Unlocking YouTube Success: Strategies for Explosive Channel Growth and Audience Engagement

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Today, we are talking about how to be remarkable on YouTube, how to get traction, how to win in terms of getting subscribers, getting people to see all these great videos you produce, and we have a great guest to inspire us.

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Aaron is a very successful YouTuber.

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He has over 100,000 subscribers and has gotten many millions of views on YouTube.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thank you for having me, eric.

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I'm excited to be here.

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Before we jump into your YouTube magic, give us a minute or two about who you are, what you've done and what you're doing.

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Yeah, so I'm a self-taught marketer.

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I started on YouTube over eight years ago now.

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I started my first agency, a video agency called Piper Creative, over six years ago and just launched our second agency, aum Growth Marketing, which is focused at comprehensive digital marketing for wealth advisors.

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And really, what YouTube is so fantastic at is a feedback loop of creative and data right, so it has the most comprehensive data suite of any platform that you can publish video to.

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I would say I haven't looked at the back end of Netflix, but I have to imagine it's nearly on par with that but you get that free data dashboard and your ability to focus on a metric optimize it, move on to the next constraint in your content strategy has sharpened my skills as a marketer and I hope to share some of those lessons with your audience today.

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That's awesome.

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So let's start with inspiring us.

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How were you able to get 100,000 subscribers and millions of views for your videos on YouTube?

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It's disheartening when I see a lot of channels that barely get any traction, and I think it's because YouTube is pretty hard, is my opinion, but please inspire us.

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Tell us how you did it.

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It absolutely is hard.

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And the inspiring piece starts with I was there, just as every other creator started there.

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That literally, is basically a non-existent case where someone just has never made videos before, never published to YouTube before, and then just immediately goes super viral and gets a ton of views, unless they're already some mega celebrity, which I am not.

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So I was there, not getting many views, feeling like you're hitting your head against the wall, and we made two kind of changes through some advice from some experts and just studying what works.

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That really just changed the trajectory of the channel.

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So for a long time we were doing podcast episodes or quick take news commentary, and it was very fast turnaround, right Like the news today, the videos up tomorrow.

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Minimal editing.

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You're not tightly scripting anything because you're having to write it on the fly.

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And the issue there was number one I wasn't that skilled as a quick news commentator or a podcaster, but also there was a lot of fat.

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And what I love about your show, eric, is it's short, it's 15 minutes, it's right to the point we get right to value and then we're out.

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You get to return back to your day.

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And what we found was these episodes were long.

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Very few people stuck even five minutes in, let alone 15, let alone 30.

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And therefore YouTube looked at that video, was like this isn't good, we're not going to recommend it to more people, so we focus more on quality.

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That meant more time editing, better B roll, better animations, better graphics, better writing, better script writing for the videos that we are producing.

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That saw a huge step up.

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We went from about 1000 subscribers to in the 10,000 subscriber range and then the next thing that we did was we put packaging the video as the first step of the process.

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What's very common is a lot of people will come with an idea they'll go make that video like you say spend.

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They'll go make that video Like you say spend all that time to produce a video.

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And then after the fact they're like what's the thumbnail going to be?

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Like let's throw something together in Canva or Adobe real quick and I guess this title will work, and then they send it out there and then they're surprised that doesn't do well.

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But that title and that thumbnail are the two first impressions that you're going to make with a potential viewer.

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People don't watch a YouTube video unless they've seen the title and thumbnail first.

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Exceptions to that apply if someone's linked it in like an email newsletter, but that's not how big YouTube channels grow.

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Big channels grow by having people on YouTube see their video, select it, watch it, feel satisfied by it.

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You notice, the first step of the process there is actually garnering a click, actually getting someone to choose your video versus all the other ones that they're being shown and recommended, and so we started making it a regular practice of designing the thumbnail confirming the title, coming up with better ideas before we even went and produced the video.

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By the time we're producing a video now, we basically have that packaging finalized or near finalized and we have high conviction that it has a good chance of performing, based off of having made so many of them, studying, researching other videos in the same area and both of and that was the next trajectory changer we talk about going 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers.

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That has been what's got us from 10,000 to 100,000 subscribers and, candidly, I don't know if necessarily that is gonna be the recipe that takes me from 100,000 to a million.

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Maybe I can come back on when I figure out that nut and crack it, but that has been the two trajectory changes for our channel and you notice, none of that is beyond the scope of what someone's capable of.

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It's really just a matter of prioritization and work right.

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If you're going to work harder at a script, if you're going to work harder at an edit, that's just time investing.

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It makes sense that people that spend more time on something are going to get better results.

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Same thing with working on the packaging.

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At the beginning, we spent a lot of time studying how to do it, analyzing more effective channels, seeing what works, seeing what didn't, but it's also making a lot of thumbnails, writing a lot of titles, seeing the ones that don't work and then committing to never replicating that mistake again and, when something does work, having the humility to say we don't need to reinvent the wheel here.

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This works.

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Let's replicate it in a way that is still fresh.

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It's still a new video, but it's continuing to satisfy the viewers that we're trying to reach.

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In our case, these are people that are really interested in geopolitics and economics.

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It's the Aaron Watson channel on YouTube, not to be confused with the country music singer by the same name.

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I'm not a singer you don't want to.

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Don't ask me to sing, eric, but the.

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We understand who that audience is.

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We've now seen what they like, what they engage with.

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Let's give them more of what they like, while still abiding by our values, our beliefs.

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We're not going to lie, we're not going to create clickbait just for the sake of that click and try to short circuit that decision for someone to select our content, but continue to deliver to them what they've shown us through the data that they appreciate and they enjoy.

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I think those are two great tips for people to get to 100,000 subscribers and you've gotten something like 13 million video views, right?

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And that's been a split of long form and short form.

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We continue to experiment with short form, although that doesn't really move the needle in the same way that our long form videos do.

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You'll see these short videos that have we don't have any of these, but millions of views and the data suggests to us that, yes, that does add some subscribers, but it's not giving you much revenue and it's harder to get those people to come back for an additional view, whereas if someone sits down with you and watches one of our 12, 15, 20 minute mini documentaries, they're got a high likelihood of returning to check out another video when we're on another relevant topic, so have you experimented some with YouTube shorts?

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Do you recommend that to people or not?

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Really, we do.

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YouTube shorts.

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We make a lot of short form vertical videos in general and we try to spread them across YouTube, tiktok, instagram, linkedin.

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We're not perfect in the distribution of those videos, but it's absolutely worth experimenting with and it's worth taking that as a place to really just hone your skills right, because in a short form video you're only doing, you're doing the hardcore editing.

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Still.

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You still should write a great intro, but we're talking about a 60, 45 second video, not a 16 minute video.

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So there's just less of an investment and you're going to have a tighter feedback loop of learning what people are interested in.

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And if you produce 15 and one performs particularly well, you can replicate that within shorts and find ways to remix that.

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Or you can say hey, this is what people are actually interested in.

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Let's make a long form video of the short that we're interested in.

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So it's a worthy place to experiment.

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But what I've seen, both myself and with peers, is that it is just a tougher road, a tougher hill to climb for real brand equity, real audience loyalty, because the short form video feed just doesn't lend itself to that type of relationship between the audience and the viewer.

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Yeah, you can link from a YouTube short to a longer video, but I think the question is what's the click through rate?

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How many people can you get to jump from the short video to the longer videos?

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It's super low the click-through rate.

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Yeah, we don't even really see a particularly tangible bump in that click-through rate because that's just not a behavior that the short viewer is particularly interested in.

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Like they selected a short feed because they wanted to watch shorts.

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They didn't want to get sent to some 20-minute video majority of folks but it is.

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It's an opportunity for them to still either hear your voice, your brand's voice, see your face, your brand's face.

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There's still an opportunity there, but it's the long form video.

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That, you're right, is insanely competitive.

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It's one of the most competitive places to go be a marketer, but if you can succeed there, that's where we see the really special businesses being built across the creator economy, from MKBHD and his tech reviews to every other niche under the sun.

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The most special creator-led companies are winning on YouTube and most of the folks that win on some other platform end up on YouTube because it just has the greatest incentives.

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It has the longest tail.

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We have content that's over a year old, that's still getting hundreds of views a day, and so in some cases it can be even be a thousand views a day, and we're not some multimillion dollar subscriber channel.

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So you think about that like where?

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When have you ever heard someone say that, like a tweet that I tweeted two years ago blew up Unless you were doing something really bad, and they're like catching you in some sort of nefarious act.

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That doesn't happen.

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So YouTube just has so many fundamental advantages over these other platforms.

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It's why it's so competitive, because everyone sees those advantages and wants them.

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But it's still worth honing your craft there because, even if you don't turn into the next YouTube star, you're gonna get so much qualitative feedback on the videos that you're producing for YouTube because of its data suite.

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We'll check our retention curve, we'll see what the click through rate is on our create, on our thumbnails, and that informs all the future work that we do.

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We get better every single time we put out a YouTube video because of the data that we get access for free from YouTube because we're partners in their AdSense program.

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We're partners in the fact that YouTube wants more people on their platform.

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They want them satisfied.

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They want them hooked on the best channels.

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They want to help you be that great channel.

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The reach of YouTube is the reason that you invest the time and the effort into it.

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Is what you're saying.

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Is that right?

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The reach, but also the fact that, like your library of older videos matters and is still relevant.

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Like I said, a year old video still having relevance and being elevated by the algorithm.

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And then also the fact that the way payouts work for creators on YouTube.

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You're splitting the advertising revenue with YouTube and so they want to see more people watch it so they can show more ads, charge more money.

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They make more money as you make more money.

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Very few people talk about like their relationship with Facebook that way.

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Like Facebook really cares about the quality of my content?

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It's no, it's lowest common denominator.

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We all know the people that are spouting off extreme political takes on both ends of the spectrum over on Facebook.

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You never hear anyone talk about that with other platforms, but at YouTube, there really is a high degree of alignment relative to the alternatives.

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So that's pretty awesome.

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It's evergreen content for a long period of time, and you just don't see that on other platforms at all.

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If you post something on X or on LinkedIn or Instagram like, you don't get engagement months or a year from now, but that does happen quite a bit on YouTube, I agree.

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So when you mentioned the analytics capability is so awesome within YouTube to be able to refine things, and that's one of the key ways that you've been able to grow to more than 100,000 subscribers.

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Talk to us about that, that analytics capability, and how you've leveraged it.

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The most obvious one that everyone, if you've released any videos with any views, you can go do today.

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If you can go check out your retention graph, this is in the engagement tab of the data suite.

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You can go video by video and see it's a descending curve.

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You imagine it starts at 100 and then as time transpires it goes down.

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You can see where people drop off from your videos and for the vast majority of folks it's in the first 30 seconds.

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You could be losing on our videos.

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We're really happy to retain 75% of people after 30 seconds.

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That's gonna be different genre by genre, industry by industry, but imagine that 25% of the people gone within the first 30 seconds.

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That tells you that your intros really are high leverage, are really important.

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But if, let's say, you're starting off and you're struggling to retain 25% of people 30 seconds in, who cares about the fifth question that you ask your guests?

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Who cares about the outro?

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Who cares about how the second half of the video is edited?

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You need to fix your intro and make sure that there is alignment between the title that you wrote, the thumbnail that you designed, the intro that you deliver and it's engaging so that someone gets that, gets through that initial section and says let's see what this video is about.

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I'm interested.

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I'm here to give this video a chance, because if you're not accomplishing that loop, then forget all the fancy oh link to this, click through to that, go subscribe to my Patreon.

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Whatever thing you want to do, that's irrelevant because people aren't sticking around and actually watching your videos and you do that authoritatively because of that retention graph.

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There's a lot of other small nuances.

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You can go sentence by sentence, music choice by music choice and really get granular there, particularly as you get more views.

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But at a basic level, if you rewatch your intro and you find yourself zoning out, imagine what someone who doesn't care about this content is feeling.

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They're very quickly be like interesting, next tab, next video, look at my phone, go back to my email, whatever it is that they need to do.

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That's the battle that you're fighting for attention.

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Everyone today could go do that.

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You have to have a great hook.

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That a hundred percent makes sense at the very beginning of the video to keep people there and to tease them to stay there.

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A hundred percent.

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And it's worth spending the time to write and rewrite that hook before you even have to deliver it, or testing it and seeing what's more effective perhaps in your shorts, and then actually picking your best hooks for the long form video.

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And what else about the analytics?

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Youtube measures how many minutes people have viewed your videos right.

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What else would you suggest is helpful for people to study in the analytics?

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The other piece is going to be the relationship between impressions and click through rates.

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This gets back to the packaging point.

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Is your video actually being shown to many people?

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If it's not, that suggests not a very good title, not a very compelling topic that you've selected.

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And then, once we actually see high impressions, is the click through rate relatively high, relatively solid?

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And that's really going to be genre by genre, niche by niche.

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There's not some sort of just baseline number I can give you, but you're going to be able to see is the packaging that I'm doing effective at garnering the click that I'm after?

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And I go on and on.

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Every single piece delivers some type of insight.

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Every single segment of the data set.

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But those are the big two that everyone needs to start with, does my video retain a viewer?

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Does my packaging garner a click?

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Love it, and the great news is it's free.

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Right there inside of YouTube, the best analytics is free.

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How good does that get?

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Doesn't get too much better than that.

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So one last question is what advice would you give people who are starting out beyond what you've already shared if they want to be successful on YouTube as a creator?

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You need to have a really clearly defined ideal audience member and don't say, because this crazy multi-million dollar channel, multi-million subscriber channel just speaks to everyone, that I can also speak to everyone.

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You have to have an idea of who you're speaking to.

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If you can say I'm trying to help people with painting businesses in the Midwest make more money, that's really clearly defined.

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That will inform your title and thumbnail strategy.

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That will inform the types of videos that you make and it will inform how your intro is structured.

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And you have a huge advantage because not a lot of people are speaking to that really clearly defined audience member.

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But when it's really broad, really sweeping.

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Going back, I talked about my podcast not doing particularly well.

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I just said that it was people who are ambitious, and so you know what that is really broad and a lot of those people are better served by niche specific.

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There's really intense people that are into US politics and get into the minutiae of policy decisions that impact people who live in DC.

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And then there's really ambitious farmers that want to understand the latest and greatest farm equipment and farm machinery.

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I am losing to both of those creators when I say I'm speaking to people that are broadly ambitious right.

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So by narrowing that to people who are looking at geopolitics and economics through a lens that's more Western, but trying to make sense of who's on the rise, who's on the decline, and allow that to see the greater geopolitical chessboard, that's a very specific type of person.

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Now we even go more granular.

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The same way that people are into, say, fantasy sports, or are into covering startups and businesses as if they're sports teams, we think a similar thing is happening with geopolitics and people trying to understand foreign policy in a more detailed and enticing way.

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So that is the kind of thesis.

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Now, for all the, if we propose an idea for a video and it doesn't fit as something that would resonate with that audience, there's no chance that we're going to make it.

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If you don't have that ideal audience member clearly defined, you're in trouble.

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And if it's soft, if it's vague, you also have an issue where you know, unless you're just some pure raw laugh so hard I'm crying comedian it's going to be really hard to reach such a broad audience when you, like you said, are in those early stages.

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Start narrow, start specific, dominate a niche, dominate a single voice, and then you'll have the opportunity to expand outwards.

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One more bonus question what have you learned about thumbnails in all your experimentation and getting to more than a hundred thousand subscribers?

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That's there's a lot there.

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The simplest takeaway lesson is that you have to make them simple and easy to consume.

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And I was just listening.

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If you've ever heard of the social media account and brand overtime, it's more than a social media account.

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It's a huge Instagram account.

00:19:39.489 --> 00:19:40.991
They have a basketball league.

00:19:40.991 --> 00:19:42.255
They're an enormous entity.

00:19:42.836 --> 00:20:21.517
But listening to an interview with the founder, the co-founder of Overtime and they got their start by covering these high school prospects that hadn't yet gone to the pros, hadn't even yet gone to college or some semi-pro league, and they would would just be like this high schooler from Nebraska is six foot eleven and going to Kansas and he's crazy good, and it's like it was all these like qualifiers and details and it's if you don't care about, if you're like out on Nebraska or you don't like Kansas basketball or whatever detail you would be, be like, okay, I don't care.

00:20:21.517 --> 00:20:33.892
But what they found is, as they simplified that explainer and just said John Smith is a problem, john Smith is nasty.

00:20:33.892 --> 00:20:35.451
Really simple explainers.

00:20:35.451 --> 00:20:37.911
All of the engagement just went through the roof.

00:20:37.911 --> 00:20:40.366
That applies to everything.

00:20:40.406 --> 00:20:40.969
I'll get feedback.

00:20:40.969 --> 00:20:43.256
Sometimes I'll be like I'm going for a really intellectual audience.

00:20:43.256 --> 00:20:45.210
I want to make sure that I'm really detailed.

00:20:45.210 --> 00:20:48.707
I let them know that I know a lot and that's actually just your insecurity.

00:20:48.707 --> 00:20:54.326
Speaking All of the best channels, biggest channels, they make it really.

00:20:54.326 --> 00:21:02.723
The idea is really simple, even if they are complex, and they end up reaching all those people that you want anyways, because of the digestibility of the concept.

00:21:02.723 --> 00:21:10.487
So if you're throwing eight elements into a thumbnail, if you're adding 10 or more words to a thumbnail, I promise you that's a mistake.

00:21:10.487 --> 00:21:17.217
I promise you that is not the optimal design for these thumbnails.

00:21:17.217 --> 00:21:21.663
They need to be simple, and simple is hard.

00:21:21.663 --> 00:21:23.186
Doing simple well is really hard.

00:21:23.186 --> 00:21:27.705
So it's worth trying to remove and simplify while still getting the message across.

00:21:28.768 --> 00:21:35.000
And that's probably how thumbnails relate to the titles is also same concept, right.

00:21:36.506 --> 00:21:37.847
Yeah, and they compliment one another.

00:21:37.847 --> 00:21:38.008
It's.

00:21:38.008 --> 00:21:43.018
The other thing is like people will write a title and then they'll just put the title as text on the thumbnail.

00:21:43.018 --> 00:21:44.026
It's just redundant.

00:21:44.026 --> 00:21:47.994
It's like when have you what it?

00:21:47.994 --> 00:21:48.134
Just?

00:21:48.134 --> 00:21:48.997
That just doesn't make any sense.

00:21:48.997 --> 00:21:51.528
I'm not going to lampoon people too much, but it's.

00:21:51.528 --> 00:21:53.885
I can read the title, I don't need to read it again on the thumbnail.

00:21:53.885 --> 00:21:56.569
Have it complimented, have them compliment each other.

00:21:57.832 --> 00:21:58.933
All right, thank you very much.

00:21:58.933 --> 00:22:09.609
I'm going to link to your YouTube channel so people can check it out and learn from what you're doing there, as well as your website, and really appreciate you being on the show today.

00:22:09.609 --> 00:22:10.452
Thank you very much.

00:22:10.452 --> 00:22:12.501
Awesome Thanks for having me, eric.