Transcription
Good morning. There are five things I wish somebody told me before starting on YouTube. And the first one is this. You've got to treat YouTube like a job if you want to see success.
I think there's a huge temptation to treat YouTube like it's just going to be a hobby. And I'll make a video or two if I can get to it. The issue with this is it really doesn't set your channel up for long-term sustainability and growth. Instead, what you want to do is set aside a dedicated day or few days a week that you're able to work on your channel. Let's say you're able to spend 8 to 10 hours a week over the course of like four days throughout the week. Treat it like a part-time job. You have a schedule in every other job and occupation that you'll ever have. You have set time frames that you're going to work on that. And even further, you probably know what you're going to do on a day-to-day basis in those jobs. So, you got to treat YouTube the same way. Maybe day one is you're planning and you spend one to two hours of planning your content. Day two is the production of that video. Maybe you start filming like I'm filming right now. I've planned this video already. Now, I'm going to film it. And then maybe day three and four is like the editing of that video and the publishing. So you're making your thumbnail, you're getting all your description dialed in. Now, of course, as you're just getting started, you have time to figure out all of these things. But the big unlock here is that if you continue to treat it just like a hobby and something you'll eventually get to, I'll start my channel one day. You'll probably never end up starting it. Instead, dedicate weekly or daily time to growing your channel, and I promise you, you're going to see way better results.
Now, the second thing I wish I would have learned is how to create a more repeatable planning system for structuring and planning my videos. So, I don't have to start over from scratch every single time. I think that's a big mistake beginners make is they're just like they have an idea and they don't really know how to execute and they just start recording. And I would do this all so differently. So, I want to give you an inside look at our Millerote planning process. This is how I plan every single video that I create here at Think Media. And I'll just dive into this completed millote board. So you can get a glance. And I know it looks kind of overwhelming, but it's actually pretty simple. It just goes column by column. And these are each distinct piece that we think through for every single video. So we have a working title here. It's affordable gear. I'd buy if I was starting YouTube. But the first thing we want to do is find competitor videos and people who have made a similar type of content. And we want to look at what they're doing well and what's already working well in the space. So I put competitor videos that I research for every single video. Then I'll do my notes and ideas and outlines including affiliate links if we have some gear that we're mentioning we want to link affiliate links towards. Then we'll do something called title crew. So this is our title crew section and this is where we put in like 10 is minimum, but we do sometimes 30 or 40 titles to figure out the best title and positioning for our video package. So you can see here some of the titles we thought about for this video were like budget YouTube gear. I buy my favorite budget YouTube gear. We have even Nathan in here talking about his favorite titles. Kyle, our content director, same thing. And ultimately, we actually landed on Nate's title that we preferred, which is affordable gear I'd buy if I were starting YouTube in 2025. Also, what we do is think about our thumbnail. So, we come up with inspiration from different videos maybe we've made or others have made in the past. And then from those thumbnail inspirations, we create three distinct thumbnail concepts that we can do with the thumbnail testing feature built inside of YouTube. So these are the three concepts for this video that I recommended we created and then Tekashi our thumbnail designer created these different designs for me and then ultimately we decided to test these three concepts right here for our final testing. Now I know this might seem like a lot and honestly it is a lot of planning that goes into making these videos but ultimately this is a repeatable system that I can come back to. So, I combine this Milloteote board with my Google document that has the rest of my outline or my script if it's a full-fledged script. And I use those two to plan all of my videos. And another thing I would have absolutely started using way sooner as a beginner is a software called Vid IQ. Vid IQ has been a longtime partner of this channel, and I constantly am using their software to come up with winning video ideas that actually perform well. But my favorite tool from them by far is their outliers tool, which is able to identify specific videos that have outperformed on various different channels. So you can figure out what kinds of videos are actually highest in demand right now that you should be creating. They also have a YouTube Studio plugin that you can add to your YouTube studio and then that helps you package up your videos with better titles and better SEO so you can get discovered from YouTube search results. This is genuinely a software I wish I would have known about when I first started. And if you want to check it out, we'll link it down in the description below. And you can get started for as cheap as $1.
Now, the third thing that I wish I knew before starting on YouTube is that the tech that everybody says is important is not actually what's important, at least at the beginning. I think people put such an emphasis on having the best camera, the latest camera with the biggest 4K image sensor, and the quality is so important. Yeah, I mean those things are great and you know me, I love cameras. I have like 30 cameras at my house. But the thing that is way more important at the start than upgrading your camera is actually upgrading your audio. Like for the majority of this video, I'm using one of the most affordable mic systems that we recommend, the Holland Lark M2. And I've paired it with this little wireless mic handle. That's kind of nice. It just gives it a more professional feel. And I I like holding the mic. What can I say? But upgrading to a simple system like this is going to greatly improve the quality of your videos because you're going to sound way more clear and crisp. and it's very difficult when you rely on these built-in microphones of like a smartphone or even a mirrorless camera. Those built-in mics typically are not very good and there's quite a bit of noise and handheld noise that happens when you use them handheld. So, if you can upgrade your mic system, I think that's a way better long-term investment than even trying to get like the greatest 4K camera that costs of three $4,000. I'm just using the iPhone for the majority of this video, the iPhone Air, even not even one of like the iPhone Pros with seven cameras on the back of them. It's just the iPhone Air, but I think the image quality, I mean, look at this. This is an iPhone, but I think the image looks fantastic, and you're going to get way more bang for your buck by deciding to upgrade your audio source before you try to get the latest mirrorless camera. And with all of that money that you're going to save by not having to research all the latest cameras, I would focus my attention and energy on just putting repetitions out and making the most videos that I can, starting with my smartphone and a simple wireless mic. Those repetitions are going to help you build that storytelling muscle memory and give you data to work with. You'll have analytics and you'll see what's working and what comments are coming through on your YouTube videos. And all of that is so much more important than having the latest camera that can do 6K video, open gate, whatever. All of that is secondary to having crisp audio that you can hear very clearly and better storytelling.
Now, the next thing I wish I knew before starting YouTube is that you want to stop trying to reach everyone with your content. And really, what this boils down to is niching down in speaking to a target viewer. When I started my personal channel, I was all over the place and I was creating editing tutorials and wedding film tips and concert photography behind the scenes and just all sorts of things. But when I finally narrowed in my focus and really started honing in on a specific viewer that I wanted to watch my content, that's when I started to see some traction and views and subscribers started rolling in. And you might think that niching down is going to constrain your creativity. But I actually find that what it does is give me clarity and direction as to the exact kinds of videos I should be making. And ultimately, those videos always perform a lot better when I target it towards a specific viewer. Now, if you're serious about growing on YouTube this year, you've got to join our YouTube growth sprint happening in just a few weeks. You'll be able to find clarity on your channel niche, and you'll also learn some monetization strategies if you want to start making money from YouTube, as well as how to get your first thousand subscribers. And the best part is this event is completely free. So, if you're interested, I'll leave a link down in the description below or you can visit ytsprint.com to register today.
Now, this fifth tip is an important one, and it's that the analytics that you think are important actually probably don't matter at all, at least towards the beginning. Things like views, the amount of views you're getting on your videos or your subscribers or having like a viral breakout hit. Yes, all of these things are really cool and they are eventually important because they're indicators of other key metrics being successful that you actually want to measure at the beginning. And there's two really important ones you should be measuring. The first is click-through rate, otherwise known as CTR. And this is whenever somebody encounters your video and has the opportunity to click on your video. Maybe they see it in the browse feed or on the side is a suggested video. And if they have the opportunity to click and decide not to, that contributes to a lower click-through rate, but if they decide, hey, your title is killer and your thumbnail was really intriguing and they click, that's going to increase your click-through rate. And the other stat you want to measure is average view duration or AVD. This is the average amount of time somebody is spending watching your videos. If you have a really short average view duration, let's say you have a 10-minute video, but people are only watching about 45 seconds to a minute long. That means that the introduction of your video really isn't holding people's attention. And you did get the click and maybe you have a decent click-through rate, but people get into the content and they think the storytelling is weak or the hook isn't very good. These are good indicators if you have a low AVD that you've got to improve your storytelling and the structure of your video. So, those are the two metrics you really need to be measuring. And at the beginning, you don't want to be measuring how many subscribers are coming from which video and how many views am I getting. All of those things will eventually come if you focus on having a good video package and retaining people for longer durations of your videos. Now, if you're serious about growing on YouTube this year, you've got to check out our YouTube growth sprint happening very soon. I've linked it right here in this end card. You can go to that website or it's in the description of this video. And I've also linked another strategy video you should check out right there.