79. How do you grow on YouTube? (f. Liron Segev)
Ever wondered how to amass a YouTube following? 📹 We've got YouTube expert Liron Segev here to tell you. In this episode, hosts Phil and Lauren grill Liron about everything there is to know about YouTube. From video length, calls to action, keywords, through analytics, you'll leave this call with a big to-do list to help your channel!
This episode is sponsored by savethechildren.org .
Episode transcription
Phil
This episode is sponsored by savethechildren.org . Save the Children believes every child deserves a future in the United States and around the world. They work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protect them from harm. Right now, the Coronavirus is the biggest global health crisis of our lifetime threatening children in every way. COVID-19 has already left many children without caregivers, out of school and exposed to violence and exploitation. Child poverty is rising. With your support this organization can help children and unsafe households and help support distance learning in the face of school closures. Even $5 can buy a baby's first book providing comfort and inspiring lifelong love of learning. Go to www.savethechildern.org/savekids to learn more. Now onto the show.Phil:
Hello, welcome to Brand Therapy. I’m Phil.
Lauren:
And I'm Lauren.
Phil:
And this is a podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brands. Really glad you're here. In fact, you chose a good episode to listen to.
Lauren:
This one is full of knowledge.
Phil:
Knowledge, probably one of our best, teachable, learnable moments that we've ever had on the podcast. This is one of those episodes, one of those guests that I've been concocting in my brain, after having had many conversations with this extremely knowledgeable, talented individual. What I love about today's guest is that he walks the walk. And you know what I mean? So many people give advice. Oh, yeah, here's the things you could do, but they're not actually doing it themselves. Whereas this guest is the first one that comes to mind is someone who gives incredible advice, but he himself is creating on a consistent basis on YouTube, but also, you know, giving people advice. He does training, he does all kinds of amazing things that teach people the latest strategies to succeed on this challenging platform.
Phil:
For sure, I learned so much. He's just such a pro. I told you to get ready for this, because we're gonna learn a lot. It's gonna be a longer episode, because we're not going to want to stop talking to him, which is what happened.
Lauren:
Yep. So for anyone who is interested in YouTube, whether it's for their own clients for your own purposes, or just because you're curious, oh, my goodness, buckle up, because Liron knows his stuff.
Phil:
Even since this conversation, I've already started implementing some of the specific recommendations he gave to me. And by the way, they're performing really great. So this is really you want to listen up, take out a notebook, pad and paper, whatever it takes. make notes. If YouTube is one of your priority platforms, you've selected the right episode. Let's get right to it, shall we? Here's our conversation with Liron.
I've wanted to have this conversation for probably a year. It was well over a year that I met our special guest today. His name is Liron. And I described him casually as the smartest person I know when it comes to YouTube. Liron, welcome to Brand Therapy.
Liron:
Thank you for having me. So excited to do this. It's been a while and all this is gonna be awesome.
Phil:
I just love conversations with you when you send me DM’s or you and I chat. I mean, I've tried to see you in real life as many times as possible, but sometimes it's not possible because you're busy. I'm busy. But we have this amazing way of just staying on each other's radar, staying up to date on what's going on in your world, building brands, you're working with vidiq which is a really cool tool for YouTubers. You're doing it all. We're busy, but we still get to communicate, and I love that.
Liron:
Gotta love technology, right? I mean, you're on more planes than pilots are. But hey, you know, this is why we have tick. And this is why we get to do what we do. And that's awesome.
Phil:
I love it. So let's tell people a little bit about you. So you're a YouTuber, you have a channel all about technology liron. Also, you've had so much growth recently. Can you talk about that?
Liron:
Yes, it is, weird, it's exciting, lots of stuff going on. So I'll give you kind of the five second PowerPoint version. Essentially, that's what I do. As Phil said, I work with a lot of creators, a lot of YouTubers around the world. Some of the biggest names that you probably watch, but don't realize are deep strategies that goe kind of behind the scenes. And I'm glad to be a part of that. Vidiq, we offer amazing tools for people to use to grow their channels. And then I do it on my own channel because you know what, there's lots of theory out there. But I believe that you have to kind of walk the walk and actually learn from experience from doing, and that's what I really kind of, I love what I do because I do it for myself.
Phil:
Leon you walk the talk. Now you're answering this politely but tell me specifically how many followers you've grown in the last six months. I'm pressing you on this question. Tell me tell me tell me subscribers.
Liron:
So subscribers were up to like 82,000 as of recording this podcast, just to put it in perspective, probably a year and a bit ago, I was at 5000.
Lauren:
Oh my god.
Liron:
Okay, so the whole thing about YouTube and this is what I love about them, is that it's this wild west still, it's his algorithms, his stuff, bunches and lots, there's lots of things going on. And it's never too late. It's never too saturated. And you just never ever give up because your next video could be the one that blasts you. In my case. It was a video that was four months old. I completely forgot about this video, simply move on to the next one. And we've got YouTube Love and everything kind of snowballed from there. So I'm sure we'll get into all the details of how we do it. But that's just a little bit of a thing. where like, right off the bat as we get going, if you're currently on YouTube and you're thinking, man, the stuffs not working, do not give up. You never know what's going to be the next video that just makes it pop.
Lauren:
Why is it important for people to consider YouTube as one of their primary social media platforms instead of Instagram? Because right now everyone is so into Instagram, I'm guessing they feel like YouTube is oversaturated. So why should they consider YouTube?
Liron:
A couple of reasons. So a lot of the other social media platforms which we love, by the way, so I'm not knocking any of them. I love Tik Toks. I think Phil just did his first first Tik Tok upload. He was like shaking everything that he's got going on right now which is awesome. But then we have Instagram which is short little clips and you know video clips and Instagram stories. Instagram lives are amazing. We have LinkedIn which is another platform, we got lots of platforms. Why I keep going back to YouTube. And I keep on saying to people, this is where you need to be. Because of the deep catalogue, so you could upload stuff today. And it will be there forever until you remove it. So it's a deep catalogue. It's always been updated as always searches going on remembering that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. And what's happening is Google obviously owns YouTube. Everything's starting to converge together. So I don't know if you've seen recently, well, recently ish. When you do a search on Google, Video Clips start to come up now. Right? So it's all about that you don't see Instagram clips coming up. You don't see Facebook clips coming up. But you see YouTube clips coming up. People are forever going to be doing searches and are forever going to be looking for that golden bit of information. And if you can set up your channel for success, when people do that search and you land on your page. That's when beautiful things start to happen.
And again, with Tik Tok, people want short bursts of information. One to Three, swipe up, swipe up, swipe up. Same thing with Instagram, you're not gonna watch 20 minutes on an Instagram, right? People just want little nuggets of information, which is great. But YouTube, you can go really deep, you can do five minutes, 10 minutes an hour. And people if you have that audience, you've got that engaging personality, you've got that storytelling ability, people will love you stick with it. And that's how you grow. And by the way, monetize monetize in a big way. So yeah, YouTube for me, still King.
Lauren:
You mentioned setting up your profile for success. What does that mean? Walk us through? If someone's starting from day one, what they like must have to set up their profiles successfully.
Liron:
Before you do anything? What's your focus? Why are you on YouTube? What has got you ridiculously excited every single morning that you cannot wait to pick up the camera and make videos about this again and again and again. People fail at this point. Those who go into YouTube to thinking oh, I'm going to get views. I'm going to get subscribers. Going to make money, I'm going to retire. This is awesome. I'm an influencer. Those people do not make it. Because it's just too hard you burn out. But if you're passionate about something, and you just want to share it with the world, you will win if you carry on doing that.
So number one, channel focus, what is your channel about? Who are you going to serve? We all refer to the avatar. Who is your avatar? Does he or she have a name? Where do they live? What are they shop? Why do they do all that basic business stuff? People tend to forget that it applies to YouTube, YouTube is a business. So I would say before the profile, it's what are you going to do on YouTube?
Now that you have that all assessed, it's about the branding? Does your channel art convey instantly? Two things? The what? And why? What is this channel about? Why should I subscribe? Here is why that's important. Somebody watches a video and they do a search. Your video comes up they go Oh, this looks cool. Click. Then they like the video and they go, I wonder what this creator does click on the channel name, they go straight to your channel and they make a split second decisions consciously or subconsciously where they see a banner and they go, Oh, wow, I love this let me watch more, or let me scroll down and see some more videos or I'm out of here.
So if you've got this lame channel banner you already lost before you start. So setting up for success means think of the overall impression, what's the branding that you want to convey? What's the warm and fuzzy you want to convey immediately as somebody lands on your channel? That is so so critical? And remember, nobody's ever got up in the morning say, I wonder what my toothpaste company is up to? People don't connect with a brand's logo, they connect with a person on YouTube. So be that person. Put you in the channel banner, put you in the avatar. Make sure that your profile is all built around you but the channel is not about you. The channel is about the viewer, only the viewer, the message, not what you want to do.
Phil:
Amen.
Liron:
Does that make sense?
Phil:
Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I am so happy and delighted to have this conversation today because many of the conversations that you and I have had have been hypothetical. So I remember our first one, our first question was, should I be on YouTube? Actually, at that time, I didn't really have the resources to be able to be consistent. And you actually said, no, put your energy into LinkedIn and try to get LinkedIn live, which I eventually got. And when I got to the point where I thought, actually, I could produce at least one video a week and when we're doing one video now a week and we're about to switch to two videos a week just for this search value that you've described. I am less focused on how many people watch my videos right now and more excited about talking about things that I like to talk about, enjoy the process of making the videos and learn from what's working. So from all those moments of hypothetical discussion, the timing of this is impeccable. We've had our first video start to get views in the thousands and the video is I don't remember I don't have it in front of me but the video is called I haven't you do? Oh, it's about Instagram. Well, you you say it Lauren if you've got in front of you.
Lauren:
It's called Instagram stories, Instagram story questions, ideas, Phil Pallen.
Phil:
So ideas for Instagram story questions are very specific, but it was actually a question that one of our clients asked me about Nicola, Lauren, from Diamond Physiotherapy asked me about questions and I thought well, that would make a good YouTube video. So it was the third video I ever made. Liron, this video has been live for almost four months, and now it's starting to get used in the thousands.
Liron:
Ah, sounds familiar. Sounds familiar. But I'm gonna pick up on two points if you don't mind from that. Firstly, don’t put yourself under pressure to produce more content. It's quality over quantity, I'd rather that you do, and the audience states this, that's one beautiful video a week versus five rubbish videos in a week. YouTube favors quality way over quantity.
Okay? Remember YouTube has changed a lot. It used to be produce, produce, you want keywords, keywords, keywords, no longer the case. YouTube is all about saying, hey, you as the viewer, what do you want to watch? Let me go find you the best view, let me go search for you the best content. If that content is rubbish, YouTube's not going to serve that. So don't put yourself under pressure to do more videos, rather stick to one video a week. And that video is a beautifully produced killer audio killer sound, killer visual, lots of value. That is amazing. So number one, quality over quantity.
And number two, you said the golden words. Somebody asked you a question. You gave an answer. Isn't that what we do all the time. People are constantly searching for how, what, when, why, who? And you're able to answer that question. Therefore, you immediately play into that beautiful, rich search engine thinking of answering somebody's question. And we all do that in our daily businesses. In our daily lives. People are constantly coming to us asking questions. Imagine you took those and instead of just writing them on the blog, you actually created a video saying, hey, here are five tips on how to do your Instagram better.
We started speaking about zoom earlier now that in this climate that we are in, people are working from home, people don't know how to use zoom or know how to use zoom in a very basic way. And I kept on getting questions saying, hey, how do I do this? How to do this on zoom? How did you do that on zoom? Perfect. I just produced a video. So here are your tips for zoom. I'm answering peoples questions. And what you're doing is beautiful golden, and just focus on the quality delivering beautiful value.
Phil:
So my question is to do with the quality. So I'm in a place right now where I'm proud of what I'm creating and I've developed a format that works for me. Back in the day, and this is literally back in the day, almost 10 years ago when I had first moved to LA there was a website called ehow, it taught you how to do things. And when they launched video content, I became a creator for their tech and marketing channels. So things like how to tag a friend on Facebook and how to do things. Some of them are really simple, but basically ehow would decide the titles, and I got to choose from a bank of titles, which ones I thought I could create. And what I do with that video was totally up to me. So back in the day I had I would write a little script, Lauren would check it over, or sometimes write them for me, and I have a prompter. So I do all my videos in one tag, but I do read them but I am trained as a host, so I know how to make it not look like I'm reading but that's my process and that's what works. But Liron, the videos that I create are different than the videos that I consume. I'm a big fan of Matt Davila and Peter McKinnon and all of the beautiful cinematic content, but I don't have the resources to create those, even though I consume them. I also don't really know. I haven't studied film. So I don't know how to make those. What do you think about the position that I'm in as an expert answering questions, chide, keep doing what I'm doing and not worry about making the videos that I'm making more beautiful. What are your thoughts?
Liron:
Okay, I'm going to do typical hosting. I'm going to ask the question back to you. If you have a question, and you did a quick search on YouTube, and somebody gave you the answer. And maybe they are sitting in their shorts and t-shirts on the beach or maybe they're wearing a suit and tie or maybe they have got bad lighting. Or maybe they've got shaky camera work, but they're giving you the answer. Do you care?
Phil:
Probably not. I always appreciate a good aesthetic given what I do.
Lauren:
I think you do a little bit.
Phil:
Yeah. Okay.
Liron:
So, alright, so this is what's holding you back, because every time I work with artists and you know, people who do branding specifically, they know the deep elements behind it, and that sometimes is a bad thing. Here's what I mean by that. If your toilet is clogged, and there's water running over, and nobody's happy, and you're doing a quick search on your phone, how to unblock my toilet, you just want a solution. Okay, so the filter, I always tell the office of the world, perfection is going to stop you from doing it. So the one thing I wouldn't compromise on is audio, because it's gonna be way too frustrating. You know, I could sit here and shake my camera, switch my lights off, but if I'm going to do, okay, if I step away from the mic and you can't hear me, then it's just too frustrating. Everything else I'm okay with, but audio, audio audio.
So to answer your question in a long winded way, it's never stopped producing. Do the formula that works for you. Do the formula that works for your audience, and don't overthink it. Perfection basically means you're never going to press record you're never going to upload, because you can always do things better. Always. If you look at the top creators Peter McKinnon, included. Go look at his first videos, go look at Casey Neistatts. Remember, YouTube is a skill, like every other skill. The more you do, the better you get.
None of us were born knowing how to do mathematics, or reading and writing. But we've learned, we learned how to ride a bike. Well, most of us learn how to ride a bike. We've learned how to do all these swimming. We've learned all these skills over the years. And the more we do, the better we get. Same thing with YouTube. Don't let perfection hold you back because that means you'll never record you'll never upload.
Lauren:
I have a quality question too. But it's different. You'd mentioned that YouTube cares about delivering quality videos to users. From data standpoint, how does YouTube interpret a quality video?
Liron:
YouTube looks for these things called signals. So here's what happens when you upload a video. Make no mistake, if you don't tell YouTube anything, YouTube still knows what your video is about. It's got AI systems, it's looks at your thumbnails, it looks at your frames within your video, it also automatically captions your voice, so it has a fairly good data to know what the topic is.
Now, of course, we want to help it by doing amazing thumbnails, amazing titles, amazing descriptions, and tags, but it's got no idea whether it's a quality or not quality, it looks for signals as soon as you upload it and you make it public. How quickly do people watch? And do they share? Do they add comments? Do they like or dislike the video? And the most important thing is retention. How long are people staying on your video? If people are staying on your video for 5% it basically tells Youtube you didn't capture them. So Your show formulas are wrong, you didn't hook them enough, because you can have amazing content, but nobody's watching it because in your first bit you didn't grab their attention.
A lot of new people to YouTube start to really go off topic. Hey, listen, I know your toilet is blocked at the moment, let me show you about my dog and I what I had for breakfast, and ah, give me the answer already. Right? So that's a mistake. But if they started the video saying, hey, today, I'm going to show you five tips to very quickly unblock your toilet, let's get into it. Now you're hooked. Now you want to stay on.
So retention is critical. If you can get your attention to 50%. That means that people are loving your content or watching most of it. And then you can maybe start experimenting by making longer videos. But the quality is all about the retention. Are you keeping the people engaged? Are they watching more? Are they rewinding and watching the part again and again and again? All of those little tips tell YouTube about the quality of your video.
Lauren:
So for someone who's starting out, we Do you recommend that they film shorter videos? So there's a greater chance of retaining people for longer?
Liron:
Completely? I always take it back to myself, what would you rather see on YouTube a video that's an hour long, but it's just terrible. And then within the first minute you're out of it? Or would you rather watch a five minute video? That's amazing. And you want to watch the next one in the next one. So your time and retention are the critical bits.
So the formula I always like to use is to say, okay, put a five minute video on what percentage you are getting. But that's not good enough. Go back into analytics, and then divide your analytics of your video into three parts. The first bit is your introduction, the first 60 seconds. Are you retaining people in that first 60 seconds? If they're dropping off like flies, something's wrong with your intro. Maybe you don't have a good enough hook. Maybe you got this amazing animation. Maybe you've got your logo flying in and out with this background sandwich looks beautiful, but people don't care. Okay, so your first slide How long are you returning people for?
Then the meat of your video? The middle section? Are people kind of staying put? Or are they dropping off like flies again. If they're dropping off, you're not delivering.
And then the ending, people make the mistake of going. Okay guys, thanks for hanging out on my channel. Hope it was fun for you. Immediately I know the videos are done so I move on. Don't do that. Keep people retained to the end, really kind of engage with them. And so I like to spring on my ending to say, hey, if you liked this video, check out these videos over here which is going to give you more information on this topic. And I'll see you in those videos. Because remember, for years the creator of the journey has ended you stop recording, but someone watching YouTube, they're on a journey. Send them with you. Hey guys, I'll see you in videos and then send them over to your next video.
That is when YouTube gives you lots of love because people are loving your content, watching till the end and watching your next one.
So as far as how long the video should be, it should be long enough that you can retain 50%. Make four minute videos 50% retention beautiful. People are watching. Make a five minute video. Is it still? 50%? Great. Seven minute video still 50% or no, it's dropped down to 20. Great. Your sweet spot is between five and six minutes.
Lauren
Cool. Very cool. So useful.
Phil:
Okay, this Kansa Spanish for let's just take a little breather a little break, because all this chat about YouTube I mean Don't you feel like oh my god, there's so much to learn and do.
Lauren:
It's overwhelming. It is exciting.
Phil:
It's exciting and more ideas to come from Liron. I want to let people know in this little mid roll moment that I have been on YouTube posting weekly since January. If you're listening to this episode, we haven't connected over on YouTube, can we do that? It's youtube.com/philpallen. And specifically In this episode, Liron says, don't say bye, at the end of your YouTube video, actually invite them to watch the next video. And in my latest round of videos, I do that. So rather than saying, thanks for watching, see you next time. I mean, that's a bold assumption, right? Someone's gonna leave your channel and watch something else I say, and while we're on the topic of content, you know, check out my next video, which is three free apps for content creation. That was so smart. And now I've actually started implementing that.
Lauren:
Liron, you genius.
Phil:
My video this week, which is our little takeaway. If you want to actually go and learn something sometimes we have blogs, the compliment episodes. This week I'm sending you over to my YouTube channel. My video this week, which I just published two days ago is three free apps for good content. This video is getting some traction and I think what I talk about in this would be useful for everyone as a relates to your content, social media creating but also after you listen to this episode later on, you'll actually go and see In this video that I've implemented a number of the things that he tells you to do. So if you need the example, go check it out. And I'd love to connect with you over there.
Lauren:
Awesome. So should we get back to it?
Phil:
Let's get right back to it. Here's our continuing conversation with Liron.
Lauren:
I have another question. Sorry, Phil.
Phil:
I’m sure you’re gonna log into my account and also look at the analytics because we have not looked at my analytics yet. I've been so focused on creating but Lauren is always the analytical piece of that, now she's very excited to dive into that sandbox.
Lauren:
Laser focused. I want to look at the first 60 seconds and let you know about your hook Phil.
Phil:
While I'm rewriting my outro because I say see you next time, but actually, I should be saying see you in these related videos.
Liron:
Hundred percent. Absolutely. Little things like that make a huge, huge, huge difference.
Lauren:
So you brought up making money on YouTube, obviously we know that should not be the driving focus for anyone starting a YouTube channel, but I want to know, what does making money on youtube look like? How does someone make money? Is it only from advertising? What is that world?
Liron:
So making money of YouTube is a couple of myths that we've got a best immediately, which is the first is that you need to have hundred thousand subscribers or a million subscribers to make money. That is very not correct. I made my first brand deal with less than 1000 subscribers with a brand called Samsung, some people know it!
Lauren:
Wow, really?
Liron:
Right. So you don't you don't need to have numbers, you have to have value. What's your return on investment? So what do brands look for in a content writer, they're looking for return just like every other business is looking for return. So I could show a return, I could show an engaged audience. I can show an audience that listens to what I have to say. I could show an audience that clicks on the links and therefore the brand says we want some of that audience, right?
So what does it look like making money on YouTube? You can do it from AdSense, which means YouTube pays you because it ads a little flyer at the bottom, but that's a minor piece. I mean, it's a good piece, but it's a minor piece. You can do brand deals. And those could be in terms of, hey, this video is brought to you by this brand, go check out their website, they've got these cool offers happening right now. Little promo right.
And you can have brand placement where someone will pay you to put their product within your video. And as long as you're disclosing everything, then you're perfectly fine doing that. You can have affiliate links. So if I'm talking about a specific phone or specific product or a gadget, or a how to, I could have a link in my description that says hey, if you click on this link, not only will you get 20% off and as the affiliate, I would also get some money because you went to their channel and basically subscribe or you went to their shop and bought something and something like everybody knows that Amazon has a great affiliate link. Now, I bought these products on Amazon, the link is in the description.
But what people don't realize is places like Best Buy, Walmart's, they have their own affiliates. You don't have to send everything to Amazon, you can actually give people options. And people like to have options. But whenever somebody clicks on that link, within a certain day period, you will get sales, you will get commission on anything that they buy. And the beautiful thing about this, let's talk Amazon because that's what people know the best, when somebody goes to Amazon, they click on your link and they look at this product, they go. Now I actually don't want it but since I'm here, I might as well buy diapers and formula for the baby and another headphone, you get a commission of all of those things because you brought them there.
So affiliate actually makes you a decent amount of money if you work it. Lots of ways. You can obviously use YouTube to sell a course you can use YouTube to go and take people back to your own website. Lots of ways that you can do that by engaging with an audience.
Phil:
I'm trying to make a point now of giving, we have a lot of freebies over the last year we've developed a lot of worksheets and you know several page PDFs, ebooks, those kinds of things that give people a taste of like what we offer and I'm trying to now in videos when relevant say, by the way, I have a PDF with 100 words to consider using when you describe yourself on LinkedIn, go grab that link below. If you had to list because there's, it's overwhelming all of these things to implement. Do you have a list of maybe three great tips that are working for creators well in let's say, 2020 and beyond one of them is you already mentioned. So maybe have three more but one of them I love is just changing the script at the end of your videos. I'm going to start doing that immediately. Are there any other quick and easy kind of little changes that people can do?
Liron: The big thing is get to the point. I've divided up into two categories. There is the entertainment and then there is the education how to start a YouTube right so the internet statement one is a special field. I respect the people who do it. It's not within my nature, but people who do it, they do it well. And people are there to be entertained. And there's no attention deficit there. So this whole I have an attention shortage is not true, depending on the mindset because somebody will watch a one hour Shane Dawson documentary with no problem on YouTube. Right? There's no attention problem. It's more of are you delivering as the content creator, are you delivering for that entire hour?
So that's the entertainment side, let's go to the how to search because a lot of channels normally fall into that category. For them, basically, people want the solution. They don't want to hear it backstory. They don't want to hear all those kind of goodness vlogging style and how you got there. And the most, they have a problem. They want a solution. They're looking to make a buying decision. They've got a credit card in hand. They want to watch a whole bunch of reviews to know that I'm making the right decision. Get to the point to tell them if they are making the right decisions. Tell them about what they want to hear. And really so the big tip is here, focus on the viewer, regardless of what you do, the channel is not about you. This is the biggest biggest mistake people make is they make the channel, it's all about me. And this is what I did today, and nobody cares. The famous rule is, you know, you've heard of wifm what's in it for me, that's what YouTube is. People are doing a search, they want to get some value out of that. They're giving you that time, give them that value. So that's tip. Absolutely. top number one.
Tip number two that I would say as far as YouTube is concerned, is your title. Don't give away the ending to a movie. You know, people do this all the time. I'm going to hold up some weird gadgets and hold up this gadget and I'm going to say everyone should buy this. It's the best. Well, in which case I don't have to watch a video you just told me right? But if they hold up this gadget and in your thumbnail they kind of pointing at this guy and making this weird youtuber face and you're tired says three reasons why no one should own this. Wait a minute, I don't even know what that is. But I want to watch. So don't give away the ending. Don't tell them what the entire video is about. If it's a before and after, then little things like the before picture is always on the left, the after pictures always on the right. If you mix those two up, it will confuse people. So all of those little kind of nuances together make up that video. And then kind of the final bit is deliver on what you say. So I'm going to tell you five reasons well then don’t tell me three reasons. I want to tell you all five. If the video it's got nothing to do with Casey Neistat meeting cutie pie. then don’t mentioned that in your title. What happens is people will be expecting that they'll start to watch, they'll realize it's nothing to do with it and leave. And remember those signals about a quality video I was referring to earlier, people at YouTube are gonna look at this and say, wow, lots of people are going to this video but nobody's watching. It must be a rubbish video. So don't click back. That is very bad to do.
Lauren:
Okay, so I'll actually give a personal example. Phil and I are talking about how to be creating more of a cohesive content strategy, where we've got the blog going every week, we've got our podcast, we've got the social media posts, and then of course, the YouTube videos. And we're trying to find a way to make it all together. And I was wondering, are there any repercussions of writing a blog post, and then through YouTube videos, scripting those and kind of reading the blog posts since YouTube is basically scanning what you're saying? And I know duplicate info is bad for SEO? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Liron:
Yeah, I wouldn't do that. I would think of each platform separately. So just like you, I also have a technology blog, and LinkedIn. Just kidding. So I have a technology blog, and I have my YouTube channel. I make sure the two are in sync, but I don't necessarily use the written word in the blog, and then use that as my script for YouTube. Will I use bullet points? Absolutely. And remember, there's something called snippets out of Google. So if you set up your blog in a certain way, where it lists things like five steps, step one, step two, step three, step four, step five, and you have a video embedded in your blog that talks about those steps, when somebody does a search on Google, what are the steps to get zoom working, whatever it may be, and you happen to answer that exact question, odds are pretty good that Google will display not only your blog post, but also display the point in your video where you talk about the five steps.
Lauren:
Wow.
Liron:
So start thinking of them together. But don't copy and paste from one to the other, have cross pollination for sure, because you're gonna be talking about the same thing. And YouTube does actually value when you have a video that's embedded in the blog post. YouTube says, oh, there's so much value here, someone actually decided to take it off YouTube and still link it back to YouTube. This must be a good video again.
So all those little signals together, kind of lift up your channel.
Lauren:
Cool.
Phil:
That's great. That's what we're about to start doing. We found for me, because I like to make sure I don't forget anything when I'm recording, I like to script it out. But I like for it to not feel scripted. But I am like classic how to how you describe that. That's what I love to do. And I think we do a good job of that. But so we're about to make sure that videos and blog posts are scripted. And then that's a good reminder to me to make sure that I don't just copy and paste it into the prompter. I actually take some time to modify it, maybe reorganize it slightly, some sentences will be similar, but I don't think the world will stop turning you know, I think that's there's a happy medium that you find there in your workflow.
Liron:
And by the way, it's also smart to do that because when you’re scripting then a lot of people who are not seasoned kind of presenters tend to just read the script and you can see the eyes doing this all the time. Okay, and that's just terrible. Yeah. So For those people who just put a bullet point I agree. And you want to bring your personality into this because remember, there are a bazillion and that's technical term, bazillion YouTube channels out there. You don't want to be a me too channel. Because if I want to watch Peter McKinnon's videos, guess what, I'm going to go to Peter McKinnon's channel. I don't want to go to somebody else who does Peter McKinnon style. That's not what I'm there for. So don't be a me too channel, bring your personality into this.
And you can do that beautifully on a YouTube video. And maybe when you're adding to your blog post, maybe then you tone it down you're more professional for those people who want to copy and paste.
So the final thing here on that is, don't forget, if your video’s talking about a blog post that you have, don't forget to link it to that blog post in your description. So people want more information, they can head over to your blog and do that if they want to.
Phil:
That's a great idea. So for example, if there's five tips on something, Lauren, maybe in the video we talk about three tips and we say by the way, I have a few more tips I didn’t have time to put in this video, so you should go if it interests you go ahead and read that blog post to get all the info or something like that.
Liron:
But the one thing about that, just remember that when YouTube looks at your video, it's gonna go all, all these people watching have now left YouTube because a person, then YouTube might say, Oh, I don't want to promote this video too much. So again, it’s kind of you got to walk on those little balancing acts. What do you want more? I've worked with a lot of clients whose entire blog is about selling courses or selling all that. And that's where they make their money. So they don't mind if YouTube doesn't give them love, because all they want is people to go to their blog, sign up and become a client get onto the email list so they could market to them and essentially save the money. So they don't mind as the people say, Oh, I just want YouTube to love me give me millions of subscribers and millions of views. So the strategy has to be a little bit different.
So I would say to a great idea, just be cautious of how you do it and don’t send everybody on every video, away from YouTube.
Lauren:
Yeah, it seems to me, at least in the beginning stages, it makes sense to keep people on YouTube. Because when you start growing your audience, that's when you really can control and send, it's almost like not really, in the beginning worth sending people anyway.
Liron:
I mean, the whole thing with this is the one downside of YouTube, which I have to mention is that you cannot control your notifications. You have no idea who your viewer is. So I would always encourage people to build a mailing list so you have direct contact with your audience. Because at the end of the day, YouTube has been gracious enough to give us their platform and they get a very hard time, but people forget we're using it for free. And they are taking care of all the technology and streaming it around the world, and then paying us when they make money off AdSense and people get really upset with YouTube.
I don't look at it that way. I think we should be grateful for YouTube. Yes, do they change the algorithm. Yes. Is it frustrating at times? Absolutely. But the one thing we need to remember, it's a livelihood that people make because of the platform.
But say all that, at the end of day, we are still building a castle on somebody else's Island, right? So we don't own a lot of the stuff. So whenever possible, build a mailing list. It is the number one thing you should be focused on in building that audience. I love your idea of say, hey, if you want the PDF download, click on the link below. Enter your email address and we'll gladly send it out to you. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful you absolutely need to continue doing it.
Phil:
Fantastic. Officially Liron, we've had at this point of publishing this episode, we've had 80 episodes Lauren, would you say?
Lauren:
Yeah, like a little shorter, a little short of 80 episodes.
Phil:
And we have never had an interview go this long because we are truly fascinated and soaking up everything you have to say. In fact, I know that we're going to need to have you back to talk more maybe more advanced analytics once I get to this level, but how incredibly valuable is this?
Liron:
It was a pleasure and I'm loving the fact that you did the biggest step is press record and upload. So many people I meet at so many events around the world and they promise you mean next year Oh, I'm gonna have this thing cooking and they get lost into this analysis paralysis and never ever upload. You're killing it on your Instagram lives you’re killing it now on YouTube. You just rinse and repeat, learn and just do more. Eat sleep create repeat.
Phil:
I love it. Thank you so much for your insight today. This is going to be so valuable. We're gonna make videos from this. We're gonna make podcasts from this. Oh my god. Repurpose you all over the world. Maybe in India. Did you hear I'm a star in India. Ah. Thank you so much Liron for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy. I'm just so grateful for you and for sharing this amazing insight. You are the best.
Liron:
Any time for you, you know it. Oh, Lauren, you rock as well. I wanted to meet for the first time. And now I understand what Phil says all about you so you're so nice.
Lauren:
I wish I could to talk to you forever.
Phil:
Thank you Liron.
Lauren:
Thank you.
