Rene’s Top Five on YouTube: April 18, 2024 edition

🧪 Most relevant: Content feels limitless but time feels super-limited. I like to think I manage my sub feed and make sure I at least look at every video that pops up in it, but the truth is, I don’t. And wow can that feed fill fast! In an effort to help people like me — and maybe you! — YouTube is running a tiny experiment that introduces a “Most Relevant” filter to the subs feed. That’s in addition to the existing filters like Today, Videos, Shorts, Live, Posts, Continue Watching, and Unwatched. It’s off by default, meaning the reverse-chronological firehose of content we all know and love isn’t just still there, but is still the starting point. It just means, if time is limited, you can tap that filter and get a set of recommendations based only on what’s in that sub feed. And if time isn’t limited or you just don’t want ‘em, ignore them! Check out all the info on Creator Insider!

🩳 Members-only: YouTube recently announced members-only Shorts. There have been members only long-form videos and Lives for a while, but what’s especially fun about Shorts is 1) They’re literally short, and also tend to be super casual, so it’s really easy to share a moment with your members and really enhance that community vibe, and 2) You might already have some Shorts in your camera roll that you decided weren’t ready for primetime but could, now, be fun gag-reels or BTS moments for your members. Either way, now you can upload members-only Shorts right in the Shorts creation flow. No need to go back and switch them later in Studio. Just hit that big plus button and share with your members! More on that also in this week’s Creator Insider!

💛 Creator Advice: We’ve got four new series and a few Q&As up on the @YouTubeLiaison channel. The first is all about thumbnail best practices — locking attention, winning the click, and earning viewer trust. The second features Todd Beaupré, our director of discovery and growth, and busts some myths about posting time, dud videos, viral videos, smaller creators, and giving up on videos. The third series is all about what to do if you think your views have crashed — which is almost always the result of seasonality, a post-viral new normal, or meta evolution. And last week, Todd Sherman, who leads the YouTube Shorts team, talked all about the Shorts algorithm, Shorts views, why some Shorts flatline, #hashtags, and why you shouldn’t delete and repost. Check them out, we have lots more to come!

🙋Q&A: If you have a lot of subscribers from Shorts, should you uncheck the box to “Publish to subscriptions feed and notify subscribers” when posting long-form? That way, if the Shorts subscribers don’t engage, it won’t hurt the long-form performance? Great question! And no, not really. Homepage recommendations primarily focus on data from the same traffic source, so reactions from other viewers on the homepage, not whether someone ignored a notification or skipped a video on the sub feed. Uncheck that box if you're doing something like making a bunch of previously unlisted live streams or podcasts public, and they would clog up the subs feed, otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it!

📈 Tip of the Week: If you upload a video or a Short, and it doesn’t perform well, it can hurt. So much so, you might be tempted to delete it, re-upload it, and hope it performs better the second, third, fourth, fifth time around. Problem is, YouTube might consider that as spam, and your channel could get flagged for spamming. That’s why, instead of re-uploading the same video or Short, make a new video or Short, an improved version or different concept, and upload that instead. Better for you, better for viewers!

Now back to the contenting!