Trent: Hey there bright ideas fans, my name is Trent Dyrsmid and I’m the host of the bread ideas podcast. Where we help you to better understand how to make your amazon ecommerce business more of a success and today on the show I have with me a fellow by the name of Tim Schmoyer. Who is a YouTube expert, I don’t like using the word guru? But he’s kind of a YouTube guru. He has worked with brands like fox, Forbes, BBC and even YouTube themselves. His team has helped their clients organically earn over 14 billion views and 61 million subscribers. Tim has at least a half a million or so on his own channel and I actually did a consulting call with Tim last week and I learned all the things that I’m doing wrong and I thought maybe I would be doing a little bit right, but it turns out is doing pretty much everything wrong on YouTube. So why you want to pay attention to this particular interview even if you’re selling products on amazon is that you want to be able to drive traffic to your product listings. If you’re talking to a manufacturer and they’re saying well why should I pick you? Why should I authorize you? This is one of those core skills that you want to be able to say hey well I actually know how to do this off of amazon marketing activity, I know how to do it really really well. Ideally, you’ve got a channel of your own as proof and that could be the difference between you getting your account request approved or not. So, with all that said Tim’s been quiet long enough. Please join me in welcoming Tim to the show and Tim let’s start off in your own words, who are you and what do you do.

Tim: Hey well thanks for having me yeah. So, I started on YouTube back in 2006. YouTube started in 2005 and it’s just like a few months later I created my first account and I was in graduate school, halfway across the country from my family and I’m like oh this might be a good way to introduce my girlfriend to my family back home and so we started making like little videos together. Now you would know them as vlogs. But back then it was just being awkward in public with the camera. We make little videos going out the movies, going out to dinner, going play in the park you know just going on walks like whatever and it’s just to introduce her to my family and as we start doing this as out I started realizing like other people are watching. Like where are these people coming from? Why are they watching my channel, what’s bringing them back? What is here that they could possibly will like care about and stared me down this rabbit trail trying to figure out the YouTube platform and I asked other people like how this working. Like who is catlicker69 and should I be concerned that they’re watching my videos. Why do they keep commenting and they’re like no Tim we don’t know? But if you figure it out let us know. Because we’d love to learn it ourselves so about solving problems like that Dovan and make a long story short, it turned into a full-time thing for us pretty quickly. I was doing youth work and loved seeing life change happen and lots of teenagers and their families and started seeing like the same amount of stuff that we were seeing in working with people in person was actually happening on YouTube. Except for in person I was working with like a hundred and eighty students a week. But on YouTube at that time our family is reaching a million people a month and same stories of people whose lives were changed and divorces that were prevented and marriages that were healed and people didn’t commit suicide as a result of our videos and it was just it was crazy and so I’m like this is what this platform is all about. Reaching people, changing their lives, offering value and really making the world a better place and so turned into a small business, there’s ten of us now. I work with clients and creators just helping them grow their audience in the YouTube and in their channels on YouTube. We’ve helped people so far achieve 14 billion views and 61 million subscribers and we’re really proud of that and had a lot of success doing it. So, it’s a lot of fun.

Trent: So, Tim for my audience what do you think YouTube would be best for them to use it for.

Tim: So, for people who are selling on amazon I mean there’s a lot of different ways you could use this. I mean before I get into the tactical like what to be actually view, I usually back up a step and I say what’s your main objective here, what’s your main goal and so is it just to drive traffic. That’s one goal, is it to actually build a brand that people know like and trust and then want to make a transaction with you or like what would be like what’s the main thing we’re going after here?

Trent: So, let me jump in and answer that question on behalf of my audience, because I have had experience with video as it pertains to landing accounts. So, one of the things that’s worked really well for me is I have a couple of videos, a couple of videos on the website that explain our value propositions and so that when we end up scheduling a discovery call with a perspective brand, usually they will have watched one or two or three of those videos beforehand. So, at a bare minimum I see great value in that. But as we went through your own eyes consulting session the other day I realized that there’s also probably an opportunity to really become the dominant expert in a given niche for the amazon reseller platform or the amazon marketplace. So, let’s kind of go at it from that perspective. If the strategy was hey I’ve got this third-party seller and I want to make it easier for me to land accounts with key brands, how would you tube help me to solve that problem?

Tim: Yeah, I think it comes down to what are the main things like who’s the target audience for this. So, in that case with the target audience be customers. Is the brand looking for like oh they have a big following and they can move a lot of merch for us or is it more like I just want to know more about these people, who they are, they credible, they trustworthy, is it the type of people I would like to work with. But who would be the target audience for a channel like that.

Trent: It could be either. Because a given third party seller could say so I’m going to go after the yoga niche. So, they could make videos with an audience of yoga manufacturing companies where they’re talking about marketing and they’re talking about ways to get more traction for their products and at the same time they probably could have another channel where they’re going after the yoga and customers. So, they’re kind of hitting two birds with one stone by getting on the radar screen of yoga manufacturers, oh and by the way I have this big following and that would really be the one-two punch in landing that type of an account.

Tim: Yeah so, we do multiple channels for people or we recommend they do multiple channels, if there is a different value proposition for a different target audience. So, if the value proposition of the channel is aligned with the same target audience and keep all the content on the same channel. But as soon as you start going after a different audience, if the goal of course is to grow the channel like people sign up with an expectation, they’re subscribing to get a certain value that’s something for them right and then if the channel starts showing in some videos that like are for them and other videos that aren’t for them, before long people are just going to start filtering out your videos and before long they’re not watching much of anything and so it’s really important that the value proposition and the target audience are aligned. It sounds like what you’re saying is that those are two different audiences that are looking for two different values. In which case I would probably have a separate channel for each of those and focus on whichever one it is, whichever one meets my goals and objectives the best. It’s really hard to grow multiple channels simultaneously without like a really big team behind you. It is more than twice as easy to put all your focus time energy and attention resources on the one channel and just really blow that one up instead of trying to do two, it’s very difficult. So, I would pick one or the other.

Trent: Okay so for the purposes of our discussion let’s say there’s a third-party person in the room called my audience and let’s say they’ve decided well I’m going to build a channel for consumers of yoga products, so that I have the reach. So that when I go to yoga manufacturer and I say hey you should sign an exclusive deal with me or a deal with me where I’m the exclusive or co exclusive seller of your products on the amazon platform. I’ve got a pretty compelling argument because I’ve got this audience and I know that I can drive traffic immediately to their product listings. So, given that that is the audience now how are we going to grow that channel?

Tim: Yeah so, the first thing I would do is really nailed down exactly who that target audience is that we’re going after and really getting that down to like a customer avatar. Presumably you’ve already done this as a part of your business. So that part’s easy. The second part is and the value proposition of the channel and presumably you’ve done this with your business as well, like what’s the main value people get forefront from our business and where they wanted to consume from it. So, it’s not just who it for is but why should they care and answering both of those questions very quickly for people on YouTube is important. It’s not like television where someone will turn it on and lean back and give you a few minutes or something. Yet like five seconds that quickly and clearly communicate and those things and make the viewer feel like yes this is for me and yes this is value I want to consume and so knowing how to articulate those very quickly and how you’re going to present those visually on the channel, through your branding and everything, both of those two things are very important before you even jump into like content and things. Because those are kind of the rails that keep the train running in the right direction, keep everything… Get that help you gain momentum.

Trent: So, let me jump in there with a question let’s say that we are going after building a channel around people who yogis are, they like to do yoga. Would it be better to have a channel that talks about like what if I’m not a yoga, well actually if I’m going after the yoga niche I’m probably pretty passionate about yoga. So, I probably know something about yoga. So, there’s kind of two ways in my mind this could work. One is I’ve got this channel that’s about yoga and how to do better yoga and so forth or I could have a channel or my value prop could be we’re reviewing products that would be purchased by people in yoga or could you kind of have both of those value props together like one, I want to learn how to do better yoga and two, I want to make sure that I buy the best products for yoga.

Tim: Yeah, I again kind of want to go like a layer deeper first of all. Which is like not what do we do like hey subscribe to our channel because we review yoga products. Instead you need to tap into the emotional thing like why does the person care that you review yoga products like what does that do for them you know and getting more a little less on the what and a little bit more of the why, now you do need both people need to cognitively understand what you’re doing. But the thing that gets them actually grow to love the brand and the channel and want to start watching every video you do is when you start making an emotional human connection with a person and so I would you know want to push a little bit into like so why this target audience loves yoga. What makes them so passionate? But what does it do for them? What’s the thing that I actually want, what’s the reward or the benefit they get from yoga rather than just telling people what you do but tell them why you do it and that’s going to that’s the first step in making a more emotional connection.

Trent: Let’s use grant Thompson king of random who’s the client years with 10 million subscribers.

Tim: Used to be a client.

Trent: Okay so in his channel what’s the like I’ve watched his videos and they’re like interesting. But what’s the emotion, now is the nature of what he’s filming different or is there an emotional thing that people are getting and that’s why he’s got 10 million subscribers?

Tim: Yeah and for anyone who’s not familiar with his channel he basically does, it’s very much a guy oriented like science project type of channel. But it’s kind of more extreme like where things blow up and stuff. Not so much like technical things about compound structures or whatever. So, what he does really well is he would be more on the entertainment side as opposed to the educational side of YouTube and he’s actually telling really good stories and a story in the sense of like it creates a sense of intrigue right away and then it makes you ask a question that your brain needs to have resolved. Which is what does happen if I splash dry ice on my naked eyeball? Right like I never thought of that before and there is a thumbnail of like the dry ice splashing directly onto his eyeball. Right like what happened that’s the question that gets people they’ll click watch and watch all the way through right and so for him like that video for example, it was only shot on, I think it was shot on his iPhone like in what 15 million, 20 million views or whatever it is now. It’s not because of how the production value.  The story value and the connection it made with people and the intrigue created in someone’s mind. So, for him I would say maybe I’m the entertainment side it might be a little bit different. Although you could certainly do an entertainment-based channel and integrate the products and things directly into the content itself too. But if you’re doing like product reviews for example, you know someone’s going to watch your video, look at me like oh that was nice I get it, I’ll buy the thing now and then they leave.  It’s good for getting a viewer maybe, I am not saying you shouldn’t do product reviews. But it’s not that great for growing a brand of people who are passionate. The strongest communities online and offline this applies everywhere, they don’t revolve around common interests. They actually revolve around shared beliefs and so if your brand revolves around, this is what we do and why we do it, that’s again a first step to creating a more emotional connection with someone and someone being like yes that’s why I love yoga too, that’s why I do yoga. That’s what I’m all about, that’s why this matter to me and then connecting every review you do and every piece of content back to that belief that creed in terms of branding is concerned.

Trent: Okay so that is a great segue let’s into kind of the tactics part and this is something that I again going back to the consulting call that you and I did where I think I was making all sorts of mistakes. So, let’s assume at this point in the discussion now that we’ve figured out who our avatar is, we know who our target audiences, we understand their pain, we understand our value propositions; so, we’re all set. So, let’s dive into the tactics of step one step two step three and getting our channel set up. Once that’s done then how are we shooting videos and then making you know how we are getting editing looked after and so forth.

Tim: Yep step one is to then start like an ideation process of how we can best deliver this value to someone on our target audience and so maybe is like hey we do product reviews and we could do maybe testimonials, maybe interviews with people who love yoga right. It’s actually not I would recommend not making it all about the products. Make it about the people, the belief, their lifestyle especially in yoga like it would include everything from like eating and health and fitness to everything you know. So let’s talk about what we want to attract people who are all about this lifestyle and so come with a couple different show maybe ideas and then the second step number two is to go on YouTube and actually search for those types of things and see you know here’s a few channels are already doing this idea and it doesn’t look like it’s working for them right or here are some people that are doing a really good job and it is working with them.  What do they seem to be doing in every video and with their brand and channel overall that does seem to make this work well for them and so the goal here is to just not copy necessarily, but just learn a lot? Just do a lot of recon research and figure out what principles do we need to take and make sure we apply like oh like wow all the ones that are doing really well, they all have a female host who wear the yoga uniform right. You know as opposed to this person is just like a like we hear voiceover, but we never get to see the person and those types of video don’t seem to be doing as well. They’re just all about the product. So, principle number one is we need to make sure that we have an actual person who’s going to represent what our brand is about. That’s going to be the person that’s that people are going to connect to. I just made that up, [17:55 inaudible]. But you get the idea of like doing all that research you start getting those types of principles and then the step number three is all right let’s do a few pilots of these and in the goal, here isn’t to make up you know fabulous video that’s going to get millions of views, it’s just like let’s get our sop’s, our processes down. What’s it going to look like for us to script a video or outline a video, get it props and everything we need and get things shot and edited and when you’re first starting out like that’s a pretty, just like anything in life and your first few times to do it it’s just a little bit cumbersome and you’re kind of feeling your way in the dark a little bit and so the process here is just to figure out how do we going to make these videos, what’s the process going to look like, what’s going to work for us and our time restraints and our resources and then just I would say make five of them and you can publish those five on your channel and then look at some of the data around it. But I want to come back to the structure I would recommend people follow when they make their content. But that would be the next step is just kind of like just to get that process down and then keep you reevaluating how you do that. Otherwise like every video is going to end up different and it’s going to be hard to consistently deliver the value that people want and so I know Trent you are a firm believer in those processes.

Trent: So good segue. Do you want to talk about what you’re developing for the fluster platform?

Tim: Yeah, we will be putting together some YouTube sops and terms of how to like to do some research.  I forget exactly were the ones where let me look him up here really quick. We said we’re going to do one about like how the process of creating a video, the structure of a video, how to optimize videos and a few other ones as well. We’re going to put all that in the fluster app.

Trent: So, stay tuned folks those will be available to fluster users in the relatively near future. So, let me jump in with some more questions. Because I know that I had on gone off on my own before consulting with you and watching YouTube videos and watching some other channel people and getting the tube buddy tool and I was thinking about okay, so everything is about keywords. I’m going to get people’s, I’m going to get eyes on my video because I just got to focus on keywords and I have to look at how much demand is there for this keyword and how much competition is there for this keyword and I was super keyword focused and you kind of got me thinking that maybe that wasn’t necessarily the best approach. So, do you want to talk through, because I don’t want other people that are watching this to make that same mistake.

Tim: Yeah, I mean that keyword approach is kind of left over from older see days. It’s been many many years since YouTube has looked at keyword matching as a part of how they surface results us more now based on user intent. So, which means like if I search for billboard top 100, I might get music videos right. No no keyword correlation there. But you can see how that’s a relevant result for someone who’s looking for billboard top 100 or vice-versa and so the way the system works is actually it’s what ranks and positions videos is not what keywords you use. It’s all about viewer signals that google collects, YouTube collects from people who are watching and some of the things they’re looking for is but when we surfaced this video, do people click and watch it in the first place. So that is like title and thumbnail and so how do you get someone to click? How do you optimize that? Well it’s based on optimizing for and this is the overarching principle, optimize for humans not for robots. Right so it’s like what if a person saw that title a versus title b, which would they click? Well title b might have all your keywords perfectly aligned in there. But title a is actually a more clickable title. I saw a perfect example of this the other day with the client, they were reviewing toilet paper brands actually and the title had none of the toilet paper brands in the title, none of those keywords. The title is something like why you should give a crap or something like, but it was something along that lines and it was a thumbnail of her face in a big pile of like kind of poking out of a big pile of different toilet paper brands right and so she had none of her keyword. She didn’t have toilet paper in the title, wasn’t even in there. Like one of the main keywords you think. But the video is doing incredibly well for her because it makes you smile when you see that. Like you’re like oh what you know I never thought about what’s the best toilet paper brand before whatever you know and so people click because of the thumbnail clearly have toilet paper in it and the title is a really good like human pitch for it and so people click and YouTube quickly figures out that hey when people are looking for toilet paper or use like what they type in toilet paper reviews, a high percentage of them click on this video. This video must be about toilet paper reviews and so they’ll just surface it for that. So that’s kind of the way to think about it more, now I’m not saying you shouldn’t use keywords. The value of keywords is again not from a robot perspective or an algorithm perspective is again the human perspective. Which is in language we use words that represent things for us right and so someone searching for a certain word, they expect often to see that word associated with that content. Like it just makes it clear to the viewer that this videos about that thing and so it’s kind of makes it more likely to click. But it’s not because you repeated toilet paper five times in the title description and tags and so Youtube’s like whoa they said that a lot, it must be about this thing now. Because a lot of people lie in their metadata and YouTube learned a long time ago we can’t trust people based on what they put. Like someone just starts putting PewDiePie in their tags, they think that if like a now our might be is going to be positioned next to PewDiePie’s videos and I’m going to get a lot of… It doesn’t work that way. People lie these misleading metadata all the time and so YouTube bases it on viewer signals. So, the principle is optimized for people not for robots.

Trent: So an example of that and this comes from [24:39 inaudible] I produced a video called how to create an Instagram following and the reason that I created that video is because we have a free fluster SOP that we had created by going out and doing research on various influencers who had come up with proven strategies for creating an Instagram following and of course because I was overly focused on keywords, I titled it you know how to create an Instagram following and when you looked at my channel which is really about amazon selling you’re like well this doesn’t really fit with this. But turned what if you changed the title to say how to avoid the ever-increasing costs of amazon pay-per-click by building a following on Instagram. Same video slightly different title, slightly different thumbnails so now that when someone comes to my channel homepage for the first time, it’s glaringly obvious to them that all of my videos are about succeeding on amazon and if that’s their goal of course they’re going to think oh well I got to subscribe to this, which is the goal and I’m positioning that video for humans. Because someone who is thinking about why oh man my amazon costs are going through the roof and they’re randomly browsing on YouTube for whatever it is they’re doing, YouTube probably knows they’re kind of interested in amazon related content. So, they’re going to surface those videos to that particular user would that be a reasonable assumption and then when that user that human being sees that thumbnail and they’re like oh my gosh yeah that’s something I got to watch. Does that kind of how it works?

Tim: Yeah that’s the real power of YouTube is like on google like someone’s got to type in something to search like you don’t just go to YouTube to or to google. Com to browse, there’s nothing to browse right and fact YouTube does or google sorry does their job if you’re on their platform though longer than like five to seven seconds or something. But on YouTube is exact opposite. You go to like the home page of YouTube is just littered with videos, you have lots of things you could look at and people are just in browsing mode there and so when google starts feeling confident about who your videos are for and start seeing that when this specific type of person really interaction engages with this channel for the first time, they get sucked in and they spend an extra thirty minutes on YouTube for example.  Then YouTube just going to start pushing your videos like in front of the right people, you end up being suggested, you end up on the home page and you don’t have to do a thing when google knows like okay content from this channel is for this type of person, like an amazon seller and we know their amazon seller because they search for this, so they look for that or they watch these other videos,  they tend to get engaged in this type of stuff. Here’s Trent’s channel, they never heard of Trent before. But we know that when this audience connects with Trent they love it and so then they just start pushing those videos in front of you. Like it’s awesome, we have one client working through he’s doing ok with a few thousand subscribers a day, they’re you know growing. But when we really leverage this principle of like homing in on the exact audience and helping google feel confident who this audience was, his video start going to the home page for people who weren’t subscribers and he went for doing about one to two thousand subscribers a day two thirty and forty thousand subscribers per day. He blew past that 2 million subscriber count, Marv got his channel and now he tells everyone he knows about me. [28:07 inaudible] but that’s the power of like don’t focus on search, focus I mean search is powerful like I’m not downplaying that.  But I’m focusing instead on like how to do we optimize these four people, so when google surfaces it to the right video they just click, they watch, and they engage and that has to do more with content optimization actually and so like you can get someone to click and watch, but they quickly abandon your video. That’s a negative signal that google too, that makes your videos less likely to be surfaced.

Trent: We’re going to dive into that in a second. But I just want to summarize this, so what I’m hearing you say is YouTube makes more money the longer people watch videos. So, if your channel is good at making people watch more videos, YouTube in their own selfish interest is going to say hey we’re going to promote the heck out of this guy’s channel for this audience, because he makes them watch videos more than all the other people and as a result you get more subscribers and you get more views.

Tim: Yes now there is an inherent problem for amazon sellers because most of you I assume want to give people off of YouTube and on the amazon to buy something right and so if your videos let’s say you have a video and it’s very successful at doing that and it does a really good job at ending the viewers session and getting them off of YouTube, you tube’s not going to surface that video that much, all right. So, it’s kind of like you’re shooting yourself in the foot to make, I mean like it’s not an effective way to grow your channel if you are ending the viewing session for people getting over amazon. So, we can come back to that too about how to maybe approach that in a few different ways.

Trent: I was going to say let’s kind of go down that rabbit hole. Because before I asked that question you talked about it’s really important the way you structure your content so that people don’t watch for three or four seconds and leave. So, let’s talk about content structure. Because number one we don’t want them to click the thumbnail and then leave. Because that’s a super bad signal for the algorithm and then what you just said number two is you know as much as I’m trying to build an audience of yogi’s and I need to get them on an email list or I need to get them to subscribe, maybe I don’t need to get them on an email list. Maybe just a channel subscription is enough. But at the end of the day I’m trying to build an audience that I can then monetize by selling them stuff on amazon. So, let’s deal with those two parts of content structure.

Tim: Yeah there’s a few different ways to do that. So, let’s talk about the video first and so what we’ve talked about so far is you need a really good enticing title and thumbnail. Doesn’t matter how amazing your video is if no one’s enticed to click on it in the first place right. So, after you click then we have to hook this person’s attention and get them to keep watching, how do we do that? So, what you shouldn’t do is what most people do I think we even talked about this a little bit in our session tramp and it’s very common. Because those people they’re familiar with television and so they just kind of like bring over to YouTube what they’re used to seeing on tv and it doesn’t work on YouTube. They’re very different platforms with different, viewer has different expectations for the content. One’s an active experience one’s a passive experience, they’re very different. We can’t do the same thing. So, the very first thing that needs to happen in that video is you need is a hook that viewers’ attention and that could be by further teasing the story that they clicked on or the or whatever expectation the title and thumbnail set that hook needs to affirm for the viewer that yes what you clicked expecting to get is coming in this video. Now that does not mean like just repeating basically what they just clicked on, like you know so in your example yeah like how to like to create an Instagram following and stuff and then you opened the video saying today we’re going to tell you how to grow an Instagram following, people like yeah, I already got that. It’s so better to instead like continue the conversation like how to they clicked on how to grow an Instagram following. So now the video is like this is what happened to my amazon selling whatever when I grew me in my Instagram accounts and look at this number, here’s a number before, here’s the number after and today I want to show you exactly how I did that, so that you can do the same, maybe something like that right and so you’re showing visuals. But more importantly is you’re not just telling people what you’re going to teach them, but you’re telling them in the hook why they should care, what’s in this for me, what am I going to get from an educational context. Its entertainment then you’re teasing the story, like oh what does happen if you splash in that or like what does that reunion between that mother and daughter look like you know there’s always that, what does the character want and why can’t they have it, what’s at stake if they don’t have it, don’t get it and how’d they end up getting it and how’s the transformation happen at the end, that’s more of a story which we can totally apply to educational content.  But coming back to the hook it’s like how you hook their attention, give it like 10,15 seconds focus on that. Then the next thing you can show is some branding if you like. But the point of the branding is like the branded intro is to quickly pitch your value proposition to someone in your targeted audience and connect that with your brand. It’s not necessarily just to be like hey I have this fancy logo and it can do a fun flip and a spin and here it is right. That doesn’t offer additional value. So that intro should be no longer than 5 seconds, 3 seconds is ideal.  Anything longer than 5 you’re going to start seeing audience abandonment on that video. So then after that that’s when you can welcome people and introduce yourself if you’d like and hey I’m Trent welcome, you know we’re all about helping guys grow your amazon, I forget the line you used. Yeah and it’s the what and the why. So, we help you amazon and we help you with amazon that’s the what and then the why, so you can grow your business and live the life of your dreams or whatever. Alright so you can pitch that real quick, so people understand the brand overall and then get right into delivering the actual thing someone clicked it wanting to get like what’s the actual value of the content get into that or the story if it’s more narrative base or something and then at the end of the video what you need to do is unlike television where you’re going to say well I hope this was helpful, let me know what you think, comment below, subscribe you know see you guys next time, great hangout like, don’t give any signals to the viewer that this video is over, you may now safely abandon this content. Because as soon as you give any signal like that they’re out, they’re gone, and you’ll see in your audience retention graphs and YouTube analytics people just drops, people leave right there. So, what you want to do instead is unlike tv where that show might be over people are saying goodbye because the next show is starting, that isn’t true on YouTube. People can keep watching more and more videos on your channel and that’s exactly what you want them to do in order to grow this and so instead you’re like maybe the Instagram video for example, it’s like this now the next thing you need to know is how to do this on Facebook to Instagram is great. But I put together a short playlist for you guys, only four videos you can click right here on your screen and you’re like pointing at that space where that’s going to be. You click right here on your screen to really dive into how to reproduce these same results with Facebook and Pinterest and LinkedIn all the other platforms. So, click there and I’ll see you in the next video, that’s it. Like you know and [35:49 inaudible] screens are there. It’s a clickable, interactive area the video people can click to get onto that next video and coming to that like back to maybe to the sales tactic of like if you talk about the product or service from the perspective as if the customer has already made the purchase, I’m much more likely like picture  themselves with that product and make the transaction, that’s what we’re doing. So, we’re not giving the viewer permission to abandon our content. We’re saying let’s keep going and you give a little pitch for the next video and they get into it or for its narrative content, it’s like maybe a quick kylie produced not produced highly cut trailer for the next video you want someone to watch with little arrow that says watch here or something and the goal is to get them into the next video into the next video in the next video and that’s going to be like one most positive signals for google like hey if we show this video to someone, they spend another 13 minutes on YouTube as opposed to like this other guy’s video they leave right away. So, let’s show this first guys right. So that’s kind of the structure how to format your content.

Trent: So, for someone who is starting out new they don’t have a lot of playlists, they don’t have a lot of content yet. How do they deal with the end of the video problem?

Tim: I would say like coming back and we said earlier plan out like 5 8 10 videos or so the very beginning before you’ve even uploaded anything and just once you get into you’ll have those ten videos or five videos or whatever it is before you even start or upload or I should say. Technically before you publish anything on the channel, you can upload them but you also need like a regular posting schedule it’s really helpful for just like television so people know when to come back to watch your latest episode and so if you can if you start your channel with five episodes already in the can, then your five weeks ahead that gives you some buffer to now learn and create new content based on the lessons you’re learning from the videos already published. So at least you have those five videos that can all interact with each other.

Trent: So, I had heard that it’s really important when you upload a video within the first 24 hours to get views. Can you let’s say I’m trying to bank up some videos, can I upload them all and keep them private or unlisted and then release them later on and I’m not penalizing myself, so I can basically store them that the 24-hour clocks not ticking yet, because they’re not public yet or is that rule is that just a myth?

Tim: Well there’s a few different ways to approach that. But you’d answer the first question yes you can upload them all, keep them unlisted or private or whatever you need to do. The clock starts ticking when the video goes public. So, it’s when you publish it that’s when the clock starts ticking. Now the other part of that though is like first 24 to 48 hours are most important that does seem like it’s a technical thing that’s true. Google is getting very quickly some signals that hey a lot of people love this video and so that’s one of the values of having subscribers. Because if you publish the video you potentially have an audience of people who are just waiting for the next piece of content and they’re there to watch it right away. If they have enabled notifications and all that kind of stuff. However, I don’t usually focus too much on that. Because that is true, but it’s also just as true that a video can sit dormant on your channel for a year or two and then take off. Yeah and it happens for me at multiple times as well. It’s because YouTube is constantly changing. There’s like what like five six hundred hours of video content uploaded every single minute and so it’s just like YouTube is constantly experimenting and testing like the click-through rates and the viewing sessions and all that like always testing and so like we had a video on our my family’s channel, we were Dave Ramsey people who’ve been debt-free for over ten years and so we did our debt free scream on video, upload it to YouTube you know got what? A few thousand views or something at that time this is you know twelve, ten and eleven years ago at this point, didn’t get a whole lot traction. But then another very popular family on YouTube uploaded a video of their debt free scream also going through Dave Ramsey stuff and their video got tons of traction, well our video then became the next suggested recommended video for people to watch after that and all of a sudden, our video it was flat took off right. So, I don’t usually dig into the 24 to 48-hour thing just because it gets people’s minds are focusing on algorithm stuff, more so than like human stuff. But the principle there is merit to that.  But just because it falls flat in 48 hours it doesn’t mean that your videos dead, it was a waste of time necessarily.

Trent: What about the YouTube community tab I’ve been messing around with it and I’ve got thirty-two thousand odd subscribers on my channel that I’ve accumulated over a period of probably six or seven years and there’s not much going the community’s kind of a ghost town to be honest with you.

Tim: On your channel specifically?

Trent: Mine specifically so I’m wondering is it just a ghost town on everyone’s channel or is it I’m not using it properly or what-have-you?

Tim: Yeah, I mean it’s a very effective tool for people who have an engaged audience. So, if your audience doesn’t care about you trying to be nice.

Trent: Remember my channel I had lost access, it’s a whole long story. But basically, I wasn’t uploading videos for like six years to this channel and it was one video that been, it’s been watched millions of times where all these subscribers came from.

Tim: Yeah and a lot of the subscribers are very old, and you post something in like who is this like I don’t subscribe to this channel. Alright so yeah but it can be a great way to interact between pieces of content throughout the week, you can post pictures there, you can post polls, you can ask questions you can share another people’s content. You know whatever is valuable or going on your own content too, whatever is valuable to your audience. Some people make like little gifts of their upcoming video and tease it out by posting those as animated gif images on their community tab. They kind of build some hype for that next video that’s coming.

Trent: Okay so the answer is pay attention to the community tab.

Tim: Yeah and if people aren’t engaging it more it’s probably more of a branding thing of how people do what’s the emotional connection you’re building with your audience, that’s probably the bigger question.

Trent: Yep and in my case that makes sense because back when that first video that got all those millions of views it really didn’t have anything to do with amazon, it was just like how to start a business. Now the channels all branded about amazon the content I put up is about amazon. So, it’s understandable that you know just because I want to start a business, doesn’t mean I want to start an amazon business. So, there’s kind of a disconnect, because I don’t have a good strategy.

Tim: Yeah so, the other thing then is like how we actually get traffic to amazon or to our email list or wherever when YouTube wants us to keep people on YouTube and not send them away. So, then you come through a few of these pretty quickly and there’s no right or wrong, you can mix and match these or whatever works best for you. One is what most people do is you can just kind of bite the bullet and be like well the goal of every video is to send people away from YouTube, so that’s what I’m going to do and that means I don’t get as much traffic as a result of it, that’s the way it is. Because it’s more important to me that I generate sales than it is that I get traffic. I personally need a little the short-sighted approach you know your kind of like killing the goose for the sake of the one golden egg.  But that is certainly a valid way to do and a lot a lot of people do that. It may just kind of bank on the fact that like a small percentage of the people actually click through. A second way to do it is to focus on growing the channel and growing the brand and that people love what you’re all about and who you are and you know those types of things you’ve talked about and focusing on using the channel more for that then the axle get then actual conversions and so but you get conversions the way it works is that you basically treat your YouTube channel the way most people treat their email funnel. Which is you have an email world you have like a lead magnet that someone signs up to get this free thing and YouTube world we call that discoverable content. Then people get maybe a series of like three four or five whatever emails, they’re just like growing to know like and trust factors that are intended to you know introduce who you are, which are all about, get people and start teasing a problem that your audience has that you’re going to leave to eventually that email sequence goes to a sale. Which is you know ok we’ve been talking about this, you know me, you like me, you trust me, you understand the problem and here’s the solution and then that’s, so you you’re publishing all these emails without ever once asking for a sale or even trying to capitalize because you know you’re leading up towards that final email in the sequence which is asking for the sale and that’s recapitalize on it, because of the know like and trust factors and the credibility you built in the previous emails. Doing the same thing on YouTube. So, you have your discoverable content, these the goal of a discoverable video is to go out, grab a new audience people who’ve never heard of you before. They only click because of the merit the title and the thumbnail pitched and they’re like I need this in my life and so they click and watch, and the goal of that video is to get people to watch another video, like we talked about.  Then you have your community videos which are kind of like you know I can trust doctor you know emails and the email sequence, and these are videos that are not intended to go big. They are just intended to reach the existing subscriber base you already have. So, like a week or so that video will pass their people’s subscription fees and you should no longer be getting any views. Because the only people who care about that are probably the people who care about you and your brand and maybe its content and be like whoa I wouldn’t have even thought to search for that or even I didn’t know that was a thing, that’s why I’m so glad I subscribed your channel because you’re providing value I don’t even know I need right. So those are like community-based videos and then you have sales videos. It’s the third category of content and this is when you’re then you capitalize on the audience that the discoverable video is brought in and you are and that the relationship that in the trust that the community videos built and now you’re asking for like the sale the transaction or really anytime you want to get people off of YouTube. Whether that be to your email list or to a product or sign up or whatever the case might be. So, I just did one of that, I just published one of those yesterday actually on my channel or a I have like a YouTube has like a membership thing built in, a paid membership thing built into your channels.

Trent: I had never seen that before.

Tim: Yeah there’s a join button next to the subscribe button and people can pay $4.99 a month and get access to special exclusive content and things and perks and things like that and so one of the perks I have is I.  Pretty regularly I would say at least once a month publish just like I just sit down it’s been like 45 minutes to an hour just diving deep into a topic and so in this past month I published training video on how to accelerate your channel growth by using the tactics that almost every top creator is using, but most creators I work with aren’t using. So, it’s like a really missed big missed opportunity and so diving in how to do that and so when that video is available enough for my members, I have my editor published like it’s usually 45 seconds to a minute trailer for that whole training. That’s the sales video that the call-to-action is click that join button, become a member and you get instant access to this entire in-depth training plus all the other ones that are in the archive there and so then I could capitalize on it that way. Now in that case it’s my benefit I’m actually not even ending the viewing session and keeping people on YouTube, because I’m using their tool in that case. But if I’m getting people are my email list or getting people to buy a product or my new course just opened or something, I make a video and say hey registration is now open blah blah blah you know that same process. So there’s that process and then the final process is a lot of people use and this worked probably especially well for amazon people more so than others is you just set up a whole bunch of remarketing campaigns on YouTube and so you’re growing your channel organically by not ending the viewing session, but now you know like hey show this ad to anyone who’s watched three of my videos and subscribe and comment it or something right.  You get really particular of like these are my diehard audience show them this ad or someone who’s just watched me for the first time, show them this ad and you can follow them you guys know how remarketing work. Keep following them around YouTube with ad campaigns and so basically your ad cost goes way down because of that, because of the organic traffic you’re getting on your channel.

Trent: Alright I think we could probably keep talking for some time. But we have we’re 49 minutes deep Tim and I’m sure you’re running up on a hard stop, I know I am. So, you’d mentioned courses and training and so forth. I know you do offer a couple of things what’s the easiest single best way, if someone’s been watching this and like I need to get me some more of Tim’s stuff; where do they go?

Tim: Yeah I used to go to www.Videocreators.Com and I have a you know a bunch of lead magnets there you can check out and courses we do an eight-week session with me, of course with me and my team of strategists let’s just walk you through the same YouTube growth strategy process that we use with Disney, HBO, warner bros,  eBay, Budweiser like all these top brands that we’ve done strategy for. It’s the same process in it and it works beautifully very predictable and reproducible. So, check that out or if you just want a lot freer content on how to grow your YouTube audience and podcast it’s just for video creators or check out videos at www.Youtube.Com/videocreators.

Trent: Alright cool Tim thank you so much for making some time to come be on the show.

Tim: Yeah thanks for having me.