How to Get a lot of Views on Youtube

What does YouTube value most?

 If we want to crush it on YouTube, it's probably important to know what YouTube values most so that we can play by their rules so that we can win on the platform. So what does YouTube value most? Well, when I talk to most people a lot of times they think it's maybe subscribers. Like, oh, how many subscribers do you have? Or more than that a lot of times they think it's views. Like if I can get a lot of views, YouTube will reward me. But it's been known for some time now, that on YouTube minutes actually matter most. So when you go into your analytics of your YouTube channel, you'll see this same stack, right? And you'll see that there's a reason minutes is at the top of the list.


 What YouTube realized a couple years ago, was that, well, views are important, but you can game views. If you did a tricky click bait thumbnail and title, and you got people to click on your video, and a lot of people to do that, you could get a lot of views but if people only watched for one second, that's actually not connection. In fact, that's almost meaningless. If someone only watches for 1 or 10 seconds, that is meaningless. That's not a metric, there's no connection, there's no depth there. So they started thinking, well, minutes though, is like 10x more powerful than a view, because a view is like, whatever, but if somebody watches an entire minute, think about that, a stranger doesn't know you, and in our busy lives, they watch a whole minute of your content, it's a big deal. So it's really important to know the new rules on YouTube is that minutes matter most on YouTube. So the first strategy I'm wanna talk about is, well, how do you really increase your watch time.

So write this down, thumbnail, title, hook, content. Thumbnail, title, hook, content. I think it's important to really think through and think that people never go from not watching your videos to like finishing your video and subscribing. That might happen but there's so many things that need to happen in between, and that we should remember about doing the best practices at every stage along the way. So what I mean is that if before anyone ever watches your video, they have to read your title. And usually before they read your title, they have to look at your thumbnail. Now you might be like, well Sean, these are some basics, of course. I mean, be consistent, do your thumbnails, whatever, but let me ask you are you doing them well, and are you doing them at a mastery level? Like, can you level up your thumbnails, your titles this year? I think you can, and I think you need to because even though this might even be common sense for those of us that have been on YouTube for awhile, it's not necessarily common practice. Like, are you executing at a 10/10 level. If not, I really want you to work on it this year. And so keep in mind (coughs), excuse me, this thumbnail, one of the goals here is to kinda be enticing. Write this down. How can you make your thumbnails provocative to kind of capture attention? So wait a minute, a 400mm pocket camera? So for any photographer, that's outrageous. Normally this lens is what, 400mm it is, but Canon released this 400mm concept camera that fits in my hand, so I wanted to think, how could I make the most attention-grabbing thumbnail possible and then knowing, though, that it starts with the thumbnail but one mistake I see people make, they make their thumbnail even say the same words as their title. You don't wanna put too many words in your title. We're putting less and less and less words. Most of the time trying to put two, probably at the most four. But notice the title is much longer, and it builds it out more. A 400mm Canon Camera Lens That Fits in Your Pocket question mark, using the hashtag, this was around a tech show that we did recently. So people are gonna look at your thumbnail first, but then you need a great title, master that skill, but then you need the hook. Just because someone clicks, they're not gonna finish your video. Study your analytics. You want to take the first 5 to 10 seconds to, and sometimes I take maybe 20 minutes to actually think about, write, script the first 5 to 10 seconds of my videos because it matters that much. Again, if you wanna get watch time, and if minutes matter most, you wanna master this stuff, right?

And so you want to craft the first 5 to 10 seconds of your video to tease and create interest for people to watch the whole video and then think about how can I make the content itself engaging, how can I maybe make it half short and twice strong. Is there dead spots, is there spots that people could lose attention? Is there just spots that are, you know, moments people would click away? And a power tip here is to go into your analytics later, and study the audience retention of your videos. But then look at where people drop off and then be like, oh, that makes sense, and like one of the things we realized was actually what we're doing right now, like on a webinar, when I do this. If I do this in a YouTube video and you don't see my face anymore, I can see in my analytics of that audience retention that that's actually where people drop off. So one of the things that we try to do is on YouTube videos that aren't like a master class like this, we try to actually make a slide like 80% of the screen and keep me on the screen like 20% to keep the eye contact going. The only reason I learned that is because I studied how is my content performing, and how can I improve my content to get more watch time. You gotta do that this year, 'cause minutes matter most. Alright, so I hope that you found that training helpful, and again, even though maybe some of those tips were common sense, that doesn't meant that they are common practice, right? And I think that all of us could do better at getting back and mastering the fundamentals.

You know I love the quote from legendary business coach Jim Rohn when he said "Success is neither magical nor mysterious." It's the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals. And I think we can all learn from that when it comes to YouTube. Have you forgotten a little bit about just doing the best practices and the fundamentals of success on YouTube, and I really believe that if we focus on those this year, you and I can get big results. And again, that training was actually a part of a larger YouTube master class, a one-hour training that's all about how to grow your audience and income on YouTube this year. So if you wanna check out the full training, you can go to tubeinfluence.com and we'll also put a link to it in the YouTube description below. Question of the day. (upbeat music) How are you doing on your thumbnail, title, hook, content game? I'd love to hear from you in the comment section below, and remember some of the best tips and feedback come from you, the Think Media community, so definitely connect with everybody in the comment section. So thanks for checking out this video. Subscribe for more videos just like this, and if you wanna check out that free one-hour YouTube master class, just click or tap the screen right there. For another video from Think Media, just click or tap the screen right there. Until next time, Think Media's bringing you the best tips and tools for building your influence with online video. Keep crushing it and we will talk soon.