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As part of my working with YouTube's Creator Community (I'm what's called a Top Contributor there, which just means I help out with the boards, keeping them polite and on-track and such), I got a Partner Manager assigned to me for a limited number of channel consultations. Usually, this is something you get at 10,000 subs, so it's kind of cool that I got one.
ANYWAY... he had some good insights to my channel and I think they could help other small YouTubers, so I'm sharing some stuff he told me to fix on my channel.
1. TRAILER: I expressed some doubt about channel trailers, but he said that they've shown in study after study that if a non-subscriber goes to your channel page and you don't have a trailer, they get confused and move on. Make sure your trailer has a clear message of what your channel is about, and that, if you have a schedule (and you should have a schedule), you explain exactly what that schedule is, so if someone doesn't subscribe, they know when to come back.
2. THUMBNAILS: I am not a good graphic designer, so I was surprised when the consultant told me he loved my thumbnails. I asked why, and he said the background colors are bold, there's almost no text on them (and the text is large enough to see on phones), and that each photo only showed basically one or two faces and the subject of the video (like the food we made). I also put a colorful border around each thumbnail, which he said was unique and worked for my channel because it's more friendly for younger people (kids) who might like puppets and shows that my channel is cohesive. So: bright backgrounds, only 1 or 2 things (faces, foods, art works, etc.) in the frame, if you have text, make it BIG and SHORT and tell a story in one or two words, and be unique so people know it's a thumbnail from your channel.
3. BANNER: My banner, he said, is not great, because it says nothing but my channel name, and again, you want to educate the viewer on what your channel is about. So....for me, that means telling people exactly when we do each of our series. Monday we livestream and make puppets! Wednesday, Sullivan tries to be famous! Thursday, we make recipes! Etc. Make it easy to understand and give people a reason to come back.
4. FOCUS: He was really confused about the hair videos on my channel (and the cooking, a little bit, until he noticed there were puppets in the cooking videos), and said that viewers tend to only go to a channel for one type of video, even if they like you as a creator. Most viewers and subscribers won't watch, say, game videos AND vlogs AND movie reviews from the same person, so choose what's most important to you and make that the main focus of your channel. You don't have to drop everything else, but make sure that when people say, "I love Xingcat's channel, because I love puppets," they can say the same type of thing about your channel and your content.
5. CARDS and ENDSCREENS: If you have a series, make sure there's an episode of the series that explains what the series is about and call it out in a card or an endscreen link, because you only have the one chance to hook someone in one video if they came across it through search or random browsing. Try to make them stay on your channel, and the way to do that is to have someone say, "What is this video....is there more like it? Is it a story? What's going on?" you have an explanation ad directions on how to STAY THERE and KEEP WATCHING. I never thought about cards and screens like that, and just having "next" and "last" may entice people, but not as much as answering questions you can anticipate them having.
6. WATCH TIME IS KING: All advertisers, sponsors, and YouTube cares about right now is watch time, so keep people watching. It doesn't have to be watch time on a single video, but watch time on your channel. So look at your analytics and see where people are leaving, and find ways of either getting them to stay longer ("Stay to the end for..." or "What's the secret of wealth? I'll tell you in 10 steps," and make sure step 10 isn't halfway through the video, etc.), or if they're clicking away, let them click to something that brought them there in the first place.
7. CONSISTENCY: He praised me for staying on-schedule and consistent (with uploads regularly), but again, I need to work on making sure that I tell any viewers (subscribers or new viewers) when to show up again, and then make sure there's something there for them to watch when they arrive. He said there are "invisible fans," who aren't going to subscribe (for whatever reason), but will keep coming back for what they like, so let them know when the thing you do that they like happens.
That's all I have (it's a bit of a book, and I wanted to write this immediately after hanging up with him). A lot more specific and helpful a session than I got when I got a consultation before, so that's very nice.
I hope that's helpful to all y'all, as well!
ANYWAY... he had some good insights to my channel and I think they could help other small YouTubers, so I'm sharing some stuff he told me to fix on my channel.
1. TRAILER: I expressed some doubt about channel trailers, but he said that they've shown in study after study that if a non-subscriber goes to your channel page and you don't have a trailer, they get confused and move on. Make sure your trailer has a clear message of what your channel is about, and that, if you have a schedule (and you should have a schedule), you explain exactly what that schedule is, so if someone doesn't subscribe, they know when to come back.
2. THUMBNAILS: I am not a good graphic designer, so I was surprised when the consultant told me he loved my thumbnails. I asked why, and he said the background colors are bold, there's almost no text on them (and the text is large enough to see on phones), and that each photo only showed basically one or two faces and the subject of the video (like the food we made). I also put a colorful border around each thumbnail, which he said was unique and worked for my channel because it's more friendly for younger people (kids) who might like puppets and shows that my channel is cohesive. So: bright backgrounds, only 1 or 2 things (faces, foods, art works, etc.) in the frame, if you have text, make it BIG and SHORT and tell a story in one or two words, and be unique so people know it's a thumbnail from your channel.
3. BANNER: My banner, he said, is not great, because it says nothing but my channel name, and again, you want to educate the viewer on what your channel is about. So....for me, that means telling people exactly when we do each of our series. Monday we livestream and make puppets! Wednesday, Sullivan tries to be famous! Thursday, we make recipes! Etc. Make it easy to understand and give people a reason to come back.
4. FOCUS: He was really confused about the hair videos on my channel (and the cooking, a little bit, until he noticed there were puppets in the cooking videos), and said that viewers tend to only go to a channel for one type of video, even if they like you as a creator. Most viewers and subscribers won't watch, say, game videos AND vlogs AND movie reviews from the same person, so choose what's most important to you and make that the main focus of your channel. You don't have to drop everything else, but make sure that when people say, "I love Xingcat's channel, because I love puppets," they can say the same type of thing about your channel and your content.
5. CARDS and ENDSCREENS: If you have a series, make sure there's an episode of the series that explains what the series is about and call it out in a card or an endscreen link, because you only have the one chance to hook someone in one video if they came across it through search or random browsing. Try to make them stay on your channel, and the way to do that is to have someone say, "What is this video....is there more like it? Is it a story? What's going on?" you have an explanation ad directions on how to STAY THERE and KEEP WATCHING. I never thought about cards and screens like that, and just having "next" and "last" may entice people, but not as much as answering questions you can anticipate them having.
6. WATCH TIME IS KING: All advertisers, sponsors, and YouTube cares about right now is watch time, so keep people watching. It doesn't have to be watch time on a single video, but watch time on your channel. So look at your analytics and see where people are leaving, and find ways of either getting them to stay longer ("Stay to the end for..." or "What's the secret of wealth? I'll tell you in 10 steps," and make sure step 10 isn't halfway through the video, etc.), or if they're clicking away, let them click to something that brought them there in the first place.
7. CONSISTENCY: He praised me for staying on-schedule and consistent (with uploads regularly), but again, I need to work on making sure that I tell any viewers (subscribers or new viewers) when to show up again, and then make sure there's something there for them to watch when they arrive. He said there are "invisible fans," who aren't going to subscribe (for whatever reason), but will keep coming back for what they like, so let them know when the thing you do that they like happens.
That's all I have (it's a bit of a book, and I wanted to write this immediately after hanging up with him). A lot more specific and helpful a session than I got when I got a consultation before, so that's very nice.
I hope that's helpful to all y'all, as well!
I think the consistency + watch time notes are things I really need to pay a lot of my attention to. It's great to hear "updated information" from YouTube managers because there have been a lot of changes to the site over the past year!
