Good News for Small Creators...

so we need to talk about the YouTube algorithm because something strange is happening on YouTube I posted a question and asked on Twitter X have you noticed new and small channels being promoted on your YouTube home feed and some of the responses included now that you mention it I have been seeing so many under 500 view videos on my feed what is the deal we're going to see what YouTube themselves have to say about this because I got some juicy data and insights I also have four specific tips that you can apply right now to grow a Channel of any size and then finally let's talk about how to make the next 30 days your best 30 days on YouTube and so I did a survey on our think media channel and asked have you noticed new and small channels being promoted on your YouTube home feed a majority of YouTube consumers are seeing small channels being promoted well has YouTube said anything about this well that's interesting because they actually have for new creators or smaller creators because when you say the algorithm follows the audience they worry that they don't have an audience yet for the algorithm to follow so do we do anything for those those creators yeah so we have a team that is specifically focused on this challenge of trying to identify um audiences for creators that are just getting started we have a team dedicated on small channels small creators and for creators that are just getting started this is Todd Boe from YouTube who's behind search and Discovery algorithms for videos that don't we don't have a lot of um information about and so yeah with with those um videos and channels we do need to uh try some different approaches the title the description when when there are viewers that that show up that seems like they might be interested in it will show uh that video to those viewers and see which of them react we really now mind you we'll come back to this but he notice you need to focus on title and description when it comes to getting some of your videos to show up that's interesting let's keep going we want to make sure that there is a path for new creators uh to get started it's a metric we track how many how many new creators are succeeding on the platform we're very focused on that we we care a lot about it because we do believe that there's a lot of opportunity there with new creators coming along with new ideas all the time and we want to we want to help those creators be successful so one thing I've also heard from you so far we now have revealed that from the surveying of again about 2,000 people that watch our think media channel and from my experience everyone that I've talked to in person um other creators or digitally they're all seeing small channels brand new channels channels with only a few views getting recommended on their home feed and if we look to YouTube I actually sent a Twitter X to Renee and it said he sent me this video and he said basically we covered it back then that absolutely yes this is something that YouTube has a team and something that YouTube is doing and that is really giving small creators and new channels a shot so this is a massive opportunity and so let's dive a little bit deeper in here and um go into some of the takeaways and tips but the overarching fact is that YouTube is intentionally promoting small creators all right so what are the takeaways and tips I have four for you and number one is seize this opportunity if a window of opportunity appears don't pull down the shade when an opportunity presents itself you got to go after it friend this is a fact like this is actually happening and so at the time of recording this video mid 2024 people could say oh YouTube is too saturated it's too crowded and there's no way to start and break out that would be false we are actually seeing that YouTube is being intentional to give new creators and small creators a chance all I want is an opportunity then it's my opportunity to seize that I want to encourage you seize this opportunity number two focus on Smart interest based topics and so again I want to know your experience in terms of this idea of small channels being recommended on your page but here's some of my observations some of the things that have been being recommended on my home feed have been very interest based and so I'll give you some examples I was actually recently following a scandal at a church in Kansas City and I've been familiar with this church and this movement for like over a decade it's kind of heartbreaking but it's also fascinated about the Leadership Lessons and just some of the details and so because I started consuming detail about this or videos about this church name the movement leader pastor's name and these different search-based topics other creators started hitting my home feed in relation to that conversation what is that that is a interest-based topic um I watch a lot of content around people's takes and their experience on the Creator economy what's being recommended on my home feed other content related to the creater economy now that might seem obvious because we already know the YouTube algorithm is going to suggest you things based on your watch history but I think the key here is that it's not just recommending big channels it's giving small channels a shot but the small channels that are getting a shot are being recommended based on a clear interest if you're making content that isn't tied to interest-based topics like if there's no value to it or no Clarity in the title or you're maybe not jumping on Trends this is a big reason reason you should embrace culture surfing which would include influence surfing and Trend surfing you know whether it's also online business or social media or YouTube growth I'm seeing interest based topics being recommended to me so focus on Smart interest based topics and you've got a shot right now to start getting recommended by the YouTube algorithm number three make it easy for the algorithm to understand exactly what your video is about notice that YouTube themselves said we have a team dedicated to small creators but you're going to want to make sure that your title your description is actually optimized what's fascinating is some of the Educators out there or some of the different YouTube teachers I honestly think they're misleading a lot of creators meaning some people I think are downplaying video optimization and I understand why but they're saying tags don't matter description doesn't matter I don't know if anyone's saying title doesn't matter because it does in a major way but one of the most important things to remember as a small and new Creator is that if you don't give YouTube data how is it going to know what your video is about if you don't take your title your description your tags seriously at the start you're not giving those feedback loops to YouTube the objection to what I'm saying is that those things in and of themselves are not going to guarantee or cause a YouTube video to perform I agree but but I think that there's some confusion that's being cast that people are throwing the baby out with the bath water especially for new and small creators so the goal here is you're going to want to make sure it's easy for the algorithm to understand exactly what your video is about if only that just means writing a really good title that has the name of a searchable person or the name of a searchable event or the name of a searchable organization because how else is YouTube going to know what your video is about and of course preparation and planning even including the very words in the video you say that is a feedback loop maybe more so than the description is the fact that YouTube knows what you're saying in your video it can see even their autogenerated closed captions what you're saying and so you just want to think okay if something that I want to get suggested by if I want to grow I'm just starting how can I optimize all aspects including my video script to make it easy for the algorithm to understand exactly what your video is about and one of the things that we want to clarify here is all YouTube is ultimately giving you an opportunity with is Impressions is Impressions because we're going to cover some of the denters of this question because I put it out there and I was like is are small Creator showing up on your YouTube homepage and people are like no they're not they're upset you know they're agitated and I get it you're frustrated maybe you feel stuck on YouTube but you being recommended by YouTube does not mean that anyone's going to watch your video or that anyone's going to like your video I think it's incredibly generous of YouTube they don't have to you know give us a shot to give us a shot but all that means is you're getting an impression it doesn't mean you're getting a view and so an impression right is YouTube having you show up on the homepage show up in the suggested videos have you being autoplayed it's it's like a chance for your video to be seen I think this is think media and in a month I got 7.6 million um Impressions but only 289,000 views right because with a round 4% click-through rate that means of course not everybody that has a chance to click on the video will click on the video in fact YouTube was saying I believe this might have been on the podcast channel that out of every hundred times if you want to understand clickthrough rate better out of this is my personal data every 100 times your thumbnails shown viewers choose them four times that's a 4% average Channel click-through rate across the channel now notice this at the bottom though many popular videos are chosen up to 10 times in the first day that would say that their click-through rate in the first day is 10% if you want to be at like that Elite level on YouTube what's the point one of the things I've been noticing and I tried last night I went to my feed in preparation for today's video and I started scrolling and I count titles thumbnails topic how to make the video interesting so that you have the best opportunity when you have the opportunity to get an impression which is a gift that just means a chance for someone to click that they actually do because it seems interesting you've opened a curiosity Loop there's something that actually makes people want to click through then you have a chance to actually add value build somebody that's interested in your content maybe a subscriber and they can go down kind of the whole journey with becoming a part of your channel you know today's video is brought to you by vid iq.com forth think and um if you can click in the link of the description or just go to that URL you can actually do a one dollar trial of vid iq's boost plan and this is one of the things that vid IQ does that is super helpful meaning they've got AI title generator they've got description generator they've got a really fast and easy way to do tags I get YouTube tags are not that big a deal they're not that influential but they also take less than a minute to add with a tool like viit IQ when you're super clear on what your video is about you just go boom boom boom boom boom you just add them all in like so tools like this are just GNA they don't make a video for you but they're going to give you an advantage to optimize your video according to best practices to improve your titles and your description and your SEO score people say Sean is my SEO score matter that that much on the one hand I'd say no it it doesn't really but on the other hand it would say but don't ignore it like why would you not want to have a peak optimized YouTube video and this doesn't mean that YouTube is not competitive just because YouTube is recommending small channels it doesn't mean that this is going to be easy so I just want to encourage you you want to give yourself the best chance of success don't cut Corners anywhere and if you haven't tried out vid IQ then just know that this helps go faster and make sure that you do have the best possible video optimization as well as a lot of other things that are happening there as well so give YouTube the give the YouTube algorithm the best chance of ultimately discovering your video and understanding what your video is about but number four is fix your mindset number four is fix your mindset this might be the most important tip because interestingly enough in this survey that we did and I asked you know are you seeing this happen and let me know in the comments are you seeing lots of small channels and channels with couple I've seen Channels with 50 views 17 views I'm seeing small creators being recommended on my homepage okay cool it's an opportunity I got some responses to this survey that were fascinating and that's why I bring this up of fix your mindset because here's here's one of the responses remember what the question was the question was are you seeing small creators being recommended to you in your feed here's the response my channel is going down honestly YouTube's not helping me push my contents I don't get subscribers or views even though I post interesting contents that's not even the question like in respect I'm I'm sorry your Channel's going down but I'm saying are you seeing small creators this is why I want to touch on this because I think the mindset is mistaken here we can get into maybe being kind of like a victim mindset or kind of like like woe is me as opposed to seeing an Open Door of possibility all we see is the impossibilities you know there's something that when we get into negative thinking we can make a we can find a problem with every opportunity and I want to encourage you if there there's certain mindsets that just see problems everywhere there's other people who just see opportunities everywhere and they're looking at the same situation so my channel is going down honestly Okay now what's also fascinating is I would go even deeper because in the replies of this thread I actually went to this person's Channel used vid IQ to look at their stats their channel was up 700% views in the last 30 days even more surprising like the negativity biased like no actually your Channel's growing it's actually up 700% and I think another thing we have to address is it also says YouTube is not helping me push my content YouTube has been clear about this YouTube never pushes content it like YouTube's not promoting my videos by the way it does it doesn't push your videos to viewers it recommends videos that viewers might be interested so like the idea that YouTube's just pushing and promoting videos back to the idea that you need to be interest in topic based it's like we got to do just some work on our mindset to even understand how the algorithm Works to understand that we might have the propensity to lean a little bit negative but to actually see that okay there's a m massive opportunity here let me jump in and seize it and not just see it through this lens of again negativity here's another one down down down from 200 from 500 to 2,000 every video down to five to 50 YouTube hates my channel let me challenge that you got to fix your mindset YouTube doesn't hate your channel YouTube loves viewers YouTube doesn't hate your channel YouTube wants to satisfy the audience so YouTube recommends videos they think will satisfy the audience when I expressed interest in a particular Niche faith-based topic YouTube started bringing me videos I might be interested in YouTube doesn't hate anybody's Channel they just love viewers and so we got to fix our mindset now again your experience might be that your view are going down I respect that but it's just so funny to me that the response to are you seeing the opportunity because other small channels are being recommended in your home feed and people are like no My Views are just going down what what's happening in your your home feed what about other small Channel and the good news is if we would open up our minds to some possibilities maybe shift out of getting stuck in negativity we could actually see okay wait a minute there's a massive open door for small creators and instead of getting maybe pessimistic and just thinking about oh it's hard to get views now or views are going down well let's get Innovative let's level up let's get creative and figure out how to get our views back up let's take every impression that YouTube gives us as a gift and let's Steward that gift with gratitude with creativity and with Innovation I think that's the mindset that we need to have now alternatively notice this this channel said I'm a small Channel and like a month or two ago I was getting 10 to 15 views even in shorts but now I'm getting 3,000 to 4,000 views which is great for a small Channel like me so one of the most harmful things is again if you project your experience onto everybody else it it it clouds your vision I think it paralyzes your creativity and it's not going to lead you anywhere productive and so I think that this is an important concept to understand is that YouTube success is going to be found at the intersection of what you want meaning this I think a lot of people are they're they're stuck in self mode selfish mode When My Views are going down like I want views and I want YouTube to promote my content and I I want YouTube hates me and YouTube doesn't like me YouTube is mad at me and what I want is views and a chance H okay respect relax sir it's going to be okay um so there's there's what you want which makes sense because I know it's your tube it's YouTube you can make the videos you want but remember success is going to be at the intersection of what you want but also what what they want like do you think about the audience first or don't don't you and at the overlap of these two things is the growth Zone but I would challenge you perhaps your success is going to be found more focusing more on what they want because again YouTube wants to satisfy viewers in a way this might be controversial they don't want to satisfy creators because if if YouTube made you happy by just pushing your crap content out to a bunch of people to give you views well the whole platform would implode because people would be like why is this ultimately being shown to me but here's what's Wild is they do want to satisfy creators because they are giving you a shot because last night I literally saw a no Avatar bad title horrible thumbnail video recommended to me it shows like they're putting the put they are putting some you know juice behind some creators that may or may not deserve it so that you at least have a chance but we got to get into a mindset of extreme ownership we got to start taking some responsibility we have to start thinking about okay so what if I actually thought about what the viewer wants or what audiences want and I actually started putting the audience first it's like you know ultimately thinking and yes what I want but even I mean talk about this just sounds weird too like I just want YouTube to make me happy what if you focused on making other people happy what if you focused on making viewers happy actually that's kind of the key to YouTube success it's actually focusing on giving viewers a great experience and give being entertaining and being educational and so for sure it's a tension of both but what do you want mixed with what do they want that's where the growth zone is and I love what Patrick said here because again the question is is YouTube recommending small channels here's what he said all the time this is what everybody's seeing it's happening everywhere and he said so you can't complain that YouTube isn't giving a fair chance I want to take Patrick to coffee and give him a high five because complaining is not a strategy okay complaining ultimately never makes anything better complaining is a waste of time and energy and so get busy getting better so you don't even have any time to complain get busy improving so you don't have any time to just think about wo is me and so as we land the plane let's talk about how to hack your brain and get more done in the next 30 days on YouTube but by the way uh later today I am teaching a live class and I'm going into the one YouTube strategy that's generating over millions of views right now between two channels I'm going to be talking about which types of channels are growing the most right now the three biggest mistakes YouTubers are making and how to fix them and the the new rules of YouTube success so if you're into this kind of stuff and you want to hang out with me on a deep dive YouTube strategy class if you don't catch this with the opportunity to watch it live don't worry it'll probably be an OnDemand limited replay or something like that so just hit the link in the description if you want to check that out

Channel: Think Media

Views: 194,313

Keywords: think media, youtube algorithm 2024, youtube algorithm, youtube algorithm explained, think media podcast, youtube tips for beginners, how to grow on youtube, sean cannell, youtube channel tips, how to grow a youtube channel, how to grow your channel, youtube creators, grow your youtube channel tips, how to grow your youtube channel, understanding the youtube algorithm, youtube tips to grow your channel, youtube algorithm update, algorithm, creator economy, youtube strategy

Id: s5l0g740yZw

Length: 23min 26sec (1406 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2024