How is it going?
A lot of you have responded to these emails letting me know you’re into the homesteading too. Who knew we had so many homesteading YouTube creators?
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Chicken chores are actually one of my kid’s favorite things to do in the mornings. It’s one of the first things I hear when I wake up. “Can we go down to the chickens now?”
In case you didn’t know… there’s a lot of prep work and chores required to maintain a chicken coop. We didn’t just show up and grab our chicks a few months ago. It took us time to build the coop, have the feed ready, and learn everything we could learn from videos, books, and talking to other chicken owners before we dived in ourselves and successfully kept our chickens alive!
You know where I’m going with this analogy. ;-)
YouTube is the same.
It’s easy to feel like because you worked hard on your video, it should be a success. But if it was easy… everyone would be doing it. Being a successful creator on YouTube takes putting in the hard work that other people don’t feel like doing. And a lot of those things take place before even filming. In this week’s podcast, Lennon, D’Laina, and myself chat about what you need to do BEFORE even filming to make sure your video is successful.
- Come up with an idea and RESEARCH. Chances are… if you have a YouTube channel, you have some idea of what you like to make videos about and can come up with general video ideas… but that’s not enough. If you want to create videos that get views (because people actually want to watch them), you have to take that extra time to do your research. What similar videos are other creators making? Are there a lot of videos in this niche? What’s an above average view number? What sets this video apart? Why is it outperforming? What’s clickable about it? How can you, not copy, but replicate those results with your own style/personality and knowing your audience?
- Plan your title, thumbnail, and hook BEFORE filming. Once you spend some time researching your video, you don’t want to drop the planning there. Set yourself apart! Don’t make a video like every other one that exists right now. Don’t just restate the title. Make it interesting. Tell a story (even if you’re a how to or educational channel).
- Plan story elements before you film. Regardless of channel niche, this can be done in extensive or subtle ways. If you’re brand new to storytelling and feel intimidated by it, we recommending reading through (or listening to) Donald Miller’s Building a Story Brand book or podcast. We also have a playlist on this here.
- Optimize your playlists. Use your playlists strategically, not to categorize your content. Make it BINGEABLE. You want each video to lead to the next, naturally. Keep them leading the viewer on a journey. You can even use analytics to see which videos are performing well and change the order or videos depending on how they perform. D’Laina talks about which analytics to look out for in the podcast.
Which of these do you struggle with doing before you film the most? Which of these do you enjoy doing the most?
If you can make it a point to put these planning skills into practice BEFORE filming… I promise you’ll see results!
Thanks for reading.
Keep changing lives,
Tim
CREATOR SPOTLIGHT: Remmington went through, “30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel,” prior to creating and publishing any videos. He wanted to start on the right foot and feel like he was doing everything the correct way for growth. After going through about half of the course, he published 7 videos and quickly earned over 100 subscribers from it. Now he’s excited for more growth and feels confident he’s heading in the right direction. Check out his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2zSgHXm0BECwMTqgyPQjag
Register for, “30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel,” here: https://videocreators.com/30-days-to-a-better-youtube-channel/