- What is quality content?
You will hear everyone give you the advice
to just make quality content.
But they never tell you what that actually means
so today we're going to define quality content
in a way that is accurate and actionable for all of you.
So let's get into the video.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake helping you
create something awesome today, welcome back to the channel.
Today we're gonna be talking about quality content
and what it actually means.
And we're not talking specifically about YouTube
and what quality content means on YouTube,
we're talking about quality content when it comes
to online video in just about any platform
you can think of.
Whether it's YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or LinkedIn.
So if that's something you're interested in
you'll wanna watch to the end of the video.
Quality for most people tends to be subjective.
And the way that I think about quality content is
quality is how the viewer experienced the content.
How they felt about it.
Now we're gonna break quality into two different aspects
that are very important.
Production quality and performance quality.
And obviously production has to do
with the more technical aspects of quality.
You could even think of this as objective quality.
Performance is obviously going to focus
on the emotional aspects of quality.
You could think of this as subjective quality.
In order to create a great experience for a viewer
you need both of these things
when we're talking about video specifically.
Now I'm someone who believes you don't need fancy gear
in order to make quality video content.
In fact a lot of people have made viral videos
just on their phone, they've made high quality things
on their phone, in fact Selena Gomez recently shot
her last music video on an iPhone 11.
I think it was an iPhone 11 Pro.
So still a $1,000 plus camera at the end of the day,
but something that is accessible
to a lot of people through payment plans.
Which means to have the best quality in the game
you don't need a $3,000 camera like me
or a $30,000 Epic RED camera.
You can work with what you have
and still be able to produce quality content.
Now there will be limitations with regards
to its technical quality,
but performance quality, that emotional aspect,
can carry the entire video and it often does.
Let's back down production quality.
Production quality is pretty simple.
Comes down to how good the video looks.
That aesthetic quality of basically the right camera,
the right lens, the right backdrop.
All of those things.
Everything that makes up how a video looks.
Then of course there's audio quality.
The thing that I've been obsessed about.
The thing that I've thrown an absurd amount of money
at getting this right.
Links to all of my camera gear and microphones
are in the description by the way.
Those are Amazon affiliate links.
They do help the channel.
And then of course there is the editing quality.
The thing that probably absorbs the most time
out of content creation for the far majority of people
whether it's on YouTube or Instagram
or any other platform, I think that most
of your time is killed in the editing.
Now all of those things are important
but they better be in service of the content.
They better be in service of the viewer.
They better be in service of the story that your telling.
Otherwise you're putting time and effort and money
into those things just for the sake of doing it.
There are so many of you that go out there
and try to copy the visual aesthetic
of Casey Neistat or Peter McKinnon,
but you end up falling short
because you don't really understand how to tell a story
using those cinematic elements and using that kind of gear.
And so it's really pointless to do that.
Then there are a lot of you who try
to go and get internet music that is copyrighted
thinking that that's gonna make your video better
and that's gonna keep people coming back.
And the reality is just having popular music
that people recognize for the sake of it
is one, just gonna get you copyright claims
in these platforms 'cause that's getting worse and worse.
And then on top of that is that
what you really wanna be known for?
Is that the only reason someone
should be coming to your content.
I think that good audio quality and good sound design
and good mixing in terms of using background music
can really enhance a video and that should be the goal.
Does having this audio enhance the video in anyway
and make the experience better,
and does it help tell the story and does it fit the story.
Putting in goofy and weird sound effects
just for the sake of it is distracting.
You should be focused, when it comes to the aesthetic
visual presentation of a video,
on does this help eliminate distractions.
You know what good lighting does?
It helps eliminate artifacts and distractions
and it helps people experience
the video better in most cases.
The same thing for good camera lenses.
Stabilized video footage.
All of that stuff is not about being showy.
It's supposed to be in service of narrative,
eliminating distractions, and helping convey your story.
Bad audio is a distraction for most people.
In fact we can forgive poor video quality or aesthetic
if the audio is serviceable.
So make sure that you're prioritizing audio
out of everything.
A lot of you, you over edit content.
And then where's the audio editing?
Where's the processing?
Myself included, by the way, in the past.
I've done the same thing.
So I'm not being hypocritical here.
It's part of the process of learning.
But a lot of you will go and you will make
this beautifully crafted thing and you slack on the audio.
And it's okay if you're not a master of audio.
I'm not an audio engineer over here.
But you can learn or you can save up
and throw money at the problem which is what I did.
But with all that being said,
if you have all of that and then you edit something together
that's not coherent, doesn't make sense,
or leaves in a lot of errors,
then that doesn't feel good either and doesn't feel like
you paid attention to details.
And it's okay if you make mistakes from time to time.
I make mistakes quite often when it comes
to motion graphics text and spelling,
especially if I decide to edit without my glasses
if they start bothering me.
So it's okay from time to time if those things happen.
I would rather they didn't for me and for you
but they do happen.
Don't beat yourself up about it.
Just try to improve and get it next time
or have someone look over your work.
Now you can have the nice fancy gimbal shots,
drone footage, a musical masterpiece,
and it still could fall short
because maybe you suck on camera.
And that's just real, right?
The on-camera performance and delivery,
the human connection aspect of this is probably
much more important than the production quality.
And when people say quality over quantity
a lot of them are just talking about the production quality.
And the reality is that we know a lot of people.
Actually, let's not even use content creators
as an example here.
You know, for all of the film crews
that have like literally dozens if not hundreds of people
producing quality content only for it to get less views
than Shane Dawson, I would make the argument
that better quality, better production,
doesn't always guaranteed the win
and doesn't always get you the things that you want
because television shows with much higher budgets,
film crews, higher production value,
are losing on views to Shane Dawson.
And Casey Neistat and any number of people.
Mr. Beast.
So does quality always win?
Well, no, but again, what is quality?
If we think of quality as production
I think that there are a lot of people
who are gonna be content creators
and YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, all of it,
they're just gonna get discouraged and give up
because they can't afford really fancy camera gear
when in fact, again, a recent phone is serviceable enough
to handle most of your production quality.
And you can always get a little kit to enhance that
when it comes to your phone.
But here's something that I feel is not stated enough.
On camera presence and performance can carry a video
even when the production quality is a little bit lower.
If you can deliver on camera and you focus
on these three things, you can absolutely crush it
even if somebody has better production quality.
I call these the three Cs.
And this has to do with that performance quality
we talked about earlier.
I think it comes down to your charisma,
your communication, and of course the connection
that you can build with the audience.
I think that your on camera presence,
your charisma, your confidence
in what you are doing is key.
And people can read on this.
They can see it very clearly in your body language.
They can hear it in the tonality in your voice.
All of it is something
that can be make or break for your content.
And again it doesn't matter what platform you're in.
Then there's your communication skills.
Your ability to communicate.
Your ability to articulate.
To form your ideas.
And to be able to reach people
and help them clearly understand it.
That's going to matter.
You can put this down even to if you're an entertainer.
You can put it down to your ability to tell a joke.
To be funny.
You can put it down to, again, how well you execute
communicating what you're trying
to get across to the audience.
But then you have to connect emotionally.
You have to make people feel something.
If you can't be confident and you can't communicate clearly
and if you cannot connect with people
on a deep emotional level,
it doesn't matter how good you make something look
at the end of the day.
Because part of the difference
between us watching television and engaging
in social media and these new media platforms is
that we're looking for that connection.
And you know what?
People who are confident
and charismatic are more attractive.
They are more likely to get us to engage
or care about something because of the energy
and the emotion and the charisma that they put behind it.
And so I really feel that if you focused more
on your confidence and charisma,
your ability to communicate and articulate well
when it comes to just talking to the camera
or talking to the phone.
And then that ability, that intangible quality
of really connecting with the audience
over your shared interest and values,
I think if you mastered that,
then you could make, you know, phone quality videos,
potato quality videos, and still pull it off
and accomplish your goals.
More importantly, quality is important.
Don't get me wrong.
And quantity is important to
because supply and demand is a really thing
and economically in social media
it's a real thing.
But remember that all of that is irrelevant
if people don't have an interest in this
in the first place.
You have to lead with value.
Value and what we care about is what we're gonna give
our time attention and money to.
So no matter how much you focus on quality,
whether it's production or performance,
it's very difficult to make people care about something
they don't care about.
Value has to come first.
You know what?
I make this joke that no matter how much quality
you put into making a strawberry shortcake
or how many strawberry shortcakes you make,
it's irrelevant to the person
that is allergic to strawberries.
And I think that's the best analogy
for social media content and why quality doesn't always win,
it's because, well that thing that you made
that was so good, I'm not interested in it.
I don't care.
It doesn't apply to me
so I'm not gonna put my time, energy, attention,
or money behind it.
And while that can feel disappointing
as a content creator, it's also fair and valid
if you think about it from the viewers perspective.
And you have to put the audience first.
At least when you're asking for something from them.
When you're asking people for views, or likes,
or comments, or follows, or subscribes,
or money, then putting them first
kind of seems like the right thing to do
and it seems like a priority.
Now what I'm not telling you to do is to pander.
I don't believe in that.
I think you have to align what you want to make
with what people want to see.
And the reality is, a lot of people criticize me
on this channel about having 400,000 subscribers
and then why is it I don't have more views
on some of the uploads of the video.
And the reality is that in many of these cases
I'm trying to reach people I haven't reached already.
The majority of views come from non subscribers.
Not only for me but for most people on YouTube.
And the same is true in other social media platforms.
You can look at TikTok right now and you can see
that there are videos from somebody that has
like, 400,000 views on a video and then 400 views
on the next video, and why is that?
The quality didn't change.
They still shot it on the same phone.
So what happened?
With these YouTube videos there are videos here
that have, you know, 100,000 views.
They were shot with the same camera.
They were shot with the same lighting
and the same audio and the same setup.
The quality did not go up,
the quality did not go down.
And there are channels with over a million subscribers
that get 100,000, quarter million views on a video,
and then then they get like 10,000 views on another video.
And the quality didn't change.
So I want to change how we perceive quality
and the impact of that and what we get out of quality
and understand that it's not always the determining factor
that we keep saying it is.
It's just not true.
Quality over quantity is a lie if you put value
into that equation, you need quality and quantity
'cause supply and demand.
And then something that people will accept
and that's worth their time and feels good to them.
But that's all irrelevant if their not interested in it
in the first place.
The topic, the timing, all of those things play a roll
in our filter for attention.
And quality isn't something we get to experience
when we filter based on our values and say no.
If you're turned off by something, you don't like something,
like I said, you're allergic to it,
it doesn't matter what the quality is.
So again I hope you have a better understanding
of what quality content actually means
at least from a perspective that I think
gives us something measurable and actionable
that we can focus on.
And I hope that this can help you improve
the quality of your content.
And I've got a question for you.
Question of the day.
What part of your quality are you going to focus
on improving right now,
and do you really think that it will give a better
experience to your audience?
Let me know in the comment section
in as much detail as possible.
I really wanna know.
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if you value it.
As always you guys, thanks so much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today.
Take care.
(upbeat music)