The Right Way to Win at YouTube in 2023

0:00We are going to talk about the right way to win at YouTube in 2023. So Neil, you want to go first on this one? Yeah. So right now on YouTube, if you've been doing YouTube for a while, you may have noticed that you're not getting as much love as you used to be. And that's because they're more competitive. So there's not much more you can do there. But it's also because YouTube wants a lot of different formats. They just don't want long form videos. They also want short form videos like reels or shorts that they would call it because a lot of people are consuming them. But the big way that we're seeing to do well in YouTube in 2023, it's one create content that causes a ton of engagement.

0:37When I mean engagement, I'm not talking about people just clicking a like button. I'm talking about people leaving a comment. If you're not creating video content that causes people to create comments, you're just not going to do as well. That is the number one thing. The second thing is if you search on YouTube, they have tons of content for almost any topic. If you're not creating new stuff that hasn't already been talked about, you're just regurgitating old information, you're not going to do well. It has to be new, fresh, or if it's an existing old topic, you better have new, fresh data that is shocking to people versus just the old plain stuff that they're used to hearing.

1:12The third thing is YouTube drives a lot of traffic from search. It's the second most popular search engine, even though it's owned by the first most popular search engine, Google. And when you look at YouTube, you got to make sure you're optimizing for keywords as well. for your titles within the video, they know what text you're using. And what I would say is, if you can get your videos to have tons of engagement, your videos typically will do well at the beginning, which means that the rankings will start shooting up on YouTube because you can rank at the top for a lot of competitive keywords in a day or two days.

1:42It's the opposite of traditional SEO. It doesn't take as long. The other thing with YouTube too, and this is the last thing that I'll add, to do really well, just create your content in a ton of different languages. There's a lot of AI tools out there that'll just go and automate the dubbing of your videos into multiple languages. So then you can have a channel for every single major country out there like Mr. Beast. I mean, here's a tool for you all, Rask.ai. So it was shared from our mutual friend, Syed Balki. So it's R-A-S-K.ai. And it'll actually do the dubbing for you. I think we shared it on this podcast before.

2:15The other thing I've learned is just like, dude, you know, I was actually talking about our content, Neil, because if you think about us like four or five years ago, you'd have videos that would get a million views, 500k views or something like that. I'd have videos that would get a couple hundred thousand views. And I would look at this other guy, he was getting like three, 400 ,000 or so. But now when I look at your channel, it's not getting what it used to get, right? Like, you know, now you're getting, it could be 5 ,000 to 20 ,000 or so. Sometimes there might be some bangers. Same thing with my friend's channel too.

2:40My point is, and actually Neil made this point too, that the standards for YouTube are getting higher and higher. And so it's like, okay, well, also what do people consider good quality content? And the two Hormozy interviews, the Alex and Layla ones that I just published, those are just crushing everything else I've done probably in the last two, three years or so. Because one, it's a longer form conversation. And so YouTube loves the long average view duration. So the longer you can keep on the platform, the more they can serve ads. You got to think about their incentives. What I also learned too, or what I relearned was your 30 second retention matters a lot.

3:12And so there's a big difference between, I think for the Alex one, I had 104 % retention for the first 30 seconds. So we had a really good introduction with good hooks to kind of keep them interested. Versus my Peter Diamandis one, we didn't have a 30-second introduction. And the 30-second retention was maybe about 40 % or so. So we lost 60 % of the audience there. Look, good hooks, good stories, and good headlines, good thumbnails. That's all great. But at the end of the day, I think you have to just be asking yourself, whatever it is that you're publishing, is it something that you'd be proud to share with your friends or your family?

3:43And is it something that you think makes not only you look good, but also whoever it is that you're promoting, they look good as well. And that's all you can ask for. And then your video should perform because as much as I was like, dude, I'm in this penalty box with YouTube. Like my content's gotten better over the years. It's like, no, YouTube's like, they know what good content looks like. And I'm like, oh, okay, fine. Dude, the big thing that I've seen a shift in is just people, a lot of people prefer short form content. It varies per subject, right? But we're seeing a lot of people disliking short form content.

4:12Mr. Beast posts a lot of his data on Twitter as well. and yes, he's getting a lot of traffic from long form videos, but short form videos are actually starting to make up a large chunk. It's not 50 % yet, but it is climbing up there really quickly. Yeah, it's like 30 % for him, which is pretty, pretty big. So yeah, I mean, that's a good call out too, right? I think it's, the shorts will help with discoverability and the good thing about shorts is that it levels the playing field now where if you started with zero subscribers and you pumped out a really amazing video, it will do well. Look at the Hermoses.

4:41They do really well, even Cody Sanchez and a lot of their content is just shorts. Yeah. And so like, could Neil and I be more entertaining with good hook stories and all that? Yes. But we also have, we got other stuff to do too. But I also like, I'll call a spade a spade, at least on my end. I don't think we put in as much time as we could have on my side. I don't know about you. No, it's easier for me to go spend 20, 30 or$50 million acquiring businesses than it is to do all this stuff. Someone should clip that and post it to shorts. So anyway, that is it for telling you the truth, right? Go create all this content.

5:10No, totally. $50 million acquiring companies and just grow faster. Actually, we'll hook you for the next video over here where I basically... So one of our mutual friends that has a pet holding company, he's like, hey, go ask the homosies for all the content they produce. How does that actually help with their business? Because I can just go buy another business, right? That was their logic. Same as yours, right? Oh, that was Eric's logic of that, right? Oh, no, no. That was Syed's logic, actually. Oh, that was Syed's. Dude, is this the same thing? I was like, I'd rather just go buy businesses.

5:38It's easier because once you have money, it's just easier to spend the money to go buy more versus just create. Creating is a lot of work. I know that's a cop-out answer, but... I mean, okay, once you've created enough, it's like you get tired of having to create all the time because it's really hard to make something from scratch. Anyway, that's it. This is the hardest grind. It's the easiest to just go buy versus creating. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, five stars, please, and goodbye.