Rene’s Top Five on YouTube: March 7, 2024 Edition
Mar 07, 2024 – [[read-time]] minute read
Another week, another top five list of things you really need to know about YouTube, curated by yours truly, the Creator Liaison, who not only tries to help YouTube better understand creators and creators better succeed on YouTube, but who scours YouTube, X/Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Discord to make this blog post happen. So let’s go!
🎤Podcast Alert! The premiere episode of our brand new Creator Advice podcast is right this very moment live and ready for you to watch! It features Chucky, who does the packaging for MrBeast videos, including thumbnails, titles, hooks, payoffs, and more, and Todd, who leads the YouTube growth and discovery team. I am maximum excited to say the least. Few people know as much about packaging as Chucky, or how the YouTube algorithm serves up those packages as Todd, so the ability to share an in-depth discussion with insight from the both of them — it’s just basically the best thing ever. Building on the #CreatorAdvice Shorts series, we really hope this new podcast provides tremendous value to the community and once again reaffirms the incredible partnership with creators that’s at the very heart of YouTube.
(MrBeast just received a beastly diamond bust from the YouTube Creator team, acknowledging his incredible 200M sub run… already over 240M and still accelerating! Jimmy and team loved it, Neal loved it, and I legit love how much creators and YouTube love it!)
✌️ Twice the Todd! Because half the Todd is just never enough for our feeds, I also sat down for a one-on-one, creator on algorithm, full-on mythbuster video for Creator Insider. We address popular misconceptions about outlier viral hits, deleting videos, reality checking with the sub feed, and much, much more. So grab an extra bag of popcorn and get to watching!
📝 Community Posts: Community posts have been getting a lot of love and attention from both YouTube and creators lately. And they should! They’re an incredible way to keep connected with viewers between videos, to share behind-the-scenes photos, poll for fun and for content strategy, share content we love with the people who love our content, and so much more. There’s even a posts-only feed now on mobile! If you’re itching to get started with posts, or just want to brush up on best practices, YouTube Creators has a fresh new overview video for you.
🙋Q&A: Does YouTube test more aggressively for interest in the first 24 hours and, if a video isn't performing so well, do the recommendations drop off? Does YouTube have a recency bias? The way I look at it is — When a new video goes live, it has theoretically unlimited potential audience. When regular viewers engage, that typically results in an initial spike. Everyone who watches informs more recommendations, but at a certain point that pool saturates. YouTube never gives up, though! As it keeps testing the video over time, or people come across it in search, or if current events bring increased interest, or a similar video trends, or it gets a shout out, or something else introduces a new potential audience pool, that same process can repeat to a larger or smaller degree. And, that can happen over and over again. In other words, when a new video goes live, it’s just a really solid opportunity to make really solid matches for recommendations. As for recency, a large chunk of content has a shelf-life — news/drama, current events, trends, deals, live streams, some reviews, etc. where recency matters to viewers. My current home page is: 4 minutes, 11 hours, 7 months, 15 hours, 2 years, 4 days, 1 year, 23 hours. Most of the newer ones are timely, all of the older ones are evergreen, which I think makes sense and is what I both expect and want from my recommendations.
📈 Tip of the Week: If you’re considering going live for the first time, be it the new Vertical Live in the Shorts feed or the traditional type of horizontal live, give yourself every possible advantage. 1. Try to pick an event or milestone to anchor it around, be it 1K subs, 1 year on YouTube, anything that could help motivate and rally your audience. Even celebrating going live for the first time! 2. Schedule it with a day or several days notice, so as many of your friends and viewers as possible can plan to be there and support you. 3. Prepare some discussion topics or questions you want to answer in advance, in case people are too few or two shy to ask while you’re live. 4. If you have a Membership section, you can test going live there to your most supportive audience — it just won’t be your biggest audience. 5. Make sure you know how to moderate chat, especially if you expect people to be landing at random off the Shorts feed. The more you expect and prepare, the less you’ll be surprised or interupted. 6. Keep it casual and have fun with it. The biggest streamers in the world all went live for the first time at some time — now it’s your turn!
Just get with the contenting!