Rene’s Top Five on YouTube: August 8, 2024 edition
Aug 08, 2024 – [[read-time]] minute read
Greetings from India! Yes, India! Seriously! But just because I’m traveling doesn’t mean I’m going to miss out on doing my job as Liaison — helping YouTube better empathize with creators and creators better succeed on YouTube. I’m just doing it from like 3/8ths to a half-a-day ahead! (Time zones are so strange.) So, follow along from YouTube, X/Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Discord as I sum up the most impactful moments of the week!
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💛 Creators! First reason I’m in India is for creators! YouTube has product managers from around the world here to meet with the incredible creators in India, get feedback, and learn more about one of the biggest markets on earth. After some opening remarks from Head of YouTube Asia Pacific, Gautam Anand, YouTube CEO, Neal Mohan sat down for a fireside chat and, of course, a desi-check. No spoilers, but you should be seeing the interview, and a Short that’ll really Let Neal Cook with some amazing creators, and soon! Johanna, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, also joined me for a live version of our Release Notes series for Creator Insider, answering some of the biggest questions from the creators in the room. We also had breakout sessions on mythbusting, monetization, Shorts, and creator tools. I loved the format and I think the creators loved it as well so I really hope we can do more!
✨ Brands! Second reason I’m in India is for Brandcast. New York happened back in May, New Dehli happened just today! Neal kicked it off, just as he did last time, with an introduction that spoke to the heart of YouTube — creators. There was also an amazing moment when Neal and Lyor Cohen, Head of YouTube Music, presented the biggest channel in India, and one of the two biggest in the world, T-Series, with their latest play button. Wow did it shine with the light of hundreds of millions of subs!
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🙋Q&A: “Ever since YouTube split the video tab on channel pages into separate video, Shorts, and Live tabs, performance for my live streams has tanked. What’s going on?” That’s a strange one! My immediate guess is that this may be correlation and not causation. Oftentimes when performance changes, we look at anything else that changed around the same time, and even if it’s not exactly the same time, just give it all the blame. You can go into YouTube Analytics > Traffic Sources and look at how many views you actually get from channel pages. If it’s not a lot (which should be true for most channels), then you can discard that theory really fast. If you still want to do something proactive about it, just in case, customize your Home tab to make sure you have a feature section for Live, and place it near the top, so it makes it really easy for anyone hitting your page to find it. If you decide it really isn’t the tab page, take a look at older Live streams that did better and see if you can identify anything else — did you go live less or more? Did you cover different topics? Was it some other day or time? Just keep going through the variables until you find something solid, then work on it!
📈 Tip of the Week: If you’re just getting started with Live, or looking to grow your live audience, we have a video on Creator Insider with some tips from Sarah who works on the YouTube content strategy team. One of my favorites is to make sure you have a plan! Regulars might just want to hang with you, but new viewers discovering you for the first time can dip in and out real fast! If you don’t have a ton of experience with live retention yet, and can keep a stream compelling for long periods of time, spend a few minutes to make an outline first. Structure your show. That'll help you keep the show tighter and the dips down!
I know that was only a top 4 and not a top 5 but I’m back to traveling and will totally make it up to you next time! So keep with the contenting!