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excited for this stream because we're going to be talking about 10 viral trends that you need to try and really what's working on YouTube right now we've done a lot of research and I'm going to be joined today by Nate from the think media team who's crushing it on YouTube in his own right making videos on this channel filmmaker and who also has been to some events recently kind of in the YouTube industry so we've done hours of research we've gone deep analyzed our own channels and you can check out time codes and chapters to

find um the different distinct trends that we are going to be covering and so uh Nathan welcome to the stream you want to dive us right into your presentation and then I'll cover my five Trends in part two absolutely thank you so much for having me so Sean sent us out to vid Summit which is host in Dallas Texas and this is my second year going and got a lot of great resources out of this year in particular so I want to talk a little bit about what is working on YouTube specially this year but

also going further and Beyond 2024 and some of the latest trends that different people have covered so let's go ahead and let's dive straight into it so this was a big light bulb moment for me we had Todd bupre kind of like the algorithm guy behind YouTube explaining most creators think when I ask you like what do you think the YouTube algorithm is you know you might think once I post up a video is going to try to put that video where it wants to go and try to get as much views as possible well

that's the wrong way to look at it YouTube does not look at the algorithm like that instead the reality is they look at YouTube very much for the viewer so when you log on to YouTube as a consumer you're watching it it's going to try to figure out what videos you're interested in so the algorithm is really dependent on each person watching your video Someone side by side is not going to get the same recommendations as you do no matter how good your video is so we're going to talk a few things about how it

chooses to put out your video but first that's just a big relight you know we need to stop thinking about how YouTube is trying to make our Channel popular instead we need to dive and think okay how do we focus in on the viewer how do we make sure that we make content that they are actually going to want to watch because that's a b thing so getting in that Fram set I think is the automatic shift for me that I'm like oh you know we hear it so much but sometimes you just need that

little encouragement like that real little reset so let's dive into the different reasons or how YouTube chooses to show what videos are seen on the homepage so number one they always say is rule-based recommendations so it's going to look at the viewer subscriptions what videos did they recently watch what are some of the high performing content in that Niche or your audiences are watching so it's going to choose that fundamentally so subscribers are still important you know if you subscribe to a channel that is a good notification that you want more content like that so

still encourage people to subscribe if they do enjoy watching that content number two is word of mouth or what they call automated word of mouth so the way they described it is if you go to a movie and let's say you just watched alien Romulus and you loved it well you might go tell your friend hey I think you should watch alien it was amazing um so you now just referred another person to watch that video what YouTube does is it's automatically doing that it's going to kind of predict which a viewer is going to

be interested in that same topic and if you watch a video you watch it all the way through you thumbs it up and you share it that's just more indication that it's going to find that similar audience um so if you think about the different viewer and what they're interested in you know if you're this is a big question too people are thinking about is what if I want to change niches or change topics well there are chances that they're interested in other similar things so if I do a video about film making there's a

good chance that people are interested in movies or other things like that and I just don't have to be stuck in gear reviews if that makes sense the third method is algorithmic personalization so again it's tailoring each video based off the viewers unique interest and viewing habits even beyond the YouTube platform which was a little concerning because YouTube they're a data company and so they they they have a lot of data and so they can kind of tell based off your interest your demographics what interest you might have in general if you're more sportsy if

you like to go on Hikes it can kind of defer what videos are going to be seen around them so those are a few ways that YouTube chooses what video is going to be placed on that home feed or the suggestions feed what I also recommend um and this was another thing that was really quite interesting is if you ever opened up your YouTube studio and you scroll through and you see related videos and where are all your views coming from so people are watching a video and they go to click on your video there

is a setting YouTube has in there where it will show the related videos it's suggesting I've noticed this for a long time that I would to get really weird recommendations like it was totally different from my Niche and I was thinking man YouTube just does not understand my audience or my channel but the way they described it makes it makes a lot of sense sometimes if you subscribe to a channel you may not watch a video immediately you know you you may not watch on the subscription feed box but you might see it as a

suggestion and you might click on that so in the same way we would watch TV and we would change channels right people have that same viewing pattern so we will go from watching aliens and we'll go to watching uh cooking recipes you know on a dime just because we're interested in that topic so do keep that in mind if your kind of algorithm doesn't seem like it's working it's actually just viewer behavior and that's all you YouTube is really trying to do is just cater to the viewer and what they're interested in and sometimes it

seems a little weird but ultimately we're getting closer to what the viewer actually wants to watch Sean do you have anything you want to say there no I love it I'm just gonna hang out I will say as we're talking about Trends and for those that are just jumping on um you're hitting this first one here and I've got five towards the second half and so we're talking about the YouTube algorithm misconception versus reality and um ultimately I've learned lately that consumption is the new subscription and so it kind of ties into this where the

YouTube algorithm the most valuable currency these days is someone watching a YouTube video almost more so than someone clicking this subscribe button because if someone clicks subscribe it doesn't mean they're seeing your videos but if somebody's watching your videos it actually probably does mean YouTube's going to suggest more of your videos so more valuable than a subscri these days is minutes of watch time and consumption and this kind of just ties into how the algorithms working have you noticed that as well Nate definitely that's actually what they kind of talked about is the um long

form being such a huge proponent I'm G to skip forward here uh long form just being on the rise because I feel like this for myself when I'm watching I might have YouTube on my TV I'm in a different viewing pattern where you know a few years ago it would took it a lot for me to watch a 30 minute view video but now I just pop on a 30 minute long video and I'll be working you know just listening to a video it's very different than how we consume YouTube before and so and just

kind of give a quick little preview Colin Samir actually talked about that being the key to success on YouTube is creating a relat a repeatable long form format and Sean I know you talked about you know creating one highquality valuable video per week you know if you can maintain that consistency and make it repeatable and make it kind of lengthy you're going to have a much better chance at getting that watch time more ad Revenue more likely for YouTube to suggest your video I feel like it's less competitive when you have a longer video when

it's more in depth than just something short that you can easily put out yeah you know it's interesting I was watching this podcast uh called the deep end with Taylor Welch and before subscribing the simple fact that I started one of the episodes of video podcast and let it play now Taylor is following me everywhere including my shorts feed so he's in my shorts feed other videos are showing up your consumption like the way the algorithm Works we're tying in a couple Trends together so I'll kick it back to you but you're talking about the

YouTube algorithm it's one of the big trends understanding how it works creating the right content and understanding viewer behavior and then I think the second one you're hitting is long form content is on the rise and uh we'd love to know Trends are you seeing if you're watching this um are you consuming more long form content just short form content but I'll kick it back to you for uh the next tip here yeah I'm just going to kind of briefly go back to the algorithm one thing that YouTube is actively working on is they're utilizing

Ai and large language models to better understand what your video is about so if you ever notice you know captions pop out on your video or the transcription box that you know YouTube has a great understanding of what your video the context is so even when you mention if you craft a video for specific title keyword like we talk about then understanding what that video is is what the algorithm is trying to understand the best way they describe this is YouTube is instead of if they're serving out a video like a recipe they're not just

following a recipe they're trying to like understand the mentality of like how to cook so like if you're interested in this particular topic maybe you want to go deeper on it or not just because it's titled similarly but it's in the same world so being able to understand more about what the individual is is going to help it put it in front of the audience so many times we're struggling getting the viewer to actually watch our video but just remember the other half of this YouTube is wanting for people to watch your video so they're

trying their best to understand what your video is and so the more we can help about the algorithm by providing or you know just being more valuable and thoughtful of how we're presenting our video is also going to help combine with the power of YouTube to better understand the content and context of our videos and that's going to put it in front of the right people but now let's move on to long form content like I teached earlier so there's three really big reasons that they've noticed about long form video and when we mean long

form video it can mean anything from like eight minutes plus but they kind of defined it as you know since 2020 um 20 plus minute long videos have been on the rise more AdSense more Revenue has been flowing into that and people are watching longer videos sometimes I get caught up watching you know a longer podcast two hours I'm like whoa you know that's totally different than what I used to watch back in the day so just keep in mind that you know having a longer video YouTube is incentivized to keep people on their platform

so if a longer video is keeping people engaged they're going to likely recommend that over the last 16 months long form content has seen an rise in AdSense Revenue so that's why it's another indicator for why we should be making that we all want to earn money on this platform and that can be a stepping stone towards you know if you're planning to go full-time on YouTube and also viewer preference like people are just naturally wanting longer more in-depth content I think we've all been inundated with short form content and we watch it but I

don't know about you but when I'm watching a short I find kind of feel gross after you know watching a 30 40 minutes and I don't feel satisfied but if I watch an hour and 30 minute long movie or two hour movie like I feel satisfied by that um and I think that's like a different thing we have to kind of keep mind is the longer video you can go more in depth you can be more personal and like we'll mention later on the stream is you can build more connection to your audience so those

are all things you can utilize just keeping a note on long form is really the best place to be and like I mentioned earlier Colin Samir great YouTubers they were there speaking and something that they said really stood out to me the key to success on YouTube in 2024 is creating a repeatable long form format and Sean you've said something similar to that but I think that's very true and that's something we definitely experimented on our podcast channel on this channel and Sean you've been doing a lot more of these deeper Dives 20 minute long

videos and releasing those every Wednesday like I think that is exactly what this is it's a repeatable long form format and you know you look at the viewership on those videos they're l more in depth people resonate with those and in turn YouTube is likely to recommend those as we've seen so that's long form let's talk about short form because I think there's two worlds we kind of have to be a part of and you know short form can be hard to necessarily grow and sustain for long form and people often ask us like how

do you convert your shorts viewers to long form and that's kind of tricky because we've explained it before it's like two different people two different audiences right so what was interesting is creators who utilize shorts well see an average of 10% increase on their long form views so what does that mean it doesn't necessarily mean by posting shorts you're gonna get 10% more views but if we kind of take it step by step here one creator that was an example of this is Max fos so he does does like these YouTube pranks elaborate videos and

he uses his YouTube shorts as a kind of a trailer for his longer video so he kind of give a brief 60- second synopsis of his video and then he like leaves the last hook like he's going to do something outrageous he says but click the link click the related short to watch the full thing and you might be divided on that but the idea is you know getting millions and millions of views from these shorts that are feeding to long form so he's a key example of you know while he is making a great

shorts he's also making the long form and by people just watching the shorts YouTube is naturally going to recommend that long form video and you may not automatically switch to it each viewer who's watching shorts may not actually click the related shorts button but in general you're going to see an increase and they said roughly around 10% on average creators who are using shorts well will see that increase in their long form views which is super cool to see you have any thoughts on that yeah I've noticed that Trend as well certain shorts with good

storytelling that not only hook me into the 60c version but are architected not just trimmed out of the longer video but create the open loop see the full video on the channel use the related um video feature to link to the long form video I think that from and you're mentioning Max fos as an example of this you know I think that one of the things we've noticed is it seems like it's a small percentage of people who click the related video and not even that we've been doing it at a world- class level but

the simple fact is that shorts can get we have a short that just is over 10 million views so a small percentage of millions of views potentially or hundreds of thousands depending on your Niche if you're watching this it could still be a major impact in moving shorts viewers over to long form so I think that is a um a cool Trend and if you're just jumping on Nate's breaking down some of the insights he learned at vidsummit uh recently with uh darl EES and all the awesome speakers over there and then in the second

part of this I've also got five Trends I've spotted and we're curious which one do you like best because whether that's tapping into shorts we've been talking about the personalization of the algorithm long form content on the rise and so um things you can apply to your channel to get better results in the coming weeks and months I see a quick question here that says what do you mean by repeatable that's a great question I kind of glanced over that but you know we can often make a long form video and we could do it

really well but by the end of that video you're just exhausted you don't upload for months so what is an I would say a relatively easy way but if you think about your workflow of making a video what is something that you could actually repeat that could be a podcast that could be a longer Vlog that could be a sit down talking video if you want a good example of this I think Sean's did a great job with his Q&A videos he's been doing so like every Wednesday we've been dropping these videos and those are

him talking in front of the camera yes there's some editing there's some Polish but fundamentally he's answering a question so I think that's a great way to start implementing this is looking at ways that you can actually come up with what we call a format something like a show you could repeat you know imagine if you watched Food Network and suddenly they're watching you know you suddenly you're watching Food Network and then all of a sudden you're watching something completely different on the show you wouldn't be tuned in so having that consistency really matters and

here's a great example of those Q&A videos again yeah newest the newest show at thick media and I mean it's similar to other stuff but it's a format kind of dialed in with the workflow it's based off of one viewer question and then I spin up the episode around it of course for the season of life we're in blessed to have help with editing and whatnot but for any solo Creator the the the question being what does repeatable mean I think sustainable it's like that you don't you can only make one video a year because

you had to all the Blood Sweat and Tears and fatigue that it took that's one reasons why video podcasting is so popular is because it's sustainable if you're interviewing other people or whatnot you don't have to always be coming up with your own original ideas you just need to book guests and have good questions so I think that's a deep question to ask yourself what is a repeatable long form show or what is a repeatable sustainable content format for your channel that can help you grow but also not burn out in the process love it

let's head back into the slides here and again here's another demonstration of just the increase 10% on long form um we're gonna talk about a little bit of hook structure and just how do you you might earn the viewers click but how do you actually keep them watching so there's three key elements that they were talking about and really you need to capture your audience ATT attention within the first five to 10 seconds so we've heard you know first 30 seconds but really it's that 5 to 10 seconds where they want to know are you

going to fulfill on the promise that they clicked on you know if you titled a video best camera for YouTube and then the first few seconds is talking about something completely different people are likely going to click off so engaging making it interesting can be another thing visually interesting you know using sound effects or whatnot but really just understanding what your viewer clicked on the video for then we talk about story a compelling narrative that keeps keeps your viewers engaged and invested this is a big thing that I heard multiple times is storytelling storytelling what

does that mean for a YouTube video especially since most of us are in the education space now I'm a little biased I'm a filmmaker I like telling stories but I myself I was like questioning like all right how do I bring in story to like a gear video right when's the appropriate time for that well if we distill storytelling and we just think of it as change right that could be a change of mindset that could be a change I've had this problem and now I fixed it you know towards the end that is an

element of change in storytelling so I think you can kind of one thing I really try to be mindful of when I'm making YouTube videos is just being in the shoes of that viewer so if there's a paino if they're talking about I did a video called how to edit a YouTube video for beginners right I'm edited for several years now so maybe I've lost a little bit of touch of those pain points that seem so natural now right but if I can put myself in the shoes of those who've never touched editing at all

they don't know what certain words mean you know they don't know exactly how to um they may be following along but they not understand the certain words you're using so to really like distill down what's the pain point of my viewer and identif in that and if you can provide that Solution that's also a form of story and then the payoff you know if you provide that solution to the viewer you know there's a sense of relief there's a sense of accomplishment now they don't have that problem or that burden anymore so I think that's

like an easy way for an educational to incorporate some video structure that's going to keep people engaged um back off a little bit let's talk a little bit more about story I think we're hearing this more and more um about storytelling on YouTube and there were some great filmmakers at vidsummit and they're talking about um most YouTube videos you know we're great on teaching people the information but we don't necessarily there's a whole other side of humans not just the knowledge but it's it's the feeling the emotion and you can tap into that as a

Creator how do you want the viewer to feel while watching your video if it's a comedy channel hopefully you want to make them laugh if it's an educational video you want to make them feel understood safe and that they can actually learn and digest the video they don't feel like an idiot you know those are a few good places to kind of try to focus on how you want your viewers to feel um I'm gonna switch topics a little bit Sean unless you have anything last to say we'll head into some thumbnail critiques and what's

working but do you have any last thoughts on that no I love it you're you're dropping fire and if you're getting value you can smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm and Shout out if you're here live or on the replay and um we're talking about 10 different Trends we've spotted and I'll recap them in a bit and I've got five that I'm sharing myself in part two these are some things we've been testing and that you can test as well so as you're watching this video or you are just jumping on and you

watch the replay um there's some big changes on YouTube so tapping into some of these Trends is a good way if maybe you're plateaued not getting views right now how can you reinvent your content maybe try something new and so with that yeah let's hit the next Point um in your deck here I forhad outed storytelling and we'll come back to that see a number of comments but let's quickly dive into thumbnails and the thumbnails that are working it's been very interesting year because we kind of seen some things that's actually I think beneficial to

a beginner and that's like people are wanting authentic real thumbnails it's quite interesting so we've done a number of tests I've stole tekashi slides here so forgive me but he has a great demonstration he's been a testing different thumbnails that we've noticed that's working for us so here's a side by-side demonstration you know this side is like extremely cluttered a lot of text you know and then it's a you know perfect background like it's different colors bright so people you know people are trying to create those thumbnails to get people's click but what we found

is that there's a more clean style that people are actually really engaging with so we've done a number of ab tests and for one video we come up with three different thumbnails and time and time again a simple clean photo is working simple clean photo of a camera no text you know this is probably more minimal of alab doll this went straight up no text just Sean and what's interesting is you know we're got great thumbnail designers on our team and so we're diving into this but we're noticing that people like the authentic in 2024

like people want a realistic photo or a thumbnail and I think that's just comes from like we're constantly tricked we're not sure what to believe and if you see a thumbnail that's just really open and just sincere like you can see your background I think it does say something fundamentally one thing that um Dave altiser he was touching touching on thumbnails he was talking about Simply Having like the same clothes as you are wearing the video is enough to like that little thing can be enough to just reinforce to the audience like hey you know

this is a legitimate video like you're wearing that same piece you're being authentic um it's just a better representation of your video If we go back to the movie example right you know if videos are like movies our thumbnails should be like posters right you want a poster that's actually going to be true to what the movie is going to be but also you want it to look nice you know you want to be sharp you want to be interesting and engaging but we're finding that there's definitely been a shift towards if we're on a

pendulum at least we're shifting towards more authentic so I think the key takea away from this is if you have a great title and idea strong basic clean and authentic thumbnail will actually work so what does this mean for viewers I think it simply means like if you're doing a talking head video as if you know I was talking to camera I think that means you don't necessarily have to have like cut yourself out and have a super clean background you could leave it kind of like as your background and then just do some simple

text to reinforce your video that's something we've seen Al AB doll just really hone in on and it's working well um so yeah it's like little things like that have been just key to be more like if you're thinking about a Creator and a viewer it does make sense to Showcase what we're actually watching so again time and time again we're seeing on our homepage you can look through our Channel you might start seeing some cleaner more minimal photos sometimes just shine an interesting expression you know very subdued expression but that's sometimes enough to create

that Intrigue um we're going to dive into storytelling but Sean do you have any kind of thoughts on this era of having simpler less Desy thumbnails yeah I think I think there's a couple things that's interesting um you know later on we'll talk a little bit how we are in the authenticity Revolution meaning people are just kind of burnt out on certain things like so they just get burnt out on maybe overpromises or overly hyped things and so a lot of times the the trends that happen on YouTube and almost in anything are pendulum swings

I mean there's Trends in fashion right now the genes go from skinnier to baggier and then back to skinnier and so it was all skinny jeans paint on jeans now it's like bell bottoms and like fullon skater baggy jeans are back this is a fact and I'm here for it you know as a 90s kid uh you know skateboarding birdhouse baggy jeans what's the point so sometimes maybe certain thumbnail styles working in a season and a lot of times knowing when the timing is to sort of do the opposite so I think that minimalist and

simple thumbnails are working because of it kind of just being the opposite of what we've seen and also um just being sometimes different we're trying to stop the scroll so when you maybe have seen you know it's a pattern interrupt as well like how do you do a pattern interrupt if you're used to seeing the same thing over and over we develop what's called ad blindness it's like if there's banner ads in your email inbox box or something like that you see them at first and they maybe used to work but now you just don't

even notice them you just even your brain kind of rewires so we're always thinking about as creatives and as YouTube creators just kind of what's Happening next and what's where's the pendulum swinging next but I think it's also about testing and experimenting I know for some um maybe sometimes typically female channels might have we we always say have simplistic text but they might have more cursive emotional fonts wow I'm going to get slaughtered in the comments uh you know maybe more collage of like a day in the life and that like really works and so

you always have to know what's happening in your Niche um and that still might be working there so I think kind of studying your Niche but these are some broad Trends in terms of what we're seeing in thumbnails and I'm curious what people's experience is as well before I bury myself let me kick it back to you Nate for this next point that you got well I think you brought up a good point about you youve often said many times different is better than better and I noticed scrolling on my YouTube TV you know I'm

I saw half of Sean's shoulder and just because it was like so different like it made me scroll over oh yeah like you know I edited that video but it was enough to eye catch me you know and it was so different than all the other noise out there so instead of just simply thinking about making good thumbnail what's a way you can stand out so go type in the video you're making on YouTube and see what thumbnails people are making how can you make yours stand out so that's a simple and easy tip we

do have a question I thought I completely replace the other one I'm sorry but uh I thought this was interesting is it worth uploading two thumbnails to test and I think here on think media that's what we are doing we're uploading three different thumbnails every time we upload and I think we're in the season of just capturing data right so we want to see okay what does work YouTube's given us the tools to see okay well we noticed the simple train that's how we were able to find out that trend of cleaner thumbnails because we

could actually see that data was backing that so oftentimes you know I might have a preference of a thumbnail oh I want it this way someone else might have it this way but it's nice to have cold hard data to show you what's working and what can you derive from so I think yeah and I think not only if you can if you can utilize the test and compare thumbnail split test from YouTube you should and what you're seeing here is one we're running on yesterday's video on um this new trend is taking over vlogging

now definitely tapping into Trend surfing and influence Surfing by having um you know different known people in the thumbnail but one thing to note is it's not just about click-through rate what it's ultimately about is and if you hover over this the winning thumbnail is generated by the highest share of the video's watch time so great thumbnails don't just get people to click they help the viewer or understand what the video is about so that they can make informed decisions about what to watch by selecting based on watch time share the winning thumbnail is the

one that gets viewers to both click and stay and so the big key here is that um we're not just trying to get thumbnails only to like shock somebody or like well that's a little different so they click on it and then they get there and they're like okay cool that was different but I'm not going to stay or or we maybe clickbait and what people thought it was going to be it ends up not being that well if it doesn't lead to watch time It ultimately is not going to be the winning thumbnail on

YouTube YouTube's eyes so I think it's thinking through the fact that title thumbnail um topic all work together in terms of packaging but even if you're click through rate someone asked earlier actually um and maybe in a different place like what would you uh it was on it was on the community tab by the way if you have a question that doesn't get answered today I have a post out I'm doing my next batch of our new series on the take media Community Tab and you could always post your question over there um and someone

asked what would you choose CTR or avd click-through rate or average viation I I would choose average viation but it's kind of both like I would take a lower clickthrough rate with more average view duration rather than a higher clickthrough rate and no average view duration because minutes matter most on YouTube It's Time on platform that matters most and so anyways if you see this post on the think media Community tab um this is is where I'm capturing questions that I'll be turning into videos and shout out to uh 131 responses already but if you

have a deep dive question and context one of the things I asked for was um up voting other people's questions a but also add details because it's one thing to be like how do I get more views I'm actually I'm probably not gonna answer that question because it's like well we have videos on the channel about it but if it's like how do I get views on my crochet channel that I've been doing for four years that I only have five hours week to do like if you give me some context then we could get

into some interesting um content so anyways that's on the community tab we're talking about thumbnails back to you absolutely one last note about thumbnails I'll just point out we recently had a video and it was underperforming you know we had we were trying everything we could but people just weren't interested in it or just maybe the thumbnail wasn't clear enough and so you know we talked we workshopped it let's come up with a new thumbnail concept see if we can revive this video and totally different concept I think we kept um we might have changed

title as well which is important to note in this equation but once we did the just the thumbnail swap we got it went from 33% average view duration to 66% average view view duration um which is huge that's like twice as people watching just based off a thumbnail so that can be another thing you're it takes a lot of effort to make a video takes a little bit less effort to make a thumbnail still a lot but if you can spend a little extra time to best create a poster for your video I think it's

worth doing that and who knows a simple thumbnail swap might be key for you to get a lot more views and keep growing your Channel all right so we're gonna dive into next um we're going to talk about storytelling I brought it up earlier but this was a key thing that I kept hearing um over and over again I know a lot of you have comments about how do I apply storytelling well here's is a few things to keep in mind um again making your viewer feel can you spark empathy you know can you invoke

curiosity maybe it's awe or you're cultivating hope tapping into Nostalgia these are a few different ways we can kind of just we can add a whole another flavor to our video if we just think about tapping into people's emotions so since many of us are educational people have problems they want to solve so perhaps you can spark empathy with that moment you know rather than being a know-it-all and be like oh you're an idiot do it this way you know sympathize with them and be like okay I remember what it's like to begin to edit

a video I didn't know everything I want to be able to follow along and uh feel like I'm not being traded like an idiot but I'm learning and growing so having a positive attitude I think you can make people feel by tapping in being in the shoes is a huge thing I think a lot of us can start do um especially if you're creating like a hook right if you can identify a problem people are more likely to assume that you have a solution which is a very interesting kind of psychological thing um building curiosity

there's a lot of great channels that are really tapping into this there's a YouTube channel called Preston goes and I watched a few of his videos he made a silly video about just like he built a railroad train track and he put it on a set of abandoned tracks and he wanted to go all the way across but he made that video feel so emotional because you get to see him pour His effort into making a cart and he's telling stories about how you know he's always wanted to do this or for whatever reason showing

the hurdles obstacles he's gone through those are things that we all sympath like have experienced is you face an obstacle how are you going to avoid it how can you get over that and seeing people do it and achieve their goal we all celebrate in that so think about a few ways you know screenshot this if you want a few ways how you could tap into creating that so Sean is pulling up Preston goes I believe this is not Preston but Preston goes yeah he it's super interesting um definitely check out this channel if you

want to learn storytelling um for your videos again who's looking up I built an underground go-kart not a lot of people but once you're familiar with him and you watch his videos like you're entertained because he's just telling stories and you might be asking yourself okay how do you put storytelling in a simple video well I think there's a lot of stories that we kind of discredit we don't think they're like we're not talking about Hamlet we're not talking about Shakespeare we're just talking about little Stories We would tell our friends and family so if

I were you know let's just take a example here A buddy of mine wanted to learn video editing right actually I'll tell you this here's a real story my sister was trying to learn video editing and she said she was looking up resolve tutorials and she's like is there any good resources for editing because I've already made a video that's pretty in depth that shows a beginner from start to finish you know I was just able to send over that link and be like boom here you go like simple as that like I was in

that moment where I've already done all the hard work I could just send a link and it felt genuinely good to be like oh you know I've help someone someone close to me and they are able to go the extra mile um and I didn't really have to do anything in that moment because I already done it at the beginning so that's a cool thing that we can have on our YouTube channels like the better you can help someone else like you don't feel bad about like helping people right so I think that's just like

so key is learning those little anecdotes how can you apply those to your videos that make sense you don't want to go off tangents right but I think people long for that personal connection and the greatest way to that is telling simple stories Sean you're a storytelling expert do you have any tips for that well um you know I actually would dive into this question to kind of also talk about sort of two different types of content I think that Grace uh with the grid asks since Preston creates content out of the norm does he

still need to focus on the description and tags as much you know in a case like Preston's Channel you in a way almost don't need to focus on the description of the tags at all because these are browse which is a traffic Source on YouTube algorithm hacking type of videos meant to they're a little bit longer entertainment can be suggested on TVs but all devices um and really we maybe talk about two big buckets of content there's suggested content and there's search based content so Grace and grit you know some types of channels it's knowing

also not it doesn't always broadly fit into just entertainment and education but a lot of times it can as well so what's here's like an interesting illustration is you've got you know Preston over here with like my RC submarine explores a sunken aircraft carrier which is a 25 minute video that is like a masterpiece of editing and footage and thumbnail and packaging and retention and uh it got 1.8 million views we could also look at like we could go Microsoft word tutorial and entertainment versus education this video got the same amount of views as Preston

1.7 million views and uh the budget on this one's a little bit lower you know like this individual is not even on camera um they're just recording their screen they walk through a screen share now good education time codes chapters breaking it down so I think it's just knowing that YouTube is a diverse place and it depends on what you're trying to achieve and while this is also going to get an incredible amount of watch time because someone who watches this it's a complete course is going to click on this for the desire to learn

this probably watch until the end and there's a lot of watch time as well speaks to viewer intent but I think more so title description and tags when someone is actively searching for something because a lot of the entertainment stuff Nate right like people don't know to search for these outlandish creative ideas that Mr Beast or Ryan tryan or pressor doing what what's actually happening it's algorithmic based it's like I'm just looking for something to watch whoa like I didn't know this jetpack was gonna work so good like you know like I might like jetpack

it's a totally different approach to YouTube it's the it's the Brows suggested approach and there's also the search based approach and I think the the savest creators understand both methods tap into both methods and then choose which method they want to use depending on the video they're creating and so um it's really yeah it's not one or other being better it's really about different yeah absolutely and I going back down like being very practical something that I'm trying to actively solve for is like when should I find little bits of interjecting my humor into a

video even if it is a camera tutorial I think people still like to have people like humor people like to laugh people like to hear stories um finding those moments where you can you know it's a attention resetter right so I think that is a great way is just incorporating more of your humor yourself into the video you know we're all very unique characters and so if we have our like own sitcom or whatnot you know find ways that make your character a little bit more unique versus just simply giving information I think that's there

can only be one of you on YouTube so trying to better understand what makes you you is going to help your audience like naturally gravitate towards you you're not going to attract everyone but you will attract those and they will you know Bond and really dive in deep we got one more slide here where we're talking about um just more storytelling establishing a relatable character building suspense and tension I think a lot of times you know what's a certain tension people have or suspense like you are trying to solve a problem you do it one

way like if Preston ising this cart and it fails miserably there's certain emotions that come with that and again unexpected plot twist like these are all things we can um inject into our videos but I'll really just boil it down to obstacles coming over those um knowing what the viewer is going through but fundamentally it's like we're not trying to create fake emotions like what are authentic emotions that are relevant in your video so like I'm not trying to Mr beastify you know like a YouTube tutorial right I'm trying to really just understand and what's

its proper context so those all all those different elements is going to help people like that's just another method if you are beginning like this might seem way more advanced and to be honest like I haven't done all of these myself either but these are different trends that we've seen on YouTube like a lot of filmmakers are bringing like a slower Pace to YouTube um and Vlogs is the same way it's like it's a slower more intentional U letting you feel those emotions but if I had to like summarize the key to success for YouTube

in 2024 Beyond number one focus on your viewer can you understand what they're going through what their interests are and just get a better picture a number when I was at vid Summit the number of creators that create their own channel avatars you know um they would create these personas of what their ideal viewer is what's their age what are their interest you know do they go to college or are they full-time um are they a mom are they a parent like the better you can understand your viewer you can start making content that they're

going to be interested in I think we often limit ourselves onto the content we think people are interested just because we had one video do extremely well if I did an editing video and that's all I did you know there's a certain Niche for that but after a while you might feel like you want to expand different topics there's a good chance that they're are interested in those things and there's different ways you can smoothly transition and identify what our Niche is which if you want to dive into that we have different resources you can

check out um but again I'll go back to the other success create a repeatable long form format again what's something you can consistently do on a basis that is longer form because people want to get to know you it's hard to get to know someone on a YouTube short because they 30 to 60 seconds or now 3 minutes but you can get to really know someone in an hourong video now I'm don't necessarily recommend starting out with an hourong video but if you are doing podcasts like can you create an intentionally video that's packed full

value and should be that long you know don't waste people's time but if you can go deeper dive in more different aspects of that problem you're trying to solve that's all helpful again tell stories tell compelling stories they don't have to be great things but different things you've went through or hey I had this problem this is how I overcame it let me show you how to do that and then lastly focus on videos that are actively growing your audience um this is one piece of advice they gave is there's if you uploaded any number

of videos there's probably good chance you could see where people were interested in right unless you have like zero views then we got to try something else but if you are if you have one video that did 100 views and the rest did 25 what's about that one that got 100 views and learning to not just necessarily repeat the video but follow up make a part two what's a video that can accompany that so those are all different ways that is going to help you create better videos in 2024 and ultimately get you more views

so that way grow your channel um but yeah that's pretty much my recap of what we learned in bid Summit Sean do you have any ahas or takeaways well I want to get into those and in just a second I actually want to share five trends that I've spotted and we're noticing at think media as well if you're just jumping on definitely watch the replay because Nate just broke down really some powerful insights in terms of some of the things working on YouTube right now for getting views and how to make better content and so

uh much more to come and um before we dive into kind of part two of the video if you're getting value it always means the world to us and the YouTube algorithm if you smash like and today's stream is brought to you by vid iq.com slink you can get a 30-day trial of vid iq's boost plan for just $1 and I asked you earlier when people were just jumping on the stream what niches are you in and one crafty gal said resin art is the niche that they are in and I actually want to show

show you one cool tool here with vid IQ called outliers and so the big idea of what an outlier is is a video that is outperforming all the other videos on an individual's Channel and what's kind of cool about this tool is you could type in something like resin art which is one crafty gal's Niche here and we can look at now and see okay on these different channels this one right here was a 100x outlier that means that this particular video got a 100 times more views than the channels videos typically get and perhap

perhaps you go oh wow I was just about to do a particular epoxy res table or something or maybe something not with seashells but that's similar even the way the title structured what can we learn about the thumbnails in almost every case there's no text on the thumbnails they're they're bright clear um pleasing images of what it is turning a free wasp nest into expensive art resinart there that's a 10x outlier and what you can actually do here is you can filter down to say okay I actually only only want to see channels that let's

say have under 50,000 subscribers or something like it's one thing for a big channel to get a lot of views but maybe some smaller channels this channel has 5,700 subscribers and they got 82,000 views and 90 5x outlier here still getting 3.5 views per hour meaning this video still gets 3.5 views 24 hours a day 365 days a year and at three years old um and so that's a resent art sphere so you may be like different ways that again Inspire your next video and as we're talking about Trends and what's working on YouTube right

now this is kind of one of the biggest Trends is this idea of being able to B what's happening jump on it quickly with your own version you it's not about copying somebody else but it's about drafting behind videos that are getting view velocity um it's one of the best thing ways to get views and grow your channel so that's just one of the many Suite of tools that vid IQ has if you've never tried it out the generate tool is pretty impressive it's pretty crazy you've got uh the keyword uh research tool still one

of my favorites and ability to analyze competitors and stuff like that so if you want to try it out it's just $1 you could head to vid iq.com slink or you can um click the link in the description down below now I've got a couple quick Trends I'll have Nate back to commentate with me on some of these and um we talked about in the first part about algorithm updates we talked about um Trends and thumbnails we talked about long form and short form um we've been covering in 10 viral video Trends you need to

try here's a couple more um the rise of the niche appearence Creator it's like Niche experience Creator try to be creative there this is basically creators that are finding success by combining their unique life experience with specific Niche interests now as a YouTube educator one thing I've noticed and I don't know if you've seen this there's this massive trend on like why people over 40 must start a YouTube channel and Rob the maritim up in Canada has kind of like led the wave as far as I could tell but a lot of others Kevin col's

a good friend um he jumped on that you see multiple channels jumping on it but what are we talking about you know in any given Niche you might feel like it's so competitive you know well finding ways to Niche down is a great way to stand out and not only that I think there's also a couple things that we're seeing here this is the over 40 YouTube Boom um it's also this idea of the of the experienced YouTuber um and you're also tapping into a trend of like there's a real Community here that's that's it's

resonating with for a long time YouTube is seen as the domain of younger creators so this trend recognizes there's a huge audience of people over 40 who are interested in content created um in this particular Niche so what else could this apply to well you know Andrew uh Bustamante if I'm saying his last name right you know not all of us are excia agents like he is but I mean he is an ex CIA agent he specializes in spy skills so he's taking his experience and then tying it into here's this promise I will teach

you the same awesome spy skills I learned in this CIA so you can make more money get better health and live an amazing life on your own terms so this kind of like rise of the niche experience content creator like another example could be if you were like a retired teacher explaining Tech or making Tech simple the experience is retired teachers who have a knack for explaining things clearly the niche is maybe you're targeting older adults who struggle to keep up with technology so you know kind of the tone and the pacing and the storytelling

you want to do and then an example could be Tech tips with Mr Jones uh you could offer tutorials using smartphone social media online services and you're taking your experience by the way this is why creaters over 40 50 60 of all ages or maybe gen Z that have spent a couple years in a particular world every the world you've been immersed in if you like shine some light on that and creatively package that people from all around the world want to hear from you learn from you so I think this is an interesting Trend

that I'm seeing Nate have you noticed that in any particular areas and I'm curious I bet your algorithm wasn't hit with over 40 which speaks to the fact maybe it was but you can tell me in a second it speaks to the fact that all of our homepages are different everybody's homepage is different everybody's algorithm is different so there's this massive opportunity when you understand how the YouTube algorithm Works to be creating content that resonates with a certain demo right your your algorithm I'm sure there's probably some overlap in the fact that we both like

are logged into our think media account so it's probably mixed yeah I I search up think media every day so my algorithm is probably skewed but uh I believe that one example why you should start a YouTube channel over 40 I think it was like someone film making related so like I saw that pop up but it is interesting and I it's so interesting that there's so many opportunities to start a YouTube channel and not many people just beyond you know getting subscribers getting views so those are just different angles right that people can tap

into what is people's unique selling points that they've lived their whole life that's one advantage like I started YouTube when I was really young so like I didn't have experience or profis I was just kind of learning as I was going but someone comes and they live their life right they have all these skill sets all these stories that they can tell in their videos so I think that's one great way to just hop on the train and really help influence people I love it I got a couple more here uh and these kind of

Stack so identity-driven titles so these are like titles of your video that appeal to a spe a specific identity so look at this um kind of TAPS into the over 40 YouTubers but look at these titles I'm 40 if you're in your 20s watch this I'm 44 if you're in your 20s watch this I'm 57 if you're in your 40s watch this these videos got millions of views which a point to make here too is at the beginning of this entire training we talked about like 10 viral Trends one of the things we talk about

in our program in fact Kelly signed up recently congrats for jumping in our VR program in V we talk about this term vfm which is viral for me because if you're typically getting 30 views and then you get 3,000 that would be viral for me right and then you start compounding that success well when you spot a trend like this it's not so much that you're G to get 3.3 million views but it's it's that if you potentially draft on the trend you maybe typically get 300 views and you might get 33,00 which would I

know that's not viral by like technical terms but it's definitely viral for me if that's your typical terms so you could kind of call this um you know identity specific titles you're calling out a person and these are not learning as much search based although they kind of tap into search because sometimes people do look for advice and they are 20 or whatever um this's another term for this would be like hyper targeted titles here's another one um if you're still single and want a girl girlfriend watch this video I'm going have to save that

video later yes uh so this is kind of again you're typing into an identity a you're you're calling out singles you're calling out a desire and there's putting some mystery in there the way he even added text to the thumbnails powerful the Simplicity we're seeing kind of the stoic anti- YouTuber face thumbnail Trend a lot of combination of things happening here and you could call this also the niche appeal strategy because it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be age it could be relational status it could be uh career status you're just calling

people out it's also relatability marketing it captures the core core goal of making viewers feel seen and understood that one hits like that slaps hard if you're like yeah I am single and I want a girlfriend and you know I need to watch that video and so if you're scrolling boom that hits you the YouTube algorithm is like Word of Mouth digitally so it could really get shared Nate how could other I mean how what does this inspire in terms of creativity that creators watching this could apply you know I didn't even really think about

this but when you brought up that example it's like I may not have watched a video from them because okay maybe they're not my age demographic but seeing that positioning how they had it suddenly that now attracts a viewer like me so it's like you could attract a whole different Audience by just phrasing it now it's Sol in its position to where I can learn from them I can learn from people who have experienced those things so I think that opens up other opportunities to be like okay maybe how could we target people who want

to start a YouTube channel in their 50s and their 60s I saw a YouTube channel this Grandma started Channel and she was in her 90s and she was just uploading day after day multiple times a day she learned how to do it she was do it for fun now she has like 50 something thousand subscribers so those are all super cool um very smart ways to again you're calling out a very specific person and yeah like those those videos attract me even though I wasn't particularly interested in them beforehand and I think it as these

continue to stack this is kind of similar but these are also distinct uh another one here would be personalized clickbait so this is kind of acknowledging an attention grabbing element calling out perhaps a specific identity but this might be surprising to some people so I've been seeing videos like this this video will find you right when you need to hear this which is like kind of a crazy title but some of these videos can get hundreds of thousands of millions of views so you're you're relying on pure algorithmic recommendations because you don't even know I

don't even know what she's talking about like what do I need to hear and but this video is a 4.8x outlier for her it's getting two views per hour it's spreading in the YouTube algorithm and perhaps probably there is is um I think her photo uh in thumbnail is maybe somebody that resonates with the way she looks maybe that is looking for I'm just speculating here but it's maybe kind of like a girlfriend to connect with talk about advice process issues whatever you're going through now there's another video here right this video will make you

see everything in green color again we're talking about this idea on this trend of personalized clickbait like and this idea of saying you like this video will make you see everything in the color green more for the person who's perhaps just opening YouTube Not In Search of answering a specific question or solving a certain problem but just kind of scrolling and looking for something to call out to them this CH Channel rainbow egg is kind of more almost like game gamification type of videos like there's videos that are like quiz kind of quizzes or kind

of interactive in a way even though they're not interactive like it's gonna going to trigger something that's kind of entertainment you're just kind of looking for but the way that you're positioning these are baiting The Click by personally calling out a viewer and so uh the next one is the authenticity Revolution this has been said talked about quite a bit I think it's important to notice and this ties all the way back to earlier on the video Nate you were breaking down we're doing split test with three different thumbnails and the most overdesigned with the

most text and logos and things on them aren't performing as well as just some of the most M minimalized ones minimalist ones and so for example here's a ve again a uh not an exaggerated face kind of almost a slightly somewhat maybe discouraged or questioning or pensive face title when things just don't work out open loop right there Curiosity and so if you're watching this and you're thinking about you know of course the point with authenticity is not to make it a iick it but it's to do it authentically it's sort of funny that people

would try to game authenticity but like titles could be like my biggest insecurity dot dot dot um I failed or things didn't go as planned real talk about insert the topic uh Day in the Life the unedited version responding to your assumptions about me uh what I wish I knew when I was younger so this also perhaps going to help when you have any number of subscribers but if they followed you for a while and they're used to seeing a certain thing from you if I upload a video responding to your assumptions about me it's

a great title like I'm ready like what are your assumptions about me tell me in the chat or in the comments I'll make a video or like real talk about and insert maybe taboo topic or something bottom line is we're in the authenticity Revolution and I think the reason people are doing this is this is that pendulum swing away from people maybe feeling burnt out by overpromise is overhype some people call it the uh the era of excess on YouTube and the Mr beastify of YouTube where everything's just so extreme and exaggerated and and truly

unrealistic unrelatable and entertaining to a degree Mr BEAST's got quite a bit of smoke around him right now and the whole thing but ultimately vulnerability embracing your imperfections people so much they relate with this type of stuff I've got I'm curious your thoughts n in a second but you know Vanessa salow did uh disappeared for a while and then came back and made a video why I quit I built a seven figure crater business and I quit here's why is kind of that open loop of vulnerability and she got very real in that video I

watched uh a good a portion of that video because I was curious and and looking for that more like don't just tell me about your successes tell me about your struggle don't just tell me about the wins or the tactics tell me about the real and the raw the mess marriage is Hard YouTube is hard health challenges what's going on mental health challenges what are things the pressure of all this stuff so we're definitely in that authenticity Revolution um and I think people are tired of fake Perfection right and people are are Tire if it's

relatable and so you don't always just have to I I think the cool thing here is alleviate the pressure of having to like always just show success or like how great you are at something you can get a lot of viewers for the fact that you failed at something like doing a cha Challenge and by challenge I mean for 30 days I tried a new routine or I tried to whatever and you didn't succeed but the storytelling of that throw back to Nate's earlier points like a travel vlogger documenting a trip that goes wrong or

musici showing behind the scenes of a recording session that was terrible or um you know talking about online hate hate or auty YouTuber talking about struggles with acne and different things people want that real and that raw Nate what do you think about this authenticity Revolution absolutely what I think draws my eye to those thumbnails is like people do like to catch on to human faces so you're immediately like eyes attracted to their eyes then you read the title find out what it is but there is something to be said about that neutral expression this

is something that like most skilled actors in Hollywood do is sometimes when you think there's a beautiful performance it's just very minimal because what are you what's the actor doing the person viewing is projecting themselves onto that person and so when you see a title like that you know I quit a seven figure business and that you see their expression but you don't give a lot of details suddenly you now have this curiosity Gap where you're feeding your own projections onto that so you want to click to see if that's true or not so I

think that's like little Keys like instead of going a shock face you know all the time try to learn to subdue that again very technical thing but again it's just being more you don't have to be crazy about everything I think that's what we really learned in this vlogging era is like people at the end of the day want to connect with other humans and watch what they do um people want to watch people like them you know I oddly enough like my parents have been watching YouTube on the TV and we'll just watch like

people mowing their video like mowing the Lawns right and they do it for free they mow people people Lawns and I'm just like I don't get this at all but there's something to be said about that because the way they um their personality is their certain beliefs that they have their being charitable like all that they're not fantastic content whatsoever you could argue how valuable they are but people watch them and that's that's really interesting so it's great insights okay a couple more this might be my last one but we'll see what we got here

so the next one is search optimize driven vlogging and I just did a bit a video with my friend Benji Travis co-author of our book YouTube secrets and we're talking about this trend is taking over vlogging of course some people are saying they're like this trend has always been around and I would say well I mean perhaps but I think what's the big idea here is like sometimes in vlogging people think that the the original Trend was like daily Vlogs and the idea was like it had to be your whole day and thus it started

with like you brushing your teeth and ended with you going to bed at night and it sort of you know also was more about the personality where a way to articulate this is it could be about something that people are searching for or a Micro Niche or micro community and there's actual value in it but it's in a vlog style and so we'll link to that video in the description and I'll um if you haven't watched it but Benji's been crushing it on his channel and some of his most viewed videos now we're going to

kind of layer strategies is he is driving to he is thinking because of mastering YouTube and the algorithm a lot of times he's planning out his video like on the drive to a location so he's actually thinking though and he's he's going into it not just with the randomness of a vlog but like what's the angle what's the big idea what's the title gonna be what's the thumbnail gonna be and kind of just planning in his head and then he gets there DJI osmo pocket 3 boom hooks in the beginning Vlogs throughout it simple editing

pretty basic but if you see this video 5 48,000 views 19 minutes authenticity Revolution because it's not overly edited and polish but minimal edits it's kind of a linear story but it's also does it's not starting it's not a daily Vlog it is a search optimized value driven Vlog right and so what's also interesting is some of his most viewed videos lately have been related to Costco how is Costco different in Japan which this would be two things here hyper Niche domination a very specific Niche like Costco is a niche within a niche it's it's

a niche within shopping or retail people love seeing different stores but also micro Community Building Costco enthusiasts are crazy like and people who love micro communities either one you don't watch any Costco videos or two if you do you watch tons of Costco videos that's an interesting thought about YouTube is like when you get into a hyper niche like for me as a Christian and Faith you know person of faith not only is my faith something I take so seriously but I just it's not like I go kind of deep I mean I will I

go deep and continuous into that culture because I love studying the Bible I love learning about it listening to different things about it different conversations theology different thing like so like it sort of speaks to the fact that you can like endlessly go deep and why faith and theology is deeper than Costco Costco is close for some people I mean and it's like when you C's always it's a whole fashion culture I mean who here is like Kirkland from head to toe is you know it's a whole it is a subculture Disney is another one

like there's micro communities like these subcultures and you can kind of layer on that Vlog style that relational style and I think another key to that is you're doing something that also you would do anyways because Benji is the ultimate food geek loves food loves to cook food wants to talk about food all day and I'm here for it because I like to eat his food uh he makes the best stuff ever go over to his house we live about five minutes apart from each other and like and so he can just kind of freestyle

in such a way you definitely know your YouTube channel is about something great if you're freestyling about it can Captivate somebody else's attention for 29 minutes because you're like oh wow I didn't even thought about that oh I didn't even know about the ingredients and oh I hadn't even thought about your perspective so anyways this would be search-based value driven Vlogs and then this idea of like even going deeper the keyword of Costco and the search based around there better than Costco us food chef store so anyways if you haven't watched this video the new

vlogging style is taking over for more on that that's in the description down below and it'll probably be the end card at the end of the video um of this one but those are a few more Trends we I think we probably covered more than 10 but we'll do our best to time code in chapter roughly the 10 sections of this video and we could hit a couple questions uh Nate what do you think about kind of this how vlogging is evolved in the way you've seen yeah I was you know having seen like The

Inspirations like Casey neist early on like this height of the vlogging era like yeah I watched them a bunch and it's interesting to see you know there's nothing new Under the Sun right like people still want to be they want the solution to their problem right and so what Benji's done really well is like he has found a niche where he can kind of be a Sandbox you know he's not being distracted about these other things but he's really fulfilling on that audience that wants to watch Costco videos and within that box there's a whole

world he can be in right so he can talk about these different aspects and finding ways to make those interesting is super interesting one of the key takeaways from that video was the fact that not only he's not trying to be the best Costco video he's trying to be the second best so when you watch the first best his video appears on the side and that's really interesting is YouTube is so vast that you not only are serving those people but the people who want to go deep ER and so I think this just so

interesting um I did a video on my channel it was about film making advice I took inspiration when we compiled a uh best YouTube advice for 30 minutes and I'm like I wonder if there's a film making one and to my surprise there wasn't any film making advice compilation that was that long or that ad depth there was a few here and there but there's no video about film making of device of that length and of that stature and I uploaded this is a follow-up to that video and like it's 10,000 views in a a

week you know and the first video got 400,000 views and it still shocks me that there's still these other areas of YouTube that are untapped niches you have to find them like it it's it's hard and difficult to sometimes find those things but you're just like one idea away from like making a video that's not on YouTube and that's really cool even in 2024 where people think it's too late there's still all these untapped niches niches within the niches so that would be my encouragement to people is you know if they're want to try something

new or they're trying to you know play with things maybe it is taking the vlogging format maybe it is a podcast format but you can bring it to a specific Niche or specific topic yeah you know Ty tying back into earlier when when someone asked what does um repeatable mean when we talk about long form repeatable that's what's kind of cool about this specifically new style of vlogging that Benji's doing he's able to pump out an insane amount of content because of the format because of also it's a whole workflow it's figuring out the right

tool DJI osmo pocket 3 you got of think about workflow the idea of having the right tool workflow of I'm gonna film what happens next download the footage edit how do I do the thumbnail make sure to get a picture of the thumbnail and then also though that you could be less interested I mean by the way you just we did another one 10 days ago why toilet paper sold out at Costco Costco makes it in the title and it's like that's gonna be a banger right like it just pops off but that's I mean

as we process this Benji has five daughters what are we talking about like so you also think I know people uh are how do I do business uh YouTube with a fulltime job how do I do YouTube and of course he's fulltime and he's got brand deals and they have more momentum and him and Judy like his wife also has a vlog Channel but listen it's not about your resources it's about your resourcefulness and about finding content formats if possible that are sustainable repeatable um and a lot of these factors are actually you don't it's

not that you have to start this new style of vlogging there's a lot of different ways you can apply this stuff but a lot of this I mean this is the new style of vlogging this is the authenticity re Revolution this is the Simplicity in thumbnails there 's a lot of common Trends so if you stack what we just talked about in this video you know and you think about which of these Trends can I kind of pull into myons and I really believe there's a ton of views waiting for you on the other side

all right I'm gonna share maybe a few final things I wanted to hit one thing just because it is October 15 and today was the day that shorts were supposed to work three minute shorts we did a survey and most people have not tried some people have tried and they did not work as far as three minutes being suggested in the short Shelf but Cameron caught that Creator Lee aison said you can upload them right now but they won't appear as a short until later this week so YouTube appears to not be ready yet that's

from Creator liaison who said that so if you're uploading three minutes shorts today trying to hop on that Trend because that's a brand new uh time limit increase that YouTube has updated it looks like later this week they will start making it to the shorts shelf and so for people one ing um yes Michael they're just not working yet but if you upload them now maybe they'll just click over at the end of the week and who knows maybe we have a viral short because YouTube's testing out the new length Nate any final thoughts on

the trends today I want to hit one or two more questions myself and then I we'll land the plane but uh yeah give us your takeaway for those that want more views want to grow their channels um yeah I think if my takeaway what I would start implementing today is yeah just authentic thumb Nails uh because I think it's easy for a beginner right instead of worrying how to try to craft a thumbnail just really understand what the viewer is wanting and take a simple like if you're doing a a food cooking show just show

a picture of the dish don't show this crazy you know everything else just be really authentic and I think it's an easy way to go about it maybe a little bit of text here and there but um and then find a way for your thumbnail to be different right I think that's why we're seeing this pendulum is is because the authentic is standing out right and it may not stand out forever but I don't see that ever going out of phase either because it's been around for so long and it's just now kind of people

like that but that would be my my key takeaway is just learning to be a little bit more authentic with the thumbnail because I think that's going to get people to be better like more relatable and we'll actually click and watch your video you know I I'm really glad you brought that up and and you brought this up and Kyle was telling me about how you were talking about this I think that we could just go a little bit deeper exactly what Nate means if we go into Cana here I think a trend that can

happen is um what people would maybe do in the past is uh let me adjust the image and auto adjust and get my little brightness on my photo so here's a photo that I took right in my office here holding a camera um put the timer on shot a thumbnail now what people would do is they'd go background remover and in the past they would then have this cutout image use something like canva Photoshop and whatever and then have this like designed looking thumbnail and I think if what you're talking about though is you're saying

that um really the authentic thumbnail could be like leave the The Reel in there so I'm I don't shouldn't have changed the image up but let me let me change it up here I'll go back to the first one let me go to my new my hands open one I have that one here okay so instead of just cutting you out and then having the smoke and the black background or whatever the big idea could be that you simply actually leave the background right and so if we go edit and we go adjust auto adjust

and then we go copy paste and I'm going to copy paste the image twice so that the background is still there and then what I might do because you could just leave the image as it is but what I might do here just for my own edits is take the background and then make the brightness a little bit less uh maybe kind of pull the highlights down and perhaps even take something like um a an element and and maybe make a a a could maybe make this like a yellow and then take the opacity of

it and bring down that transparency and and you might what do you think even that might be too much I'm going to go a lot darker than that but maybe I just want to give a little bit of tint to the background so now I'm still in my real office but to your point like you also could head over to dolly or something and give yourself an AI background uh and there's something about as like Dave Mae uh would talk about that it's powerful to have um you know the same clothes and maybe the real

office that you're in so if it's a fake background but if you were to say um you know simple home office background you also could bottom line articulate what you kind of mean here because I think yeah yeah I think we can get so caught up and we told to make our thumbnails the importance of the thumbnail people now know that which is great but we I feel like sometimes you if you don't have a lot of professional skill like you end up going down this road that you know it's maybe it's making your thumbnail

actually worse so what for me at least my like my skill set it's like I could actually just take a good photo and then not have to worry about designing anything I just like okay make sure you open your window get good lighting but I think even this right like this is a little bit more authentic right it's less of that design background um I'm not saying the it's worse you know you don't it's not like it a s that you're doing it this way you know but I think I would try that like if

you are working on designing using canva like I use canva but if you could just experiment and take a step away and like okay let me just take a photo of in my room and do an AB test just see what does better because maybe I'm wrong I could be wrong but if we're looking at the data showing us that what you're doing here is just taking what's real and then just tweaking it so that way your eye actually pops on screen adding some contrast cleaning up your background a little bit totally fine but um

I think those are just ways to just leverage that authenticity definitely wear the same clothes in your video I think that's going to help um drive that authenticity when people watch your video Dave altiser was talking about he did a video where he was um showing off like an iPhone tutorial and the first image the thumbnail was the first image of the video so when you clicked on the thumbnail boom ready you're confirmed that you're watching the video you set out to see versus cutting away to a talking head that maybe is not that immediate

payoff so those are little tweaks you can make um and I like what you're doing here just kind of taking it as if you were in a studio cleaning up a little bit um it just feels a little bit more I guess authentic is what we're seeing here yeah and right now if you're curious as we land the plane um using Dolly and just kind of like throwing in some AI images maybe getting the actual dimensions right and all those kinds of things could be of course important uh but uh so that because even the

perspective and like what exactly is happening here but we're living in an interesting era and I guess even yeah the light's kind of in a weird spot but like you know sort of actually I guess probably you might have like field of view and once you get it underneath yeah I I compared to just design and I I I loved your point because we were doing our YouTube challenge and I was making a thumbnail in like under two minutes or under three minutes and I think the the modern point was that was just to get

people started but what people are so used to seeing now is like everyone's seeing the same canva template so it's and and on this like designed background with the same red with the you know little whatever like we see some of the things so it's how could we be different and if possible if you could take photos in your own environment or um different things and still I do think the tweaks to it whether dimming the background you know I put a drop shadow on myself here some colors some different things you can certainly still

do some things to make the pop but yet you're still in that authentic environment we're tapping into that authenticity uh Revolution hey was that uh helpful little tutorial Nate good way to land the plane did made the plane take off again it was like I was like well let's open up canva and Ai and just dive into some stuff but I appreciate you thanks for um adding so much value today and if you got value from Nate's tips smash the like button um also today's stream was brought to you by vid iq.com think if you

want to grab a $1 trial of the 30-day version of um 30 days of IQ boost uh I am curious what kind of niches are you in here and do you have any questions as we land the plane today but like what's your YouTube channel Niche um why I'm asking you that as well I would love to get as many questions as we can but we do have to land the plane pretty soon and so I did a new Post in the community tab it looks like this um and on this post it's a carousel

I just ask for your questions and I'm also asking you to upvote questions so if you head over to that post on the think media Community Tab and post your question upvote any of the questions you like I'm going to do a new batch of the whatever we're calling this repeatable long form Series where I kind of take one question and then do a deep dive on it so that's another place you could post that but uh let's see um my Niche is a bit of travel and lifestyle in Ecuador is GM a here so

one of the Cool Tools on vid IQ is called the generate tool and if you were to say eador um day in the life if you have a general idea and you use the generate tool of vid IQ let's check out the tips here and this is using vid IQ so first thing as I just typed in a general idea it's actually going to give us a couple of the top related keywords now some people would say this doesn't matter and they're wrong it's not that it matters because those tags are going to help you

it matters in helping you position your video to know what kind of Search terms or language or words so you really dial in your video idea properly okay so ultimately then it comes up with a title Ecuador in 24 hours a day in the life of an Ecuadorian which is amazing because now you know okay cool what could I get accomplished in 24 hours you reverse engineer the video if you click over here you could make it longer shorter add excitement change the tone maybe make it a little more witty and you could spin the

title until you get it correct now this is one of the biggest principles we always talk about too we research before we press record we um we want to know our title even before we film the video if possible so 24 hours in Ecuador a day in the life living like an Ecuadorian for 24 hours Okay cool so you figure out your idea and then you also see some different tags which by the way even if they don't matter that much because again the tags themselves aren't going to move the needle you could just copy

paste these tags and move them over to your video to reinforce the uh YouTube Understanding what your video is about and then it's giving us some thumbnail inspiration now it's not that you're going to use these thumbnails but it's G giving you the inspiration for the shot composition of what your thumbnail could be these are all great they're vibrant shot composition okay let me let me shoot a couple maybe and let me pre-plan my thumbnails so they pop in most cases no text in this case only 24 hours you could choose a different font uh

maybe get rid of the only to say 24 hours and then it tees you up with a hook and even an outline with the hook introduction presentation of problem and challenge then the storytelling stuff that Nate was talking about earlier vid IQ will do that heavy lifting for you it'll walk you through be thinking about introducing a problem and Challenge and then be thinking about the exploration and development of that and then be thinking about the climax and the key moment and what's the conclusion in the summary and you could generate even a greater skip

if script if you want this is just one Tool It's called The generate tool and um it's part of a suite of tools that vid IQ has that you can check out if you want so anyways shout out to vid IQ for uh being one of our partners at think media vid iq.com think if you want to try out a 30-day trial of vid iq's boost plan and try the generate tool try the outliers tool we talked about earlier Link in the description um and it's just $1 if you want to cancel before the deadline

then um I don't know where else you're going to spend a dollar but that's probably the best use I mean of all things you could spend a dollar on this month you know pitch me in the comments if you think there's another way there's not a lot of ways you could spend a dollar these days so it's pretty cool um all right if you have any questions uh let's see Kelly says vid IQ is worth it it grades your titles and thumbnails which is very helpful I agree uh let's see made by uh pan said

uh vid IQ is really useful I agree appreciate it and um yeah crazy value for a dollar good call it's not a lot of things you could get for a dollar there is one of my favorite instagrammers right now though his name's Damon darling and he and he and he talks about you got a dollar and then they say no and he goes oh here you go everyone in America should have a darn dollar look him up man that's that's going to be an Instagram Rabbit Hole to travel down for a while um and with

that uh I think that uh it was a pretty good stream we're an hour and 33 minutes in check the replay out because we covered a lot of stuff we T covered at least 10 Trends probably really more than that and if you're just joining um the time codes and chapters will be there if you want to watch that video that I did and that conversation with Benji Travis about this new style of vlogging is taking over you can click or tap the screen to watch that hit like for the YouTube algorithm check out show

notes and links and resources in the YouTube description down below my name is Sean canell your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel this is think media and I can't wait to connect with you in a future video peace out