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You have expertise that you would like to share the world, but it won’t make an impact if you don’t get to reach a lot of people. What are the different ways you can do to garner more views for your YouTube videos? In today’s episode, Nate talks about the important factors of a YouTube video that you’ll want to keep in mind when doing your next ones.
So, how do you take a YouTube channel where you’re just posting videos to it and actually start getting results? Like, how do you get more and more views? How do you get more and more subscribers? How do you even get to seven figures of revenue? Okay, I’ve got 10 tips of ways that you can do that. I’ve done it myself. I’ve done it with many of my clients. I think these 10 tips are going to help. Okay, tip number one is to start ugly. I heard those words from Chris Kitson most recently. I typically have said that phrase as done is better than perfect. But when he said start ugly, just don’t stay ugly. I’m like, “I like that. I’m going to start using that.” So, what does that mean? To me it means you just make a good video without worrying about it being perfect. The more that you’re held back by a perfectionism, the longer it’s going to take for you to succeed and your first video is going to be ugly anyway compared to video 50. So, starting ugly to me means don’t worry about the expensive camera. You’ve got an amazing expensive camera already in your phone. Things that you can focus on is getting good lighting. But you know what? You can just face a window, have the sunlight come in on your face. That is amazing lighting to start with. It’s better to start ugly, put valuable content out there and then just don’t stay ugly work to improve gradually over time. Tip number 2, there’s a really cool and easy feature in YouTube where you can upload a custom thumbnail. When you upload a video, it’ll find 3 still moments and that you can choose between but I would recommend going a step above that and design your own custom thumbnail. When you can go to canva.com and in the search bar, you can find YouTube thumbnail templates that will get you started. Just by creating a custom thumbnail, you’ll drastically increase your click-through rate which means more people are going to click on your video by creating a custom thumbnail. Okay, the third tip I have for you is to do a/b split testing on your thumbnails. So, what does that mean and how do you do it? Well, if you have thumbnail version 1 and you have thumbnail version 2, you can have them compete against each other. So, you just make a subtle difference. Maybe the text here is red the texture is blue and you can see which one performs better. And you’ll have significant differences so that way you can improve your click-through rate on your thumbnails. Now YouTube in the spring of 2019 said “This summer we’re going to come out with an a/b split testing tool right within YouTube.” Well, the summer has come and gone and we still don’t have that tool yet. I’m still very hopeful. You can go to tube buddy and they have an a/b split testing tool. That’s what I use to do that. It works really, really well. Now, I actually recommend another video here on YouTube by Derek Muller. I’ll link to it right up here. And he talks about a lot of great strategies for getting better results and having videos go viral on YouTube. He talks a lot about thumbnails there and I think his advice is amazing. So, I recommend that you watch that video next. Something that’s important to track on your videos is your retention rate. You know, how long are people watching or what’s the average view duration that your videos are that your channel are having. And one thing that you can do to really increase your average view duration or that retention rate is to summarize what’s going to happen in the video. Let people know what’s coming. Okay? So, I’ll share with you a story. One of my clients, a good friend of mine now, she made a video that was extremely valuable. It was 12 minutes long and she just shared so many points and laid the foundation really painted the whole picture that I not only knew the answer to the question but I understood why I knew how to implement it. And I just felt so complete and I got to end the video and just realize, “Wow, this is a really valuable video.” Here’s the problem: That video had an average retention rate of a minute and a half. And this is a 12-minute video. So, with a video that’s so valuable and yet people are only watching a minute and a half of that episode, they’re not even getting to the really good stuff. What I realized is in the beginning of the video, she said, “This is the question that I’m going to answer.” And then she gave the answer. And people would then leave because they knew the question they knew the answer why do I need to watch watch the rest of the episode. So, what she could have done is said, “Okay, here’s the question. Now here’s the answer and then I’m going to tell you why it’s important that we understand where this questions comes from and why we have this misconception.” And then why this answer is important. And what we can do with it and then how we can apply that in our business to really get results or whatever the topic is right. So, whatever the topic is, if you let people know, “Okay, here’s what I’m going to talk about first. And then I’m going to talk about this. And then I’m going to explain how this happened. And then I’m going to share with you this story where you’ll see how you can implement it in your own life. And then I’m going to share this bonus secret at the end.” Right? So, if you paint the picture of what’s going to happen in the video, people know what to expect and they have a reason to keep watching. And so, that’s a great way to increase your retention rate or your average view duration. Tip number 6 is to make your videos conversational so that people can get… I’m pretending to read a script. Actually don’t have a script in front of me. You want to be conversational in your videos. If people can tell that you’re reading a script, they’ll have a hard time connecting with you. Another mistake that people make is speaking to groups of people. So, “Hey, all you subscribers out there. I hope you enjoyed this video, It’s actually better if you just talk to one person.” And the way that I found is to talk just as if I’m talking on the phone. So, if I’m giving advice to a friend, how would I talk on that phone call? That’s how I want to talk to the camera. And admittedly, it can be hard when you’re talking to a piece of equipment versus a person. It just takes practice. It was really awkward for me at first and now I don’t even think about it. Because I know that you are watching this video. So, that’s my advice. On this point is just to be conversational. When I ask my clients what they think is most important, the camera? The lighting? Or the audio? What do you think they respond? Yeah, they say the camera. Okay? That’s not. That’s actually the least important of the three. Okay? Because you’ve got an amazing camera in your pocket that can do amazing work. The most important thing is actually the lighting. So, we just had to adjust our our lighting right here. I set up a ring light actually right here. I don’t know if you can tell because we’re competing with shadows and sunlight outside. So, we brought out an additional light out here to help with the lighting. Lighting is the most important. And a tip on that, even if you don’t have lighting, if you can just turn and face a window, so the sunlight is coming in on you or maybe not direct light. But at least the the light from outside is coming in on your face. And then you have that camera in front of you, it’s an easy way to improve the quality of your videos. And while people may not notice. “Oh, this person is using good lighting.” They’ll have a better experience watching your video. Tip number 7 is to make your videos between 10 and 12 minutes in length. Now, some people think that sounds long but what’s interesting about that, most the clients that I work with are professional speakers and they know how to talk. And when you put them in front of a camera, it’s actually hard to keep them from only doing 10 or 12 minutes. When you do the keyword research strategy that I teach, you find the questions that people are asking. When you get that specific and you’re sharing all of your wisdom, 10 minutes is a very good length and it’s easy to do and here’s why: YouTube loves watch time. If you get people watching a video for 10 minutes, YouTube’s going to say, “Hey, this video is performing well. Let’s show this video to more people.” Because the more time people spend on YouTube, the more ads YouTube can show to them. So, the algorithm really likes watch time. And a 10 or 12 minute video will perform really well. Tip number 8 is to study the YouTube analytics. Now, that might sound boring but YouTube has a vested interest in your success. They want you to succeed. They want you to find opportunities. And so when you go into YouTube analytics, you do provide you a lot of great information. They’ll let you know what videos you’ve made in the past that are succeeding and it will tell you why they’re succeeding. So, then you can think, “Ah, I know what video I want to create next that can capitalize on this and ride this roller coaster, ride this wave.” Now, the first time you log into the analytics… It might be overwhelming. There’s a lot there. But pay attention just what they show you first, What’s on that dashboard? If you see a video that’s performing well, take your best guess. Like look at some stats. Look at some figures and figure out why did this for video perform well. If you notice that a lot of the traffic is coming from suggestive views, that’s a good indication that the YouTube algorithm really likes this video. And creating a sequel of that video is probably a good strategy. It’s likely that YouTube will promote that one as well. So, if you’re in YouTube analytics on the dashboard, up at the top, you’ll see reach. Click on reach. This is another cool screen that I like to go to that really tells a lot. And on the right side of the screen, you’ll see a funnel. An upside-down kind of pyramid triangle thing. And you’ll see click-through rate an average view duration. You can look at these stats for the whole channel and see what your average click-through rate channel white is and average view duration. But you can also find an individual video and compare your click-through rate and average view duration. That’s a good place to start. And if you really understand what those numbers mean, it’ll make a big reference in the future videos that you create. Okay, number 9. I saved one of the best ones as my second-to-last tip and that’s to do keyword research before filming. Before filming is so critical because if you find the questions that people are searching for, now you know what the title of your video is going to be. So, an example I share a lot my friend is an interior designer, Katie. And I asked her “What’s one of the categories that you teach?” She said “Living room design”. She could just film, you know, turn on the camera and start talking about living room design. Maybe she could come up in her mind with a few different living room design videos. But when we went and did keyword research first, we found some amazing opportunities. We found a title like, “How to design a living room with high ceilings?” Or “How to design a living room with a corner fireplace?” Or “How to design a kitchen living room combo?” So, we need two keyword research before filming. You find a lot more opportunities of more topics you can cover and make more videos. And it gives you a huge leg up because people who are searching specifically for those things are going to find your video. If somebody has a corner fireplace, they’re going to find your video they’re going to watch it all the way to the end. So, this is a huge, huge strategy. Okay, the tenth and last tip that I want to share is to put a call to action in your videos. This can be a call to action that leads to a lead magnet. You know, some free gift that you’re giving away or it’s actually a good idea to recommend people watch another video. So, you have a longer session time on YouTube. Now, the previous tip that I shared is about keyword research. And so the call to action that I want to give to you is to watch that video I’ll link to it right up here. I share with you step-by-step on how you find the questions that people are asking that will pull in that traffic, right? That will get you that automatic search boost on YouTube? And I show you the tool that finds all these questions for you. So, all you have to do is come up with the category. Like what category do I want this video to be in and this tool will tell you the questions or tell you the titles that you should make your video? So, go ahead and watch that video that I’ll link to right up here.