- I'm gonna tell you five things that you need to focus on
as a YouTuber, to grow your channel,
and we're starting right now.
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Okay so I'm gonna tell you these in the order of importance,
because content creators reaching out to me all the time,
are like, hey what should I focus on,
I'm just getting started,
what are the things I need to focus on?
So I'm gonna tell you these in the order of importance.
And, I'm also going to tell you why each item
is important to the growth of your YouTube channel,
starting with your thumbnails and titles.
The reason that your thumbnails and titles
are in that number one spot,
is because your thumbnails and titles
are the very first point of contact with new viewers,
and with returning viewers, and because of that,
when your thumbnails and titles are presented to them,
if they don't click on 'em, and come to watch your video,
nothing else can happen.
I mean you can have the best video in the world,
the best video that anybody has ever made
in the entire history of the planet,
but if nobody is clicking on it to watch it,
nobody is ever going to know.
So because of that your thumbnails and your titles
are extremely important, because if you wanna get views,
if you wanna get subscribers, if you wanna have influence,
and all that other stuff that comes with being a YouTuber,
you got to be able to get people to click.
Next on the list is your audience retention.
Now the reason that your audience retention is important,
and in that number two spot,
is because if you get somebody to click on your video,
and then once they come in,
and they start watching your video,
you have a graph that looks something like this
in your audience retention reports,
and people are leaving in mass, then basically,
that shows YouTube that,
hey, people are not into this content,
maybe it was clickbait, maybe the title was misleading,
or the thumbnail was misleading in some way,
which causes YouTube stop showing that video to people.
So what you wanna do is instead of you
just thinking, hey I'm making awesome content,
or your friends saying, hey, you're making awesome content,
you wanna see how people are responding to it and mass,
and in order to do that,
YouTube gives us an awesome statistic,
called the audience retention report,
and with the audience retention report,
it will give you a second-by-second indication
of how people are responding to your videos.
Inside of this report, you can even adjust the settings
to relative audience retention,
which will even show you how your videos compare against
other videos on the platform of similar length,
which is a great way to get a gauge,
to see how your content compares
to other content on the platform.
Now, another thing that I wanna mention here
is that it's really,
easy especially if you're just getting started,
or even if you've had a channel for a while,
to fall into habits of doing things
that you see other content creators doing,
for example, you know,
how I do my introduction at the beginning of my video,
and I ask people to subscribe
at the beginning, and things like that,
in some of my content,
that's extremely effective if you do it correctly,
however, if you don't do it correctly,
it can actually work against you.
So what I recommend in this situation,
is learn how to get people watching your content
for a longer period of time before,
you start adding all of the YouTubey stuff.
And what I mean by the YouTubey stuff,
is a lot of people, when their videos open up,
they're like, hey, welcome to another video,
comment, subscribe, share it with a friend, buy my stuff,
whatever it happens to be.
But you're trying to get people to do all of this stuff,
before they even get a chance to watch your content.
Now again, you can do this in a way
that's extremely effective, but you need to master the art,
or at least get really good at the art of keeping people
watching your videos for a longer period of time,
before you start experimenting with that sort of thing.
Because at the end of the day,
how long people watch your content,
is a really good indicator to YouTube
of the quality of the content that you're putting out there.
And I don't mean video quality,
I mean actual user experience, people that are coming in,
they're watching your videos,
do they deem it as quality or not?
Regardless of the type of camera
that you make your video on,
do the viewers watch that content,
do they enjoy that content?
If your audience retention reports tell you that,
yes indeed, people do watch your videos
for a longer period of time,
and you can get people to click on your thumbnails,
and your titles at a decent rate,
those two things together will almost guarantee
your success on YouTube.
The next thing on the list that's extremely important
for you to learn how to do is YouTuber,
is to get people to watch more
than one of your videos at a time.
When people are watching more than one video at a time,
this is another thing that indicates quality
on your channel.
So, if you have a video, and people are watching that video,
and they watch it to the end let's say,
and then they click on your end-screen,
and then they go and watch another one of your videos,
and they click on another end-screen,
and watch another one, then basically what you're doing,
is you're taking that one viewer,
and you're multiplying their view
by three in that situation,
you're multiplying their engagement, possibly by three,
but overall what you're doing,
is you're accumulating a lot of watch time
from that one viewer, on your channel,
and on each individual video.
And watch time is really important on YouTube,
and if you're not familiar with what watch time means,
it's basically the amount of time
people spend watching your content.
Really easy ways to get people
to watch more of your content,
is one, to make awesome content.
Two, to make it easy for them to actually find
the additional content to watch,
and you do that by making sure that you're using
your end screens on your videos,
recommending that they watch other videos
in your end screens, using pinned comments,
or recommending other videos in your comment section.
You only wanna do that with one comment,
you don't wanna spam your comment section,
you just wanna do with one comment,
and make sure that you pin that comment
to the top of your comment section.
But the idea is to get people to watch more,
and another really powerful thing with this,
is if you get really good at suggesting content for people
to watch next to the video that they're currently watching,
you're also starting to create a relationship of sorts,
between the videos that people are watching,
which then increases YouTube's chances of suggesting
that content that people typically watch next,
next to the video that they're currently watching,
which can help you get more views naturally as well.
Next on the list is getting people to engage more
with your content, so what I mean by that
is getting people to comment on your videos more,
getting people to like your videos more,
getting people to share your content more,
add it to playlists and things like that,
and the reason this is important,
is just because it shows that people are active,
and what it is that you're doing,
people care enough to go down to your comments section
and leave a comment,
people care enough to give the video a thumbs up.
As a matter of fact,
if you are enjoying this video right now,
if you've gotten any value out of this at all,
make sure you give this video a thumbs up.
Now, as a little side tip for you,
an easy way that you could get people to engage more
with what it is that you're doing,
is by simply asking people to engage,
and instead of saying hey leave a comment,
or hey, like this video, or hey, share this video,
give people a reason why, and just make it easy for people.
For example, when you're asking
your viewers to leave comments,
instead of just saying leave a comment,
ask a question that they can easily answer
in the comments section,
that way you take that difficult part
of coming up with something to say, out of the equation.
Same exact thing with people sharing your content,
or giving your video a thumbs up,
the same exact idea applies,
give people or reason to where they can use that thumbs up
as just a response to something that you're saying,
instead of just saying hey leave a like.
Next on the list,
is finding other content creators to collaborate with.
Now that's as direct video to video collaborations,
or just as a support system, a support group,
other people that you can talk to,
that are also content creators
that are doing similar things that you're doing,
so that you can create friends in the space.
And this is really important, and often underestimated,
because as a content creator,
you get stuck kinda doing your own thing,
and being in your own universe, so to speak, making content,
but when you have other people that you can reach out to,
and talk stats with,
and talk about things that you're working on
with your new videos coming up, and things like that,
it can make the process of being a content creator
a lot easier, and a lot more pleasant.
And, just downright fun,
if you can find some cool content creators to hang out with,
or just talk to on a regular basis.
Again, remember to check out Placeit.
I have a link in the description
that'll save you 15% on your accounts.
And to learn even more about growing your YouTube channel,
click into this playlist right here,
I've got a bunch of videos in there
that are gonna help you do it.
Thank you so much for watching, I'll see you next time.