I give you my opinion and my team’s opinions on YouTube all the time. But, today I want to give you the insider, tried and true opinions of one of the great YouTube experts of our day. If you have been feeling like you’re struggling, this conversation is a literal blueprint for your content and how to win at YouTube today.
Roberto Blake
Roberto Blake is a creative entrepreneur, public speaker, podcaster and best selling author . He has been on YouTube since the beginning, but has been consistent for the last TEN YEARS.
I asked him what do creators need to see as a successful blueprint for their video content going into 2024.
Clarity
He said that one of the most important things is clarity. You need clarity in your branding, aesthetics, messaging, thumbnail, etc. When the value of what you create isn’t clear, the views will be inconsistent. A place where we see this a lot is in a channel’s target audience. You can not successfully reach multiple audiences with one channel. You can have multiple topics, but they all need to be geared towards the same audience.
Another place we see this is in titles. Too many people focus on being clever more than being clear. Intrigue is good, but if they are confused or they have no context people may not click.
Intent
Strategy is so important. You aren’t going to be successful by just making videos about what you feel like or whatever is currently trending. There is room for this type of content, but 80% of your content has to be planned out strategically, with most of that geared towards drawing in the casual viewer. – People who are not super obsessed with your topic and will get lost in all the nitty gritty without any context. Don’t spend your entire video “nerding out” on your niche. This will lose the viewer who is just getting into it. Again there is room for some of this, but if this is all you do you will lose your newer viewers.
Maximize the suggested video feed is one great strategy. No one wants to make lots of videos on the same topic, but you could create a mini-series that build off of each other. This is going to keep people watching. You could also have a recurring theme: “I tried this, I tried this, I tried this.” People who like one will want to see the others.
No matter what your strategy is, it can’t be just one video at a time. Instead, think of 6 videos at a time. This will help with suggested and “next up.” And it will make sure that you have room for community content, trending ideas and are dedicating an appropriate amount of content geared towards reaching new people.
Your titles and thumbnails play a huge role in drawing people in as well. Titles that succeed give an emotional trigger in them in terms of desire, curiosity, tension or anxiety. Remember, you are trying to draw in REAL PEOPLE. Optimize for people, not robots.
Roberto also shared the “vibe check” that all thumbnails need to pass:
- Visually appealing
- Inform the viewer through storytelling
- Bold – color contrast and depth
- Eye-catching – circles/arrows/etc
Shorts
Did you know that shorts are now added to google search? And they are being prioritized over TikTok videos, so don’t sleep on these. If you don’t exist in the shorts feed, you are literally invisible to the shorts-audience which is giving 50 billion views a day to YouTube. Blake suggests making shorts geared towards search. If you’re a channel that teaches something, can you do it in 59 seconds? Try it!
For your shorts strategy, really focus on your on camera delivery and less on production. Style, structure and storytelling is going to take you further than any fancy editing tricks ever will.
AI Tools
If you struggle with writing titles, utilizing chat-GPT could be a great help. It shouldn’t do all the work for you, but you can use prompts like, “Re-write this title, but on the 5th grade reading level” or “re-write this title in a way that triggers this emotion” Tell it it give you 5-8 suggestions and see what you get.
AI can also help you with thumbnails. Use mid-journey ai to do a/b testing on your thumbnails. It can also help you with posing, dynamic lighting, layout, etc. Then, you can use that as a jumping off point to create it in photoshop. This will allow you to not have to come up with it from scratch, but just execute.
YouTube is Always Evolving
YouTube is always evolving and adding new features. Recently, this has been occurring especially around podcasting and live video. Roberto believes that live video is currently the best monetize-able opportunity on YouTube due to super-chats, fan funded donations and the ad revenue that comes from the replays as well. Plus, live videos build the deeper unity and connection with your audience. So if you haven’t tried it yet, you should start.
Having a smaller channel lends itself to this more of this connection, which can make a difference financially as well. 50k subs or less is a great size because you still have that tight knit intimate community feel. There is actually lots of opportunity to make money at this channel size more so than massive channels where the audience just feels like a drop in an ocean. But if you’re not even there, that’s fine too. 90% don’t get to 10K, so you aren’t alone. But you do have benefits that you shouldn’t take for granted. Build that community connection. Allow new subs to feel welcomed in with open arms and not just one of the masses. Going deep with them now will pay off later.
Power Tip
If you livestream, now you can have reactions on your lives. YouTube experimented with timed reactions on long form videos quite awhile ago to see how viewers reacted during certain moments. They found that it really strengthened the sense of community, so it made perfect sense for them to bring it to livestreams as well.
Viewers on iOS can now react to livestreams in real time by tapping the reaction that corresponds to how they’re feeling. The reactions will be anonymous to both creators and other viewers. They’ll both see them, just not who left them. All channels that are eligible for live streaming will have reactions turned on by default, but if you find this distracting, you can always turn off reactions in the live control room by clicking on edit > customization > reactions. You can turn on or off at any point in your stream.
Keep changing lives!
Tim Schmoyer