people think click through rate is, it's wrong.
So first is, you don't even know what click through rate is.
Your click through rate,
is your ability to convert the viewer,
or basically get the viewer to click on your video
when YouTube shows it to somebody,
anywhere on the platform.
And that act of YouTube
actually showing your thumbnail to somebody,
that's called an impression.
Your click through rate,
and the amount of impressions
that you're getting from YouTube,
can literally make or break your YouTube channel.
So it's important to make sure you get
familiar with these words,
and it's also important that you know what to look for,
so that you can know if you're doing a good or a bad job.
Which will let you know if you need to improve
in these areas.
I'm gonna show you how to do that now.
YouTube says, that the average click through rate
on the platform is between 2 and 10%.
So you want to at least fall within that.
But what you wanna do,
is you wanna look in your traffic sources,
and track what works, and doesn't,
in the different sources that your trying to target.
For example, if your targeting suggested,
find all of you videos
that are getting suggested traffic,
and see how they compare against the ones that are not,
in terms of click through rate, and average view duration,
total watch time, and so on, from suggested views.
If your targeting browse traffic,
the same exact thing applies.
You want to look at your traffic sources,
and you wanna see what your click through rate is is browse,
compared to the impression that you're getting
on all of those videos that are doing really well,
compared to the ones that are not.
But just like if you were targeting suggested traffic,
we talked about a second ago,
you also wanna look at the total percentage viewed,
total watch time that your getting, and so on.
Now, when it does comes to your browse features, you also,
when you looking at that traffic,
you also wanna actually click on that.
And when you click on that,
you wanna to make sure
that you are looking at the homepage traffic,
and not just the subscriber traffic.
So, if you're just looking at subscribers,
then it might skew that number just a little bit.
So you wanna make sure that you're really getting
an understanding,
of how this things performing on the home page.
Now depending on the type on content you make,
you might also just be primarily targeting search traffic.
If that's the case then what you wanna do,
is you want to make sure that you're comparing
your videos that typically do well for search results.
You wanna compare the click through rate,
that you're getting on those,
versus the impression that you're getting,
against the ones that don't seem to rank as well.
And the really cool thing,
is that once you get this information, you start noticing,
hey, when I do this particular thing in my thumbnails,
when I add text, or when I don't add text to my thumbnails,
they seem to perform better in search.
Or in browse, or in suggested,
based on what it is you're trying to accomplish
with your channel.
Now one thing that we have to keep
in mind as content creators,
is that the click through number by itself,
doesn't mean that much
if you're not getting a lot of impressions.
You always have to factor in,
how much is YouTube showing my video
to people on the platform.
For example, if you're getting 100 impressions,
and you have a high click through rate,
doesn't really mean a lot,
if you are getting 100 impressions,
and you are getting a very low click through rate,
well you've got some work to do.
On the other side of that,
if you're getting tens of thousands of impressions,
or your getting millions of impressions on your videos,
but that you're still able to maintain
a high click through rate,
then you're doing awesome.
But it's really important that you keep this in mind.
Typically the more impressions
that you're getting on a video,
the more difficult it is to maintain
a high click through rate.
Because, that basically means that YouTube
is trying to show it to a bunch of people,
and that those people that they're trying to show it to,
at first, they're like the perfect people,
that should be watching it.
But as time goes on,
and they try to show it to more and more people,
then those people start being less qualified
to view that video.
Which then can drive down the click through rate,
your average view duration,
and all of that,
of videos that are getting tons of impressions.
Okay, so now let's put this into some actionable
stuff for you.
Let's say that you went through your videos,
and you figured out that,
hey, all of these videos here,
have a high click through rate in the browse features,
based on the impressions that I normally get on my videos.
And in suggested, and search,
you can do the same exact thing, where you say,
these thumbnails perform best
in these particular areas of YouTube.
And of corse,
if you can have your thumbnails performing well
in all of those then that's a huge win.
But ultimately, what you're trying to do,
is you're trying to recognize patters.
So what I recommend that you do in this situation,
is that once you identify those videos,
or those thumbnails that are performing at the higher rates,
or they're just performing great for you,
is start looking for patterns.
And here's what I mean.
Pay really close attention
to what color those thumbnails are.
Pay close attention to the words that you've used,
or didn't use in the thumbnail.
Pay really close attention to how you focused
on the imagery, or other elements of the thumbnail.
Did you have a face in it?
Did you not have a face in it?
And what you'll find through doing this,
is you'll find that over time,
people typically respond to these types of things
on your channel, versus these types of things.
Another thing you wanna make sure that you keep in mind,
when your putting all this stuff together,
is you wanna think about, okay well,
this video that performed well,
or this this thumbnail that performed well,
is it also because of the title?
Right, you gotta start looking for patterns in your title.
You also wanna consider things like, is this seasonal?
Is it performing well just because it's the season
for that type of thing.
Or is it, this particular video performing well,
just because I happened to hop on a trend,
and the interest for that topic was higher,
at that particular point,
that I put out that video, for example.
Or, is it something that you think that you can replicate?
Now I'm gonna make more videos about this in the future,
where we're gonna go a little bit deeper down that road.
But for now let's stay focused.
Other things that you wanna look for
in your high performing thumbnails,
and you low performing thumbnails,
'cause you wanna look at those too, right?
You wanna look for patterns there as well.
But you wanna look for things like dominate colors.
Is it zoomed in more, is it zoomed out more?
Is there clutter, right?
is there like a lot of stuff happening on your thumbnail?
Is it really basic,
to where there's like super laser focus,
on a specific thing that you're trying
to bring attention to?
You also wanna consider things like the title of this video,
or what's happening in the thumbnail?.
Is it framed in a negative way?
Is it framed in a positive way?
Are there certain words in the title or thumbnail,
that just happen to be triggering people to click?
And if that is the case, then you know,
hey I need to start using these things when
I'm putting out new content,
because that is what the people
that YouTube is showing my content to,
that's what they're responding to.
Once you notice things,
and you start to come up with theories,
on why it is that you think people respond to things,
then next thing to do is the test.
Which I'm gonna show you how to do here in just a minute.
But the big idea here on the click through rate,
is you wanna start looking for patterns.
You wanna start looking for those proven,
things that people are proven to respond to,
over and over again, on your channel.
And here's the really fun thing that you'll notice.
Especially if you have multiple channels.
Is you're going to notice that
one thing that works on your channel,
doesn't always work on another channel.
Or one thing that works on that other channel,
doesn't always work on your channel.
So it's really important that you test this
on your specific channel.
So that you can find out what works,
specifically for you and your audience.
So we're gonna get into the next
game changing topic right here, in just a second.
But before we do that,
let's talk about how you can actually test this stuff,
once you do come up with your theories.
One way is to use the thumbnail
testing feature in Tubebuddy.
I'll put a link to them down in the description.
Their tool lets you isolate the data to the thumbnail,
and run tests to see which thumbnail works the best,
regardless of what your title or topic is.
When You're testing different things with your thumbnails,
you can use the grouping feature in Creator Studio,
in order to group together different thumbnail styles,
or topic groups.
So that you can know how your experiments turned out,
when averaged against each other.
When you compare them in groups,
that's also going to let you know,
which ones led to more watch time, and more engagement,
and all of that other stuff as well.
Now let's move on to the next game changing thing.
And I'm gonna show you how to actually look at it,
so that you know if yours is good or bad,
or what's working, or what's not.
So we got the thumbnails and titles figured out.
We went through that last part,
where you went, and you were able to figure out
what people respond to the most,
when it's actually presented to them on YouTube,
so they click on it, what happens next.
They get to watch you actual video content.
As content creators,
the people that are actually making the content,
we're always biased towards our own content.
And because of that,
YouTube actually gives us information
that lets us know how people ar responding to our content.
And I don't mean people like your mom, or your brother,
or you sister, or like some buddies of yours,
I'm talking about if you're getting
a thousand views on your video,
your gonna get it an idea of how a thousand people
responded to your content.
And when it comes to YouTube,
how long people watch your videos for,
is a really important part of YouTube,
and how your video perform.
YouTube gives us something called
an audience retention report.
The audience retention report shows us a second to second
display of how people respond to our content.
Things that you wanna look for here,
is you wanna look for total watch time
that you're getting per viewer, on average.
And you also wanna look at the percentage view.
The percentage view, that's like a quality indicator.
If you can people to watch 60, 70% of your video,
a lot of people, to watch 60, 70% of your video,
then you're really good at putting out quality content,
and the percentage viewed shows that.
When it comes to the total watch time
that you're calculating per viewer,
on average, that's also important.
Because one of the things that YouTube is trying to get,
is they're trying to get as much watch time
per impression as possible on a video.
And what that means,
is when YouTube shows your video to somebody,
if they click on it,
and they watch for a longer period of time,
then they have that impression, right,
they showed it to somebody.
And then that person clicked,
and then how long did they watch the video?
So what they're trying to do,
is they're trying to accumulate as much watch time,
for every time they show it to somebody as possible.
So ultimately, what you're trying to do,
is you're trying to get people to click, right?
Through your click through rate,
you're trying to get people to click as much as possible,
and then watch as much as possible.
But let's get back on track, in you audience retention,
you wanna pay really close attention
to the first part of your video.
Because if you can grab a viewer's attention,
and hold them at the beginning,
they're more likely to watch a lot more of the video.
If you see a graph like this,
it means people are not interested,
and you've got a lot of work to do,
on that beginning part of the video.
If you do see a graph that looks like that,
what I recommend,
is that you spend a lot of time working on your hook.
Or basically, the thing that grabs people's attention
when they first come in to the video.
If you see a graph that looks like this,
it means that people are skipping
to different parts in your video.
On the channel that you're watching right now,
one thing that I noticed, when I was looking at this,
was that I noticed that on my list videos,
when I would have graphic on the screen
showing each individual thing that I was talking about,
people would just skip from thing, to thing, to thing.
Which is great for the user experience.
It's great for you when you're watching.
But, for the sake of, you know,
keeping that watch time relatively steady,
I said okay, let me see what happens,
if I actually take the graphical representation out.
And then they have to actually watch the video,
and that's exactly what happened.
Those dips went away.
I hope you understand,
I'm also trying to get as much watch time per impression.
If you see something like this in a graph,
it means that people got what they expected,
and they left the video.
Which is fine, but consider that type of information,
when you're trying to decide how long your videos should be.
If you're using end screens in your videos,
you'll notice a drop off like this,
when people start clicking off at the end.
But what you wanna pay really close attention to,
is what happens before your end screen pops up.
For example, you see drop like
this before your end screen pops up,
you probably said something like,
"and that's how you",
or, "I hope you guys liked this video about",
or, " that's why I think X, Y, Z".
As content creators we want to avoid
phrases like at all costs.
Here's why, let's say for easy math,
that you have 1,000 views on your video.
Of course, you can multiply that by as many as you like,
based on how many views you typically get.
If you lose 60% of your viewers
by the time you get to that point,
you're already down to 400 people.
Then you give your viewers a clue
that the video is finished,
before you even get them to your end screens.
Which means they don't have an option of one of your videos,
to click on right there in front of them.
So before you even have the opportunity
to recommend more of your content,
to the people that are watching your videos,
and that are already interested in it,
if you lose another, let's go small,
and say 5% of your viewers
from telling them that the video is over,
now you're done to 350 people
that are gonna make it to your end screen.
And I know what you're thinking,
Nick, it's only 50 people, not a big deal.
You're right but that's only one video,
and that's only 1000 views on that video.
You see it's really important
that we think of the stuff at scale,
not at just one video at a time.
But that we think of it as scale
across our entire content library.
If you multiple that across your next 50 videos,
and that's assuming that your only getting
1000 views per video,
if you multiple that acris the next 50 videos,
you're losing 25,000 people.
And that's 25,000 opportunities to send people
into more of your content.
If your average views on your videos are 5000,
then saying those things at the end of your video,
can cost you 87,500 opportunities,
over the course of the next 50 videos.
Do you see how this can add up in a massive way?
Especially if your channel starts growing,
and you start getting lots and lots more views.
I'm sure you get the idea.
Here's what you need to do to ensure
that you give yourself an advantage, over the next year.
I'm gonna be adding tons of value,
in a lot of different ways to content creators, you,
over the next 12 months.
To make sure that you have an awesome year on YouTube,
subscribe to my channel,
and watch the videos when they're shown
to you on the homepage.
I'll see ya in the next one. Thanks for watching.