Transcription
Welcome to Amateur Hour University, where I teach things even though I barely know what the hell I'm doing. Come on in. Today, I'm going to be talking about the two ways to grow an audience on YouTube, and trust me, you're going to want to take it from me. I have over 10 million subscribers. I've talked in other videos about how I will primarily make filmmaking and art content. I am not a YouTube specialist. I'm still a very small account myself, but I feel like I can explain things in a simple way for my fellow small, new, or struggling YouTubers to grasp, 'cause I know how overwhelming and challenging it can feel in the beginning. Let's [Music] begin.
Many of the comments that I get from people who are frustrated are usually people that don't know what to talk about in their videos or posting, and they're not really finding success or finding their audience. The thing about it is, YouTube can be hard to grow. It takes a lot of time. If you're posting things without any real direction or any rhyme or reason, it's just going to make it even harder, and it's going to lead to subpar results and to you feeling discouraged, and we don't want that.
I'm a visual learner, so I went to the art store and bought dry erase boards, easel stand, things, dry erase pens, and this whole setup so that I can smack the board and emphasize my point and feel more important than I actually am. I forgot to buy something to smack the board [Music] with. Sometimes you got to use the elements.
Now, as mentioned before, there are only two ways to grow on YouTube. There's only two, in my opinion, but I'm right. Number one is education. The other is entertainment. Easy to remember, E E, like a dolphin. Now, let me explain. You only ever come to YouTube for these two reasons: to be entertained or to learn something. And everything that you can think of right now falls under one of these two categories. We are already simplifying things, folks.
The reason it's important and the whole reason I'm even making this video is if you simplify your thought process in terms of the type of content that you're going to put out and start thinking of things as one of these two categories, it allows you to have more of a plan and more of a strategy to know, my channel, have some sort of direction. Is my channel a good mix of both of these two things? So that when people land on it, they're getting value, they're being entertained. So I'm not just going to talk about it in this video. I'm also going to create a mock account. If I was to start a new channel, knowing what I know now, what I would do from the very beginning to make my first 20 or so videos, why I would do it, how I would break them down so that it's really clear how I would maximize these two categories to have a successful channel. I'm going to try to help with that as best I can with the limited knowledge that I have.
Now, let's start with the most obvious, because this is probably the main reason that any of us originally came to YouTube, that is to learn how to do something. I learned entirely how to paint and anything I know about filmmaking or video, video editing, or anything from YouTube. The reason why, regardless of what your account is about, that I recommend going heavy with educational content in the beginning, need to establish trust and validation. Again, this is a search-based platform, so if you are creating content that you know people are going to go look for, "how to write a book," "what should I do if I want to self-publish?" You know, those people are going to find you, and then that may lead to your other stuff. But the point is, let them find you.
Be sure not to miss an incredibly well-acted scene around the 8 to 9 minute mark. How-tos are probably the most common, 'cause it's usually what you would look for when you learn how to do something. So, "how to change a tire" or "how to get better sleep." Another variation like this is, "how you change a tire" or "this is how you get better sleep." But how-to is probably the most common.
Then there are lists, which are very popular and very effective. So, "top three tire changing techniques" or "top five ways to get better sleep." The reason lists work well is because it increases watch time. If you have a list of things, one, two, three, four, in a video, somebody's going to have to watch all the way through to get to the third and the fourth, so they can help increase watch time if done right.
Then there are do's and don'ts, which are also very effective. So, "do this to avoid having to ever change the tire again," or "stop doing this if you want to get better sleep." The reason these work well is because psychologically, they get you to want to prevent making a mistake ahead of time, as opposed to the others where you might be doing it reactively, and it's already too late. So invoking a little bit of fear or concern actually works pretty well in video titles.
And the last would be product review or tutorial, which is kind of similar to how-to. This is actually in both categories of education or entertainment. And all of these educational style videos will do well because they are very searchable. If you care about growth, you always need to be thinking, is this a searchable video? Is this a searchable title? Because remember, this is a search-based platform, so it will always benefit you to be searchable.
So, for the mock account, I didn't know what to talk about, so I just came up with four kind of generic ideas, and they are: mechanic, self-published author, pastry chef, and rocket scientist. All right, let's see what I get. Please don't get rocket scientist. Okay, self-published author, that's the example that I'm going to build from scratch. And let's say, in this assumption, that I have some success. So I have a couple books that I published on my own, maybe they're on Amazon or Wattpad or whatever. So I should have a lot of stuff to talk about. But again, I'll go over the mistakes that I see with some people when they start from scratch and what you should be doing instead.
The first thing that I would do is write down 10 educational ideas that I could think of. What is something I could teach? And again, we're just going to put this aside, and we'll mix this up with some entertainment videos later. Okay, moving on to the second way to grow an audience on YouTube, and that is entertainment. Now, entertainment can be very vague, but it's usually sharing a skill or talent, funny videos, motivational videos, vlogs, day in the life, film, short film, documentary, podcast, reaction, or some form of product review, unboxing, opening, that kind of thing.
But here's the big catch with all this. This is easier to create, but harder to grow with early on. This is harder to create, but easier to grow with early on. It can feel like a lot of pressure to teach people things, especially when you first start out, 'cause you're probably full of impostor syndrome and insecurity with even making a YouTube channel to begin with. So I can feel like, who the hell am I to teach people things? So the mistake I always see when people start out is they just post a bunch of vlogs or day in the lives or podcast style videos. And look, these are great, but until your audience is invested in you and has some sort of connection to you or your life, they're probably not going to give a damn about what it is that you do all day long.
"Hey stranger." "Hey, are you into writing?" "Yeah, I'm a self-published author." "Oh, that's cool, man. You want to watch me write all day? You want to hear about my frustrations as a writer and a bunch of other things about me?" "Not really."
"Think about it. Hey stranger." "Hey, are you into writing?" "Yeah, I've actually been thinking about it for a while now." "The reason I ask is, I'm a self-published author with some mild success, and I could actually teach you how to become a writer. Does that sound interesting?" "Oh, okay. Yeah, that, that would be great." "After teaching you how to become a writer and several other tips and tricks about writing, would you be interested in learning more about my story, my successes, failures, and other things about being a self-published author?" "Yeah, I'd actually love to follow along with that. You've been super helpful for me." "Excellent. Sounds like a date. You go away now."
It is so much easier to create and upload something that you're doing, working on, talking about. All you got to do is turn the camera on, hit record. So it makes a lot of sense why a lot of people go that route, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. That's a great thing. But people might not find you.
So, in this example, as a self-published author, here is exactly what I would do from scratch. First thing that I would do, and I'm not sure why I even have to tell people to do this, but I see this all the time, is I would write a damn bio about myself. I get to so many pages where they don't put anything in the bio. How do I know what it is that you do? I think everyone's too convinced that, oh, if they just watch my videos, I know who. Says they're going to watch your videos? You have no idea if they're even going to click on your videos. So make sure you explain a little bit. Have a blurb about what you do. You can put a link there to your website or whatever you want also, but most people aren't going to go there until they're actually interested in you.
So the first thing I would do is say, "My name is Darren. I'm a self-published author, 10 years into this space," or whatever it's going to be. Boom, there they know right away who I am.
The next thing that I would do is I would create an intro video and then pin it at the top of my profile. You can go to mine and you can see how I kind of have one there. In that video, don't make it super long, somewhere between 2 and 4 minutes. I would go a little bit deeper into it: who I am, how I became a self-published author, how many books I've written, and what this channel is going to be about. That is very important to explain to people what you should expect out of this channel. That validation right there is going to probably make them decide if they want to watch any of your other videos.
Now, obviously, we know now that I'm a self-published author. I have multiple books that I've written that are available for purchase. Do not, I repeat, do not sell them. Almost ever. Let it happen organically, and it's going to happen by providing value, getting them invested in you, getting them curious about your stories. Let it happen organically. The last thing people want is to land on a page and feel like I'm being sold something. People want it to feel authentic and genuine. So if you're trying to sell them the whole time, it's going to turn them off. They might leave. I'll explain this a little bit more on how to kind of guide them to looking at your work, but it's definitely not going to be by talking about it and trying to push it on them.
So, for my first handful of videos, I would start leaning more towards Big E on the educational side. So, my very first video would be, "How I Became a Self-Published Author." This is sort of educational and entertaining 'cause it's a little bit about me. Not a lot of people are going to see your first videos, but eventually, once your other ones start doing better, they may come back to these. So I think that's a good first video.
Then I would follow that up with a strong Big E, and that would be, "How to Write Your First Book." Very, very searchable. This is something that might bring some people to your page 'cause people will be going to YouTube looking for, "how to write my first book."
Then I would follow that up with another E, which would be, "The Top Three Lessons That I've Learned as a Self-Published Author." Again, this is cool because it's educational. You're going to talk about big lessons, and people want to know what mistakes not to make. So you get to teach them something while also teaching them about your life and your career as a self-published author. So it hits both.
So next, not even until our fourth video, will we slide in our first kind of primarily entertainment one, which is, "A Day in the Life of a Self-Published Author." Now, this is one where you get to have some fun with it. You get to start kind of revealing a little bit more about yourself, more about your career, what you do all day. We're not even doing that until the fourth video in, but we're still going to go right back into heavy educational stuff.
So the next will be, "The Best Writing Resources That You'll Ever Need." Strong title that may grab people, get them curious. You say things like, "You'll ever need." You know, they feel like, oh, cool, this video is the end-all be-all of writing resources. So this is another really strong educational one.
And then we're going right back doing sort of the same things. "Avoid Doing These Things If You're Planning to Self-Publish." And like I said earlier, when I was explaining the educational types, invoking a little bit of fear, which is like, "Hey, don't do this if you're going to self-publish." Those really pique people's interests, so they're going to want to come see, "Okay, what mistakes can I not make?" So you get to teach them what not to do while also kind of validating yourself even more as an author.
And then right back at it with the educational side with, "The Top Five Ways to Beat Writer's Block." This is a big one. Writer's block is a very real thing, so I know people are always looking for ways to try to beat that.
So now that we've gone really education-heavy for the first five or six videos, we've got a lot of value. If someone lands on my channel, they're going to learn a lot of stuff about writing, about self-publishing. I want to round out the remaining four by having them be a good mix of both E's by going with, "How Much Money I've Made as a Self-Published Author." This will do well. People love talking about money. People love learning about how they can make money in the arts. People are probably always really curious if you can make money as a self-published author. I think there are more people nowadays that will self-publish over going the traditional route because of how all the gatekeeping and how slow that that process can be. So this should be a very good video. And this, with you being so vulnerable and telling them something personal about your personal finances, you're going to win a lot of people over. So that's going to be a good video.
After that, "These Are My Three Favorite Books of All Time." This is a fun one where they get to learn a little bit more about you, your taste, and this might start to give them hints at what type of writing you do because if they know these are your favorite books, it might be a similar style to the way you write. So this is how I'm going to slowly transition them into starting to think about wanting to learn about my work and about my books.
And then I'm going to follow that with, "Why I Chose Self-Publishing Over Traditional Publishing." This would be another really good video. A lot of people probably want to know the difference. They probably want to be able to compare, to be able to hear that comparison from someone that's done it and someone that can explain why they chose one over the other. That'll be another really good video. That's a very searchable video.
And then lastly, this is how we'll really segue them into being curious about my own work and my writing, is, "How I Create the Characters for My Stories." So this one's obviously the first one that's really kind of full-blown personal into the actual work itself. So I've gone like a full 10 videos without ever talking about my books, my characters, anything, because I'm trying to show, hey, I want to provide value. So now that I've validated myself as a writer and I've validated my experience and my knowledge, now I'm starting to talk about my own characters.
So in the process of sort of teaching how I create characters, I'm talking about my characters. And if people like what they hear and it sounds interesting, and the characters sound interesting, and the story sounds interesting, this is going to increase their chance of wanting to go read it. You'll probably get a lot of comments that are like, "Oh, I would love to read it. Where can I find it?" That's where you can comment back and be like, "Yeah, go ahead, hit my bio or check me out on Amazon or what have you." At the very end of that video, you could probably bring up, "By the way, if you were interested in reading any of my stuff, you can check it out in my bio or whatever." But make sure that it's at the very end, and that you're not kind of like pushing them to read your stuff the entire video.
So again, it's going to feel really natural and organic, and that's the best way to sell nowadays. Everybody's scared of being sold things all the time. So if it feels organic and natural, it's going to do much better in my opinion.
The point of all this is, if you actually want to grow on YouTube, you're not going to be able to just throw up random videos of you doing next to nothing or simply just existing or doing dumb things the way that you might be able to on TikTok or Instagram. And this is a good thing, because Lord knows if you've been on TikTok or Instagram over the last few years, and you've seen some of the stupidest things you've ever seen in your life, or videos where people are putting next to no effort, doing the absolute bare minimum, and getting millions of hits. It's very refreshing being here where you have actual creators that have to put in effort and put in work to deliver things to their audience. Sounds like I'm being a hater. I'm not. I know that's just what the platforms are about, that's what they reward. But this platform can be really refreshing because people actually have to put in work and some effort here in terms of the quality of the content that they're delivering. So I just definitely prefer it, and it's why I think you have some of the best creators in the world on YouTube.
YouTube is more value-based in my experience so far. So you should always be thinking, am I providing value in some way with my content or my channel? This doesn't mean your videos have to be entirely educational, by the way. People can always find value in your experiences or your insights, etc., things that you do in your life, without all your videos having to be full-blown tutorials.
So the next time that you go to create, just try to think to yourself, am I creating videos that are searchable? Am I creating videos with some clear direction in one of these two categories? Are a really good mix of both? So that I can find an audience? So that if someone lands on my page, they know exactly what they're getting into? And I'm not saying it's foolproof. It still takes a lot of time, but I promise you, if you have some structure and some direction, you're going to have much more success than just throwing random videos out and thinking that the algorithm is just going to bless you for simply existing and just throwing up random videos. I promise you, it won't. I've tried.
So at the end of the day, I just recommend trying to provide as much value as possible to your audience. It's going to make them more invested in you, your story, your success. So that when you do want to create other things or showcase a talent or talk about something personal, they're actually going to care. They might not care very much, or it doesn't seem like there's some type of value exchange. So I think the more value that you can provide to your audience, the better your channel is going to do.
So I hope this video provides a little bit of framework and structure as to how to start thinking of your content, how to come up with a good mix of content. YouTube can be really challenging, but it's the most rewarding social media platform that I've ever been on thus far. I'm having so much fun with it. So if you have comments, questions, anything like that, let me know in the comments. As always, I try to answer, uh, a lot of them. I have a ton of fun doing it. I've emailed back and forth with a lot of you. I've gone to your channels and tried to give you recommendations, and so I do have a lot of fun doing it. Again, I'm a very small account still, so I'm not trying to act like I know everything, but I feel like I'm starting to kind of figure some stuff out, and I've always said that I would try to help in anyway I can. Anyway, love you, Palace. Thanks for, uh, watching. Thank you. And, uh, good night for.