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- [00:00]
Sean Cannell
Hey, before we jump into the show, I wanted to give you a heads up that my free YouTube strategy class is available right now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com on the class, I reveal the one YouTube strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 330,000 views every single day. So if you're new to YouTube, this will help you start right and avoid mistakes. And if you're a YouTube pro, this training will help you multiply your growth. This class is 100% free, and you can watch it now on demand@thinkmasterclass.com now let's jump into today's show. So how does the YouTube algorithm work? Does uploading a new video kill the momentum of the recent or last video? How does YouTube determine impressions?
- [00:50]
Renee Richie
One of the biggest hurdles for creators is getting over the idea that we make a video, we upload that video, and the algorithm pushes that video out. Try not to think about the algorithm too much because the algorithm's job is to follow the audience.
- [01:02]
Sean Cannell
We're going to be unpacking, really how to get views, how do impressions work, and even how do you create viral content? I'm joined by Renee Richie, who's the head of editorial and Tubeleson, helping YouTube empathize with creators and helping creators succeed on YouTube. And he really is an incredible expert because not only has he been creating content since 2008, one of his channels has grown to over 300,000 subscribers. And he is a practitioner himself. As well as working at YouTube and being at all the events, he really can give us some insider insights to help you create an unfair advantage in 2025 for your YouTube channel and your content. Rene, welcome back to the podcast.
- [01:50]
Renee Richie
Thank you so much for having me. It's always great to be here.
- [01:52]
Sean Cannell
So we did a community tab post and so many questions came in and I want to hit those in relation to the algorithm impressions, videos, momentum. Why a video has momentum and loses momentum, but from a high level. Can you explain how the algorithm works? Sure.
- [02:08]
Renee Richie
So I think like one of the biggest hurdles for creators is getting over the idea that we make a video, we upload that video, and the algorithm pushes that video out to viewers when it's actually the other way around. What the algorithm does is pull videos for viewers. So a viewer will open up the YouTube homepage on their phone or on their laptop or some other device, and within a few milliseconds, the YouTube algorithm will will try to figure out what are the most the best videos for that person at that time on that device and populate Those on the screen, the videos that they're most likely to want to click on, watch, enjoy, interact with so that they have something that's going to be satisfying for them to watch. So the advice that we try to give people is try not to think about the algorithm too much because the algorithm's job is to follow the audience. So if you have questions about the algorithm, replace it with the word audience and almost all of the time you'll get a way better answer.
- [03:03]
Sean Cannell
And one of the things that everybody wants is views, like, how do I get more views? But before you can get a view, you have to get an impression. What is an impression?
- [03:13]
Renee Richie
So an impression is like there's multiple traffic sources on YouTube. And one of the best pieces of advice I can give people is go into those traffic sources because a lot of times you'll open up YouTube Studio, you'll see like the click through rate, you'll see like the view duration, and you'll just stop there and think the video is good or bad. But what you really want to do is see what those numbers are for. Search for browse, which includes a subscription feed, the homepage, all of those things, because it can vary wildly within those. And impressions are specific mostly to the browse tab. Like anytime we show a thumbnail, I guess search as well, anytime we show a thumbnail on the page and a viewer has the opportunity to look at that thumbnail and choose whether to click or not, that's an impression. The thumbnail being there in front of a viewer is an impression.
- [03:58]
Sean Cannell
And so by nature, if a video gets a thousand impressions, that just means like a chance to be viewed. And if the video had a 4% click through rate, then it means you, out of a thousand impressions, you would have gotten 40 views.
- [04:14]
Renee Richie
Yes. Yeah. So yeah, it's that that thumbnail was shown to a viewer as an impression.
- [04:18]
Sean Cannell
And if we break down these traffic sources for those that are maybe thinking about how they could strategically use them, Shorts feed is a traffic source. And that's also a little bit different than impressions. An impression is kind of the same, but if it's actually being in the shorts feed, it means it went through someone's feed, they may have swiped away from it, but it went through their feed distributed by YouTube. Correct?
- [04:40]
Renee Richie
Yeah, yeah. So with long form videos, when you look at those browse areas, those browse surfaces, you have impressions and click through rate. Because the shorts are in a feed, there's no. And there's no thumbnails, there's no browsing, there's no impressions. So there you have viewed versus swiped away. So if you, if you put up a short and you have like a few hundred or a few thousand views, treat those as impressions because it means it's the shorts algorithm sort of testing that video with audiences the way that the long form algorithm would test those thumbnails with audiences.
- [05:08]
Sean Cannell
Okay, so then if we break down the long form traffic sources, YouTube, you explain these just kind of in a high level, simple to understand what is YouTube search?
- [05:17]
Renee Richie
So YouTube search is someone goes to YouTube, there's a search box at the top, they type in what they're looking for and then it generates a ranked list of videos that YouTube believes best matches that query personalized to the user. There's always two metrics. There's performance, which is how well those videos perform, which is more of an objective absolute, and then there's the subjective part, the personalization. You and I could both see a video that has the same performance and you might thumbs down and I might thumbs up just because of our own personal taste. So it's going to rank based on performance and then re rank based upon personalization and you'll get that rank that order in the search. And then if someone chooses your thumbnail, that impression would convert. Like you'd get the click through rate for that impression to a view.
- [05:58]
Sean Cannell
So what are you telling me? That the search feed is slightly personalized and perhaps meaning if I was to open an incognito window, I could get different results if I did a YouTube search than I would based on like my viewing history if I did a YouTube search.
- [06:12]
Renee Richie
Yeah, that's one way that we were like someone might say I didn't see this video in my search. Like open up an incognito window and search and see what you get there.
- [06:18]
Sean Cannell
Got it. So if there, and there would be that idea that if someone is just going to YouTube or hasn't pop or hasn't conditioned their account with their watch history, you might have kind of a universal ranking versus more of a personalized ranking. But the bottom line is there is the ability to search on YouTube and in doing so, that becomes a source of impressions. Someone doesn't mean they're going to watch your video. But if your video ranks anywhere on that first page or any page that a viewer clicks through, they could see your thumbnail and that would be the equivalent of one impression. So then another traffic source is browse features. What does that mean?
- [06:54]
Renee Richie
So browse features is where there's sort of like a bunch of thumbnails on the page, and you can browse through them and click on the one that you want. So, for example, the subscription feed is one of those. Probably the. For most people home, the home page is the biggest source of browse traffic. And then I think there's up next is also included in there.
- [07:11]
Sean Cannell
Got you. So that's traffic from the homepage or home screen, the subscription feed, and other browsing features. And then there's suggested videos. And these two are known as, like, the power traffic sources. Like, if something's going really viral, it's typically not going to go viral from YouTube search, because there's only a certain amount of search traffic in any given month. But it just continues to satisfy viewers, and it's showing up on people's homepages and it continues to spread. But suggested is a little bit different than browse what is suggested.
- [07:38]
Renee Richie
So suggested is, for example, the sidebar. If you choose a video and you're watching a video, there'll be other videos in the sidebar or on mobile, there'll be other videos underneath it. It does cause some confusion because people will see videos that don't relate to the. To the videos that they make, and they'll think that YouTube doesn't understand their audience. But what YouTube again, is, it's not centered. Like, the discovery system is not centered on creators. It's centered on viewers. And viewers typically have a wide range of tastes. So if I click on one of your videos, I might see, like, a couple more of your videos in the suggested sidebar. Then I might see videos from other creators who make things that are similar to yours. But then I might see other videos based on what I watched, like 20 minutes ago. Like, maybe it was a sports. I was watching a bunch of sports videos or coffee videos, and I'll see some there. So then if I click on a coffee video, they'll go into suggestion and say, hey, they came from Sean Cannell. Does YouTube not understand my audience? But it's the opposite, is that we understand that people like varied topics and that people choose their own journey. Sometimes they want to keep going. Sometimes they want to change the channel, literally. So we make suggested is the videos that YouTube is recommending next to what you're currently watching.
- [08:39]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, and it makes total sense, too, sometimes, especially if it's video podcasting or education or something at some point, like you said, you're done and you. But you want to go then watch a music video, or you want to go catch up on a political town hall or something. And so it might seem completely unrelated. But YouTube is a massive in a way marketplace. It is not unlike hundreds of channels on DirecTV. So you, you're like, I'm done with Comedy Central. I'm ready to go catch into the news or I'm ready to go learn something on the cooking channel. And so then there's other YouTube features. So what is that? And then there's even others. And so I'm looking at actually my back end right now and maybe list off a few things because there's other places impressions and views could come from.
- [09:25]
Renee Richie
Yeah, there's notifications, which is the one place where YouTube actually does push things out. Especially if people select all. Not like to get all notifications. And I'm blanking on cause I don't have them in front of me. And there's a rather long list, but there's the shorts feed and there's just a variety of other things that are in there.
- [09:42]
Sean Cannell
Got you.
- [09:42]
Renee Richie
Related video links are in there now. Someone clicked through from a short to go to your video. So just.
- [09:47]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, and even, I mean there's, I mean it goes even deeper. I guess you could have. If I look in here just to list external is big director unknown notifications, playlists, related shorts, end screens, hashtag pages.
- [09:59]
Renee Richie
If you use, if you run your video as an ad, you'll see like an ads traffic source there as well.
- [10:04]
Sean Cannell
I would encourage creators too to probably not get too distracted with those lower level ones. Who knows, you may have some miracle amount of traffic that comes from there. But if you take for example hashtag pages, I got 58 views and it's equivalent of 0.0% of my traffic compared to like actually short speed was 2 million views. And this was our Think Media podcast channel. So just different in percentages. Okay, so we're kind of a.
- [10:31]
Renee Richie
Just for a second. Like one thing that's really good though is like it's a way to judge your anxiety level sometimes because we'll at a lot of times when people will say like someone said they're not getting notifications, they're not clicking through to my video. And then I always encourage creators to go and look at the notification traffic because like I know on my channel 14% of people have the bell set to all. 8% of those have turned off all notifications for the app. And you can only do that after you set the bell to all. Which means at some point they just had enough of notifications. And then 1% click through because they're busy. Their operating system stacked them or delivered them quietly or did it AI summary for them and they just come like, they watch your video, but they do it from the homepage when they get home and it's. Or when they take out their phone and it's convenient to them. So rather than. And some people will spend days, you know, being super stressed about their notifications and then they go and look and it's such a tiny amount of views. I would just say, like, get a sense of where your traffic comes from and spend your efforts on nurturing the sources that you're really successful with.
- [11:25]
Sean Cannell
That's a great point. Out of 2.5 million views on the Think Media podcast In the last 28 days, 5,000 views came from notifications for us and then the big one shorts feed, YouTube search browse features suggested is where a lot of our views are coming from. And it depends on the nature of the content. Well, let's dive into some nuances here. One of the questions that came in asked, does uploading a new video kill the momentum of the recent or last video, especially if it's uploaded almost a day after the previous one?
- [11:58]
Renee Richie
So it's a nuanced answer. So, like, one of the things that it can depend upon is, like, it depends. A lot of these answers I'm going to give you depends a lot on the creator and their audience. So, for example, if you're a news channel and you're doing breaking news, whether it's like finance or weather or something, and you're putting up 10 videos a day because your audience expects the latest news immediately, they're going to pick and choose which ones they watch. So those videos are all going to be stepping over each other because very few people come to YouTube so often that they're going to come every 10 minutes to find every one of your new uploads. Other people maybe, like, they do an engineering video and the project takes them three months, so they post three times a year or once a month or something. And that next video is going to have very minimal impact because most people are going to come to YouTube way off, way more than once a month. So a lot of it depends on your content. If you can figure out sort of like the rhythm of your channel. If, you know, people tend to come like every three days, it's unlikely that at the top of recommendations, they would have two recommendations for the same creator. So you open up the YouTube app and you see your first three videos, or you open up on the desktop, you see your first eight or 12 videos. It's unlikely that if you've put up two videos close together, both of them will be there. They'll be the one that the YouTube system thinks is the most likely for the person to click on. And if they scroll down, they'll probably get to the other ones. But it does mean that at some point people might start choosing in between your videos, depending again on the frequency and the urgency of those videos. Same thing. Like if you post a video and then go live, a lot of people are going to say, oh, they're live, I can't miss this. And they're not going to look at your video. So maybe like go live and then tell everyone you're about to launch a video and think of it strategically.
- [13:34]
Sean Cannell
So let me know if my thinking is correct here. You're saying it's unlikely that two of your videos would be recommended on like the gold golden opportunity of YouTube traffic would be someone logs in, your video is right there on the homepage. If it's on desktop, there's what, eight choices? And if you're there with a great title and a great thumbnail and people click on it, love it, then you are theoretically going to get disproportionate distribution and maybe the video even goes viral. It's unlikely there'll be two recommendations there. However, that could lead you to the idea that, well, I only want to upload one video so that a week, let's say, so that it has the greatest chance of making it to the homepage. But that would not necessarily be the logic. Even if you were to upload two or three high quality videos, high effort videos, even though there might not be two there. You're also giving your chance more at bats because if your video doesn't perform its distribution, you know, if even subscribers are skipping over it, well, then it's also maybe likely you would have zero recommendations on the homepage, let's say. And so it's a nuanced answer to your point that if you're putting out great content, consistent uploads are giving you more at bats. Is my thinking correct?
- [14:51]
Renee Richie
Yeah. And maybe like a video is overperforming, so you decide, you make a strategic decision to give it a little more space. Or maybe it's underperforming, so you make a strategic decision to upload another video closer. Or you know that these are just entry point videos and they'll start watching the first one, but then they'll go to the second and third one that you know that someone who just loved that video would love to watch next. So it has to be Part of an overall strategy. The only thing I call out there is that each traffic source primarily affects the same traffic source. So if you upload a video and your subscribers aren't into it, there's no like, algorithm in the subscription feed, so it doesn't really matter. What matters is on the homepage is how people who watch on the homepage are reacting to it. I know some people. Are they worried that their subscribers won't be into it? Check to see how many subscribers actually watch the subscription feed versus the home feed. And then, you know, figure out, does it really matter if they. If they aren't into it as long as, like, if it's really compelling, great packaging. The home feed is where that sort of performance is going to be measured.
- [15:45]
Sean Cannell
So let me just then, a totally personalized answer. Um, we upload the Think Media podcast on Tuesday and Thursday as a target, and we. If. If Tuesday popped off like you said, wow, that one's getting 2x4x our typical performance. It's a 1 out of 10. Would you give it more space? I'm asking you personally, and maybe say, hey, let's put. Push back the Thursday upload. Let's set this thing, continue to run. And. And for us, we found that flexibility. We can study our upload times. When should we upload? We could upload on Friday or Saturday. And actually, as far as how many of our viewers are online, it stays pretty consistent. And we would be paying attention to that as well. But what would Renee do if you really had a breakout video on that Tuesday? Would you give it some space?
- [16:33]
Renee Richie
Yeah. So, like, the way I'm gonna answer this is like, there's. There's two different, like, large categories of personality type. There's one personality type who really cares about the immediate performance of a video. If you are that type, it's easy to say don't. But if you are that type who, like, I blocked a video, I'm sitting there, I'm waiting for it. I would give yourself a little space. Like, let that video perform as best as possible. But if you're somebody who uploads a video and then doesn't look at it for a week, you're like, whatever system's going to do what it's going to do. We've found that over the course of a month, when you publish, doesn't matter that much overall because those views will accrue. Like, maybe, like, there won't be. You won't get two videos in the top spot of recommendations, but maybe like, two days later, that person comes back to YouTube and the other video is there. Like, because YouTube doesn't give up on videos, it keeps testing them. So if you're willing to like, wait and you're not sort of like bound to the initial day's performance, I would just stick to your schedule and not worry about it too much. Renee tended to be old Rene tend to be very like stuck on the immediate performance. Like current Rene is like, to set it and like leave it.
- [17:29]
Sean Cannell
I think that's smart. And not to. I think either personality type I think is okay, but I almost feel like that's a more like maturing type of perspective as you've just been on YouTube over the long haul. Not unlike me. I think we go into that, stick to the schedule, stick to the system, stick to putting out the best content you can and just understanding the shelf life of YouTube videos. Like, I'm like anybody emotionally tied to the day of upload. Oh, 10 out of 10. I'm a failure. Of course it's emotional roller coaster. But I have just learned, especially with our obsession at Think Media for ranking videos, that it's like, man, the first week or the first month, man, if you're especially creating evergreen types of content, videos can be getting views for weeks, months and years to come. And five years later, if the video is still getting significant views per hour, you're not thinking back, like, wait, was that a Tuesday or a Thursday? What was the upload time? It's irrelevant. Like, ultimately, because the long game of YouTube on evergreen content sort of trumps all of this stuff.
- [18:27]
Renee Richie
Absolutely. I came to this realization personally when I noticed that my videos that were eight or nine out of ten were suddenly my biggest videos because they were evergreen. They were buyer's guides. And then like, so the answer, like, the actual answer is yes. If you upload videos close together, they can have an immediate impact on other videos. But over the course of like a month, especially if they're not like, if they're not time sensitive videos they like, they'll probably end up at the same place.
- [18:51]
Sean Cannell
Okay, so another question is, how does YouTube determine impressions? For example, why does a video get low or no impressions after uploading? And what should a creator do to try to get that video impressions? And I'm sure a lot of creators are thinking, if I have a newer channel, and this question is kind of like, it's like, what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Like we all should imagine. And YouTube is certainly giving creators opportunities, but I think people are wondering, how does it work? Like, in the sea of all of these competitive content, how could I even get my initial impression? Why would I get an initial impression? And what are some opportunities to trigger that or to you ultimately position our content for the best opportunity?
- [19:36]
Renee Richie
Yeah. So I think going back to the 1 out of 10, 10 out of 10 things, I think in some cases that is like you made an amazing video or you made a not so good video, but I think in other cases you can look at that as sort of market potential. I like to think every video is sort of bound by its market potential and then within that range, your execution on that video. So if you make the best video in the world, but it really only appeals to five people, like, it doesn't matter that it's the. Like, those people are super loving and maybe that's what you really care about. But it's not going to be like a billion view video just because, like, there's not that big an audience for it. And so sometimes the 10 out of 10 videos aren't that they're not great videos, they might be amazing videos is that the potential audience for that video isn't very large. And so I think sometimes creators will make a video, like, especially in the beginning, it might not be a great video. And then the answer to that is like, keep making videos, keep learning, keep improving, make better and better videos. So that when people do give them a chance, you know, they might like them and then the system will kick in there. But the other thing is, like, what is the potential audience of your video? So a video might not be getting a lot of impressions. It might not be performing well. You can do things like updating the thumbnail, updating the title. Look, put your title on the homepage, look away, look back. Is yours the thumbnail that your eyes click on? Because there's going to be a Sean Cannell video here and there might be like, huge challenge creator youtuber video. There's, you know, like other really popular video tech reviewer here. And like, did people even see your thumbnail? Like, it was on the page, but did they notice it or were they too busy clicking on, like the Sean Cannell video? And so be honest with yourself. Like, did your thumbnail really lock someone's attention while they're looking around the page or scrolling on their phone? And then was it enough to actually get them to click? Like, did it, did it make them curious enough or interested enough? Because it doesn't matter if it's a great thumbnail, someone looks at it and goes, ah, I don't care. And Then they just go on to the next video. So you have to really do those two things. Capture attention and get clicks. And you can try other like a new thumbnail, a new title for that. But also if that's not working, maybe the addressable market isn't very large. And if you care about views because some people don't, like, you have to be honest with what your goals are. We both know creators who make enormous amounts of money off very few views. Like, they just have a very specific, really high value audience. They get like a few thousand or whatever views and it makes incredible amounts of money for them. So they have a very different goal than views. But if your goal is views, like, what is the addressable market of that video? And if the first one didn't take off, figure out like, how can I make a version of this that would appeal to many more people.
- [21:58]
Sean Cannell
That's very interesting. Like niche appeal versus broad appeal would be a consideration. And then also it makes me think, especially when starting, there's an argument for Casey nice. That uploads a video. Somebody uses a software tool and says there's no tags and he left the description empty. Metadata doesn't matter. Then there's maybe this argument to where. Yeah, but you're starting a channel from scratch and you're trying to let YouTube know what this video is about and tap into something that also is broad appeal. How do I start a new tech channel and compete with big other channels? Would you say that? Well, metadata matters because early on especially that is going to be some of those signals. You're in the early days of impressions. And could impressions be connected to metadata? Because YouTube goes, okay, well at least we're going to give this video a shot because it's explicitly clear that it's about this particular phone model or this particular camera or this particular sewing machine. What do you think about metadata?
- [23:05]
Renee Richie
Yeah, I think, like, it's interesting. So like, Casey Neistat is his own topic. There's not a lot of people who can say that. Like, people don't watch Casey for a certain thing. They watch Casey because Casey. So like that's one of those unicorn channels that's not a great example for anybody to like, to like, Casey got to the top of that mountain, but like he ran around eight times, climbed three trees. Like, you don't, like, you can't just run up there. So like, so those examples are like, be inspired by them. But like, you can't just say he doesn't use any title. Like, any title on he wants, doesn't matter. But like to your point about metadata, YouTube tries to understand what a video is about. So if there's. It has very little signal, if a lot of people haven't watched it, again, thumbnail and title, the most important metadata, because that will get people to click and watch. In a previous episode, we talked about trends, and one of the ways to get people to have data on that is to use, like, hashtags. Because then, like, if the topic is bigger than you, like if you're making a video on a popular concert or a movie or like a big news event and you hashtag it, you'll show up on the hashtag page for that. And maybe people looking specifically for that will stumble across you. If you have a good description in the beginning, like YouTube's trying to understand that video, that's what's going to help it understand eventually behavior, like audience behavior is what's going to determine the ultimate success and failure. So you can't, like metadata your way into a good video. It has to be a good video. But it can help YouTube understand who to put it in front of. Especially in the beginning when it's trying to test with those audiences how they respond will be how it performs. But just sort of giving YouTube some help until it accumulates enough data helpful.
- [24:35]
Sean Cannell
There's this word thrown around called channel authority. And how would you describe that? And is it a real thing? What my understanding is even using the new what we talked about in part one, if people have not watched it of our recent conversations, we'll link to that in the show notes Talking about new YouTube features under the Inspire tab. You can also do a search of different topics to brainstorm video ideas for your channel. And there's now this kind of circle that gives you a prediction of how likely that video is to get views on your channel, which would be essentially what your channel's been conditioned to or the types of subscribers that are subscribed to your channel. Which I think is what people mean when they say channel authority. Like, you are an authority. And I almost wonder, I guess it's maybe a theory and perhaps you can confirm or deny. Like on Think Media we've developed, it seems to be a massive amount of authority around this title of like best camera for YouTube or top cameras for YouTube. And it would seem that I could be wrong. But just title and thumbnail and the quality of the video and the watch time, of course those are going to be the heaviest weighted metrics. But sometimes I wonder, and maybe velocity, because subscribers click on it But I always wonder, is channel authority a real thing? Because YouTube's also like, well, historically think media has really satisfied people with camera related videos. What's your take on this concept, this mysterious concept of channel authority?
- [26:03]
Renee Richie
So I think it's one of those yes and no things because the algorithm tries to follow the audience and audiences can ascribe authority and that can manifest in different ways. So like for example, you see like your favorite challenge. YouTuber puts up a video, you know exactly what you're going to get. If you click on that thumbnail, it becomes a no brainer. It's sort of like a restaurant makes your favorite meal. Anytime you want that meal, you go to that restaurant, you get it, you're happy. That restaurant served random food. It might be risky. You're like, I don't know, I'm not sure what I'm going to get. I'm going to go to this other place that I know for sure what I'm going to get. So audiences can ascribe authority. And sometimes when you see like on my channel, for example, I talked about tech companies and I made some videos on Twitter and they did really badly. And I had to look at it and go, well, people aren't used to clicking on me for Twitter. So probably the people who watch me most weren't that interested. And by the time the system discovered people who were interested, they watched videos on Twitter from people that covered it all the time and that they trusted a lot. And nobody needs to watch 10 videos on Twitter in a given week. So it just like it was exhausted before I ever got there. But on the same token, like you can make a random video and it'll go viral and there's no, like, you don't have any authority on that video. But it was something people really wanted at that time or didn't even know they wanted or didn't have competition that was underserved. So I think that audiences can ascribe authority. But on the other hand, like you always have these endless opportunities to do things that maybe you don't have authority for. But there's like a unique moment where that video just really resonates with people and takes off under its own power.
- [27:29]
Sean Cannell
So under the Inspire tab, I mean, what YouTube is saying, if we brainstorm a topic and it says, yeah, this is probably going to be a peak topic for you, that's the Inspire tab, giving us feedback of who our audience is, correct?
- [27:42]
Renee Richie
Yeah, it's sort of like the audience tab. You'll go there and you'll see which videos are bringing people back to your channel most often, but also which channels and videos people who watch you are also watching. And that can give you an idea of like, make more videos like those videos, or make videos of people who watch those videos would love to watch next. Or these are videos I'd never thought of, but I could do my own unique spin on because my audience is obviously interested in those things. And this is just like the next level of that. It's like, what are people watching here? What else are they watching? What do we think would be a really good fit for those people who are watching those videos?
- [28:13]
Sean Cannell
That's very interesting. So it's kind of an amalgamation of, in a way, a black box of data from YouTube of a combination of factors. So leaning into that, especially when we only have so much energy, many of our listeners might be trying to make one video a week. And finding trying to put out an excellent video a week is its own challenge. Even if you do it full time or you're working a 9 to 5 job, you know the challenge of that kind of consistency? Well, when you use that Inspire tab, you ultimately, if you publish a topic where YouTube predicts, and of course it's always take it with a grain of Salt and the AI could be right or wrong. But if YouTube predicts that it's going to be very low interest from your channel versus the other one, that's going to be peak interest from your channel. And these other factors you're talking about? Well, I'd prefer to do 4 peak interest as opposed to 4 low interest. If I'm also trying to go full time faster, if I'm trying to put out the videos with the highest potential reach views. How would you address my thinking there? Do you ever wish that YouTube came with a cheat code? Well, it kind of does. It's called Vidiq and it's packed with AI tools to help you grow your channel faster. Think of it like having a YouTube expert in your corner giving you personalized tips and tricks to improve your videos so that ultimately you can get more views and subscribers. And the best part is you can try it out for 30 days for just $1. If you want to grab this offer, just go to vidiq.com forward/think or click the link in the show notes. All right, let's get back into the episode.
- [29:43]
Renee Richie
Yeah, again, I think it depends on your goal. Like, again, if your goal is like peak up upper right views, then yeah, you want to lean into what, what is successful and give people more of what they love about you. I would again just stress that it's like, it's not meant to replace your creative strategy. It's meant like if you were hitting a brick wall or you, like, you have a creator block to give you ideas that you can riff off of. But you might also know that, hey, it doesn't think this is really good interest, but I've seen these X, Y things on other platforms or other ideas or in the news and I just know there's a market for this. I would never like, I would never like, not experiment just because you don't see something in a, in a graph that gives you like, you know, like a higher confidence level. I would always let the, let the human win.
- [30:20]
Sean Cannell
I gotcha. And so if, just to close the loop, if you're listening to this, we're talking about if you go to your channel and you go to analytics, there's overview content, audience revenue, and inspiration. That inspiration tab has recently been updated and will help you get new ideas for your next video using generative AI. And it's more powerful than ever because it is of course connected to not just your channel. The information is being served up to you by YouTube. But as we said, there's an amalgamation of factors there that is gonna can give you a unfair advantage or just a fair playing field for coming up with your next best video idea. And so we're talking about the algorithm and as we talk about that, there's a big question where people wonder, can channels die? And is there such a thing as a dead channel? One of the questions that came in Sundays, well, if YouTube has just stopped giving impressions, is the channel dead forever?
- [31:21]
Renee Richie
One of the things I like most about YouTube is it really doesn't give up. I've seen videos where they get almost no views for a couple of years and then 6 million views over a weekend. And obviously that's a huge outlier. But I don't think there's ever anything that's dead. There might be things that it would be less effort to start a new channel and build a fresh audience, but I don't think there's ever an idea of dead. So if you're going to be continuing on the same topic, I think you can invest in reviving that channel. Like again, like seeing what's fresh in the market. Because YouTube is competitive, it's like anything else. Like the biggest. One of the analogies I love is the biggest media company in the world right now, with the two biggest franchises in the world is having a real hard time Pulling views and there's no algorithm involved. Like they're having like a couple successful movies, successful TV shows, but a lot of the stuff isn't working, no algorithm. So like that audience affinity and audience match and like product market fit, all of these things applies whether there's an algorithm involved or not. And I think like if you're continuing with the same topic, see who else is doing that, what's fresh, what's working. Because there's always new like people coming into a space. The audience changes over time. It's like you can't just keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting not even like different results, but the same results because everything does move forward. So I would just look at it. And if you're doing the same type, try those fresh ideas, experiment, see what resonates, lean into what works. If you're doing something different, like you might have some advantage if you think there's a big overlap with the existing audience or you have a lot of personal affinity on your channel. But otherwise like you can experiment with new channels as well. Like just sign one up, start working with it and sometimes it's just like there's less stress involved in that as well.
- [32:57]
Sean Cannell
So we've circled around this topic of impressions many times now. But I think this next part could be incredibly insightful as we just, I think, you know, creators want to wrap their head around, you know, why did I get views? Why did this video do well? Why did this video not do well? And so one of the questions that came in said, okay, I'm making a video about a topic that is being talked about. So it's a trend, it's popular and it has good click through rate and it has good average view duration and it has good watch time but the views slow down. So can you help us understand that sometimes our metrics might be incredible for us. Like and this is a football channel. So our metric, you know, let's say it's getting a 10% click through rate and it's holding there. And then it's like, man, the average view duration is, is also phenomenal, eight minutes or something. And you know, that's pretty good platform wide. Yet at some level, you know, we're capping out sort of like what videos cap out and why do they cap out? Is it our subscribers? They maybe hit kind algorithmic wall? Is there any other angle of explanation to kind of help us understand why this might happen and how to think about that in terms of do we try to do something to revive it? Or keep it going or do we focus on the next upload?
- [34:18]
Renee Richie
Yeah, so there's a paradox of statistics which you just have to learn about. So one of the things is if you see a viral video, they typically have much lower click through rate and much lower retention just because the audience becomes so big that 3% of a million is so many more views than 10% of a thousand like you. Just as the videos grow and grow and grow, the chances of any one person clicking on is lower. But so many people are getting impressions that even with a low click through rate, that just translates into a ton of views. So typically when you see a viral video, it's not that the metrics are super high, it's that the metrics were high through the core audience, but then it went into like a much more casual audience and they loved it as well. And then it just kept going more and more and the metrics are going down because the casual audience is less invested, but the size of it is so massive. And like an analogy I try to, I totally stole from Todd Beaupre is that it's like automated word of mouth. So let's say like I watch a video and I love it and I know that you and two other people that, you know, friends of mine are really going to love it too. So I recommend it to you and you're like, not my cup of tea. But the other two people are like, you'd love this video. They tell three more friends and they tell a bunch more friends and they tell a bunch more friends. But it gets to a certain point where we've exhausted our friend, sir, like our friend circle. Everyone who is interested in it, watched it or passed on it and there's just nobody else that we can recommend it to or we don't know anybody else to recommend it to. And that's when you'll typically see a video like launch. And YouTube is like, this person would like it, this person would like it. Oh, we've shown it to everybody we think would like the video and they've either watched it or not and then it tends to go back down and you can make new friends. So like sometimes people will search and find a video and we're like, oh, maybe this is a new audience here or there'll be something in the news or another big creator will make a video and you'll be in suggested. And there's ways that videos can find new audiences, but it's typically that like it goes through that pocket of audience and when that's depleted, it goes Back into like, we'll try and see if we can find a new audience. And if we find it, you might see bigger or smaller spikes as it goes along. And with some of these videos it's like, oh man, the friend circle loved it. But as soon as you tell people who aren't as close friends, they're like, no, not for me. And then because the initial like love of that video was so high, the metrics are all great, but it just, it didn't escape like gravity. And as soon as it hit casual, it just tanked. And the way statistics work is you won't really see that. It's like the amount of impressions you got compared to the amount of people, the core audience that loved it versus the casual. You just see those really good metrics and you would expect to see those go down if it kept successful, succeeding.
- [36:48]
Sean Cannell
It makes sense. And so yeah, your subscribers loved it. The initial velocity was there. And I think for those who dive into their analytics though, they have maybe visibly seen that all of a sudden it was like getting this many views per hour and then the drop seems dramatic. One of the possibilities of what has happened there are probably one of the most common possibilities is yeah, it was really being consumed to a core audience. I've also heard it explained as circles. You may have just said that. So it's, you know, it reaches that first circle and then it tests it on the wider circle and viral could be the circle has gotten so broad. But every time you stepped into that next circle, it hits a wall and it's like, oh, the interest there, the view duration there, the click through rate there is not the same. And thus algorithmically it's like, Whoa, why did YouTube just stop giving me impressions? Well, it's not that it's not about your video, it's not trying to push your video. It's trying to satisfy viewers. And as it, it actually hit and that, that's essentially the wall. More casual viewers, even if they're your super fans, you've got or supposed super fans, you've got your core audience who loves your stuff, but just because they're subscribed, they subscribe for all kinds of different reasons. In fact, I heard you say once, subscribe means different things to different people. Explain that. Because just because you have a subscriber, like, wait a minute, I have a hundred thousand subscribers. Why don't, why are they not all watching it? Why are not all my videos getting a hundred thousand views? Well, not everyone's hit subscribe because like they wanted to see Everything for every minute. What does subscribe mean? Or what could it mean?
- [38:13]
Renee Richie
Yeah, so I have a friend, Dave Whiskeys, who has a great analogy. He's like, subscriptions, number of subscribers is all the money you've ever had in the bank. It doesn't mean it's your current balance. Like, those are active viewers. And for most people, that's a. That's a great number. Like to just know every dollar you've ever had in your bank account. But what you care about is your current balance and so care about like returning users or unique viewers. Like, what your current viewers are. That's much more important because some people do subscribe as sort of like a mega. Like, like, they like, I. Super. Thanks. They're like, I love this. I'm going to hit subscribe because you deserve it, you earned it. Other people are like, I want to bookmark this channel. Like, it's not something I want to watch all the time, but I want to be able to come back to it. Other people are just like, hey, I like. Also like, it varies by region. It varies by generation. How many people will, like, will subscribe. Some people just subscribed and then like three years later, like, if they were 13, now they're 16. Completely different person. If they were like 15, now they're 20. Completely different person. And people's interests change. And I think a lot of times we don't think about our own behavior, but if we think of ourselves as viewers. Go into the sub feed. See how often you clean that out. See how often you actually watch all the channels. Think about how often you click through every video in there. Because I know I go to my sub feed every day, but I don't. I can't watch every video in my sub feed every day. So, like, subscribers is like, it's an interesting metric. If someone subscribed to you right now, they're probably really interested in you. If they subscribe to you 10 years ago and just never cleaned up their sub feed, probably not as interested anymore.
- [39:40]
Sean Cannell
So one of the questions we actually get all the time is there's a lot of creators who started a channel sometime in their past and they started. You started back in 2018. The first channel I ever started was for my church in 20. No, 2008, you started your first channel. I think it was in 2007 that we started a channel for my local church in our small town and have started many channels since. There's others who have started maybe a personal channel. They uploaded a Backstreet Boys clip. The thing of their dog, you know, some random recital or something, and then they abandoned it for a couple years. So people always wonder, should I post on my old channel or on my new channel? And the specific question actually said, my old account from 2007 with some awful random videos, is it better to start a new account or is it helpful for the algorithm to use the old one? What would be your decision making framework to decide? Should I start a new channel or post on an old channel?
- [40:37]
Renee Richie
Yeah, I think, like, one of the nice things about YouTube is the algorithm tries not to have opinions. It just looks at behavior, like audience response. So I would like, if you think that you have an audience there that is into you and this kind of stuff that you like, it could give you, like an initial advantage. Like if people subscribed for whatever topic, but they just love the feeling you get them. Like, some people are just really funny and people initially come there and they watch, like the video for the topic and they're like, this creator is super funny. I love them. And that creator does something else and it's just as funny. They're there for it. Or like the Casey Neistat example, they don't really care what Casey does. They just want to watch Casey. So if you, if you think that, like, there's some affinity for you or some crossover in what you've done then and what you've done now, that would just give you an initial push. Like, it can be good to do. And I would experiment and try it. Like there's nothing to lose by trying it. But. But if you think it's completely different audiences, our usual advice is same audience, same channel. Different audience, different channel. And then it'd be worth, like, if you think there's just no affinity for it or nothing to gain from it, start a new channel. Think of them like, think of channels like shows, you know, like, Bryan Cranston can be in Malcolm in the Middle and he can be in Breaking Bad, but if that was the same show, it'd be really confusing. So you can have like the same person, but, like, base your strategy on the audience, not on the host, if that makes any sense.
- [41:51]
Sean Cannell
Yeah. And there's certainly a point to be made if you're very much a personality or a personal brand that has done different things, like a Casey Neistat that you're asking yourself, yeah, why did they subscribe in the first place? We like to say, never upload videos your subscribers didn't subscribe for. And take that statement with a grain of salt because you can experiment, you can research. But if people originally subscribe for Minecraft playthroughs and your new thing is you're really into vertical gardening, that might be a hard pivot saying that though you just might be a, you might be Tim Ferriss. And Tim Ferriss is known for just kind of being his own experiment of trying things, whether that's fencing, whether that's biohacking, whether that's psychedelics, whether that. And so you're like, man, that seems really random. But you're like, no, it's Tim Ferriss. But like you know, whether it's venture capital and investing, but you're like, you're following actually a personality, which is maybe why some people get confused too. And I do think there's something about topic though. So is it a topic based channel? Did you subscribe for a particular topic? Think Media has had different personalities on the channel over the years, but the through line is we still talk about cameras, best lighting, cameras, tools, and so. And while actually the changing of personalities could absolutely change viewer satisfaction, we have still found macro success by staying as much on brand as we could. So that's some great advice. They go deeper in this question and ask though, should I delete in private old videos if they don't have anything to do with the new content that I'm making?
- [43:22]
Renee Richie
Yeah. So one way to think about that is like a. So one of the ways YouTube works is watch History. So let's say you and I have almost identical watch histories, but you've watched some videos that I haven't. Those would be good candidates to recommend to me. That goes back to that word of mouth thing. Like, it understands that like you like similar things to me. So things I haven't seen, those are recommended. And Watch History is like the connection that we have to those videos and those channels. So when you delete a video or private a video, it removes that connection. Now that might be something you want to do if you, if you're like, you know, for whatever reason. But if you think there's that connection is worth maintaining because there is again that overlap with people who might enjoy the new thing. It's, it's worth keeping it at that point because like a lot of times people won't remember the topic of the video, they won't remember the subject of the video, they'll remember the way you feel. I remember the way they feel after that video and they might want more of that feeling. So I would just try to get a sense of like, is it worth maintaining that connection. If you want to sever it, you can go ahead and delete and private that video. But if you want to maintain that connection as a way of like potentially getting more videos recommended to that person, I would keep it even if there's a variation in tone or content or topic.
- [44:28]
Sean Cannell
Now you might have stated on this earlier and it could have been in part one of our conversation, but the question ultimately is, does engagement on different types of posts and to define posts, if somebody watches a long form video and engages, a short and engages or a community tab post, do they cross promote algorithmically? If somebody engages in a community tab post, theoretically, is it only going to make them see more community tab posts from that creator? And side note, there's actually community tab posts showing up in my feed. For me personally, it's usually like hip hop albums or classic hip hop albums and people and these massive channels, they got a little square of the album covers, which album from 2008 was the best and it hits my feed and I don't subscribe to the channel or follow the channel or watch videos on the channel. I might be consuming some of their shorts, meaning they're going through my feed. So the big question is, if I'm utilizing all these different formats, is there algorithmic crossover between the formats?
- [45:37]
Renee Richie
Yeah, so there are, you know, what's referred to as bridges between the different formats. One thing I was going to mention earlier that sort of applies here too is one of the biggest problems creators have is expectational debt. So it goes to everything. Like if I make a video with very small appeal and it gets 10 out of 10, I might be devastated. Even though there was no way that there was a big enough market for that video to get any more than that. And I didn't adjust my expectations. Like when I made videos about iPhone reviews, they were enormous. When I made videos about accessibility, they got very small views. But I knew that it was important, I thought it was important to make them. So I adjusted my expectations. This is similar to that. Some people, for example, if you're making long form and shorts, some people only watch shorts. That's only. They only want to watch short form video. Some people only watch certain topics on shorts. Like personally, I can watch a dancing short, but I wouldn't watch 10 minutes of dancing. Not that dancing isn't amazing, it's just like my, I prefer to watch other long form content. So I'll watch that in shorts. I wouldn't watch that in long form. So those, those parts of the audience, even though if they watch A lot of your shorts we might recommend, or YouTube might recommend the long form video. They're just not inclined to watch it because they don't watch long form or they don't watch those topics on long form. There are people who do watch both though. So if they engage a lot with shorts, we can test recommending the long form videos as well. Whether they go across or not, it's a different story. You can also put that like related video link on your short. We found like creators who just put the link there will say like it doesn't work. But we found a lot of creators who like, who know like their audience is there for a feeling and they do it very intentionally and purposefully and they'll say like hey, for the rest of this, click the, click the link right here. Maybe pop up a thumbnail of what the video looks like. They have a lot more success in moving people over. The most important thing is like think like the viewer. No viewer is going to watch something because you want them to. They're only going to watch it or engage because they want to. So it's our job as a creator to make them want to or to get them excited about wanting to do it. Whether that's moving from a post to a short to a long to a live. We've got to make like a call to action and then reward them for taking that action. And that's what builds sort of cross format affinity.
- [47:40]
Sean Cannell
That's genius. And actually I want to mention a video we'll link to in the show notes or an episode with the content strategist for Dave Ramsey who has multiple channels, multiple personalities, multiple, multiple kind of a whole media empire. And he taught the three pillar strategy and how they do shorts and how it, I think it 10xed their long form views but they did it in a very particular way. To your point, it wasn't just accidental, it wasn't just throwing out a link, but they were very thoughtful and structured and that is one of people's favorite episodes. So make sure to check that out later and we'll link that out in the show notes. The last part of this question though is also is there how are engagement metrics weighted on these different content types? And let me just isolate that to Community tab, I'm assuming. And you can confirm for me that like other social media platforms, even just Dwell Time is being registered by YouTube. If I stop on a community tab post and read it, even if I don't click like I'm imagining YouTube is like, well that's Time on platform looking at the post. Is that true?
- [48:43]
Renee Richie
Well, you can click with attention. It's like people will ask us if someone is on their phone and they pause on a thumbnail and starts to play, does that count as a view? And if they watch for long enough, they basically clicked with attention instead of clicking with their finger. So that will count as a view. So yeah, if you started. If we feel or YouTube feels that you're giving attention to that thing, it does count as giving attention to that thing. It's just hard to put a number on things because there's so many different signals and all of them are very dependent on other signals. But in the large scheme of things, everything else being equal, whatever is not equal will win. So if you're doing a lot of something, that's going to count more than if you're doing a very little of something.
- [49:19]
Sean Cannell
Interesting. So yeah, I mean again, I will see community tab posts. Maybe it's a poll, I'll vote. Maybe it's a poll or text or a carousel. I'll swipe. I don't necessarily click like or dislike. You know, just as a personal anecdote. I don't even know if I ever, I don't know if I've ever clicked dislike in my life. I think I've either just.
- [49:36]
Renee Richie
I haven't either.
- [49:37]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, I think I've either just clicked like or done nothing.
- [49:40]
Renee Richie
But it is a way to tune though. Like. So like because there is personalization and ranking, if there are videos where you like the topic in general but you don't like that specific kind of video, you can use the dislike button to sort of tune the recommendation engine to show you less of the videos you don't like and the like button to show like more of the videos you do. So you can use that for personally tuning.
- [50:00]
Sean Cannell
Yeah. And would that be it? Would it be accurate to say you're kind of up prioritizing or down prioritizing, you're still subscribed to the creator, you don't unsubscribe from the creator. You've proven in your watch time you like the creator, but you might down prioritize perhaps a topic. And then algorithmically YouTube is like, okay, we maybe we're taking that information into account. Account for what we'll show you in the future.
- [50:19]
Renee Richie
Yeah, it's not really like subscribing is like another signal. So like it's not the entire picture but it's more like you're just wait, like you saw like this topic like you generally like this topic of videos, you may not particularly like this version of that topic, this subtopic, the way this creator present like it's just a signal to less of this and more of more of the other thing.
- [50:40]
Sean Cannell
Okay, so as we were talking about the algorithm, a lot of people listening to this are juggling a 9 to 5. They maybe have aspirations to be a part time or full time creator. Maybe they love the side hustle. But regardless whether it's family, whether it's kids juggling it all, in fact an individual in full time ministry is working on a family travel channel. And ask the question, how do I maintain growth when I'm not able to produce as much content as others would love your advice related to that because if we're talking about the algorithm, I think we could feel like man, competing with somebody that is able to produce more content to me than me is so difficult. But if you were in a situation where you had limited time and you can't post as much as the full timers, what would your strategy be?
- [51:26]
Renee Richie
So I think like everyone as an individual is going to have pluses in mind. Like maybe not even pluses mind but they'll have circumstances and there might be people who have a lot of time, but you know, they've never learned to edit or to film and they don't know how to frame themselves. So that's just a skill they've got to work on. Other people might not have as much time to post, but We've seen across YouTube in general that there is no one way to succeed. One of my favorite examples is like Nile Red, I think he posts like two or three videos a year. They're 45 minute long chemistry videos where he transforms cotton balls into cotton candy or something. And like 20 million people watch them over the course of the year. They're just like ridiculous. And like some people might think, well posting two or three times a year, there's no way that they're going to get traction. And like he's not like over the top, he's just standing there in his lab in his lab coat, you know, talking very lo fi. And people just really love the content. So I think like it. And it again depends on what your goals are because like people can have different goals for their channel, but if their channel is like maximum growth possible, I would just lean into what you can do. Like if you, if it does take longer, try to like spend that, spend whatever time you can like watching your videos or researching how things work. So when you do make the videos that you can make you give yourself the best opportunity with each of those videos.
- [52:39]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, and I love that example you used of if you make like fewer high quality videos, which could be subjective and at the start you're maybe still learning your skills. But essentially a ranked video on YouTube, whether it continues to be suggested or whether it continues to be discovered in search can be your pathway. When time is limited to growing your channel, then essentially it could be growing your channel passively while you're working, while you're doing your job, while you're working in ministry, whatever it is you're doing. And that was my story as well. Like I really focused on how do I make evergreen content that ranks in search and suggested. So that when it was a side hustle, it just took me one step closer. Every upload, hopefully. And it wasn't every upload because not every video continued to get views. But you know, as I focused on that, it was my step by step process to going full time on YouTube. One interesting.
- [53:28]
Renee Richie
You can also. Sorry, one of the things to think about is if you're only making a few videos, whether you can still provide a journey in those videos. So if you're doing pure help content, if you do how to repair your sink and then your next video is how to repair your shower, there's very little likelihood, unless a person's had a whole disaster, that they're gonna wanna watch one video and then the next video. But if you make how to repair your sink and then the next video you make is how to avoid having to repair your sink and then the next video is like the best parts to replace your sync, then at least if like one of those videos does rank the way you're talking about, you've given a journey so that people might watch two or three or four of your subsequent videos and you're not waiting for these one shots every time.
- [54:08]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, that's a genius tip. And compounding the growth of your channel, creating more leverage. Now one of the things that kind of is one of the oldest YouTube features and very rarely is talked about, but when people upload their videos they sometimes get stumped is YouTube categories, like do categories matter? What are the best practices for categorizing content? And if we take this to the top of the conversation algorithm impressions, can getting my category right at least give me, even if it's minimal, a little bit more metadata or information for my video to perform well?
- [54:41]
Renee Richie
Yeah, so like it's one of those things where like aside from title and thumbnail, there's very little Metadata, that's going to mean a lot long term. But you want to choose what's most accurate for you. I wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about it, especially if it's not like some people worry it's not 100% accurate. Pick the best one you can. And that again, especially if you're brand new and there's very little information about you. It does help YouTube initially understand it, but I wouldn't devote a lot of. I would devote time to making better videos and not worrying too much about that.
- [55:07]
Sean Cannell
I got you the specific question too. Said actually, how do I best categorize faith content if I'm doing like a Bible study, is it under education or is it a per people in blogs or is it how to and style if off the cuff, if somebody was. If they were doing some kind of religious content, is that education, what would you say?
- [55:27]
Renee Richie
Yeah, I would. I don't think it's gonna make a huge difference, but like education works. Like I would. You probably know, you're like the creator probably knows their content the best. And there might be different ways of doing religious content that would fit into different, like different buckets. Like maybe you are teaching, maybe you are storytelling, maybe you're doing other things. So I would just pick the one that you think best reflects your content.
- [55:44]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, maybe your personality, maybe you're doing news from a certain perspective. How to instyle. Big idea here though is don't overthink it. But also, you know, one tip that I have found lately is I've been talking to Gemini and you know, Gemini and quite literally talking because of the audio mic feature and being able to do verbal dictations. And to be clear, Gemini would be Google's AI large language model. And because of the connection of YouTube, Google Gemini Alphabet, Gemini can pull some really great answers for you in regards to if you were to ask about YouTube categories, it could explain what each one means and things like that. So definitely a tool to consider looking into. You know, at part one of our conversation, you mentioned YouTube premieres. That's another one people wonder about. Like, and sometimes people fall into patterns and habits. In fact, I had a question recently where someone's like, we've been premiering our videos for the last five years. It was a travel channel couple and they were like. And we always do premieres and we are exhausted. This was the comment. They were like, we're always showing up because they treated the premiere as someplace they would be in the comments. And they were like, is it okay for us to either stop doing premieres and is it going to kill our channel and should we do premieres? If it's really like you said, it's a red carpet in the last episode. It's like a red carpet premiere. The big idea is that you're there to hang out with viewers for the first. First viewing and be in chat. I see some channels that just schedule and premiere it. They're not there. They're just. That's the way they upload. So is there a best practice? Is there an algorithmic advantage to using this feature or is it not that big a deal?
- [57:27]
Renee Richie
Yeah, I think those. This is one of those things where, like, the algorithm shouldn't have opinions because it shouldn't punish creator. Like, there should never be an idea of, like, algorithmic punishment. I know everybody thinks the algorithm is out to punish them and we all take these things very personally, but that would just not be good. Like, let's say, like, your next video is going to be the most popular video in the history of YouTube and there was some weird algorithmic punishment, or like, like, oh, they didn't premiere it, therefore we're not going to. Like, that's in nobody's best interest. Is in everybody's best interest that every video have, like, have every chance for every bit of potential that it could ever have. So, like, everyone is aligned on, like, videos should succeed sort of regardless, like, on their merits, sort of regardless of the specific tools or methods or however people want to put them up. So I would say, like, and also prioritize mental health and longevity above everything else. So, like, even if there was, like, some, like, audience expectation for, like, premieres and it just didn't fit your lifestyle anymore, prioritize being here for the long haul, like, being able to make those videos. And maybe that's not premiering at all anymore. Maybe it's saying, I'm only going to premiere the first video when I'm in a new country and that's going to be, like, an extra special event and people will be even more excited for it because it's, like, less common now. It's more of a rare occurrence. So I would, like, think about it more in terms of the creator's longevity and then give your audience a reason to support you in doing it.
- [58:45]
Sean Cannell
I love that. Okay, and then I think this might be our final question. Hashtags. You brought up hashtags earlier that if you're a newer channel and you wanted to reinforce your video to get some impressions related to good metadata that's stepping on Jumping on a trend related to hashtags could be powerful. I think there's. I've seen confusion where people go, wait a minute, is tags, hashtags? I'm like, no, two different things. And some people maybe don't use hashtags at all. Or maybe they're putting extra weight on them. What are hashtags? How do they work? And then how is it best to think about them strategically as how they could actually help creators, maybe trigger impressions, trigger the algorithm, get views, and what weight does that carry?
- [59:34]
Renee Richie
Yeah, so the way I would think about these things in general is like, try to spend all of your time making great videos because, like, there's no, there's nothing else that is as impactful as making great videos. And that just means videos that your audience are going to want to, like, click on, watch the completion, and hopefully watch another video. Everything else is sort of taking your time away from that. So think about it that way and then spend that other time. Like, invest that other time accordingly. And hashtags, like, there's. It depends on the size of the creator. Like, if you're an enormous creator, you still might want to. And you go to a concert, you still might want to use a hashtag. What hashtags do to actually answer your question is it puts like an active link for that hashtag on a video. So if people click on that link, they'll go to like a hashtag page and they'll see other videos that use that same hashtag. Or if someone is already interested in that event and they go to that page, they might have watched somebody else's video and come onto that page and seen your video. So what you're banking on is that the interest in the trend or the topic is much greater than your, like, organic potential audience. It's like this concert or this movie premiere or this natural event was so, so much attention that when people go there, I want my, I want my video to be in front of them. If you think you are way bigger than the, than the hashtag, then instead of somebody maybe watching your video next, they might go to the hashtag page and watch somebody else's video next, which, like, just selfishly isn't as good for you. So I would like, again, be like, super strategic about it and think like, is this a potential for me to get my video in front of a bigger, larger, different audience? And is that something I care about? And then if it is, like, especially if it's like a mega concert or trend or something, might be worth putting that hashtag there. Especially like if it's just like mega, like blockbuster movie premiere, huge concert event, one of those things could be worth it for you to be there. Otherwise I would also be like strategic about that as well.
- [61:17]
Sean Cannell
I would love if you thought about my thinking on this. It makes total sense that if appropriate and you were typing into something like people are just looking as an event is happening and maybe it is a release of a new product or even you from home covering the news. I go to, I have gone to CES Consumer Electronics show in Vegas for probably over a decade. And so around when something like that's happening, there's people who just kind of like want the feed. They want everything related to it and they. And they might go to the hashtag page. Great. The way I like to think about it though is I also realized the problem with those clickable links and I think you kind of just said this is they. Someone might accidentally click that or click that intentionally leave your video and then on that page you're nowhere to be found. So it ultimately leads away from your channel. The way I like to use hashtags is actually more for personal organization. And I use the hashtag Think Media podcast, the hashtag Sean Cannell. The hashtag think media3show up. And those three then are pages that the truth about hashtags, you can't own them. Other people could certainly use those hashtags and show up on that page, but those as being kind of personal brand, company, brand media, brand are ways that those, those are the main three that I use. You know, other creators on Think Media, we might use their name. So then as a way to categorize and go deeper in them. Plus Think Media or whatever it is. What is your thoughts on using them for organization and brown branding like I do?
- [62:43]
Renee Richie
Yeah, I think that's great. I would always want to click through and just see what other videos are there to your point, because you can't really own them. And you might think this is great, like, there's no one here, it's just me. Or I don't mind that the other people here. Or no, I don't want anything to do with like the other videos that are on here. So I would just do that like as like a periodic check to see what's on there. But yeah, then I think it's great to wait for people to find more of your videos on a topic they've already expressed interest in.
- [63:05]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, that's a great point. And, and that's why, yeah, you might think your channel name or your brand name is your channel name or brand name. And then you click through and see, oh, whoa, there's, there's somebody else, or this is some weird trend, different industry or something. You're like, wow, there's a bunch happening here. So the, the big piece of advice, make sure to click through and just check, see what's there and then make an educated decision. I think the one other interesting thing about this is that it's as many as three hashtags is maximum that'll show up there. But I also noticed that it's overrided, like on our Think Media podcast, because we always add these episodes to the playlist, which means they get distributed on YouTube music and our proper podcast on YouTube. That playlist link overrides the hashtag and there's other things that override that section. I suppose the user interface on YouTube could change over time, but am I thinking about that correctly in my description as well?
- [64:03]
Renee Richie
I think I'd have to double check that because it shows up in different places on different surfaces and different experiments. And YouTube also runs experiments for different places. So I might not be doing this, seeing the same thing that everybody's seeing, but I would again, like just go to find an old video, put the, put the hashtags in, see where they are, experiment, see how it changes, see what works best for you and then put those on your, if it works, put that on your more recent videos.
- [64:26]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, that's a great point. And at this exact moment I see, I see my views, I see the date of upload and then I see the Think media podcast, Unfiltered YouTube tips with Sean Cannell. The playlist would override that. That's a good point though. The metadata you're adding or the optimization of your video that tapping into YouTube features, YouTube Experiments tries different tests, different surfaces, show up different things. Maybe a good piece of advice for listeners as we land the plane is I've heard it said for like an entrepreneur mindset. Eat at your own restaurant, take some time to experience your own content, to click around in your own description to see how once you started posting YouTube links in your description is now like a really cool YouTube logo and the title. Sometimes if you copy paste over description stuff, it's. It's truncated in the public facing thing and now the link's dead. Eat at your own restaurant, go look at where your hashtags are leading, if you're even using them, and get really familiar with Also the new YouTube features which if you haven't listened to our first episode where we actually talked about so many new YouTube features and updates that creators can leverage in the actual experience of YouTube. The future is bright on YouTube. It's exciting to see what's coming down the road. And Renee, I really appreciate you spending now like equivalent of two hours together just going super deep in algorithms, super deep in new features. You've added so much value and so much respect and appreciation. For you taking the time to add value to our community, it means the world. If people want to connect with you, let's follow you. Oh man, I appreciate it. And if they want to connect with you, follow you and some of the other ways they can stay plugged into YouTube news. Where can they find you?
- [66:07]
Renee Richie
I'm at YouTube Liaison pretty much everywhere. So whatever you favorite platforms are, go to YouTube. At YouTube Liaison, I'll be there. Also, Creator Insider, we have podcasts with YouTube executives that try to go even deeper on a lot of these topics. Their areas of specialty Think Media podcast.
- [66:21]
Sean Cannell
Subscribe like share, rate, review wherever you watch or listen. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable channel. Thanks so much for joining us today and I can't wait to connect with you in a future episode of the Think Media Podcast.