Transcription
My content is not performing the same. The algorithm must have changed. It's like a blanket statement. That's not always true.
I have the privilege of sitting with a YouTube employee today. I think people underestimate the power of viewer journeys. You want to think of like someone found my channel through this video. What's the next video that's just no-brainer for them to click on and watch? When it comes to getting views, what's the best way to think about it in the context of understanding how the YouTube algorithm works? What has changed in terms of how YouTube shorts work and how views on YouTube Shorts work? What is the fastest way to grow a YouTube channel to a thousand subscribers? You got to just press record. So, what are the latest updates to the YouTube algorithm? And what are the best ways to get views and subscribers on YouTube in 2025?
I have the privilege of sitting with a YouTube employee today, Renee Richie. And Renee, the algorithm always evolves.
Yes, changes. This change is a big word cuz foundationally a lot of things are the same, but there's some new updates that creators need to know about. What are those?
Yeah. Well, just to go back for like a short second, like the algorithm tries to get better and better every day, tries to learn more and more every day. And as content evolves, the algorithm evolves. Sometimes you see creators say like, "My content is not performing the same. The algorithm must have changed," as like a blanket statement. That's not always true. What I think is happening is people see ecosystemwide changes. Like they see changes on their content, like maybe someone stumbles on them. They watch a lot of back catalog. The YouTube algorithm understands that this is the type of viewer that's interested in it. They find people who also watch similar things. They recommend it to them, and that sort of pocket grows of like, yay, we found a new audience, and that that audience pool depletes and they don't get those views anymore. Oh, the algorithm changed again and it went away. But really, like I think of it like weather systems, but really it's just like, um, strange attractors. It keeps finding new audiences; those audiences consume or or choose not to, and then it goes back to searching for more, for more audiences.
And one of the things you mentioned was there was kind of like the the full recipe or just the what's that update?
Yeah. So YouTube is using LLMs, large language models, and a lot of people think about GenAI, but they're also very good at holding large sets of parameters. So, for example, we can now understand more parts of a video. So, an analogy a good friend of ours, Todd Boprey, uses is before, like maybe YouTube knew how to follow a recipe, and now it's better at learning how to cook. So, like if you watch a video, that video might have a bunch of different nuanced topics and just serving you videos that are somewhat similar. You may not like them; they may not be what's interesting to you, so you might skip those, and those creators would see that in lower CTRs. Uh, so what this is doing is letting us more precisely recommend videos to the right viewer. So maybe you're watching something, and we think you like this kind of food, but really you like these specific ingredients. And once we can understand this is what you want, we can give you much more specific videos to suit your tastes. So that's a better experience for you and better audience fit for the creator, and it basically does the creator need to do anything different in their strategy, or you're just saying essentially using large language models, which am I right to call that AI?
Yeah, I mean, everything AI is like a blanket term for everything, like there's machine learning, there's like neural networks, all these things. So yeah, and so kind of like ChatGPT is a large language model. YouTube is more precisely looking at scripts. Yeah. And looking at all the details that are in a video. So always fighting for better discoverability. Yeah. Getting the right information to viewers. How should the creator think about that strategically so they can get more views?
I think this one is more on the viewer side. It's more precision. So, like, do you like dance videos or do you like salsa? Because maybe we're recommending generic dance videos, and you're not interested in those. Now, we understand you like salsa; we're giving you salsa videos. So, like the creator is not going to like an audience that's not interested in them, and the viewer is getting exactly what they want.
I got you. So, ultimately, when it comes to getting views, cuz we talk all about the algorithm, but everybody listening to this like I want to get discovered. I want to get more views. What's the best way to think about it in the context of understanding how the YouTube algorithm works?
Yeah. So I think it depends what stage of a creator you are. Like in just in the beginning, like if you experiment, you can start to try like first, of course, find what's passionate to you, or you won't be able to do it long term. But like once you find your passions, experiment, and you can go into the audience tab and see what kind of videos are resonating with your audience, and then you can make more of those videos, but also videos that continue. I think people underestimate the power of viewer journeys. There are going to be some videos that acquire an audience whether through search or through recommendations, uh, or through suggested traffic. There'll be videos that nurture your audience and giving them more of what they want. Uh, there'll be videos that sell products for you, but you want to think of like someone found my channel through this video. What's the next video that's just no-brainer for them to click on and watch? And what's the video after that? And so when you're building out your strategy, think about this is a video that's going to get a lot of interest. But immediately at the end, and I I want to say like go watch this video for the big picture or go watch this video for the details. And you want to give them something to relate to. The more somebody who loved the current video will love the next video, the more likely they'll click on and watch that next video. I know some people think that's constraining, like the algorithm is forcing me into something. But it's the audience. You create an audience. And it's a it's a total cliché, but like if you look at Mr. Beast, if you want a Mr. Beast video and you see that thumbnail and you click, you know exactly what you're going to get. You will be satisfied with that video. There's no risk. But if there's a channel that sort of makes random videos, it's like a restaurant that makes random food. Like, do I really want to go there tonight? I don't know. No, it's a bit of a risk. Do I want to click? Oh, I'm going to go click on this other video where I know where I'm going to get. So, you start to look at retention not just in a video, but across videos.
So, is that kind of like thinking about building your brand and reputation because people have a certain experience with a creator? You might have a one-off hit, but like with Mr. Beast, you know what you're going to get. If you go to In-N-Out Burger, you know what you're going to get. And so, if people are going to they might you might get discovered because someone takes a risk with you, but you want to be thinking about how do I build a brand and follow up with a consistent experience in my videos. Do I have it right?
Yeah, absolutely. Like like and you you don't have to feel trapped because like you can grow over time. Like restaurants change their menus and experiment with things, and you can totally do that, but you want to sort of let the audience come with you. If you start giving them a bunch of things that don't really relate to them, it's like if you imagine a TV show like that doesn't have like consistent episodes. It's always a different show. It's hard to get people to watch week after week after week. And if you do want to do more variety content, think of an overarching framework that people can attach to. So you look at like Dr. Mike or Legal Eagle. They do movies, they do interviews, they do reactions, they do news, but all of it is like for lawyers or for doctors. So those people can always relate to that channel even if the type of content changes.
So if you want to get more views this year on YouTube, you say one of the things you want to understand is psychology. How do you make something a big topic when someone doesn't think about, well, I never went to school for psychology. I don't talk about psychology with my family at dinner. But it's a big deal if you want to be a successful creator. What are the ways to think about understanding viewer psychology to get more views?
Yeah. So like start like start just looking at the audience tab and analytics and see what is growing your audience. It'll show you like high, moderate, low, and those videos are telling you something. You can go in and look at the comments and see what people are reacting to. You want to figure out what they like about you, what they love about you, what is distinct about you that they're getting that they're not getting from any other channel because attention is hugely competitive. There's almost infinite content and very finite attention. People have to make a lot of choices. So, why did they choose you? Once you understand why they're choosing you, you can start giving them more of that love. And it's not sort of like people don't always remember exactly what every video is about, but they remember how you made them feel. And so, you want to figure out like what feeling am I giving my audience. That'll even let you shift around in topic more, but you're still giving them that same feeling.
You're a creator yourself. What is your routine when you're planning a video and shooting a video? Uh, you grow multiple channels to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. If there was a practical for creators getting in the right mindset to create a feeling or how some of this stuff goes into their planning so that their video ends up being a better product that ends up getting more views and creating a better view experience?
Yeah. So mine I mostly cover technology. So my my content strategy was driven by the news. And so there's different ways that you can play YouTube. And if you're topical, then your your videos have a shorter shelf life. Like there's interest when the news is high, and then over time it dissipates because people move on to the next news story. So that's a very different path that's like you have to start making more videos because there's new news every day, every week. It's a little bit of a grind, and I would just try to think like what is the most interesting story of the day or the week and what is the most interesting angle, and then I would try to do deep analysis because there was a lot of people covering it superficially, and I thought like my differentiator was going deeper and giving people like more explanation, not the what but the why. Like I think it's what is sort of easy, but why is a lot more hard, like more difficult. So I would sort of focus on that. Uh, but you could like some people do really well with evergreen videos that maybe they do them once every week, two weeks, a month, but that video accrues views and AdSense for months and years, you know, several years sometimes. So you have to pick sort of what your what your strategy is going to be going in.
Now some people say subscribers don't matter or subscribers are dead. Is that true?
So again, like what is your goal? Like I think one of the things that's really helpful on YouTube is to figure out what your goal is. Like there are some people with low views and low subs who convert on product and make a fortune. So like if money is your goal, maybe you don't care, but for some people subs really matter. Whether it's a vanity metric, whether they want plaques, whether they want to like be the biggest like quote-unquote creator in there, like there's something that's offending to them. Subscribe. If someone subscribes to your channel immediately, it's a strong signal that they're interested. If someone subscribed 10 years ago, they may not have watched you in 5 years. So, it's really a relative indicator. I have a friend, uh, Dave Whiskers, who says like the subscriber number is all the money you've ever had in the bank, which is an interesting number, but it's not as interesting as how much money do you have in the bank right now, which is your monthly unique viewers or your like your returning viewers. So, I think like in terms of channel health, looking at your current viewership is way more beneficial.
Got it. And that's something that if you're listening to this, you could go into your YouTube analytics, not just look at your total subscriber count, but look at your monthly unique viewers. That's the actual impact of your channel this month. You're saying that's a much better health metric.
Yeah. For like just your channel, but like there are vanity metrics, and sometimes sponsors care about the subscriber number. Sometimes industry events care about your subscriber number. So growing it isn't bad. It's like having the box office record, you know, like you're the highest-paid actor. Uh, so those vanity metrics are important, but I wouldn't like plan your channel strategy around them.
A lot of people really want to hit that 1,000 subscriber mark on YouTube. In your opinion, what is the fastest way to grow a YouTube channel to a 1,000 subscribers?
Yeah. So, if you just want like max max subs going upright on the angle, be consistent. Like again, like plan store like like journeys for your viewers. Someone comes in to watch a video; they should be able to watch two, three, four videos immediately after that. Should be able to binge you. Binging is probably the fastest way to grow a channel. So instead of just jumping around, and we talked I don't know if you talked about this before, but like you you take a channel that's help-based, and if you do how to fix your washing machine one day and how to fix your refrigerator the next week, it's very unlikely people are going to have those two problems back to back. So you're limiting like someone who clicked on that will be recommended the next video like I don't have a fridge problem. But if it's like how to fix your dishwasher, best parts to fix your dishwasher, how to make sure you don't need to fix your dishwasher, then people who watch those videos are going to have three, four videos to keep watching.
Yeah, these are a lot of deep strategic thoughts. And if you're getting value, smash like, and if you listen on audio to the Think Media podcast, rate, review, share wherever you watch or listen. And uh, super grateful for this community. There's some new updates to YouTube, uh, shorts view count has changed, midroll ad placement, and there's some other algorithm misunderstandings and even talking about shadow banning that we'll do a little bit later, but let's cover some of these new updates. Shorts view count revision has happened recently. What has changed in terms of how YouTube shorts work and how views on YouTube shorts work?
Sure. So the the metric previously defined as views was intentful, so uh, like if you click on something you have an intent to watch it, but if something autoplays or something shows up in a feed, it's harder to gauge like did you really intend to watch that? So, previously to count as a view, you'd have to watch that for a short period of time. It could like that period of time could change it depending on the context, and we never want anybody to game the system. So, we didn't give exact numbers, but you'd have to like basically click on it with your intention by watching it for a short amount of time. 1, 2, 3 seconds. You didn't ever clarify the actual number, but it hit the feed. Someone watched it for a few moments. That became a shorts view.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And but that was sort of not the usual way that it was done, and it wasn't what a lot of creators expected. And we kept getting feedback saying, "It's really hard for me to judge performance of my short-form videos across various platforms because you're counting views differently because a lot of places count views as impressions." So what we're doing now is if your video shows up in the feed, that counts as a view. We're keeping the old view metric now, and we're calling them engaged views. So, you'll be able to look in uh YouTube Studio and see like the raw view count, which is how often you appeared in the feed because for some people that's hugely important in terms of their reach. And then you'll be able to see engaged views, which is what we still calculate like ad rev sharing or YouTube partner program eligibility from.
Do 100% of creators have sight to that right now?
They should like I'm not sure how long it's going to take to actually roll out all the updates in YouTube Studio. Uh, but it we started rolling that out earlier.
Got it. So basically, there will be two view count numbers in the back end of your YouTube studio that you can analyze when it comes to YouTube shorts to kind of have a better understandance of better better understanding of performance of your YouTube short.
Yeah. So you can look at views to see how often it showed up in the feed compared to other platforms, and you could look at engaged views to see how many people, and also we have uh viewed versus swiped away, so you can see how many people actually stayed around to watch it versus just swiped away immediately, which is like CTR for shorts.
Is YouTube want to help small creators grow?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, everyone was started as a small creator. Everyone literally started at subscriber zero. Even the biggest creators on the platform started at subscriber zero, and they went from there. And you never know who's going to be the next biggest creator on the planet. So, it's in nobody's best interests to like artificially limit or do anything but support creators. We try to let the audience decide everything. So, there's no artificial boosting of anything. I think sometimes people think certain features or certain things are promoted. It's very rare. Mostly there's like sometimes there's not a lot of supply of something and interest peaks, and so if you're making those videos you see a huge upswing just because there's few people making it, but then more people rush in to make it, and it sort of goes back to normal. So it can look like there's a boost and such, but generally the audience YouTube wants the audience to decide like what they want to watch. Uh, part of the experiments that we are running though the discovery and growth team is taking one or two slots at the top of recommendations and finding channels that we think the viewer will be interested in that are either like like low views and low subscriber channels just to sort of help them find an audience faster. Uh, we want to still make sure they're good recommendations. There's not as much data; they might not always be, but we want them to sort of find more data, find more audience, and help them grow.
One of the things I've noticed in my subscriber feed and and you could give me feedback on this because it also might be based on my behavior. It's based on what I click on. It's certainly topical. I watch creator economy. Yeah. Entrepreneurship, business, marketing. I will get big creator, big creator, big creator, and I will get small creator, and it might be under a thousand subs, under 100 subs. View count might be only 50, 55, but I've seen view count three. Yeah. Showing up in my feed. What's happening there? And what is the insight for the opportunity for someone that wants to start a new YouTube channel this year?
Yeah, I think like uh impression like you want to get impressions, and the way you get impressions is making videos, but like you have to if we have an opportunity to put you in front of what we think is like the right fit viewer, that's a faster, better way for you to get those impressions and get get data on that channel. So, I think the more we can do to sort of surface those things, again, we don't want to give people bad recommendations because then you don't click and you'll find something to watch. So, we still want to be in the the realm of what we think are going to enjoy to watch, but we want to give those channels a chance to find their audience faster if we can. So, what's actually happening there? That's it's usually me. If I'm showing topical interest, the algorithm works also off of personal viewer history and watch history and co-watching like what if people who've watched the things
That you've watched have also watched, but you haven't. Okay. And so, that video is getting some kind of inter-interaction, and people that have preferences similar to Sean, yeah, um, might also be interested. And this is how anybody can start a new channel and get discovered.
Yeah, absolutely. And you see like one of the strategies people sometimes do is go after suggested traffic, which is making videos that would be a great video to watch after like a very popular video or a very popular topic that's come up.
So, let's talk about shorts versus long form. And a lot of people wonder, how do I actually get my shorts viewership transitioning over to long form? A while back, YouTube created, I believe it's called related video, yeah, that connects to a short, so you can link a YouTube short with a clickable link to a long form video on your channel. But is anything else changed, or is there any way creators should be thinking about getting shorts viewership over to their long-form YouTube videos?
So I think it goes back to goals, too. Like, is—is all you want to do drive to long form? Because there are some people who only watch shorts. So if you don't make shorts, they will just never know that you exist. So for some people, making shorts is more about brand awareness, general reach. It's why a lot of podcasts do clips, or a lot of like big creators will like have a bunch of clips out because they just want to be better known, and they figure that it's like awareness of brand marketing basically is good for them. So some people just do that. There are other people who only watch certain topics in shorts. So maybe they'll watch 30-60 seconds of dancing or or food or cooking. They wouldn't watch 15 or 30 minutes of it. So again, it's like, do you care about that audience? And you may not. But if you do, like you want to maximize your reach, they're a good thing to do.
If you want to bring things over to your long form, the most important thing is people won't click through because you want them to. Same way they won't click your thumbnail because you want them to. You have to make them want to. And that's a subtle difference, but it's everything. So, there are some creators who have incredible amounts of conversion rate, but they'll do things like, similar to a thumbnail. It's about how you make the audience feel. And if the audience loves you, they're—they're in the short feed. They're happy. They're swiping. It's a big deal for them to move. So, you have to make it worth it. So, you do a video, you give them the vibe that they love. Some people throw a thumbnail on top of the button, point at it, and say, "Hey, if you want more of this, you want to see how this ends." Like, I was watching an engineering video, and it's like, "This is how the solar sale works on the satellite. If you want to see how the whole satellite works, click here." And I'm like, "I do want to know how it all works." So, I click through, but they make me want to. And then as soon as you click through, they reward that. The same way like a great intro rewards the click on the thumbnail and derisks the experience because people can click out real fast. Like if you don't reward that experience when they click through, make it like a good thing for them that they might not stay. So you want to make sure you get their attention. Same as a thumbnail, get the click, same as a thumbnail. Rewarded in the video, same as a thumbnail. It does feel like to do shorts to long form.
Well, my experience, it's been storytelling. Yeah, it's a good short story to open loop to the expanded story in a future like—and so that's architected. I would imagine creators, you can maybe do it later, but if you think about it like as you're listening to this podcast, okay, that's in our program, we talk about like reverse engineer, always starting with the end in mind, because the more you're thinking about, okay, if this makes it all the way to shorts, what's the narrative, the packaging, title, thumbnail, what's the long form, what's the short form, what's the story arc, and then, of course, once you're in editing, or you could do some tweaks later, but the sooner you start with the end in mind, usually the better your results.
Yeah. Yeah. And—and you—it's a little careful balance because the short has to be standalone, too, because it has to be a great experience. If it's not, people are going to feel like—like the short won't become popular, which means there won't be as many people to potentially click through. So, you want to be able—like in the loop theory, you want to be able to open and close the loop for the short, but open up a bigger loop that could only be answered if they click through. And you want both those things sort of working like an A-B plot.
Yeah, that's really good. The loop theory. Okay. Okay. As we land the plane, I do want to talk about tactics for what everybody wants, you know, more—more views and subscribers. But one of the frustrations that I hear a lot of people talking about is, oh, YouTube is saturated now. What would you say to the claim that YouTube's too saturated? It's not worth trying.
I think like there's always opportunity. Like you—you could have said like movies are saturated or television is saturated, but there's always like new—like there's always a new medical drama, always a new law drama, always a new—there's a new way to reinvent those things. I think that's the same thing on YouTube. Like what makes you different? What makes you interesting? Like if you're just going to copy what somebody else does, unless you can do it so significantly better that people will just rush to you, it's probably going to be really hard. But if you can figure out what makes you uniquely your own, I think there's just unlimited possibilities. I think like the discovery systems are way better now. I think you can learn from the experience of people like you. Like when I started, I started in 2008. There was no one like you to learn from. And so you had to like make all your own mistakes. You had to reinvent the wheel over and over again. And now, yes, there's more competition, but there's also so much more information to learn from. So, you get like a boost into that—that pie. And I think just start iterating and seeing what makes you you, and you'll stand out from a crowd.
Okay. So, if you were to give—it's 2025, the landscape does change. Competition goes up down. There's more opportunity. There's AI now. There's more tools. There's more education. There's also more competition. So, you have to play the current environment. If you were coaching a friend that wanted to start and grow a YouTube channel, what would be kind of like your one, two, three for YouTube success?
Yeah. So, I would start by like making five to 10 videos that are on the subject that you're passionate about, so you'll continue making them. And try like a variety of different formats. Be a viewer. I think the most valuable thing a creator can do is be a viewer. Go out on YouTube, see what interests you, see what's working, what formats. Like there are formats like one to like 1 million, and you can do one to 100. Like there's like—or like I tried—there's like—there's a lot of formats.
Explain what you mean by what a format is.
Yeah. So there are ways that people put together a video. It's almost like on television; there's like a procedural, which is like two detectives investigating something, and every episode is like that. Uh, right now very popular on YouTube is like I tried every hamburger. I tried every French fry. Uh, I tried every airplane. I tried like—I tried every video game. There's like someone who is has some expertise in that topic tries a variety of things and rates them. There's also like the one to a million or like one to 100 where somebody, again, who has some knowledge of the thing or it's just an exciting thing tries a variety of escalating versions of that thing from like super cheap to like really lux experience. Um, and you—like this versus that—like prof—amateur versus professional. There's a variety of popular formats, and you see those by like just looking at popular videos on YouTube. See if any of those relate to you. Like don't copy them, but see what inspiration you can give, and like there's talking head videos, explainers. As I sit there and I explain a topic that I'm an expert in, find people who are doing that really well. Find a few of them. See what's similar to them and what's really resonating with you. Make like five to 10 videos. Post those. See what's resonating. Like again, see what video is getting the most views, the best comments. Lean into those. Make videos that the person who just watched that video would love to watch. And then keep making those videos. Very few people blow up immediately. It's very rare. So take that time and like figure out every video what I can learn from this video. Don't just post and move on. It's not just repetition; it's conscious repetition where I used to journal every video. I would write down the things I didn't like. I would pick one of them, and I would iterate until I thought I got like diminishing returns. Then I'd pick the next thing. And you keep watching other people and see like what are they doing that's interesting, and you see how you can incorporate that. And then just keep iterating. If it stop—if it stops working, figure out what's wrong. Go back, try again. Like work your way through a maze. If it is working, just keep doubling down on it and get better. Get better every day, every video.
So, step one, do five to 10 videos. Step two, see which of those five to 10 videos resonated the most. Comments, views. Yeah. And then—and then be consistent. Double down on that, but continue to iterate.
Yes. I've noticed creators seem to get stuck. I have a lot of people that will come in our community, and they'll say, "One year ago, two years ago, my views were here, and they've dropped. What's wrong?" Yeah. What do you think without even knowing the specific situation, what's typically wrong?
So there's like—there's three things that identify quickly. One is that a lot of people just go to analytics, and they see the month view, and they don't change it. So change that to three months. See if you had like a viral video, because if you're only seeing the tail end of that, your views are dropping. But really what happened is you had an—an outlier performance, and your views have gone back to hopefully above normal, but pretty much normal, and you're taking that as a dip. Also look at like three years and see if there's seasonality because it could be like when sports seasons start or stop, when school starts or stops, when the holidays start or stop. You always go down or up, and you can make plans to bulk record or take vacations around those times, but you won't think like my views are just dropping. And then the third thing is go to the tab. You can either go to trends and look at YouTube trends, or you can go to the audience tab. Look at what other pe—other part—other videos and other channels your audience is watching because there could be new competition who are doing things in a fresh and interesting way. Like the audience never stops. So you can't stop either. And it's not meant like in a grind way. It's meant like a creativity way. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. But also doing the same thing over and over again expecting the same results doesn't work either. So you have to keep asking yourself, what are other people doing? And don't copy them again, but like think of like how can I be even a step ahead of them. That's the number one thing I noticed is that the expectation that two years ago you were getting a certain result, you're still doing the same thing today, and you're still expecting your views would be that you got to reinvent yourself. You got to stay on that cutting edge.
Well, I do have one f—final question. I just want to add like that's not a YouTube thing. Like it's very like bands to get multiple hit albums, to have multiple seasons of a hit TV—like most TV shows start pattering out after a few seasons. Movie franchises—like it's hard to keep reinventing yourself, and sometimes you have that dip, which is what forces you to do the reinvention. It's rare for a musician—there's lots of one-hit wonders.
Yes. Or they have one hit album. They maybe have a sophomore that does all right, but those that reinvent themselves over five decades, multiple decades, and continue to find relevance and perhaps actually drift into maybe not obscurity, but just core fan base. Yeah. People—the—the majority feel like they disappeared for a while, but they survived; they maintain core fan base, but then they might come back, and if they can recreate multiple arcs of success, it comes back to this idea of reinvention, staying creative. I do want to talk about probably the—some inside YouTube tools and analytic tools at the end on our final kind of section, but if anybody wants to follow you, connect with you, where can they follow you? We'll link it up in the show notes.
YouTube Insider on all the social platforms, and YouTube Insider—that's you—and then the YouTube channel people should be Creator Insider.
We have Creator Insider and YouTube Insider and YouTube Creators. It's not confusing at all. There's three different channels.
Yeah. Yeah. But mostly my videos are on Creator Insider or YouTube Insider.
Why is there three channels? It depends on the audience. Like Creator Insider is really run by the product team, and they want to give you all the updates on product. But with YouTube Insider, I want to go a little bit more into content strategy.
Okay. Awesome. So, we'll have a full stack in the show notes. And also, if you got value out of this episode, uh, if you want to head to the YouTube version and you're not on the YouTube version, leave us a comment, leave us a question because Renee and I connect every three to six months and would love to answer your questions about algorithm, about YouTube. Um, and then also, if you got value today, like, rate, share, review, wherever you watch or listen. I actually do want to unpack in the back end of YouTube. You mentioned one feature.
Yeah. Similar audiences watch channels, similar audiences watch videos, and I want to talk about the research feature which is now called Inspiration.
Yeah, I think we have both now, cuz like research will give you more search-based and—and inspiration will give you more AI-based. Okay, so let's break it down. So these are some powerful tools on the back end of YouTube that any creator can use to get more views. One is similar audience watch in regards to channel and videos. How should creators be using this?
I think like it's a—a way to see like if there are any blind spots because like you might have a bunch of ideas, but your audience is also watching these other videos, and maybe they're a topic you haven't done before, and again, you put your own spin on it, but it's just like an opportunity might be like the packaging that seems attractive to you—like we always think we know stuff, but the best way to actually know something is to keep testing it—like keep holding yourself honest, you know, cuz like maybe your thumbnails have gone stale, maybe you've missed something big and like that your audience really enjoys, and that's a great way to see what they're actually clicking on and watching. So these are free tools because it's just right in your analytics. The key is to go in. Now, do you know how big your channel needs to be to even get these metrics?
It varies because it depends like—so you can have like smaller subscribers but more views, more views, more. So it—it just like it needs a certain amount of data, and then it starts showing you those things. So if you're a brand new channel, you might not be seeing this feature, but if your channel's established, you could go into your YouTube studio. What's powerful here is—what would you recommend? Set aside some time on your calendar to go look at it and expose yourself to other channels your audience is watching. That's going to give you a lot of insight. Yeah. But also to look at the videos and the channels—like you said, what are they doing? What are their topics? How's their storytelling, editing, how's their thumbnails? You—you could do a surface level look into this, but if you actually take some time to analyze—like what would you do if you were to set aside—make a cup of coffee, set aside a few hours on a Saturday and really do like a methodical research process. What would you do?
Yeah. So, the first thing I do is I try to watch YouTube. Not like what I like, but just like YouTube is a job. Like I go in there, and I spend an hour. I try to do it every day. Some days it's hard. And just see what's popular on YouTube. And it doesn't mean like the biggest creators, but there's all sorts of like really interesting trends. Like there was cozy comfort where people were watching like long-form leather working and woodworking and camping and just—I want to see what's interesting on YouTube because there's maybe something I can learn and apply to myself. Maybe not, but like there—I want to see what's successful because there's different genres. There's different ways creators are doing it. What's like Ryan Trahan doing that's really interesting to me as a tech YouTuber, for example. Then I also try to look at what you were talking about—like look at—see what other videos people are making, what blind spots I might be—might be having. One way to think about it is it's not going to be great. Like it's going to spark ideas, but like the one of the worst things for a creator is like the blank page. I have no idea what to do. I don't know what title to use. I don't know what thumbnail to use. So if you go into like research, you can see like what queries are people asking that are similar to what's on my channel, but nobody's really serving them yet. And maybe it's not a great opportunity. Like for me would sometimes be, oh, there's not enough content about the five-year-old iPhone. And I'd be like, well, I won't make that video. I totally understand that it's a search gap; it's not for me, but oh, maybe I could do like is it the right time to upgrade? So, like it sparks those ideas. The research tab is similar. Like you can start going through there and exploring like what videos could I make? Like I'm a travel creator. I've done these. What's another place I could go to? And maybe it gives you three or four ideas. Maybe one of them like vibes with you. Maybe none of them do, but you're like, "Oh, that's not a right fit, but I just realized if I went to the—the next country over, that would be great." So, a lot of it is just meant to be sort of like your jamming partner that you can just go back and forth with, because not everybody has like, you know, like you on speed dial, but they can go in there and get like a bunch of information to be more—more or less helpful to them.
So then to be clear, you have—these are free tools as well that YouTube has added. Research has been there for a while. That's kind of SEO, keyword-based, search terms, topics, trending things. Inspiration's newer.
Yeah, inspiration is basically understanding like the data that YouTube has and being able to sort of have a conversation with it. So it'll recommend uh titles for you. It'll recommend thumbnails. Uh, it—it'll do like if you want it to draft up like a script for you, it'll give you like bullet points for a script. And again, probably not great, but probably a starting point if you're looking at a blank page. You're like, "Oh, now I know what I want to do with my thoughts." I've also seen it has a view predictor that I would say is like likely to get a lot of views on your channel. Kind of like a high, medium, or low. And so you can sort of validate the idea before you invest energy into it.
Yeah. And again, like—like maybe your gut's telling you something different, but it'll give you like a good shot on what to invest in. And maybe sometimes like—again, goals—the smaller audience is super important, and you know they're going to convert better. So like I'm not—I don't want to make this big thing that gets a lot of views. I want to make this—
Small thing that sells a lot of product. So like you can you can balance all those interests off each other. Yeah.
So so these are some cool tools to be clear. Go into your YouTube analytics. You've got similar your audience also watches these channels. Your audience also watches these videos. You've got the research tool and the inspiration tool.
And this is a good reminder for every listener to update your YouTube app and to make sure you've downloaded the YouTube Studio app or updated it because there's always new features and some of those it's a little bit different on desktop. Sometimes there's more nuance on desktop in terms of how those tools work. Advanced analytics, advanced analytics is on desktop, but on the app is the inspiration tab as well.
And I've noticed the experience is sometimes different. It actually seems the inspiration tab on my YouTube studio app kind of leans shorts and and uh versus the desktop version of the inspiration app. Yeah, I think it's trying to meet where creators where they are and like a lot of shorts creators are mobile first, sometimes even main app first. Like they don't even look at studio. So we want to make sure the tools are where the creators who use them most are most going to find them at least at first. We want to eventually get everything to parody, but there's always like trade-offs to be