← The Think Media Podcast
The Think Media Podcast
421: 7 New Social Media Trends YOU Need to Know Right Now /w Neil Patel
00:59:00
Loading summary
Transcript71 lines
- [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 your growth. This class is 100% free and you can watch it now on demand@think masterclass.com now let's jump into today's show.
- [00:38]
Neil Patel
Roughly 4.6 billion pieces of content are being created each and every single day. In two days, you have more content than the world's population.
- [00:45]
Sean Cannell
Most creators are about to get wiped out. But there's also a golden opportunity. Everything's changing faster than we realize. AI is disrupting content creation and algorithms are fragmenting. And the strategies that worked just months ago are becoming obsolete.
- [01:01]
Neil Patel
The algorithms have changed in which your follower count doesn't matter as much. Social media has been democratized. It's whatever gets tons of engagement when it first comes out, it just shows to everyone. And the stuff that doesn't doesn't matter if you have a lot of followers, it just dies down really quick.
- [01:15]
Sean Cannell
But here's the good news. Smart creators who adapt are about to cash in on the biggest opportunity in years. Today on the Think Media podcast, you're going to discover the newest trends in social media, AI and digital marketing so that you don't get left behind. I'm sitting down with Neil Patel. 1.4 million subscribers on YouTube. Founder of multiple multi million dollar companies. Forbes calls him one of the top 10 online marketers. Wall Street Journal says he's the top web influencer and he was recognized as as a top 100 entrepreneur by President Obama. In this exclusive conversation, you'll get to learn from not just a futurist predicting what's coming, but someone who's in the trenches implementing what's working. Right now. You're going to discover the seven social media and AI trends that are reshaping 2025. Neil's exact four step system for viral content that got him 1 million followers across platforms. Why Google's dominance is is ending and why SEO no longer means search engine optimization. It means search everywhere optimization. This is everything you need to know, not just to survive, but to absolutely dominate in 2025. Let's dive in. Neil, welcome to the Think Media podcast. I'm super excited to dive into the content today. And recently you did a breakdown of some of the biggest social media and AI trends that entrepreneurs, marketers, content creators need to know. But on a broad level, what do you think is kind of the state of online marketing and social media right now? The biggest challenges and the biggest opportunities.
- [02:54]
Neil Patel
The biggest challenge is there's too much content. Roughly 4.6 billion pieces of content are being created each and every single day. In two days, you have more content than the world's population. Now, when I say content, I'm talking about text, audio, images, videos, pretty much any type of content that you can imagine. Not all of it's published to the web, but it's being created. Great example of this is I can bust out my phone right now, take a picture of this. That is considered someone creating content, right? Because I just took an image. Technically I didn't, but if I did, you get the point. It would be a piece of content, or this recording of this podcast is example of another piece of content. So the problem that you face is there's too much content, and you got to figure out how to get attention when the algorithms have changed in which your follower count doesn't matter as much. Social media has been democratized. It's whatever gets tons of engagement when it first comes out, it just shows to everyone. And the stuff that doesn't doesn't matter. If you have a lot of followers, it just dies down really quick. The reason there's a big issue with getting your content tons of reach is not that, oh, I didn't record in good quality or use good lighting or microphone like this setup. Because if you look at a lot of the stuff that goes viral and does well, it doesn't have any of these key characteristics. It's typically the stuff that's done well, not necessarily gone viral, but does well in today's world is stuff that's new. Forget the word. What's high quality content, because that's in the eye of the beholder. I'm talking about if you look at just in general, the stuff that's doing well is new stuff that no one's talked about before. And that's the big challenge that we face right now on the web in which it's hard to create stuff on new topics because most things have already been talked about. So most things are regurgitated.
- [04:34]
Sean Cannell
That's a key insight. And so how do you spot things that are new, personally?
- [04:39]
Neil Patel
So the way I spot things are new and they're not perfectly new, but they're close enough or starting to trend or they are up and coming and going to be popular is we have a tool called Answer the Public and we believe search happens everywhere. So everyone talks about SEO, you know, search engine optimization. We call SEO Search Everywhere Optimization. And when you look at Google, Google only makes up around 27% of the market share. They get around 13.7 billion searches a day. There's over 50 billion searches a day. YouTube is super popular. Instagram has 6.5 billion searches a day. Snap has 4 billion a day. You know, even the Apple app store has 500 million a day. Like Amazon has 3.5 million a day. ChatGPT around a billion a day. So when you start looking at all this data, what we like doing on Ask the Public is it shows you what's up and coming because it's using something similar to Google Suggest. We're showing what people are recently typing in. And if you look at these platforms, if you type in a keyword like marketing or digital marketing or YouTube marketing, it'll show you the longer tail phrases that people are talking about. So I love using that tool partly because it's mine, just being honest, but I bought it, I didn't create it. And the reason I love using is it'll show me what's up and coming on YouTube, Google, TikTok, Instagram, and the list goes on and on. But my favorite one there is Amazon because I can see what's up and coming related to products. And let's say if I'm creating products to monetize my YouTube channel, I'm not, but let's say if I was, I can start creating content around stuff that's up and coming on Amazon and I can do the same query on Answer the public on YouTube to see what's up and coming. And if they're different. The cool part is I start going after the stuff that's up and coming on the other platforms that's not up and coming yet on YouTube or Instagram or any of the other social channels and then create content for each one.
- [06:38]
Sean Cannell
I know that our community is going to geek out on this because we talk about Answer the public a lot. And the fact that's your tool that you invested in and purchased. What, what is the. This speaks to the paid features, right? You get three free searches a day. But are you talking about the deeper level of Answer the Public and of course we'll link up that tool in the show notes.
- [06:58]
Neil Patel
No, you can, you can do most of it for free. And I think you get four, you get One, then you register and I think you get three more. So whether it's three or four doesn't really matter. You get keywords unlimited, none are blocked. You may not got CPC and search data on all of them, but that's okay. You just go, you don't really need the CPC and search data. I know those are premium features, but like it's up and coming trending stuff. The CPC and the search data is not going to be 100% accurate. Uh, and it's not gonna be a representation of where that keyword is going or potentially going.
- [07:32]
Sean Cannell
Well, everyone's gonna be more pumped than ever. This is a free tool and opportunity you could start using right now to spot trending insights, upcoming topics so that you can create new stuff. Cause that's what's working on YouTube and social media right now. And you recently made a video about trends in general. And I've written down seven key social media and AI trends for 2025. And I want you to unpack some of these so that we can stay on the cutting edge as creators and entrepreneurs. And number one is platforms now prioritize new creators more than ever. Can you break that down?
- [08:10]
Neil Patel
Yeah. So people have this misconception like, oh, I'm going to join YouTube, but it's too late, I don't have any followers. And they don't care if you have a million followers or zero followers. What they really care about is did you create some amazing viral piece of content or just amazing piece of content that people love within your vertical or nich again, it doesn't have to go viral and is this content that no one else has been talking about on the platform and fills a void or a gap for people searching or looking for content around that topic. So if you create content that's super high quality and engaging, you're much more likely to get views. And it doesn't matter if you're a new account or old account or have a lot of followers or little followers, because if you have a new account with very little followers or no followers, and when you publish your content, they show it to people and they show to people who they think would be interested. And if those people are interested, they like, they comment, they share, it's going to cause them to start showing it to more and more people even if you have no followers. And this is a great example or a great example of this is if you look at a lot of the viral videos out there on YouTube. A long, long time ago, I saw this dude, I think he had dog in his screen name or username. I don't know exactly what his username is. I'm not trying to offend him. I just. I think the word dog was in there. Cool, dude. He had like a tattoo of a feather, I think, going down his neck. I could be off. And his car broke down. He longboarded to work. Right. It's a version of a skateboard. This is just a longer skateboard, I believe. And he was just chugging some cranberry juice in a big bottle. What followers did he have to make him get millions and millions of views? Same with on YouTube. I saw this clip of this girl who said, I'm looking for a husband in finance. 65 blue eyes. I don't know what the other things were, but it was catchy. And then she even released a video or a music video with it with, I believe, David Guerra or one of those musicians. And she started getting tons and tons of views on YouTube and all the other social channels. But she didn't really have the follower count to get that many views. It was just more. So the content was catchy and good. I was watching cnbc, so I watched a lot of the financial sites and they even reference that clip of her talking about it. And funny enough, that's actually how I first learned about it. It actually wasn't YouTube. I first learned it from there and then I went to YouTube to go find it.
- [10:35]
Sean Cannell
So we're living in an era where you can go viral regardless of following and even if you're just starting from scratch. I've heard it said one way by, I think, Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm curious your take on this statement. I believe we're no longer in the era of social media, but we're in the era of interest media. Do you agree?
- [10:54]
Neil Patel
I agree. And that's why I said you need to create new content. And if people like it and the people who see it, that they show it to comment, like share it, which is crazy. Not everyone's going to do that. But if everyone did that, it got showed to 10 people and everyone did it, then it got shown to a hundred people and they all did those three things. Not manipulated, not, you know, fake comments and likes and shares, but they genuinely did it. They'll start showing to 10,000, then a million, and then it just explodes. Why? Because those three things that I just mentioned on YouTube signal that someone's interested. And another one that people very rarely discuss is watch time. Right. And I know it's discussed on a lot of different channels. But people discuss how you can get more comments, or they discuss how you can get more likes or shares, but not enough people focus on watch time. And if you look at a lot of the tips that try to teach you how to get watch time, they try to give you hacks. And I'm not saying those hacks aren't somewhat effective. Those hacks don't compare to just creating something that's new and interesting that people haven't seen before, because they're much more likely to fully watch your video if it's new and interesting than if it's something that's regurgitated.
- [12:05]
Sean Cannell
So the second trend is an expansion of this, the new algorithm formula revolution. You're kind of just breaking this down. How do algorithms work now? They show content to a small test group and then it starts to expand. Help us understand.
- [12:19]
Neil Patel
Yeah. So if you release a piece of video on or if you release a video on YouTube, whether it's short or whether it's long, they'll show it to a handful of people. If those handful of people engage engagement for them on YouTube specifically, is someone watching as much of the video as possible, hopefully better than the average within that category. If they engage through comments, liking, sharing, it's a combination. All those, I would say video watch time is the most important. And if they do all of that, they start showing it to more people. And if your metrics are better than the average video within that category, they keep showing it to more and more people. And that's how you grow. That's really the key. Because remember, the more people that watch your YouTube video, the more people that stick around on YouTube even click on other suggested videos after they watch your video. These are all signals that shows YouTube. Oh, this video is creating more good users. And when YouTube has more sticky users, what happens to the revenue? It climbs because they monetize through ads and subscriptions.
- [13:17]
Sean Cannell
So viral potential is based on watch time, not follower count. Which brings us to number three. Video length is everything. We're going a little bit deeper. Platforms care about retention. So what is your thought? And one of the biggest questions we get is, how long should I make my YouTube videos?
- [13:36]
Neil Patel
I always tell people quality over quantity. And you have to decide what quality is. That's a very vague term in the marketing world because it's really in the eye of the beholder. But if your video is only supposed to be five minutes and you can extend it to 10 by just adding tons of fluff and stuff, people probably don't care about, but it's just filler content. You're probably better off having a 5 minute video than a 10 minute video because your watch time completion rate is going to be way better than if you had a 10 minute video and people always stuck around a minute where versus if you had something that was five minutes but because there was less fluff, people stuck around for three minutes instead of one. You're going to be better off because three minutes is more consumption than five minutes. I mean than one minute even if the video was half the length. But Generally speaking from YouTube we see videos around 710 minutes, 15 minutes do really well. I would say 10 plus minutes is great, but it doesn't mean that you have to create a video that's 10 plus minutes. Focus on what content that you can create that's really new and interesting where people want to continue watching versus focusing on the length of the video.
- [14:46]
Sean Cannell
Hey, we're going to get back to the conversation with Neil in just a second. But if you're ready to get serious with YouTube and with video podcasting and you want to implement everything that you've been learning today, we have a free one hour deep dive YouTube strategy class that's available on demand@thinkmasterclass.com during this no fluff training, you're going to learn the one strategy that's generating over 150,000 organic views on YouTube every single day on our YouTube channels and the three major components to make it work for you. This is the perfect next step to implement everything you're learning today in this episode. So to get access to this exclusive one hour deep dive YouTube strategy masterclass, just go to thinkmasterclass.com or click the link in the show notes. Let's jump back into the episode. We've been unpacking some things you've mentioned, but the Next1 is AI powered recommendations are a game changer. Is there anything else to expand on that? If how AI is driving these algorithms and making viral growth greater?
- [15:52]
Neil Patel
Yeah, you know it's pretty much self explanatory. Like you mentioned, the recommendations just end up letting people know other similar videos that they can watch. But here's a real cool thing. YouTube. For the longest time when you talk, even if you don't upload a srt file, it can add it for you and let you know the text that the person's saying. It wasn't always 100% accurate, but it's good enough. With AI, not only are they better at understanding, you know, what words you're saying, but they're better at Understanding the context of the words and the meaning and what you're really talking about and the topic. So it allows them to recommend better videos to the consumer, which is great because you want to make sure that your video is hot. So that way it's recommended more and it's shown, you're showing other related videos that are good for your watchers because that just keeps people on YouTube longer, which makes it more likely that your video is going to get views. And this doesn't have to do so much with the algorithm when it comes to related videos. This has more to do with watch time. Hack that people can end up doing is using sub hooks. So everyone knows that hey, you got to get them in the first five seconds. Well, if someone, if you have a 10 minute video and you're talking about 10 different sections in that video, try to use a hook for each section. So then that way those are like little mini sub hooks. So that keeps people intrigued so they keep watching the rest.
- [17:14]
Sean Cannell
This is like you said, self explanatory. But if we were to take this strategically deeper, how do you go with the approach of developing your content, researching your content? Because what I'm hearing you say is Google and YouTube understand better than ever before what we're saying, how we're structuring our content, what the meaning is, what the context is. But that means we're going to need to inject all of those things in our content in a very strategic way. So for the busy creator, the busy entrepreneur, what do you think it takes to put together rich content in video form to win in today's marketplace?
- [17:49]
Neil Patel
When you, you leverage research on YouTube, what I see most creators doing is they'll research topics like I can research a topic like LinkedIn or how to grow on LinkedIn. They look to see what was already popular that other people created and then they create a similar videos with their own take. The problem with that formula is you're pretty much doing a version of something that already did well and, and you're probably doing a version of something that did well many times. So it's kind of now played out. So when you create it, you may get some views, but you're not going to get anywhere near the views in most cases like the original versions. What I recommend doing is you research what's hot. So for example, if I'm in marketing, digital marketing, which I am, and I teach people how to get traffic from Google or you know, AI platforms or Instagram or YouTube, I would start doing research on, let's say what's popular with ranking on Google and then see what all the popular videos were. Same with with ranking on Bing because they're both search engines that most people are familiar with. But now everyone's starting to use Chat GPT. I would then see what type of content is popular for Chat GPT. I would also see what kind of content is popular for Perplexity would do the same for Claude. And then I would look for the gaps. What are the gaps that people talked about largely when it came to ranking for Google and Bing that people aren't talking about for ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude. That gives me an avenue to fill this void because if I can do that, the chances are people would be interested in that video. Because Claude, Perplexity, ChatGPT are all popular platforms. The key is it has to be relevant to it. I can't take something that was related to Google and it wouldn't work on chat GPT and be like, look what you could do on chatGPT. Then I'm just creating misinformation, but assuming it would work for ChatGPT or is a different spin or a relevant spin, or there's similar types of factors that I can leverage or concepts. I now have idea for a video on something that was popular for a different channel, but there's new channels that people are interested in that aren't talking about that yet. They should know about it. Those type of videos are likely to do very well.
- [19:55]
Sean Cannell
Genius. So we're learning. The strategies that worked just a few years ago are quickly becoming obsolete. And brands and creators that fail to adapt really risk watching their traffic conversions and ROI vanish. Some of the other trends that you've identified is that brand recognition trumps traffic volume. Can you explain what that means?
- [20:17]
Neil Patel
Yeah. So let's go back in time. All right. Search engines, and I consider YouTube a search engine because you people search for content on there or a content engine, whatever you want to call. But a lot of experiences or most online experiences start with the search. YouTube and Google have this problem of misinformation. And if you go back into time, when Google first started, there was always misinformation. You fast forward to today, there's still misinformation. When you look at these AI platforms like ChatGPT, sometimes there's misinformation because what they're doing is they're crawling the web and they're taking what's been out there and. And based on things like links and social shares and comments and engagement, they're determining what they should show other people, but then they realize you have extreme cases. Okay? And I'm not trying to get political here, but I'm going to give everyone an extreme case that they can relate to. A few years ago, we all had COVID 19. That popped up in this world, right? Sadly, people passed away from it. If you fast forward today, it's kind of people don't really talk about it and they're used to life and they just go around their day. I don't know how many times you walk around and you see someone with a mask, but for me, it's very rare. You know, if I see 100 people, it's very rare that even one out of them has a mask. I was just on an airplane from Air France or Paris to Los Angeles, and when I was standing in line to board the plane, I don't think any one person wore a mask. The only person I saw with the mask and I could have missed someone was one of the people working for the airlines. And they themselves had a mask when they're helping people scan their boarding pass. But when you look at Covid, they had an introduction of COVID vaccines. And if you ask people what they thought about the vaccines when they first came out, most articles were really positive, some were negative, and some of the negative ones were getting tons and tons of engagement because there were some people that were against it. And I'm not asking if you're for or against it or if any viewer was for or against it. That's not the point. But you have extreme examples on both points. And you know, even like Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg publicly went out and said he had to censor some data based on government requests related to Covid. But if you fast forward today. Okay, again, I don't need to know if anyone's taken a vaccine or not, but chances are, whether you took a vaccine or not in the past, you don't take any more booster vaccines for anything like that. I don't even need anyone to answer this. You can just go look at the earnings of Pfizer, Moderna, or any of the stocks out there. The data is pretty much public on how much revenue they generate from vaccines, and the number is really, really low compared to a few years ago. Right. Their stocks boom from it. Not anymore. The reason I bring up this example is everyone can relate to the COVID vaccine era. So how does a user know when there was Covid? When they were searching for a video on YouTube or doing research? Which one is accurate and which one isn't? Because the people for the vaccine and against the vaccines both had tons of engagement and tons of comments and views and shares and saves and links and all this kind of stuff and tons of watch time engagement. So it's really hard to know which ones the algorithm should show up. So one thing they started doing over time is saying, hey, if this video is from WebMD, a brand that's well known for health advice or a doctor, like a Dr. Fauci, we are more likely to show it because it's a brand or it's recognized and they're less likely, not 100% unlikely, but less likely in their eyes to push out fake information. So these platforms look for brands and they try to push brands first because they know they're less likely to put out fake information. A great example of this is cnn. If you watch CNN and they post something you would hope because it's a well known website, they're less likely to put out fake information. My dad watched a video on cnn, this was a year plus ago and it said Neil Patel is running for, I believe, senator. You know, I'm not a politician. And they had my face all over it. What's the problem? When you google Neil Patel, you want to take a guess? You already know this one. If you google Neil Patel, what do you think is the biggest issue? If you're looking for an image.
- [24:40]
Sean Cannell
Reveal that. Reveal it to me.
- [24:42]
Neil Patel
Okay. The biggest issue is going to be I'm going to rank for everything because my background is SEO. You agree with that, right?
- [24:48]
Sean Cannell
100%. So you're going to out. So this same name is what you're saying is running and you're going to outrank that individual because of brand.
- [24:55]
Neil Patel
Yes. Not on purpose. So CNN showed a video of me running for a sender like my image of. Technically there was a Neil Patel running for senator. I don't know if he won or lost, but he was in a different state and it wasn't me. But yet CNN showcased my image. Typically that's very rare for CNN to do. They didn't fact check it, but if they did, or the YouTubes of the world, the Googles of the world, the Facebooks of the world typically assume that the brands usually do fact check and they usually do. So they are more likely to showcase their content because they know they're likely to create less fake information than a random person. So you got to build a brand over time and showcase your experience, your expertise, your authority and trust. And if you don't have any of that at the Beginning, that's okay. By continuing publishing content, building a community, you can build up those signals.
- [25:45]
Sean Cannell
So this trend is brand recognition trumps traffic volume. And this matters. In today's fragmented marketing landscape, with 59% of Google searches resulting in no clicks, brand awareness drives purchasing decisions across 11 touch points. Give us just one before we go to the next trend. Final practical application for the small business owner, the small creator, and even small, I mean you might have 10,000 subscribers, 50,000, you might have a silver play button from YouTube. But sometimes when you think about brand, you're not CNN, you're not Amazon, you know, you're not these huge brands. So when we are thinking about you mentioned, we can start be consistent, build a community. But what's the action item to leverage this trend as your long tail niche content creator?
- [26:35]
Neil Patel
Yeah. So I'll give you a quick stat, then I'll tell you something and then I'll give you the solution. So the first stat is roughly one out of every three searches on Google is for a brand. Most people don't know that. It could be a brand, it could be a product that the brand owns and variations of it like price comparison, you know, like Pampers diapers price comparison. I'm making up the keyword, but that's example of a branded search. One out of every three searches. Keep in mind 13.7 billion searches a day on Google, one out of every three are brand, which is kind of ridiculous to think about. Another interesting tidbit when it comes to creating a brand that people don't realize is Google doesn't want to just showcase CNN for everything or Wikipedia or New York Times. They actually want to showcase niche brands or vertical based brands that are authoritative and they know more about that subject than anyone else. So if you look at politicians, whether it is Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Barack Obama, they all have a bigger brand than me. Would you agree with that statement?
- [27:37]
Sean Cannell
I agree.
- [27:37]
Neil Patel
Okay. Would you agree I know probably more about marketing than most presidential candidates.
- [27:43]
Sean Cannell
I agree.
- [27:45]
Neil Patel
So YouTube doesn't want to give you marketing advice from someone who has a brand new but isn't known for that category. They want creators who specialize and they want them to be known in that category because the information is going to be typically more helpful, more accurate, and it's going to provide more value which is going to keep them coming back to YouTube more often. Right. Like if Joe Biden kept giving everyone YouTube advice, do you think your followers would turn to him or would they turn to you? They would turn to you because you're known for YouTube and you're great at it, right? It doesn't matter if your brand's not as big as a past president. And I'm not trying to pick on Joe Biden, I'm just giving you an example of this. So when you are out there and you're trying to create a brand, keep in mind that the average consumer, before they really evangelize a brand, become loyal, start purchasing, telling other people about it. It requires roughly 11.1 touch points. That's in today's world, 2025. If you go back into time a few years ago, the average touch point before a purchase was around 8.5 interactions. And that could be interactions multiple times on the same platform, like YouTube, or it could be interactions on multiple platforms. So what I would recommend is you create content and you do it consistently. That's number one. Because if you don't, it's hard to get the touch points and get people to come back. Number two, repurpose your content and put it on multiple platforms. It doesn't matter if you release similar content on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, they all take similar formats, release the content everywhere. Even if you get less views on the other channels, it's okay. Something is better than nothing. Ideally, create content specific for each platform in the audience, but I know that's hard for most people to do because it revolves a lot more time and budget. And then the fourth thing that I tell people is most people focus on creating content and they're like, okay, I created this piece of content and this is great. Let me go create the next piece of content. Yes, you need to create more content, but instead of just focusing on quantity, promote what you have. We spend more time promoting a piece of content that we release than creating the piece of content. So what I recommend doing is emailing other people that, you know, engage with content like yours. Ask them to like it, share it. I know that may feel awkward at first, but hey, you know, if you don't ask, you'll never receive. And it really does all help and let people know you'll return the favor for them. Not just have them like it and comment. I'm talking about actually, like, have them watch it and give feedback. Right? That helps with engagement numbers and it helps with showcasing it to more people. In addition to that, you can do strategies like tell people on some of your other social networks, like through stories like on Instagram. Hey, I just published this new video on YouTube. You guys should check it out. Go swipe up to go Watch the video or click the link. And doing little things like that will get you more engagement on YouTube, which will cause your videos to do much better. And a lot of people like showcasing their content everywhere, and I think that's great. But at the beginning, my right recommendation is if you're really trying to go and try to build your community on YouTube specifically, publish it first on YouTube, especially the long forms. Use other social channels, like through stories and things like that, to push that YouTube content. And then later you can publish the whole video on Instagram and the other social networks.
- [31:01]
Sean Cannell
So our next trend. This is a bold statement. Podcasting is the underrated traffic channel. Can you back that up?
- [31:10]
Neil Patel
Yeah. So did you know there's roughly 7 to 8 ish billion blogs right now? That's roughly one blog for every single person out there. The last podcasting stat that I checked was I think it was around 4, 4.5 billion podcasts. So when you divide that for the amount of people in the world, that's a thousand. One podcast for every thousand something people. There's a big disparity. If you look at how many people are consuming podcasts just in the United States, the list is the number's going really fast. And when we look at how many new podcasts is being created, we saw during, like Covid, during those times, more people are creating podcasts, but the number of new published podcasts being created has been declining percentage wise. And a lot of the old podcasts aren't active anymore. So if you just release a podcast just because there's so much demand, it tends to just get viewership without really much promotion. Viewership audience. And if you do video format, you can leverage it for YouTube, you can leverage it for Spotify as well. Because Spotify, you know, you can upload video podcasts and you're going to get more views as well. And if you look at like Joe Rogan, how many people consume this podcast through the video version? I know when I listen to the Rogan show, I don't listen it through an audio version. I listen it through the YouTube version. And that also creates branding and brand queries. That's one way to get your brand out there. Because when I'm looking for the latest episode, I'll just go into YouTube and just type in Joe Rogan and then I go to the latest episode and then click from there.
- [32:47]
Sean Cannell
Are you ready to start your YouTube channel? But you don't know where to begin? Or have you been posting videos but you're frustrated because you're just not getting the views and nobody is seeing them. For a limited time, you can get the number one bestselling YouTube strategy book, YouTube Secrets for free at ytsecrets.com this book is the proven blueprint that has helped thousands of people go from zero subscribers to a thriving channel. All I ask is that you pay shipping and then I will mail you the brand new updated second edition of YouTube secrets. And when you place your order today, there's a couple other super cool things that'll hook you up with first, you're going to get instant access to a free Deep Dive masterclass where I will break down the exact strategy I'm currently using to generate over 120,000 views per day every single day on YouTube and generate over $100,000 per month on the platform, as well as the three biggest mistakes that most creators make when starting and trying to grow their channel. That class is free to watch instantly when you pick up this special offer. Now you're also going to get my video series called the Perfect Video Recipe. One of the updated chapters in the second edition is titled the Perfect Perfect Video Recipe. It's actually a formula for how to structure YouTube videos to get maximum views and how to break through in the YouTube algorithm. This is the exact formula that readers of the book and our students are using to generate millions of views. And again, that'll just be included when you jump on this limited offer. Third, you're going to get access to our 1000 Subs Club email newsletter which delivers actionable weekly tips to your email inbox that will help you get to 1,000 subscribers fast. And we also do really cool weekly giveaways that includes lighting and microphones and YouTube equipment, plus software that will help you on your creator journey. But here's the thing. Supplies are limited on this free book promotion. So if you want to grab this offer, go to yt secrets.com right now and just place your order covering shipping and I'll get this book in the mail to you right away. So the opportunity is it billions of podcasts exists? Or actually fewer than 5 million active podcasts exist?
- [35:02]
Neil Patel
No, no. So there's around 4.5-ish million podcasts. Most of them are not active blogs. Sorry, I. I think I said there were 7 to 8 billion blogs. Did I say that? I'm actually wrong on that. I meant to say there's roughly a billion blogs, 7 to 8 billion people. So there's one blog for roughly every seven or eight people. Podcasts, there's 4.5-ish million podcasts, some are active, some are not. Same with the blog. Some are active, some are not. But there's one podcast for every thousand something people. It's just less competitive.
- [35:33]
Sean Cannell
Got it. So, I mean, yeah, that disparity is, is insane. And so also the podcast medium attracts an affluent audience with the average income of $75,000 or higher.
- [35:44]
Neil Patel
Yes.
- [35:44]
Sean Cannell
So you have more loyal listeners. This is kind of an interesting. More money, better customers, more serious. So not all traffic is the same. If you were to think about, yes, there's short form opportunity, yes, people are in TikTok or YouTube shorts, but even if you look at the RPM on a YouTube short, maybe it's 15 cents. If you're, if you're doing well on a video podcast in a professional niche, the RPM could be ten twenty dollars. It could be even higher. Speak a little bit to also, you know why podcasting could be an underrated traffic channel. Even if your audience is much smaller.
- [36:21]
Neil Patel
And more niche, you're building really strong loyalty. And it's much easier to drive a conversion from a podcast versus a short. If you don't believe me, you just gave the stats on monetization from a short versus a long form video. Look at Mr. Beast. He's published some of the data on how much he makes from a short versus a long form video. It's night and day different. The reason shorts don't monetize well isn't because people don't consume them. They're not as engaged. They don't typically recall the next day what they consumed. And that's why long form videos, especially if you're in professional services or in a niche that's lucrative, just perform way better from a monetization and traffic standpoint. And the reason it builds a lot of traffic is when you look at most podcasts, they tend not to be scripted, they're just real. And people are talking and they're getting to the nitty gritty and revealing stuff that they may not. And a typical day in the life, and those episodes do extremely well because people are being vulnerable, they're being transparent and people like it. It shows the ups, the downs of people, the good, the bad humanizes them.
- [37:24]
Sean Cannell
So someone's listening to this and they're wanting to get into this opportunity. YouTube, podcasting, social media, and number one, maybe they've actually tried and failed so far. They've had mediocre results. And maybe they're still trying to figure out their angle, their niche, what exactly their approach is going to be. But also maybe they actually have not chosen their strategy yet. And they're trying to think about what's my content format going to be? How am I going to approach this? What would be your advice for the first few decisions for dialing in a content strategy and then specifically the first few steps for basically deciding if podcasting is right for you and then getting started in light of still feeling like, okay, only 4.5 million active podcasts exist. I see the opportunity, but competition still feels fierce. How am I going to stand out? Everyone's interviewing the same on same guest, quote, unquote. How could I figure out my unique angle? What is your advice?
- [38:22]
Neil Patel
You don't have to figure out a unique angle. That's a beautiful part about podcasting. I don't care what niche you're in, it is not competitive. There really isn't that many active podcasts, especially if you look at how many people are have produced 50 plus episodes. There's not that many that survive. Not because you can't get views. It's just people give up and they're not consistent. It requires some work if you just go and create it. You don't have to have a unique angle. You can interview some of the same guests. What makes podcasting unique isn't the guests, it's what you're asking the individual. Just like you and me, we're doing an interview right now. I've done hundreds if not thousands of interviews, probably a thousand plus interviews over the last 24 years, right. I don't have the exact number, but it's a lot. Some weeks, it's not even some weeks. Some days I'm doing two or three of this, right? Like it really adds up. But on an average week, cause I travel, I probably say I do four or five interviews a week. Some of them do really well because I'm talking about new stuff that I've never shared before. And when you're a podcast interviewer, the key is listening to the person that you're having as a guest. What have they talked about on past podcast interviews they've done and then figure out what they haven't talked about. Cause you just eliminate and you start talking about those kinds of things and you come up with questions that you think would be intriguing, that you think that they could talk about. You may send them to em in advance. Um, what I like doing is I like reaching out to a few of their friends. So you ask the podcast interviewer that you're having and you say, hey, can you mind, do you mind inter introducing me to like two or three of your close friends. I'd love to ask them some questions so we can make the podcast better. They almost always say yes. And you ask them, hey, what are five or ten things that you think I should interview Neil about that he's never talked about before? And that can help you get really interesting insights without doing tons of work.
- [40:11]
Sean Cannell
It's genius. And if you're gonna start a podcast from scratch or a YouTube channel for the professional that's busy, what do you think about team resources? Set up amount of hours to allocate per week? We both recently were speaking at an event in Miami for ypo, the Global Marketing Summit. And ahead of time, Eric Sue. I asked, he said that. I said, how much are you spending a month to produce content? And I think he told me $25,000 is what he's investing in his content. And then I said, how much is Neil spending? And he said, more than that. Maybe 60 or 70. And I'm curious, you know, for someone listening to this, they've got a growing business, they've got revenue, but they're not ready to spend 70 grand a month. Speak to like the workflow, maybe the team minimum viable product to get your media company internally at your company off the ground, and maybe some steps to that with what you're doing, but what you might recommend to somebody that's starting.
- [41:17]
Neil Patel
So when Eric and I record a podcast, we tend to record in the same room that I'm in right now. And we pay a gentleman named Noah, who's amazing. He helps set it up, do the lighting and all this kind of stuff for Eric and I. I have my own crew for my own stuff. But when we do our podcast together, we know we've been using him for ages. He used to be one of Eric's ex employees and then went on his own. And he was there also at the YPO event. So when we were at the YPO event, Eric and I filmed a marketing school podcast episode in his room. We literally took just some camera and some portable mics. It came in this rectangle case. I don't know what it was called. And you just take two out and you just clip them. I think you know what it's called. I have no idea. They're wireless.
- [41:59]
Sean Cannell
Might be like the RODE Wireless Go or the DJI Mic dgi.
- [42:03]
Neil Patel
There you go. It was something like a dji, I believe. And we plugged it on. We didn't script and we just talked about our experiences for an hour and a half because we were too busy and we didn't have time and we were just real and authentic. We got more views from that podcast episode with less quality editing or any of that. And we were just sitting on a couch. It wasn't set up professionally with lighting, sound, video or anything like that. And it just got more views. People assume that you need to spend money to create content. That is so false. You can just bust out your iPhone and just start recording and you can have your first podcast episode. Literally you can just do that. Or you can bus out your laptop, set up an interview on one of these channels using like Streamyard or Restream or any of, any of them, any one of them, and just start recording with someone else and you got your content.
- [42:56]
Sean Cannell
Okay, so the, the barrier to entry is super low. And to to think it's going to be about the money or the resources. No, it's not about your resources. It's about your resourcefulness when starting. Why then do you spend 50, 60, $70,000 a month on content? And what's the trajectory to scale for somebody doing what you're doing? So if that's mid to advanced level, break that down for our advanced listeners.
- [43:25]
Neil Patel
Keep in mind, I have an organization with, call it a thousand plus people. I don't know how many countries we're in 28 countries. I don't know how many different languages. So when I produce content, I gotta produce it for our global operations and for a lot of different customers that don't necessarily speak English because we're dealing with large corporations. And when you work with large brands, not everyone working at these corporations in marketing speak English as their native language. So when they're using YouTube and they're searching, they typically are searching in their language versus English. Now, a lot of people in the business world do speak English, but when they're looking for content, consuming it, English isn't the first language that they're going after. So what we do is we create content for a lot of languages and that's expensive. AI tools like hey Gen have started to help reduce costs. And we're also an agency and a lot of our clients are global. 10,000 companies are publicly traded. They have massive global operations and they want the nice quality lighting just like right now. So it's one of the reasons that we do it, because it aligns with our customers and what they're looking for for. But no joke, most of the content that my team here have filmed that's lower quality tends to get more views than the stuff that is highly produced and edited.
- [44:48]
Sean Cannell
Powerful insight So a lot of the budget that's expanded is speaking to the scale of the business that you run. The agency, the global reach translations, AI is giving some new opportunities. But for someone to start a show, start a YouTube channel, that barrier that it's an excuse. Gear, expense, cost, you're saying that's an excuse. Really what you want to be focusing on is starting and being consistent. And especially if I heard you correctly, the the big opportunity is most will quit, most will give up, most podcasts never reach 50 episodes, right?
- [45:24]
Neil Patel
Correct.
- [45:25]
Sean Cannell
Okay, final trend. Social commerce is the new front door. What do you think macro we should be paying attention to as this trend, but also such things as TikTok shop, Instagram shop and YouTube shopping as really for the creator, an affiliate marketing opportunity that's native to the platform, that clickable product links can show up on shorts and long form videos. What's happening with this trend and what should we be thinking about strategically?
- [45:53]
Neil Patel
Yeah, so I believe the number that I last saw was I think 7 trillion or 8 trillion will be spent on social commerce a year by 2030. That's a crazy large number. The question is how can you get a small fraction of a slice? Right. If you do that, you're making money hand over fist. And what you want to do is focus creating content within a specific vertical and then start monetizing. You can monetize by white labeling, doing affiliate stuff, making it easy for people to just sell products right then and there. You can be an ambassador, not an influencer. Influencer is one thing, but how can you be joint with the company and create a product that can also be partly yours and sell it? You look at Hailey Bieber, she just sold her makeup company I believe for like a billion ish dollars to I think it was like some elf beauty, I think that's what they're called. She had a few partners. I don't know if they had investors. I think some of it, quite a bit of it was in stock compensation instead of just cash, large chunk of their overall shares. And when you look at that company, what did she have? She had partners who understand the industry, but she herself had the brand, the expertise. She was using her platform to start selling. You can find other people who are well known, partner with them and do some of the operations or build your brand and then push out products on these places. What we've been seeing that's really effective right now is partnering up with other influencers, giving them a percentage of all sales and have them be part of the product in an Affiliate way. And that grows your channel, your brand helps with sales. But what's really interesting with shopping is you're going to see more people eventually go live on these platforms and sell live, kind of like qvc. We see that in Asia that I bet you is going to start booming in the US within the next few years.
- [47:46]
Sean Cannell
And for those that are following along, but when they hear this idea of social commerce and they say like what exactly do you mean or social shopping, can you define it at a basic level for what that even is?
- [48:00]
Neil Patel
I'm on Instagram loading up the app, I'm casually browsing, going through reels. All of a sudden it stops my flow and someone shows me a product, could be an ad, could be organic, click a button, buy it right then and there, don't even leave Instagram. And then boom, they generated a sale and it's all done. And they have autofills and all that kind of stuff just makes it super easy to buy. Because most people look at marketing as let me create a video promoting a product and send you to a landing page, then get you to read everything and then buy. Why can't you just do it all in one video and do it right then and there so someone doesn't have to leave the platform so you have less of a drop off rate. Typically we see higher conversions.
- [48:46]
Sean Cannell
So this is a major shift because it's replacing traditional search, that social platforms are the primary product discovery mechanism. Yeah, I actually was at my friend David's house in Vegas and I'm in his living room, I'm like, that's a nice carpet. And he goes, I got it on a TikTok shop. And I was like, what? Personally I have, I haven't converted that way yet. And I was like, you bought like an area rug off of TikTok? That was. He's like, yeah, you know, and, and I would imagine that product came to him, algorithmic, came to him, caught his attention. Now it's a purchase, purchase lower friction. What do you predict is going to happen over the next few years with this? How significant is it?
- [49:26]
Neil Patel
I think it's going to be one of the biggest commerce channels out there. And Amazon and everyone is trying to do partnerships and get their hands on it. Product discovery is huge. We watch all this short form content on all these channels like YouTube. It's hard to monetize. Look at the ad revenue, it's just terrible. The ad revenue is not terrible because these networks don't want to pay you money. They'd gladly pay you more if they can make more, they're just not making that much off of short form content. But what they're finding is it's easier to sell people products than it is to get them to click on ad through social discovery.
- [49:57]
Sean Cannell
As we land the plane, a couple topics. Search YouTube and AI with some of your final thoughts. The first would be search. You have write a lot of articles about what it takes to rank what it takes to rank on Google. You're an expert at this. Do you think anything has changed on what does it take to rank on YouTube in 2025?
- [50:20]
Neil Patel
I don't think much has changed. I think the big thing that people tend to forget is we see people rank better when they keep their profile on YouTube specific to a vertical versus talking about everything. So I talk about marketing videos. But sometime my team's like, let's go broad and let's test this out. It may get more views. Like you know how entrepreneurs are making millions of dollars through Chad GPT. It's not the right audience and those kind of videos may get views, but my channel ranks better when I specifically focus just on marketing videos.
- [50:49]
Sean Cannell
And then as far as YouTube goes, what's your mindset right now? Or maybe you know, a tactic or strategy? Right now you're saying, okay, YouTube's competitive. I want to focus on you covered earlier. New you're using answer the public to spot some topics. But like what's your thoughts on your personal investment of time, money and energy in YouTube, how you're thinking about YouTube and where you see YouTube going.
- [51:12]
Neil Patel
So I'm just shifting up my YouTube strategy. So we used to pay this company, I don't know where they were based, I think la, and they would take my outline and then turn it into a script and then I would go record YouTube videos and they would spend a lot of time and money editing. It was on a lot of topics that I wasn't more so keen to record videos on, so then stopped working with them. I'm now shifting my YouTube strategy to continually produce content. There'll be a little bit of a gap though, and my buddy AJ is helping me film and edit content that won't be as highly produced, but it'll be on topics that I care about. It's scripted, more real and authentic. Because what we've seen is typically when we do too much editing and too much polishing, it doesn't do as well as just when it's just more real, raw and authentic. And that's our goal. So we'll talk about more topics Related to marketing, the vertical that we're in, more advanced stuff that would be more related to enterprise customers, which is ideally what we're going for. We work with SMB and mid market as well. We service the whole funnel and then.
- [52:24]
Sean Cannell
We just go from there and then AI obviously massive. Do you think the average person is underrating AI right now?
- [52:31]
Neil Patel
I think they're overestimating AI right now. I think people overestimate what it can do right now because people look at it as a magic wand in marketing that can solve all their problems. It can't go have it optimize your pay per click campaigns or AB test tons of images for you. You're going to also get a lot of losses in there. Losses cost you money right when you're running a B test. But at the same time I, I think people underestimate what AI can do for them in the future. It's going to do a lot more for them than they can imagine. From cleaning your house to getting your groceries. Like it'll do a lot of things. It can probably end up eventually detecting what you're opening a handlebar for on your fridge or you're opening a handlebar, who the person is based on your fingerprints, see patterns on what you eat and provide that data to insurance companies so they can and medical companies figure out how to make you more healthy and how much your coverage should cost for things like life insurance. So I think AI will do way more for people than they're imagining in the future. But in the short run, people believe it can do everything and it's not there yet. It doesn't mean the technology is not great. It's just they're overestimating it in the short run, underestimating it in the long run.
- [53:40]
Sean Cannell
And recently there's been some leaked CEO emails, as you know about AI AI agents. What is your take on There was a memo from the CEO of Shopify. There was a leaked memo from the CEO of Fiverr. There was another CEO that talked was going to give a $20,000 prize to his team's AI agent competition. What is your take on what the average what what business owners leaders CEO should be thinking in light of of some of the headlines about job layoffs, AI replacing people, these types of things.
- [54:22]
Neil Patel
I think people should shift their thought process to AI to hai humans combined with AI. How can you make your team more efficient and better at what they do and allow them to focus on the stuff that really moves the needle versus boring repetitive tasks that provide little to no ROI for a company but yet they know they have to do those tasks. I think a combination of both is really where the world is going.
- [54:47]
Sean Cannell
And final question and I want to hear a shout out to your stuff. What would you recommend for somebody that wants to train their team personally, get educated, to stay on the cutting edge and to figure out how to do exactly what you said. With so much information it feels overwhelming. How do you figure out this AI stuff?
- [55:09]
Neil Patel
It is really overwhelming. There's always a new tool. You don't need to hop on the latest tool. If it gets traction then go leverage it. But at that time you'll know. Just be an early adopter. But you don't need to be the first adopter. What I recommend doing is either do this with your team or external team and every Friday have a call for 1015 minutes with a group of three or four people within your industry or within your own company and talk about a cool thing that you did with AI and showcase it to people. Doesn't have to be a presentation, you can just share your screen. But if everyone starts doing that, you'll start learning cool ways people within your space or your department are using AI and it'll give you ideas on how you can be better and use it within your daily basis to actually move the needle when it comes to your KPIs like your key performance indicators versus using it. Because we see a trend of everyone using these AI technology but it has nothing to do with their traffic, sales, revenue or cost savings or any of that. They're just a lot of them are even spending more time using AI and becoming more inefficient when it comes to driving results for our organization.
- [56:11]
Sean Cannell
Genius advice and so much powerful actionable insight today. Neil Patel, you are doing very cool things. We'll link it up in the show notes. But where can we listeners check you out, learn more from you and where would you like to shout out your stuff?
- [56:23]
Neil Patel
My social handles are on Neil Patel and my ad agency is NP Digital.
- [56:28]
Sean Cannell
Well I hope you've been getting value out of this conversation and I want to leave you with my two top takeaways that will change your business and your YouTube channel from this episode. But a couple things if you got value today, can you like rate, share, review wherever you watch or listen to the Think Media podcast. And if you are ready to get serious about growing your personal brand and business with YouTube, if you're thinking about launching or growing a video podcast then check out our free deep dive YouTube strategy training@thinkmasterclass.com It's a one hour on demand training where you're going to learn the exact strategy we use at Think Media to generate over 150,000 organic views on YouTube every single day. And the three components of that strategy so that you can implement them right now so that'll be linked up in the show notes and you can check out that class. For me, the top takeaways that will change your business from this episode was that new content wins everything with 4.6 billion pieces of content created daily. Stop copying what's already been done and check out the answer, the public tool which you can use for free for three searches a day to use Neil's Gap strategy so that you can turn those ideas into fresh content. And number two, your follower count is dead. Of course we still want to get subscribers, get gold play button, silver play buttons. But how cool is it that we're living in an era where content is the variable, where really social media has turned into interest media. And so if you can create good content and strategic content, you could go viral regardless of following, you could get views regardless of subscriber count. It's not that it's easy. The landscape is tough, competition is high. But as you master the strategy, content creation, storytelling, learning these details and actually create content that people watch and watch for a significant amount of time, then you can grow right now, today, and break through. And so subscribe to the Think Media podcast for more tips. Because this podcast is all about helping you build a profitable YouTube channel and learn what are the best practices and what's working today with video content for building your online brand and online business. Thanks again for being a part of the show. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. And I cannot wait to connect with you in a future episode of the Think Media podcast.