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- [00:00]
Sean Cannell
There is something that happens when you get in a room with the right people that just cannot be replicated by a course, a podcast, or a live stream. The energy shifts, the excuses fall away, and you leave with a level of clarity and momentum that you couldn't create on your own. The Think Media Mastermind is that room. It's a live, in person, two day event in Las Vegas. It's small by design, intensive, and by application only because we make sure the room is stacked with incredible creators and business owners. If you're serious about using YouTube to build your business or grow your side income, stop waiting and go apply right now@thinkmediamastermind.com all right, let's dive into today's podcast.
- [00:56]
Nathan Eswine
If your YouTube views are down this year, you're not crazy. In a recent poll, we asked our community what they're struggling with most, and this was their biggest answer. I've improved my thumbnails and videos a ton in the last six months, but have lost 70% of my views. My views fluctuate like crazy from tens of thousands to hundreds. I'm trying new titles, new thumbnails, but it's hard to pinpoint what I'm doing wrong. Sean, what's your take on the views decline the that creators are experiencing right now?
- [01:25]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, I mean, my take is that, number one, it's real. I think that number two, it's happening at all different levels. We've got creators like Faith Quest who just said, you know, they're comfortable with getting tens of thousands of views, but they're seeing the drop to hundreds. But also, maybe a lot of people haven't heard that. Even Mr. Beast came out and you and he talked about his views going down and that's observable. At his peak, he was getting 200 million views a video and in some cases it's dropped up to 75%, being around 50 million views on video, which is still really incredible. Like who? You know, that's like a lifetime of views for a lot of creators. But I think the point is we're seeing what seeing it with the big creators. We're seeing it with channels of all sizes and we're going to be diagnosing that, but also talking about how to fix it 100%.
- [02:11]
Nathan Eswine
And I think we want to break this into two parts. Right. So we want to talk about what you can't control in this situation. But. But then I also want to talk about what you can control in the situation. Just like some of the people in our community were saying, like, it's hard to pinpoint what I'm doing wrong. And there's this tone of like, I am doing the thumbnails, I am doing the titles. It's hard to stay motivated when metrics are down. When it comes to things that you can't control, Sean, you know, how do you start here? Like, what do you notice about the algorithm? What are things that is actually true with what our community's saying?
- [02:41]
Sean Cannell
Yeah. So in life, in business, in YouTube, there's just always things that are out of your control. And what can happen is, number one, it's wise to understand them. Because when you understand them, you can pivot, you can adapt. But it's foolish to use them as an excuse. We have two different postures. We can either be in a posture of people who overcome and figure things out, or we could be in a victim posture. So when our views go down, if we take that disempowering victim posture of just like my views are down, it's YouTube's fault. It's the algorithm's fault. Fair enough. There's things that they, they're doing. However, I just. That's the disclaimer as we go into this, because we do have a lot of hope coming at the end of the episode as well. But our mentality is everything is figureoutable. But here we are, number one, things you can't control. The fact that there's more competition than ever in today's world. There's more than 20 million uploads per day. AI has lowered the barrier to creating content, which is just as much of an opportunity as it is of a challenge. Because now there's just more creators, there's more content. And so that's one of the big ones. But then the other one and you can hit on this is the home feed shift. YouTube has been what appears to on almost all services, kind of reducing long term, long form visibility. Break that down.
- [03:56]
Nathan Eswine
Yeah, 100%. And so this is the idea that there was this shift that YouTube did on the platform where instead of all these long form videos that would pop up on the homepage, we now see shorts taking over in a much bigger quantity than the amount of long form that you see. And I actually just did this this morning, Sean, opening up my homepage on YouTube. Sure enough, there's three long form videos. And there were like, you know, and then it was like long form videos, community tab posts. And so even, you know, this home feed shift. Why is it such a big deal? Well, because it's proof of the changing of consumption Right. Like having multiple methods. It's not all about long form anymore. And attention is going into different places, and YouTube knows that. And YouTube is presenting different opportunities for people to go deeper. So what this means is, yeah, okay, you could get fewer chances per video, right? Like, if you are creating a video and it's. You want it to hit browse traffic, you want it to get in YouTube recommendations, well, there could be fewer chances for you to get it. And now that means that those slots, so to speak, could matter more.
- [04:54]
Sean Cannell
Yeah, and another thing that's out of your control is views are being redistributed, not just reduced, because across the platform, the platform is not suffering from total views and total consumption. It's just more creators are getting some views, fewer creators are dominating everything. I think this speaks with a glimmer of hope into the future. Niche communities, niche positioning, building your YouTube brand and channel off the smallest viable audience, not the largest viable audience. It's not that views disappeared. They're just getting spread out. But then the other thing we can't control before we get into a lot of the tactics we can, is number four, audiences change and evolve. Break that down 100%.
- [05:39]
Nathan Eswine
And this we've seen, but the data's showing it. Of course, homepage redesign and UI changes are one thing, but it's another thing for these studies to come out that are saying, okay, now YouTube is consumed on television more so than any other streaming platform like Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus. There's this, like, living room era where people are tuning into YouTube on their televisions with their family, just like they would a TV show back in the day. And so attention is changing. And what that means is, man, there's more options for people to choose. And if there's more options for people to choose, then there's gonna be less loyalty. So it's kind of this idea of man, your own audience, the people who were watching your content. And this could even be what's going on with Mr. Beast. You and I talked about this a little bit ago in an episode that actually, what's going on with the audience, right? Like, maybe they're just changing. Is there fatigue with the style of content he's been doing? And so obviously he's at the big macro level, but it is interesting to think about, like, man, even his process, his audience, like, how has their viewing behavior changed? Are they getting tired of his content and choosing other mediums? And we're even seeing this, too. Not just the living room era, not just UI changes, but then we're also seeing people prefer sit down. Long form, more authentic content is the word that keeps getting thrown around, right? Like, as opposed to this fast paced stuff. There's a growing movement for just connecting with someone at a relational level, a
- [06:57]
Sean Cannell
slower pace, a hundred percent. And so the problem is, is yes, these are real external shifts, but if you stop there, that's where you're gonna get stuck. And a lot of people will say these are reasons to quit. These are reasons to. There's too much competition. But we have a different perspective here at Think Media and that is that, okay, we're going to be aware of things that are out of control, but we are going to focus on the things we can control. Which brings us into, I think, five ideas that we have here. And that is number one, your ideas got weaker even if your videos got better. And so these are things you can control. And so what do we mean by this? You know, some of the feedback because we're listening to our community. This episode came out of a survey, came out of a Community tab post. If you're new here, make sure you're subscribed and you know, stick with us. Turn on notifications, things like that. You know, you might be downloading the audio version, but we're having conversations on the Community tab listening to you. That's what inspired this episode. And some individuals will say, my, I feel like, you know, my thumbnails are better and I'm making stronger videos. And then my views went down. Well, okay, one, you could just go, eh, I guess that's just life. Maybe the homepage changed. But here's our challenge to you. Even if you're like technically getting better at how you write a title or your thumbnails or even the content itself, your ideas might have got weaker.
- [08:23]
Nathan Eswine
100%.
- [08:24]
Sean Cannell
The video idea is the game.
- [08:26]
Nathan Eswine
Yes.
- [08:26]
Sean Cannell
The topic itself, people are focused on titles and thumbnails. Good topic is more important. So better thumbnails or better editing. If you have worse ideas or safer ideas, maybe you haven't jumped into something new and polarizing or trending recently. Better packaging, which everyone's talking about packaging. So are we master packaging or get ignored? But good packaging doesn't fix boring ideas. There it is. So ask yourself, would a stranger click this? Is this video solving a real problem? Is this video interesting right now? What's hot right now? What's on the mind of your target audience right now? What are they staying up at night? What are they thinking about? What are they interested in? Have they moved and are they thinking about something you're not even connected and talking about what it is, they're interesting. Test your ideas, come up with stronger ideas that is in your control. We're actually, this is one of the things that we obsess about here at Think Media. And we have in about a week at the time of recording this, our next two day Mastermind coming up. And one of the things we do is not only are we sitting with our Think Media coaches, myself, we're using our AI tools, but you're also sitting in a small room with other serious creators, really testing your strategies, testing your ideas, processing them, making them stronger and stronger. And that's why the testimonials we get off of an event like this is crazy. People are getting 5x10x100x outliers from going through our process. And it's the big lever. Their ideas themselves are getting stronger as well as the packaging, the videos and everything else. So anyways, if you actually want to join myself, Nathan, in Las Vegas in person, we're doing an in person event. Think mediamastermind.com is where you can apply. There's a link in the description as well. But whether you want to be at that two day event with us or not, come up with stronger ideas, that is a big lever you can control. Which brings us to number two. Go ahead and break it down a hundred percent.
- [10:22]
Nathan Eswine
So the second thing that could be amiss here is that talking about the audience changing their viewing behavior, audiences drifting. And so the thing that you actually can control here, if you feel like, man, like my audience isn't interacting or even if you're in a YouTube studio and you're seeing like how many people are watching your video, how many of it are subscribed, how many is it, how many of them are make it to that casual viewer list or returning viewer list. And something that you can control here, though. And Sean, it blows my mind how many creators don't try to ask their audience questions. And so I think a way that you can actually control this is like, okay, putting on my calendar like every week. How am I just connecting with my audience? How am I staying connected to what they need? How am I staying connected to how I'm actually serving them? Like, when I show up and I do this kind of video, man, it really helps. But for some reason I keep doing this other kind. Like, it blows my mind the amount of problems here that could be solved simply by asking your audience more. And you know, like, this is actually what we're doing here. This episode literally exists because we asked our audience, hey, what's like troubling you on YouTube right now? And you could do this through if you have an email list, like actually just sending an email, incentivizing it in some way. Like I've literally done this. I think I just did this with my auto insurance. They were like, we'll give, you know, you get entered to win X amount of discount on your whatever for filling out a survey. Guess who did it? This guy. You know what I mean? Like, and then another way you can do this is the community tab or now it's just called posts on your YouTube channel. Ask questions. Like we just said, Sean, earlier, the UI has changed posts.
- [11:55]
Sean Cannell
Yes.
- [11:56]
Nathan Eswine
Actually can like show up in browse if you will. They can show up on homepages for people and people don't even have to be subscribed to you fact for the posts to show up. And so. Oh my goodness, what are you talking about? Like we could potentially get a lot of feedback, potentially get people who are watching your content or watching your niche that could articulate and express what they need help with. And so I think that this is a missed opportunity, Sean. It's something that we can control. Is actually trying to connect with our audience.
- [12:24]
Sean Cannell
Yeah. And I want to go deeper on this before number three, because I think this really actually parallels to let's call it romantic relationships. I heard a relationship expert recommend this. If you want to keep your relationship or your marriage strong, schedule a once a week walk or at least talk and ask these three questions. How did you feel loved by me this week? And then also, was there anything I did that frustrated you or that you didn't feel loved by this week? It might even just been those two questions. And then it was like, and what's going on in your life? And it was like couples that have that meeting once a week keep the bond strong.
- [13:01]
Nathan Eswine
Check that out.
- [13:02]
Sean Cannell
And when I say, when we talk about your audience drifted. I'm sure most people listening to this could think about, yeah, man, that was in a relationship once and we drifted apart. You're in a marriage. We started to drift apart. That happens to content creators. Stakes aren't as high in this case or whatever, but you know, they can't. You're trying to build a brand. Are you drifting apart from your audience, man? Are you disconnected? And we all have felt that in a relationship. Like they're talking but it's not connecting because they haven't. I don't think they see me or they haven't heard me or they don't understand me in a long time. I've moved on, or I've been changing and evolving and they're, they're. We're disconnected. There's not a connection there. And being a content creator for, honestly, coming up on 20 years, which sounds insane, since I started making videos for my church and all kinds of other iterations, like, I've not only myself gone through this journey, but I've watched other creators that, again, there just starts to be like a separation. They're just kind of saying the same thing, but they're not talking, they're not listening. So there's the Practical Tools Community tab, if you have an email list asking people to comment on a video. But you got to stay engaged. And let me. Let's summarize that. And it takes work. Yeah, like, relationships are hard, like staying connected. So the natural propensity of relationships, of business, of things in life would be like the law of diminishing results. Or that things don't drift towards order, they drift towards chaos and they drift towards disintegration. Like, if you don't work on it, you don't invest in it. And so this one point could be the viral moment for listeners, because it could just be what I want you to most capture. Think Media Podcast is like that fire and that love. Again, to, like, make the relationship with your audience. Like, hot, on fire, passionate, steamy. All right, maybe not steamy, but it's, you know, like, like when it's on fire and there's connect, like, then that translates to not just width but also depth in your content. But let's hit number three. The standard went up and you did it. What is no sugar coating. Break this down.
- [15:10]
Nathan Eswine
No, this is just real talk. Like, you know, we shared some stats here, but the. It's 20 million videos that are uploaded to YouTube daily right now, which is like 500 something every minute. So by this point in the podcast episode, I actually don't even want to know how many videos have been uploaded. And with that amount of uploads, the amount of volume. Mr. Beast has been around for a while. There are formulas and structures to creating content. Like, the standard has just gone up because more people are in the game, more people are trying to get after it. And so this is just real talk. The standard went up, but you're not getting views or your views are dropping because you didn't. You didn't raise your own standards. And this actually means. Okay, man, here's a good question. How long has it been since you opened your YouTube studio to take on some gut punches. I don't know, Sean. Like, I know sometimes, like way back when I was like, we were in debt and we were trying to get out of it. Like, I remember actually not even wanting to open my bank account. I didn't want to look right, because it's just like ignorance is bliss. Well, I don't know. What, I don't know. I think some creators are doing this right now with their analytics, just posting videos, but not actually using the free data that YouTube gives you to try to make your content better. So how can you help your views continue to climb? And it's gonna be trying to get better and like we say all the time, 1% better. This doesn't have to be like some crazy thing, but I do think that as the standard is going up and YouTube is becoming more of a thing, you have to make sure that you're evolving too for your niche, for your audience and for your channel. So what could this mean? This could mean, okay, I need to look at my analytics. How am I doing on my retention? Actually, are people even clicking on my videos? Gee, what is my average click through rate? How long do people spend time with me? What is the overall sentiment from the comments? If I'm getting comments on my videos and if I'm not, why is that? Am I getting any sort of engagement? Like, I actually think you'd be better off not posting for a week and just pausing, taking time, getting into that YouTube studio, maybe trying to collaborate, get someone or even just get on, get on a call. Like do what you need to do to get some guidance to help you understand where you're falling short. Because a lot of creators, we don't know what we don't know and we need someone else to point out where we could get stronger.
- [17:23]
Sean Cannell
You dropped a lot of fire there that I want to emphasize. Yeah. One, sometimes it's smart to slow down so that you can speed up. And so the idea of actually taking a break from just constant uploads, it's like the famous saying that says, don't just work on in your business, but work on your business. And I think as content creators we could get stuck working in our YouTube channel. But when was the last time you slowed down to work on your YouTube channel and on the content itself? Because the standard went up and you didn't, maybe you didn't get worse, that's true, but you just haven't gotten better fast enough. As the world is changing, taking some time to integrate AI into your workflow, taking Some time to analyze the competition, taking some time to get feedback. Right. And so the standard went up, you didn't. And I want to also encourage individuals that this could feel like it's disqualifying because now the standard is too high. I think that's a myth. I think that's actually false. Really. You only have to be in the top 10% of creators to I believe, make a sustainable income, like some at least side income or full time income on YouTube or build your business with YouTube. And that might sound like a tall order, but no, the bottom 90%, I call it the bottom because most are not working on their channel or improving. Most are being lazy, most aren't taking it to a level of just professionalism and attention to detail. So you can even be at the bottom of the top 10%, which just means learning some things that are figureoutable to rise above the noise of most that don't do things strategically. So it is accessible. But you know, we're not here to sugarcoat things on the podcast like get better, improve, make your channel better, make your videos better. Which brings us to number four, you broke consistency and lost momentum. You can hit this one real quick.
- [19:06]
Nathan Eswine
Yeah. So, you know, something that we can control is, believe it or not, our schedule. And that might sound a little counterintuitive, but something that we can control and learn to get control over is workflows and systems and our process for going about our YouTube week. The fourth thing that you can control is actually your consistency. And a big reason that I think a lot of people's, you know, a lot of creators views have dropped is because breaking consistency, you're losing momentum. It's interesting. I'd be curious here what you think about this, right? Like YouTube has come out and said every video is fresh. It's like it's on its own merit. It's a blank slate. That's what YouTube says. But then there's like what we feel as creators, which is like, no way, man. Like, YouTube is momentum based. Like my last upload I do think totally affected my next upload. So in that case, right, like having a workflow that allows you to be consistent and maintain momentum, those creators over the long term are gonna perform and grow faster than the creators that aren't. Because if I look at a channel, Sean, one of the first things I'll look at, like if hopping on a coaching call with someone is I do go to their videos and I'm gon look at upload schedule and I'm just gonna look just what YouTube tells me. There's no specific plugin for this. It's just like oh, three months ago, four months ago. But then if there's a gap, if there's several gaps in there, I just want to ask about it, right? Because I want to be like, hey, like what has your process been like so far? I noticed like a couple gaps going on here. Maybe it's life, maybe it's whatever. But the key is, the key here is that this year YouTube doesn't reward effort as much as it is going to reward patterns. Patterns of consistency. YouTube cares about this. There's actually an amount of time that if you go on your chann without posting anything, there's a chance for it. You know, you could lose monetization or your channel could be. I need to fact check that.
- [20:48]
Sean Cannell
But I think yeah, it would be if you fell under the 4,000 hours.
- [20:50]
Nathan Eswine
Yeah, right. So it's like, but, but there's a mark there because I remember coaching someone and they were like, hey, we need to get stuff going. So anyway, it's like it matters to be showing up on the platform consistently. And so something that I think you can do here is take a little bit more control over how could I be more consistent? And I love how you coach this. Sean, I'll kick it to you. You talk about how consistency actually doesn't have to look like every single week or every single day. Consistency actually can look a lot different than most people. Coach.
- [21:14]
Sean Cannell
Consistency is not just uploads but it's consistent brand, consistent value, consistent feeling, consistent experience on your channel. So, so it's like a lot of individuals, it's like they're not counting that we upload every Thursday. Some audiences might be or news based channels but they're counting that when they see content from us it feels a certain way. It's consistent and meaning it's also, it's consistent value. Oh yeah, I don't want to miss an upload from that person. So long as I'm interested in the title. I might not be interested in the topic of an individual video. So. So yeah, you broke consistency and you lost momentum. These are things in your control. And then number five is you stop studying what works. So you touched on this already so we can hit it quick. But you're guessing instead of analyzing. You're not looking at your data and making data based improvements and decisions. But I'd also say you stop studying what works in general. You, you stop studying human psychology. You stop studying where is the, the market where our audiences in general, zooming out to, let's say the creator economy or social media in general, zooming into your industry and what's happening. Leaders are students forever. Lifelong leaders are lifelong learners who continue to read, study and improve. And that's also, by the way, as we land the plane on today's episode, why the Think Media Mastermind so important? We're so passionate about it because if you actually are interested not just in getting our coaches eyeballs on your content and on your analytics, so you have feedback so you're not guessing, you're getting real insight. We host a two day event. It's in Las Vegas. Our coaches are there, I'm there, the incredible entrepreneurs and creators are there. It's quite an experience and it's super deep and it's gonna help you figure out what you need to tweak on your channel, but also give you a radically shifted perspective about what's working now on YouTube. We have some proprietary AI tools that we only deliver to the Mastermind attendees and we do some workshopping. Individuals leave the Think Media Mastermind with clarity, with confidence, with other connections, with other individuals that are, you know, collabs. It's a really, really cool event. So if you're interested in ch that out, you could go to thinkmediamastermind.com you can click the link in the show notes to apply. We just want to make sure it's a good fit. If you fill out that application that we can connect with you. And we're super excited because the next one's coming up soon. We do four a year. So even if you're like, I don't know if I can make the next one, then still connect with us because maybe you can make one that's coming up in about three or four months. ThinkMediaMastermind.com is where you can check that out. Nathan, land the plane on today's episode 100%.
- [24:00]
Nathan Eswine
And Sean, one of my favorite things about these masterminds is not just the, like sessions because we are like sharing latest stuff and even like case studies internally and everything. But it's actually the moments after where like, I remember just the last one sitting on stage. But it's after a session, you know, we're hanging out, people are talking and I'm just looking at people's laptops, like they're literally just opening up their computer. We're going into YouTube studio. They're what's going on here, Nathan? And like, I actually just like that's the thing. Maybe you just need that. You just need someone who knows what they're looking at to be able to look at what you're doing, to give you your next step. And so I highly encourage people, if you can get on the list, to get to one of those this year, think mediamastermind.com but podcast in the meantime. Let us know what you got out of today's episode. Where are you at? What are you going to take control over now going into the rest of this year? And we're here to help you all the way through it. This is the Think Media podcast. I'm Nathan Eswine, and I can't wait to connect with you in a future episode.