“Don’t forget to like and subscribe!” – Do you say these words in your YouTube videos?? If you do, STOP!

Asking for subscribers is such a common practice in the world of YouTube. But, this practice is actually hurting your channel. We talk about this on this week’s podcast.

Why shouldn’t we ask for Subscribers?

In the early days of YouTube, asking people to subscribe was helpful. People didn’t know what subscribing was, so explaining it to your audience was important. But today, people do not typically go to their subscription feed and watch only those videos. Instead, they go to their home page or search for something specific and go from there. So we asked ourself, what does YouTube actually want to get on the home page of those viewers? We found that watch time played a huge role. The more time a viewer spends watching your videos, the more likely your videos will pop up as suggested videos for your viewers. So we need to focus on getting viewers to stick around and watch the next video instead. When people here, “like and subscribe” their brains zone out and they end up skipping through, moving to a different video or they are reminded that they aren’t just hanging out with a friend, but actually watching your video and can give them the feeling that you are viewing them as a commodity. -Yikes.

Why is that the advice I hear all the time from other YouTube experts?

The main thing you want viewers to do is whatever makes your channel grow the fastest, right? Gaining likes and subscribers are positive signals; however, the strongest signals to YouTube is more watch time. At the end of a video, we need to tell the viewer what we want them to do next. Most people think that is subscribe, but that is a short-sighted goal. You can be subscribed to a channel and never have a their video pop up on your home page. To get those videos to pop up, we want more and more of our videos watched by them.

If I shouldn’t ask for it, what can I do to make the right viewer want to subscribe and stick around?

It’s all about personal connection. How do you make your viewers feel? Do they like you? Are you being yourself? Are your viewers wanting to be friends with you in real life? That emotional/relational connection is what makes people keep watching. and storytelling plays a huge role in this. Think about your favorite creators. Don’t you just want to hang out with them? It’s not because their data was SO accurate, but because they allowed themselves to be transparent and you got to connect with them on a personal level.

But if I don’t ask, people won’t subscribe!

Welllllll, actually they will. Here’s three examples of clients who didn’t ask for any subscribers and still got ’em. (We are leaving their names out since we are sharing their personal data, but here are the facts.)

Client #1 – Her video had 500K views and she gained 9K subscribers (which is a great conversion.) -Not one time did she ask people to subscribe in her video.

Client #2 – She posted a video where she shared her personal story. Her video had 1.7 million views. Because of it, she gained 17.5K subs. No where in the video did she ask anyone to subscribe. She just made the viewer feel something and gained 17.5K subscribers.

Client #3 – Her video had 6 mil views. Because of it, she gained 51K subs. And again, not one time did he ask anyone to subscribe.This was a reaction video and she did a great job of making people feel entertained, opinionated and they learned something. Because of this, people just naturally subscribed.

Creator Spotlight

Mike Greiner has a channel called the . He felt like he was just speaking to a camera and no one else. Feeling alone, he wanted someone to come alongside him and help. So he jumped into and loved it. He stopped asking for subscribers and started focusing on his value proposition and end screens and gained over 4,000 subs in one week and he has more than 10x more views per video since taking Video Labs. (- There’s room for you too, if you want to see what this course can do for you.)

Power Tip

The mission of Creator Hooks is to analyze YouTube videos and figure out what titles bring in the most views. They said in their , “Talking about why something is NOT working is a lot more interesting than talking about something that does work.” Example: Give 10 reasons for why a popular tool or technique isn’t working for your audience. We used that in this podcast! “Stop asking for subscribers. It’s hurting your channel. We could have just titled it, “How to get more subscribers.” But pushing against the narrative, usually results in a stronger response. So try it! Highlight the thing you want your viewers to stop doing and see if it works for you!

Keep changing lives,

Tim Schmoyer