I’m finally back on this week’s podcast! If you don’t know, for the month of April I stepped away from Video Creators while I helped develop the app Volley. We had been using it to help with coaching in a few of our courses and they asked me to help them develop for a month, which was so enjoyable. And I actually still use it just to connect with other creators. If you’re interested, to talk about how to rally your community together, get them excited and how to interact with & coach them in a way that’s much faster than anything we could have done with text-based communities.

The time away was extremely insightful! After spending 9 years focusing on Video Creators, it was so helpful to be able to peek inside another company and see how they run things, build relationships, make decisions, etc. But now I’m back – Energized and ready to take things to the next level!

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In the last several episodes, we’ve been asking for you to send us your questions and in this week’s podcast we are answering them.

But first, I wanted to give a shout out to Caroline Beck of, “” When she first started in Video Labs last year, she had about 50 subscribers. I knew she was going to make it because she was asking all these questions, really digging in and following the process. And after going through the 8 week process and applying the things she learned to her channel, she now has 7,200 subscribers (and growing). YouTube themselves took notice and declared her a “Creator on the Rise” – listing her right on the trending page of YouTube.

If you’re curious to try for yourself, we have changed somethings. Because of our utilization of the Volley app, we have removed the barriers of the weekly zoom meetings and have given you direct video chat access to a strategist and to each other as a group. The results have been fantastic and we have all felt so much more connected.

Ok, ok. Now for our A’s to your Q’s.

Question 1: What is the ideal length for a YouTube Video? I prefer to make 2-3 min videos, but does YouTube’s algorithm prefer longer videos??

Well… it depends. If you can build a human connection in 2-3 mins, then great. If you can’t fit that into 2-3 mins, then longer videos are better. A good way to gauge this is to see how long you are holding the attention of your viewer. If you make a longer video, are they watching for the whole video? Or are they checking out after 2-3 mins anyway?

YouTube’s algorithm doesn’t have a preference. It depends on how well people are engaging with your content. The rule of thumb is this: If you have a 2 min idea, do a 2 min video. If you have a 10 min idea, do a 10 min video. It’s more about holding attention and making an emotional connection, not so much about the length of a video.

How do you make that human connection? Use Storytelling. Tell your story. Find the pain points of your viewers and share the thoughts and feelings you are having. People who feel and think the same things will automatically feel connected. Also, primal branding elements are so important.

Question 2: Do adding chapters affect your overall viewing session? Should I add them? Should I not?

Guys, don’t overthink it. We can’t manipulate YouTube into doing exactly what we want it to do. All YouTube does is respond to how people respond to your videos. Whatever serves the video best is what we need to do. If putting chapters in your content, helps the viewer & keeps them on YouTube longer, then YouTube is going to favor that. Chapters may help viewers not abandon a longer video because they see where you are going.

Question 3: In a recent podcast, you said not to ask for subscribers. But with channels that aren’t monetized yet, it’s very necessary to get a certain number of subscribers.

Having subscribers will always be important. But asking for them to subscribe is not nearly as important as making content that makes them want to subscribe. If the content has no emotional connection or does not bring value to them, asking to subscribe does nothing. If you can do it in a way that is fun and engaging to the audience, go for it. But if you are just asking your viewer to like and subscriber and watch another video, you are going to get very little results. The more things you ask a viewer to do, they less likely they’ll do any of them. And statistically, we have not noticed any impact on subscribers based on if people asked for them or not. So save your time and just make connections instead.

Power Tip of the Week:

When you are creating your thumbnail, go to your home page, take a screen shot, put it into your photo editing program and add your thumbnail into one of the boxes. Then ask yourself, how does mine standout? Can I see what’s happening even when it’s small? Is my eye attracted to this thumbnail? If not, how can I tweak it to make it stand out.

I hope these questions and answers were helpful. If you have your own, and you might be featured in an upcoming podcast episode.

Until next week…

Keep Changing Lives!

Tim Schmoyer