You undoubtedly hear gurus telling you to fill up your video descriptions on YouTube. They say to give Google as much information about your video as you can and to use your keywords in there and other variants of your keywords. They encourage people to put a lot of links in there, too, because you never know which link someone will want to click on. But then you see that most of the top creators on the platform either have little or nothing in their description boxes. At the very least, some use some default text that’s the same for every video on their channel. So is there an opportunity here for more views or is it just a meaningless description box? That’s what we want to help you understand here today.   CREATOR SPOTLIGHT: Check out Kids Toys Play on YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/c/KidsToysPlayChannel   YOUTUBE CONSULTING: If you'd like to put together a growth plan for your videos and your channel, we'd love to get into a private consultation with you, too! Go to https://videocreators.com/consulting   POWER TIP: YouTube recently introduced the ability to use automatic video chapters for your videos. Video chapters allow viewers to jump forward to a specific section of a video. You can now allow or opt-out of automatic chapters in bulk on existing videos in YouTube Studio. More info about that here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9884579   LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE: Have comments, reactions, questions, a YouTube tip to share, or just want to say hi? Leave a voice message for us and we may use it in an upcoming podcast episode. https://www.speakpipe.com/videocreators

We see a lot of clients lose up to 50% of their viewers in the first 20 seconds of a video. Obviously, this is detrimental in getting YouTube to surface your content to a new audience, not to mention keeping your existing audience feeling like they're getting something fresh video after video.  But what's the difference between videos that feel like "nothing" is happening, but you're still intrigued, and those where the trolls are lurking in the comments saying, "Shut up and get to the point?"  Let’s answer that question in this episode. By the end of it, we hope you’ll be equipped with several new ideas of how to improve the opening seconds of your video to better grip that viewer’s attention for more watch time and thus better performing videos.   CREATOR SPOTLIGHT: Check out Dr. Lane on YouTube here https://www.youtube.com/c/DrLane   30 DAYS TO A BETTER YOUTUBE CHANNEL: This 30-day process will help you optimize your YouTube channel and your videos to better convert new viewers into subscribers. It’s the process Dr. Lane used to get to almost 900 subscribers from his very first few videos. Check it out here: https://videocreators.com/30days   Much of our discussion today is based on this article: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/tips-for-writing-an-attention-grabbing-hook#why-is-a-good-hook-important   LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE: Have comments, reactions, questions, a YouTube tip to share, or just want to say hi? Leave a voice message for us and we may use it in an upcoming podcast episode. https://www.speakpipe.com/videocreators

Patreon can be a great way for YouTube creators to monetize their videos and grow a fan base of people who want to financially support the channel. However, many creators have attempted to launch a Patreon campaign to their subscribers and only get crickets. In this interview, we talk with an employee of Patreon about how to best set up your Patreon account and introduce it to your audience so it actually resonates with them. We also discuss what perks and rewards would be good for your audience, mistakes that make Patreon unprofitable, ideas for reducing churn and turnover in your patrons, and when to consider YouTube Memberships or other platforms instead.   30 DAYS TO A BETTER YOUTUBE CHANNEL: If you want to follow a step-by-step process for optimizing your YouTube channel for growth, our online course will walk you through exactly what you need to do to start getting more views and more subscribers on YouTube. Check it out here: https://videocreators.com/30days   LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE: Have comments, reactions, questions, a YouTube tip to share, or just want to say hi? Leave a voice message for us and we may use it in an upcoming podcast episode. https://www.speakpipe.com/videocreators

Many creators are taking advantage of an opportunity to repurpose their existing YouTube videos into other content on other platforms. They simply take their YouTube video, reformat it to fit the aspect ratios of other platforms, add a headline, burn-in some captions, and boom! Now your YouTube video is ready for Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, and other platforms. However, it's not quite as simple as just reformatting your videos to a different aspect ratio. There are some important things to consider about each platform and how you position the content there in order to actually see the content grow and perform well. In this interview I sit down with Erich Lochner, VP of Creator Partnerships at Jellysmack, to talk about how they optimize repurposed content for multiple platforms. We talk about how they test the content before they publish it, some of the nuanced implications for how you optimize content for different platforms, how much more of an audience you can reach off of YouTube, and more.   NOTE: This episode is NOT sponsored by Jellysmack.   You can reach out to Erich Lochner, VP of Creator Partnerships at Jellysmack, at e.lochner@jellysmack.com   30 DAYS TO A BETTER YOUTUBE CHANNEL: If you want to follow a step-by-step process for optimizing your YouTube channel for growth, our online course will walk you through exactly what you need to do to start getting more views and more subscribers on YouTube. Check it out here: https://videocreators.com/30days   LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE: Have comments, reactions, questions, a YouTube tip to share, or just want to say hi? Leave a voice message for us and we may use it in an upcoming podcast episode. https://www.speakpipe.com/videocreators

There's a lot of conspiracy theories out there about YouTube. Everything from how the CEO keeps her job to why YouTube suppresses smaller channels to what you have to do to be picked up by the algorithm. Today's episode is a bit more fun where we kick back and get into some of the conspiracy theories about YouTube that you all submitted to us. We answer some of them, but others are just so far out there, sheesh, we don't really know what to say. Haha, This is a fun one! CREATOR SPOTLIGHT: Ryan Bos has grown to over 100k subscribers because he's already doing some things well. He's here to share what some of those things are but also shares what he's working on next to go to the next level with his channel. Check out The Funny Carpenter here: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFunnyCarpenter YOUTUBE CONSULTING: If you want to jump into a one-on-one consultation with us to review your channel and get some actionable next steps for moving forward, we're about to open up a lot of availability. Book your session at https://videocreators.com/consulting LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE: Have comments, reactions, questions, a YouTube tip to share, or just want to say hi? Leave a voice message for us and we may use it in an upcoming podcast episode. https://www.speakpipe.com/videocreators

You don't have to look long to find some bad advice online about how the YouTube algorithm works, how to rank your videos, how to "SEO" your channel, rank number 1, and get more views. Most of it is rooted in an antiquated understanding of how YouTube works despite being promoted still today as "best practices." I went to a few blog posts on sites that are considered authoritative on Google SEO and pulled out some of the bad advice and most common myths I hear. I'm going to share each one with Lennon and D'Laina, two of the other YouTube Strategists on our team here at Video Creators, and get them to react. CREATOR SPOTLIGHT: Leslie took a break for several years from his channel and now wants to grow it again. So we hopped into a consultation to discuss his next steps for infusing growth into his inactive channel. He shares more about one of the tactics he'll be using on his channel to do just that.   Check out Leslie's channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/InteractivebiologyTV   YOUTUBE CONSULTING: If you'd like to put together a growth plan for your videos and your channel, we'd love to get into a private consultation with you, too! Go to https://videocreators.com/consulting   LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE: Have comments, reactions, questions, a YouTube tip to share, or just want to say hi? Leave a voice message for us and we may use it in an upcoming podcast episode. https://www.speakpipe.com/videocreators

Stories can feel REALLY intimidating for creators. In this episode, we want to break down the simple ingredients of a story, how to put them in the right order, and how to find stories in your everyday life that you can use in your content.  Check out the book Stories that Stick Kevin's Channel - relax and learn guitar.  https://www.youtube.com/c/Relaxandlearnguitar Sign up for video labs!  https://videocreators.com/video-labs/ How to use clips on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A63imEmP_-I

Whether it's the process of creating content that just isn't enjoyable anymore, or whether you're not getting the results that you want from the content you're creating -- or maybe even both! Let's talk about 3 ways to light your fire again, as well as to get YouTube to show that fire content to more people. Audrey Crawford's channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AudreysLittleFarm Sign up for our next Video Labs class here: http://videocreators.com/videolabs POWER TIP Resource: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/next-phase-searching-youtube/

When a creator is struggling to see growth on their YouTube channel, they commonly start trying some other tactics to get more views and subscribers showing up on their videos. Today we tackle several of them to help you know if they're worth your time or not, including backlinks, stealing another creator's audience, sharing videos to your email list vs. letting the video grow organically first, tapping into a competitor's audience, growing your audience with advertising, balancing videos intended for growth vs. those intended for building community, and more. We also tackle some topics around YouTube Shorts, such as how many shorts you should be publishing each week, whether or not you should use thumbnails on Shorts, notifications for Shorts, and much more. Our final Video Labs session for the year starts in only a few weeks! To join a small group of creators and work through our YouTube growth process for us for 8 weeks, register here: https://videocreators.com/video-labs/

On YouTube, you only get a few seconds to quickly hook someone's attention and get them to feel something that holds their attention throughout the video. Storytelling is one of the best ways to do that, but how? How do you use storytelling to connect with your audience and build a relationship with them? Which stories should you pitch with your titles and thumbnails? How should you open your stories to quickly grab someone's attention? How do you use stories when you're an educator? Should you just teach or tell the story or a combination of both? What if your video doesn't naturally have stakes involved or conflict? Today we talk with Matthew Dicks, a world-renown storyteller and the author of Storyworthy. He guides us through all these questions and more. Check out, "Storyworthy," by Matthew Dicks: https://amzn.to/3ggtnMt (affiliate) Some story examples on Matthew Dicks' YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Jg09cVP1jCrmXGLmOCuLQ We only have 1 more session of Video Labs this year! Register today to reserve your spot in our small group coaching program to better master storytelling and channel growth strategy: https://videocreators.com/video-labs/