- How to get noticed on YouTube as a small YouTuber?
I get this question all the time,
Roberto everything feels saturated,
Roberto there's too much competition,
Roberto is it too late to start a YouTube channel?
Here's the thing, you can absolutely get noticed
as a small YouTuber it happens to people all the time.
One of the things that I will tell you is that
when you go to extra mile that's not saturated my friend,
there's almost no competition for going the extra mile.
So we're gonna talk today about how you can figure out,
getting noticed on YouTube as a small YouTuber,
and you're gonna be surprised,
it has very little to do with the YouTube algorithm,
and a lot more to do with understanding
how human beings actually work.
Let's get into the video.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake,
helping you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
So today we're gonna talk about
how to get noticed as a small YouTuber.
I've talked to a lot of content creators
who actually blew up last year,
I have a lot of friends in the small YouTube community
that are doing whatever it takes to get noticed,
and I stumble across videos all the time on this platform
for people with like almost no subscribers,
they're getting massive views,
and sometimes there's a lot that we can learn
from these situations that really gets overlooked.
And it's actually more a matter of common sense
than you might think,
there's not really a trick to hacking the algorithm
as a small YouTuber as much as
you have to really pay attention to what a viewer wants.
People talk about quality, they talk about quantity,
you know what no one talks about?
Value.
value is the filter for attention.
If you want more views on YouTube,
you have to understand what is stopping somebody
from clicking on a video in the first place, okay?
And I'll give you a hint,
it has nothing to do with the fact that
you don't have subscribers.
I don't care how many subscribers someone has,
when I click on a video.
You know who are the only people who really care about that?
13 year olds who are obsessed with YouTube,
they're the only ones who care if you're a big YouTuber.
Oh, wow, how many subs do you have?
Children care about that.
So unless you're catering to you know children
and you wanna be you know, destroyed by kappa
maybe you don't really care about those kind of things.
The majority of people on this platform
that are like over 13 or 15 years old,
what they really care about is,
is this something I really wanna spend my time on?
Is this something that's interesting to me?
Is this relevant to my interest?
I mean, the reality is, no matter how cool
or dope you make a surfing video,
I'm not gonna click on it,
you're not tempting me out into the ocean,
I'm not getting out there with those sharks,
I'm not gonna drown,
you're not gonna get me up on that boogie board,
you're not going to kill me, okay?
I'm not watching a surfing video, I'm out,
It's not happening, okay?
If I'm allergic to strawberries,
I'm not watching a video about strawberry shortcake.
You have to understand
there're filters for people's attention,
they're looking for things that they're familiar with.
The reason that big YouTubers get views
is they're are a household name, okay?
The reason that sometimes it feels like YouTube
is propping up celebrities and the mainstream media is
they're not we're and maybe not if you're someone
who's a hardcore person in the YouTube community
and you only care about YouTubers,
but the average viewer, casual people, normies,
click on things they're familiar with,
and that often is franchises.
So people who make things about
certain video game franchises, Final Fantasy,
people who make videos about Star Wars, Harry Potter,
anything that's relevant in pop culture,
that relevancy is a filter for me clicking on a video
versus clicking on a video from somebody
or something that I'm not familiar with.
Human behavior, we go to the cereal aisle,
do we get the cereal in the bag or do we get Kellogg's?
We get Kellogg's.
I mean, that's how it works.
You do tend to lean toward things you're familiar with.
Now as a small YouTuber you can tap into an harness that.
That's why there're a lot of people who do things
like product reviews, whether it's makeup or tech
or even toy unboxings like transformers and franchises
and things like that, the collectables,
well, they're hitting a sector of people
that are very familiar with that,
they're hitting something where they're niching down,
and so they have a focus.
So expectations are set and delivered,
and as human beings we like that,
we like when people give us exactly what we want.
So what are your takeaways from that?
Well, you're gonna have to stop making random content
to grow as a small YouTuber.
If you want to express yourself, you can have a channel,
or you can have a TikTok or an Instagram
that lets you make whatever you want,
but the channel that you want to grow,
the channel that you want to monetize,
the channel that you want to be successful in YouTube with,
is gonna have to have some kind of focus
so that you can show the viewer
that you're respecting their time,
and that you guys share the same interest
and the same values, okay?
If you don't do that, you're going to confuse people,
and they're also less likely to watch your content
and YouTube is gonna look at that and say, you know what?
We're trying to predict what will keep people
on this platform longer,
and when you're turning off your viewers,
well, YouTube notices that.
So the easiest way to avoid turning off your viewers
is to give them something consistent
from video to video to video.
It's something that because of the way that
I built my channel early on,
and the way that my business works that,
I don't benefit from that advice in my particular situation,
I make up with the way that I monetize my videos
so that I don't have to do that.
But that's also because
I've been on the platform for seven years,
so my way of handling that is a little bit different.
So if you're looking at my channel,
and you're saying Roberto, you don't take your own advice,
there's an asterisk beside that, okay?
But I'm also not a small YouTuber anymore,
so the way that me or maybe even a larger creator
with a million subscribers, the way that we do things,
may not apply to you if you're a small channel
that's still trying to grow,
and nobody knows who you're just yet.
You may not have some of the resources that we have,
you certainly don't have like
the unlimited time to put into this,
you might not have a certain amount of money to put into it,
so the always look at what larger people are doing,
as the example of what to do right now,
because it may not fit the situation
and the limitations that you currently have.
And this is something that I tell people
kinda goes back to sports is you can't look at somebody
who's been an athlete for 10 years,
and think that you can do the same things
when it's your first day on the field or in the gym,
it really doesn't work that way.
That's a really good way to not only be motivate yourself,
it's a good way to injure yourself,
and that's very true,
even when it comes to being on YouTube.
Something else that I will say
about being noticed on YouTube,
this applies in the real world,
you have to do something that will actually
grab people's attention,
and you need something that will generate word of mouth,
that will generate buzz,
so you really need some interesting and unique qualities
that make you stand out and make you different.
If you do things that are generic,
whether it's the topic of the video,
or the way that you make the videos,
then there's nothing to stand out.
So there's no real way for you to be competitive,
because it's the same as everything else.
If you want to be competitive may I say
about going the extra mile,
you have to find a way to raise the bar.
And so there're ways to maybe cultivate an extreme,
this is why a lot of people that you'll see
that are younger that blow up on YouTube,
they will do extreme challenges because they know
it is the best way to get attention
from their younger audience of people they're like them.
People in their teens, in their 20s,
they love this kind of stuff, all right?
And there's some validity to that.
But you may not be somebody
especially if you're watching this channel,
most of my audience, you guys are over 20,
you're working, a lot of you have families,
so you have to figure out in your niche
of what you're doing, what would represent an extreme,
would that be being the person who goes daily in your niche?
'cause that's a form of being an extreme,
I did that for a while,
I don't recommend it without a doctor's note,
but yeah, daily could be the thing that makes you stand out
because you're more consistent than everybody else, right?
So how can you be extra?
Can you be more consistent?
Can your production be better than other guys else's?
Can you have a unique editing style
that makes you worth talking about?
Is there a way that there's something interesting
in your personality or in your lifestyle?
Are those things worth sharing and worth talking about?
Do you have a different or conflicting point of view?
That could be something that separates you from the pack.
So you really have to look at
where can you contrast yourself with the majority of people.
We call this having your unique value proposition,
and I think it's really important,
and I think it's something a lot of content creators
don't think about is, if everybody is doing it,
how are you doing it differently?
If everybody's doing it,
how are you doing it in a unique or interesting way
that we haven't seen before?
Where can you put a twist on this thing?
And so that is something that
I really want to see more of in the community,
and I don't think you have to be super original
to be able to pull that off.
I think you just have to be even slightly creative,
slightly innovative, and just put a twist on something,
and that's actually enough to catch people's attention,
and it might be worth them subscribing to your channel.
Here's another thing for me to leave you with
as a small YouTuber,
get over the obsession with subscribers,
because I'll tell you YouTube's dirty little secret.
If you have any videos that have views on YouTube at all,
I want you to go into your YouTube Analytics,
and depending on how large your channel is,
you'll see something interesting,
the far majority of your views do not come
from your YouTube subscribers, you will see that,
in fact in the comments section,
tell me how many percentage wise
of your views are coming from subscribers
'cause I think it's gonna be like half of subscribers
and half of non subscribers, maybe more.
And as your channel grows,
and as you also branch out in your topics
and in your category, you're gonna find that YouTube
is trying to grow you by promoting you to people
who again haven't heard of you.
So you have to make content understanding that
most of the people watching you,
probably never heard of you before,
especially if you're trying to grow your channel.
So you need to make your videos
and make your format with that in mind
and make yourself memorable and interesting
and a good experience for somebody
who doesn't know who you're,
and isn't in on the inside jokes
for the channel just yet, okay?
So you have to make your videos newbie friendly,
you have to make them casual friendly,
and that's gonna be very important for you,
and the data supports this,
in your YouTube Analytics you'll see it for yourself,
subscribers have very little to do with views.
However, getting views is what will get you subscribers
because that's traffic and we're gonna convert
that traffic of casual people who came in,
and hopefully we're gonna get some of them to stick around.
So you have to start thinking about
view to subscriber ratio is,
the way that the YouTube culture has conditioned you
to think about them.
I've talked to people at YouTube HQ,
and their idea of a view to subscriber ratio
is the opposite of what the YouTube culture
and the YouTube community says.
They think of a view to subscriber ratio as
how many viewers turned into subscribers,
not how many people in your audience are active.
Active subs are a very difficult thing to do,
and if you've had a channel for a while,
and you grew an audience before
the notification bell existed a couple of years ago,
then there're cases where that
might have actually hurt your channel because of
how much now YouTube relies on the notification bells,
and old subscribers didn't automatically have
the bell turned on for them.
So in some cases, that's why I've had to tell some people
that they were better off starting a new channel,
and that's why new channels actually have
a really good chance of growing and being competitive today
is because in some cases,
old channels don't always have an advantage.
In fact, some old channels are at a disadvantage in YouTube.
This is why I don't like people thinking that it's too late
and that everything's already been done because
you'd be surprised how many big channels are inactive
and don't even upload anymore.
There's almost nothing but opportunity
for people who are willing to work really hard
and do what it takes to make it unique
and interesting content for viewers
who maybe nobody cares about.
There's an audience out there that is completely neglected,
because their thing isn't popular enough,
and yet, that's 20 or 30,000 subscribers
just waiting for somebody to make the right content.
And as long as you understand that,
and you really think about how you can be creative,
and how you can bring something new
and interesting to people who would really want it,
instead of just chasing popularity for popularity sake,
and if you could just let culture die,
please, please just let it die.
If you could do that, then you actually have
a chance of growing as a small YouTuber
by making valuable content to the best of your ability,
being consistent as all hell and making sure that
you're one of the people who puts in the work
and last in the marathon 'cause I promise you,
the short game, the sprint is saturated,
the marathon is not, all right?
And that's how you gonna get noticed on this platform.
You're gonna do it by out competing
and outlasting people.
And that's legit, you can take that to the bank.
Question of the day.
If you're new here, you may not be used to this,
at the end of every video,
I ask the audience a question of the day,
and then you guys leave that in the comments
along with whatever else you wanna say to me
or to each other,
but the question of the day is this,
are you more motivated to make content now
that you've watched this video?
I really wanna know if this is having an impact on you
and making you excited about being a content creator.
So let me know in the comments section down below.
Like this video if you like it, don't forget to subscribe,
check out the other awesome stuff on the channel,
we also have some free resources for you in the description
if you got to the end of the video, so check those out.
As always you guys thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget,
go out there and create something awesome today.
Take care