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Being a YouTube content creator is difficult. On paper it looks like a lot of fun; you make a few videos, you get a bunch of views and people love you and then you get famous and buy a modest but still kind of expensive vehicle because you want to come across as genuine and not full of yourself. But what happens when you make 20 or 30 videos and that doesn't happen? What do you do when you have made 100 videos, you are barely creeping your way up to 1,000 subscribers and that 4,000 hour watch time requirement is seems like an impossible filter that is preventing you from joining your YouTube brethren in the promised land of the YouTube Partner Program? Turns out YouTube creators have to wear a lot of hats... we don't just make videos. Our thumbnails require us to master not only graphic design but human psychology as well. We are statistical nerds (admit it, you checked your YouTube studio views three times before you read this). We are social media divas and late night copy editors, script-writers, asset designers, public speakers, entertainers, merchandise distributors and salesmen. Oh, and in order to have gotten as far as any of us did we had to do all based on the niche that we mastered before we even started filming.
So what do you do when it just isn't working. What can you do to fix a channel with slow growth or a lack of views. There are so many things that can be the problem, so many things to learn. SOOO many things to fix! Luckily there are three things that you can do to make vast improvements in video performance and we are going to break them down right now.
Tell YouTube How You Really Feel
Ok, not literally. That just seemed like a cool and-also-sorta-fitting title to this segment. You don't need to go to YouTube and start complaining about how your channel isn't growing. But you do need to let YouTube know what you video is specifically about. You do this by crafting a title which specifically describes what the video is about and then you reinforce that with a solid description about this topic. Plain and simple. It gets more complicated when you begin researching keyword phrases and you try to cram in as many as possible... and these are things that you really should do. But at the end of the day you really need to make sure that the topic is at least focused. Make it easy for YouTube... and viewers!!! ... to understand what this video is about. This will help the right viewers to determine whether this video is for them and the more accurate it is the more these viewers are going to watch it. The more they watch it the more YouTube is going to realize who the core audience for this video is and the easier it will be for them to share it out to the correct audience. Do your keyword research and fill as much metadata and keyword phrases as possible into that title/description/tags... but don't do so by sacrificing clarity.
The Obvious Choice
So, yeah... everyone who has ever read any of these articles probably knows what I am about to say here. Thumbnails. This is the obvious #2 thing to discuss in a list of top-3 things to fix and to many this is #1. I disagree, but more on that in a moment. Let's talk about thumbnails. So here's the deal, you need to make better thumbnails. Yes, I am talking to you. I am talking to everyone. I am including myself as well as the stars of the show... Jimmy Donaldson, Felix, Dude Perfect... you need to improve your thumbnails. Who am I to judge? I'm not but here's the thing... we all need to improve our thumbnails. No matter how amazing you are. If you are the single greatest thumbnail creator of all-time you still need to improve your thumbnails. There is no such thing as a single thumbnail that is going to be the greatest, most-clicked thing of all time. Cultures adapt, trends change and what is popular now is not going to be popular tomorrow. Today it can be all bright colors and poppy text and next year the fad may be dramatic overlays and muted tones. This changes across platform, across demographics and audience as well as niche. You need to be always improving your thumbnails. You need to be always improving your graphic design skillset but also you need to improve your grasp of the psychological element behind these thumbnails. Study others, study what is working. I was critical of some big names earlier, but they would not disagree with me here. Did you know Jimmy spends between 4-8 hours designing and testing multiple thumbnails before he ever publishes a video. Do you do that? If not... why don't you? If you want views the very first thing that must happen is your video must be clicked on. And the decision to click is based on the thumbnail and title. That is all the information the viewer has to go on. Why are you not spending more time trying to get them in the door? When they are looking at a list of videos on their screen you need to be the obvious choice.
If You Don't Focus On Anything Else, Focus On This
You are a master of SEO. You have a 100 SEO Score on 50+ videos, your titles and descriptions are impeccable and your thumbnails were handed to you from on high. But something is still going wrong. There is still some thing holding you back, something to fix. If you are going to fix one thing... if you want that single, solitary thing to adjust in order to see real growth and change in your views... then you need to improve your video. But I only have a cell phone and no budget. I know, we've all been there and I am sorry but I don't accept that excuse. Godwin Josiah makes it happen with less than you:
www.pulse.ng
Watch channels like cinecom.net, Lila and Peter McKinnon to learn filming/editing hacks, tricks and tactics. Study your favorite creators and how they do their content and try to implement their style into yours. Spend some time improving your sound design. Figure out how to key colors and use a green screen. Learn how to use Alight Motion and make your own visual assets. A couple years ago someone told me to take the thing that I am worst at and improve it until it is no longer the thing that I am worst at. Then switch over and begin improving the thing that I am now worst at. Every video. Make an improvement to the thing you are worst at. 100 videos from now you are going to be a different creator, your videos are going to be on a different level and that thing you are worst at... well, it's going to be pretty freaking decent by then.
YouTube can be a stressful endeavor. We are all trying to provide an amazing experience for our audience while also trying to accommodate the relentless YouTube Algorithm and in doing so we are all torn in many different directions. It is important to take a step back and focus on what really needs to be improved and less on what you need to fix. When things gets complicated, when you are feeling frustrated and you don't know what to do and the views aren't coming like you had hoped turn your frustration inside and use that as motivation to focus on and improve aspects of these three things. Nothing you can do is going to provide you with more long-term and organic results than optimizing for the Search Engines, improving your thumbnails and above all... make great videos.
So what do you do when it just isn't working. What can you do to fix a channel with slow growth or a lack of views. There are so many things that can be the problem, so many things to learn. SOOO many things to fix! Luckily there are three things that you can do to make vast improvements in video performance and we are going to break them down right now.
Tell YouTube How You Really Feel
Ok, not literally. That just seemed like a cool and-also-sorta-fitting title to this segment. You don't need to go to YouTube and start complaining about how your channel isn't growing. But you do need to let YouTube know what you video is specifically about. You do this by crafting a title which specifically describes what the video is about and then you reinforce that with a solid description about this topic. Plain and simple. It gets more complicated when you begin researching keyword phrases and you try to cram in as many as possible... and these are things that you really should do. But at the end of the day you really need to make sure that the topic is at least focused. Make it easy for YouTube... and viewers!!! ... to understand what this video is about. This will help the right viewers to determine whether this video is for them and the more accurate it is the more these viewers are going to watch it. The more they watch it the more YouTube is going to realize who the core audience for this video is and the easier it will be for them to share it out to the correct audience. Do your keyword research and fill as much metadata and keyword phrases as possible into that title/description/tags... but don't do so by sacrificing clarity.
The Obvious Choice
So, yeah... everyone who has ever read any of these articles probably knows what I am about to say here. Thumbnails. This is the obvious #2 thing to discuss in a list of top-3 things to fix and to many this is #1. I disagree, but more on that in a moment. Let's talk about thumbnails. So here's the deal, you need to make better thumbnails. Yes, I am talking to you. I am talking to everyone. I am including myself as well as the stars of the show... Jimmy Donaldson, Felix, Dude Perfect... you need to improve your thumbnails. Who am I to judge? I'm not but here's the thing... we all need to improve our thumbnails. No matter how amazing you are. If you are the single greatest thumbnail creator of all-time you still need to improve your thumbnails. There is no such thing as a single thumbnail that is going to be the greatest, most-clicked thing of all time. Cultures adapt, trends change and what is popular now is not going to be popular tomorrow. Today it can be all bright colors and poppy text and next year the fad may be dramatic overlays and muted tones. This changes across platform, across demographics and audience as well as niche. You need to be always improving your thumbnails. You need to be always improving your graphic design skillset but also you need to improve your grasp of the psychological element behind these thumbnails. Study others, study what is working. I was critical of some big names earlier, but they would not disagree with me here. Did you know Jimmy spends between 4-8 hours designing and testing multiple thumbnails before he ever publishes a video. Do you do that? If not... why don't you? If you want views the very first thing that must happen is your video must be clicked on. And the decision to click is based on the thumbnail and title. That is all the information the viewer has to go on. Why are you not spending more time trying to get them in the door? When they are looking at a list of videos on their screen you need to be the obvious choice.
If You Don't Focus On Anything Else, Focus On This
You are a master of SEO. You have a 100 SEO Score on 50+ videos, your titles and descriptions are impeccable and your thumbnails were handed to you from on high. But something is still going wrong. There is still some thing holding you back, something to fix. If you are going to fix one thing... if you want that single, solitary thing to adjust in order to see real growth and change in your views... then you need to improve your video. But I only have a cell phone and no budget. I know, we've all been there and I am sorry but I don't accept that excuse. Godwin Josiah makes it happen with less than you:
Young Nigerian filmmakers go viral for shooting sci-fi movie with a smartphone
Science fiction (sometimes called Sci-Fi ) is a genre of speculative fiction that has been called the “literature of ideas”
www.pulse.ng
Watch channels like cinecom.net, Lila and Peter McKinnon to learn filming/editing hacks, tricks and tactics. Study your favorite creators and how they do their content and try to implement their style into yours. Spend some time improving your sound design. Figure out how to key colors and use a green screen. Learn how to use Alight Motion and make your own visual assets. A couple years ago someone told me to take the thing that I am worst at and improve it until it is no longer the thing that I am worst at. Then switch over and begin improving the thing that I am now worst at. Every video. Make an improvement to the thing you are worst at. 100 videos from now you are going to be a different creator, your videos are going to be on a different level and that thing you are worst at... well, it's going to be pretty freaking decent by then.
YouTube can be a stressful endeavor. We are all trying to provide an amazing experience for our audience while also trying to accommodate the relentless YouTube Algorithm and in doing so we are all torn in many different directions. It is important to take a step back and focus on what really needs to be improved and less on what you need to fix. When things gets complicated, when you are feeling frustrated and you don't know what to do and the views aren't coming like you had hoped turn your frustration inside and use that as motivation to focus on and improve aspects of these three things. Nothing you can do is going to provide you with more long-term and organic results than optimizing for the Search Engines, improving your thumbnails and above all... make great videos.
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