How YouTube's Algorithm Can Find Your Customers for Free

0:00I'm Mari Smith, known as the premier Facebook marketing expert, aka queen of Facebook, and this is actually my 14th time because I have been at every single social media marketing world. There is no amount of sophisticated technology that can ever take the place of live, in person, IRL, heart to heart, face to face. You could very well meet some of your best friends, clients, joint venture partners, alliances, have opportunities, podcasts, speaking engagements, it's extraordinary. So come on in for this beautiful, in-person experience. Get tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info.

0:37Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. This is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. If you are new to this show, follow us in whatever app you're listening on. Helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. My special guest is a video marketing strategist who helps businesses and creators grow on YouTube.

1:18He's worked with many of the biggest names in the world of YouTube, including Mr. Beast. He's also the co-founder, executive producer, and chief strategy officer for the Chosen TV series. His latest book is The YouTube Formula 2.0. Daryl, welcome back to the show. How are you doing today? Doing great, Mike. How are you doing? It's super awesome to have you back. So, Daryl, obviously you've been at YouTube for a long time. There's a lot of people that have a lot of advice and maybe misconceptions about what they should or shouldn't do on YouTube. What are some of the big things that you hear from people that maybe just aren't true or misconceptions that people have?

1:51Yeah, I think there's a couple big mistakes, especially when businesses apply what they're trying to do on YouTube. The first thing would be, they use YouTube as a library. They just dump all content. They're not really strategic with their content. And that leads to one of the biggest mistakes, which is they're trying to appeal to a customer. And really, that's a huge mistake on YouTube. what you need to do is like really look for the viewer and that viewer's engagement that can turn into your customer. And so when I when I'm out working with brands or creators, what we're trying to do is like try to understand who would be naturally watching your content.

2:35What type of content would they find valuable? And then really deep dive into not the demographics, because that's a big mistake. And look at the psychology of the viewer, where they add in life. What would they find valuable? What wouldn't they find valuable? And what we're trying to do is create a plan where we have a really, really good understanding of who we're talking to. And then two, knowing a format that would work really well with them to respond with your type of offer. And the offer, just to keep in mind, is to bring value, not necessarily to sell them on anything yet, because this is a great platform that if you do it right, if really speaking to someone and they're finding value in it, that not only are they going to share naturally with people that would be like-minded or would have general interests, but YouTube's very mindful too, like topical.

3:27And then to kind of seeing what's kind of in their watch history and YouTube's outgoing finding clients and also viewers for you. And so that's kind of one of the bigger mistakes is they're thinking, oh, this is just a repository. There's not a real strategy. Or if there is a strategy, they're thinking of the end customer instead of someone that doesn't even know who you are or doesn't understand what your brand is. And so it's like taking a little bit wider step where you're actually bringing value to a viewer. Folks, Daryl Eves is a master strategist and a brilliant marketer. That's why I'm really excited to have him back on the show.

4:04We're going to unravel a lot of what he just kind of teased at here. But what I want to first say is, Daryl, what is the benefit or the carrot waiting on the other side? If people pay very close attention to what we're about to talk about today, we've got lots of marketers, entrepreneurs, small businesses of all sorts of different sizes that are listening. When this is done well, what can this do for them if we pay attention to what you're talking about? Yeah. So I believe that there's a lot of brands that want more visibility for what they're doing, regardless of what it is. Or it could be individual marketers working very specifically to get more awareness out there.

4:41And one of the most effective ways to ever do that is to pay to get your message out. That's called advertising. Right. And when you really look at different ways that you're paying to get it out there, it can be really effective. Well, on YouTube, if you do this right, if you bring value to a viewer, YouTube rewards you for that. And it will literally go out and find the right ideal person for you without you even have to pay. You'll have to pay your production side of putting a video together. But realistically, to get it distributed and pay to get the visibility, you won't need to do that. That's something that YouTube does very, very automatically because what YouTube has done since 2013 is they had a view-based algorithm and that view-based algorithm switched to an AI-based algorithm.

5:34And the AI is all it's trying to do is to give the viewers what they want and keep them on the platform longer. So if you're providing very specifically what viewers want, YouTube's finding your viewer for you. And then that transforms into a traffic source that brings traffic source to what you're trying to be aware of, whether it's going to a website, going to e-commerce, going to a local mom and pop. But also it could be, you know, taking offers and having them go deeper with you. That's all done organically without paying any ads. And if you do it right, YouTube is going to do that and pay you money because you're uploading content.

6:12Some of that money can get pretty substantial if you do it right. That's a real shift. When we were prepping, you said that you know somebody who was selling office furniture, used office furniture. Tell us a little bit about that story. Yeah. So I have helped a lot of people over the course of my career. And I had someone reach out to me. They wanted to be one of my students. And they had an e-commerce site that they would go into these foreclosures of offices and take all their office furniture out. and then they would resell them online. And I was asking him, well, what are you doing to get visibility?

6:48He says, honestly, all I'm doing is uploading YouTube videos. I go, do you have any ads? He goes, no, like everything's coming from YouTube. And ultimately I was looking to what he was doing and people were looking for, you know, inexpensive type of office furniture. And this is a great mechanism that was getting traffic naturally either through search on YouTube and also on Google because that was like showing up as well, that would lead people to finding the deals of the day or deals of what he had going on. Fast forward a little bit of going through and learning the YouTube formula. And I was teaching him how videos can get very, very targeted to viewers and they need to be able to take it into a viewing perspective instead of trying to sell people on a chair.

7:36And he's like, well, I'm trying to sell chairs. I'm not trying to get viewers. I says, well, if you do it differently in the sense of realizing, hey, there might be gamers looking for a gaming chair. And maybe you gamify your video where you have an S tier and all the way down to an F tier of the different types of chairs that they can get that would actually lead them to your e-commerce page. And it can kind of really start developing an audience around that. And then too, you can do live streams where you can engage them, answer questions and so on and go from there. Well, what's been interesting was this was actually being done before COVID.

8:12He started to see a massive increase of sales. And he went from one warehouse to two warehouses because he just had all these deals that were coming in and he was moving a lot of product. Well, he actually took off on YouTube. For someone selling used furniture, he was getting 50 ,000, 80 ,000 views per video. And sometimes it was only 10 ,000 views, but it was the right people, the right people watching it. And YouTube found that audience. And it was like YouTube recommending his content was about 75, almost 80 percent of all views that he was getting was when YouTube was recommending. And the other was coming through search.

8:51And when they come search, they'd watch three or four videos. Before you know it, YouTube was recommending even deeper. Well, he not only did seven figures of sales on his e-commerce. he's done eight figures. And he's still, to the end of the day, he came into my inner circle and I was asking him questions on his email list. And I thought anyone that had an e-commerce site had an email list, was doing email marketing. He had none. And I'm like, are you kidding me? You're literally just getting traffic from YouTube. What were the videos about? What was he doing in the videos? Was he just reviewing?

9:23Yeah, so he would do a review. He would do a comparison. He would do a breakdown, things that you need to look for, but you have different types of formats. Like, hey, if you're looking for this chair, you can go in detail. But when he combined what most of your audience already knows, Mike, like the actual marketing, like you drip systems and all this other stuff. When he put that in, he was well over$20 million of sales that was going through. And zero ad spend in the sense of buying for distribution. He would put his money into production. and he actually created his own event where he, in May, he'd actually, every May, he was doing something that was similar to what he would do for Black Friday and made more money in May than he did Black Friday and making a special event where he had a live stream and everything going on.

10:10And so there's a lot of opportunity out there when it comes for you as not only a marketer, but a business owner or a mom and pop to get that visibility where YouTube's really finding the right type of people that would be interested in what you're actually sharing with them. And that value is being consumed in a way where YouTube will put it on an autopilot, really get massive amount of people engaging with your content. Let's get into the details on this. You've already mentioned that the person you are targeting is really important. Let's dive in because I know this is one of your areas of expertise.

10:46So how do we quote unquote, begin getting this right? And I know it starts with the who's so like elaborate, please. Yeah. So when, when I break it down, there was a paper that was published back in 1946 by a gentleman named Abraham Maslow, and he created his hierarchy of needs. I discovered that when I was in high school and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so cool because people are motivated by different types of needs. And when you really break it down on the hierarchy of needs, the emotional connection is really, really high. And I look at whatever I'm trying to do, I'm trying to understand the needs of the individual.

11:35And then I'm not as worried, believe it or not, Mike, on the demographics, like the age, I'm not. I'm more worried about the psychographics of how do they find something valuable or what do they actually need? And if I can speak into that, the demographics will tell me how I need to create content. So like if it's a younger audience, a Gen A, I would totally do it different. Might have same information, but I would present it differently to Gen A versus a boomer. And then two, one of the bigger mistakes that I found is they're like, well, it's for everyone. We want it for everyone. Well, no, there's actually a core audience that's going to be more receptive.

12:14What does that actually look like? And so I know you put on a conference for the last 14 years, right? Yeah. And you put on one too. You know your audience, right? Wouldn't you say you know your audience? Of course. Yeah. We should plug VidSummit. That's your event. Well, but what I'm saying with yours, I would take it back down and saying, okay, hey, you pretty much know your audience. You know what they're going to respond to. You know, almost, you can almost anticipate it because you have like 14 years, almost 15 years worth of interaction with them that you can pretty much say, oh, this is what's going to work really well.

12:49And it's not, it has nothing to do with demographics. Demographics is like who's showing up, right? But it's the way that you communicate. Like, you know, if you do a subject line this way, it will turn off some people that you could go from there. That's the same thing on YouTube. And what I like to do is like look at it in a way where if someone's looking for value, I want to set the stage of, hey, I know who we're targeting. And now I want to be able to do what is really important, which is getting them to click. And the only way that people come and click on something is if they're curious.

13:24They're curious to see what's going on. And that curiosity will earn the click every single time. And so I'm trying to figure out, OK, what would get them curious around what we're actually offering in the video? OK, what would that be? And that curiosity needs to be not only in the title, but the thumbnail where it leads into it. Now, what happens next is is someone's going to click on and they'll give you about five to 10 seconds before they're moving on, especially if they're on mobile phone. It's a little bit faster. If it's a short, it's even faster. It's milliseconds, right? You got a little bit for a swipe up or whatever that may be, but you got to be able to reinforce that curiosity factor.

14:04and so for me you can approach it in so many different ways where you earn the click and what you need to do is earn the view after that because when they're coming on you have about 5 to 10 seconds on a long form video you have about 2 seconds on a short form video to really reinforce that they're in the right place and you're not trying to explain everything and then you get to what you really need to at minute marker three, what you're doing is giving immediately right at the very beginning. And they know exactly what the video is about based on the click. And you tease them a little bit of the things of what you're going to bring in the video, that value proposition that you're going to give them.

14:52So if it's an informational thing, I'm going to give you five tips of how you can use AI right now to make$1 ,000 a week. Okay, I'm very curious about how to make$1 ,000 worth using AI. And so there's opportunities to lead them through it. Now, this leads to a big mistake, Mike, and this is one that is notorious with people that go to social media marketing world and other events like this where they really want to promote, promote, promote. They're already marketing, marketing, marketing, and putting their marketing hat on and they try to sell me. They're trying to get all the credibility, everything that's going on, everything that they learned that you do in ad copy that doesn't work very well in an organic video because you're like, okay, hold up, you know, I'm now skeptical.

15:34I'm going to go click on something else. Oh, I see what their intent is. Instead of saying, look, I just want to help you. And if you just have this video alone, I'm going to help you. You know, that's where it's at. And that's where I know that I'm going to get everything. I'm not going to get to the end of it and say, oh, to get the rest of it, you got to go over here to this page. You could do that at times. But if you do it every video, then you're losing out on that opportunity to have them go deeper with you to know, love and trust you on YouTube and to watch multiple videos, not just that one video.

16:02And so I think a lot of people can get that one view, maybe for 10 minutes, maybe for two seconds, maybe for 10 seconds. But the real value of what you're trying to do is get them not only to consume your video, but to say, where's this channel been my whole life? They have so much of what I was actually looking for and they're going deep. And then two, there's so much value where they're thinking of four or five people naturally that they're going to share. And you do that. You share content naturally. And so I want to make that content so valuable early on, early in the video that people are like, man, this is so great.

16:37And then too, when you bring the value early, they're a little bit more tolerant to stay with you throughout the whole video. Okay. So you've expressed multiple times that you need to understand who that audience is and not think of them as a customer. Yet marketers often think of a customer. So give us some tips on how to like reframe this. So we think of them as if you are not a customer, because I think that might be easy for you, but not so easy for my audience. And maybe a little bit on that would be helpful. Yeah. I try to understand who naturally would find value in the content I'm creating.

17:12And you might say, well, what is, what is the value? And I would say, you're going to entertain them. And maybe you're not. Maybe some people are going to entertain them. Maybe you're going to give them education. You know, so what would you find valuable in education? You might inspire them. You know, it might be like this mindset thing. It's more inspiration education. But there's there's a value prop that that you're looking to do. What I look at is, well, what type of person would appeal to a piece of content that would engage? And so I was just on with an immune doctor. And what she was doing was using YouTube to get more clients coming into her practice.

18:02And she had a couple videos that really took off. We're talking almost a million views on it. And she's like, how do I consistently capitalize on it? And so I says, well, well, let's look at like who's watching the videos. And believe it or not, most of the people that were watching our videos were between the age of 45 and 65 plus. And so when I go into the value of a viewer, I'm trying to put my hat on and say, okay, what's life like for someone 45 plus? I don't care if it's male or female. And I want to just understand what's going on. In the health related niche, they're starting to fill their age.

18:43the energy level is not where it needs to be. There might be some blood pressure issues that they're engaging with, or there might seem other things that are there. They might have a wake-up call where they had a heart attack or something in that, or they know someone that has died. So that's kind of like the mindset of where they're at. But ultimately, they're looking in the mirror and they realize, man, I don't feel like I'm in my twenties anymore. I can't, I'm not, I don't have the energy like that before I need change. So thinking about that from a, uh, psychographics that gives us a good way to understand how we, how we can bring in some curiosity.

19:28Um, you know, where, where, uh, you know, this curiosity would lean into, uh, a particular type of content or also a content strategy where you can actually have a pillar for your content that's actually speaking very directly to them. So in her case, we actually did a video on blood pressure. And the reason why is usually in your 40s or 50s, you're getting your health check. You got to get your prostate checked. There's a lot of little things that's going on. And there's a high number of people, like a very, very high number of people that have to check their blood pressure and it's usually a little bit higher than either they're on medication and or just just saying hey you need to watch this you know we we we uh this is actually happening in in your life right now and they probably know someone that just died um they really do they have a high probability they know somebody that's died so they're a little bit more hyper aware so what do they go they're gonna go look on youtube um how do i bring down my um you know, blood pressure naturally.

20:32Right. And so if that is the curiosity, top 10 foods to bring down your blood pressure naturally, how many of those people that are in that situation would click on it? Probably a lot. And they're curious because they want to know if they have, they're eating those foods, right? Exactly. Exactly. And so she has 1.7 million views on that video. And I says, look, why don't you follow up with that video on something that's not foods, but it, but it's around blood pressure and it could be checking it right. Like I, I, I check my blood pressure a couple of times a week and I don't, sometimes I don't know if I'm doing it right.

21:07I don't understand sometimes where it's at, you know, I just take a picture of it so my doctor can say, Hey, you're doing good or whatever. But at the end of the day, you know, what, what would that be? And she goes, well, let's just talk about how to, how to properly check your blood pressure and, and then avoid five, you know, five mistakes. Okay, great. Five mistakes when taking your blood pressure, you know? And so that is a natural recommendation. So if anyone watched that video, that 1.7 million people that watched that video, when she released that video, she immediately had 865 ,000 views come in with, with, in less than two weeks because of people watching this video, YouTube says, oh, they're interested in, in blood pressure.

21:47Let's send them this other video. And so when I'm breaking down the viewer, I'm not trying to sell them a product. She has a product for them. Okay. She has everything that's going on. What I'm trying to do is bring them enough value where when someone comes on, they know, love, and trust her. They've watched multiple videos. And then they're like, man, what does she have going on? Oh, I didn't know that she has some B12 or whatever. You know, I'm going to, I'm going to be buying that from her. And, and ultimately she might do like a virtual visit or whatever, but that's where that, that process thing.

22:17So think, think of these YouTube videos is very top of funnel. and then as they watch more videos, it gets you closer and closer down to that no love and trust. And I can tell you, if you do it right, you don't have to sell someone. They're already sold. You just create an offer and they'll take it. And I've had people sell out in five minutes on something that they spent hundreds of millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to promote where they're able to do it immediately and sell out within five minutes. So for those people that don't think like you think because you have a very creative mind, They can go into their YouTube analytics, look at their most successful videos and kind of get some data.

22:54Yeah. Any tips? Could they ask AI to do some research on this audience and see what their biggest fears are? Do you have any tips on how to get to or some of their biggest concerns are how to get this information so that your next video can be a little bit more in tune? How do you get that data? Yeah. So what I normally do, if I don't have the data in my own channel, and sometimes I might not want the data in my own channel because I maybe only have like 10 views or 100 views. I want to look out what's out there. So what I normally do is I go out on YouTube and I'm searching very specifically for the type of content that I'd be creating.

23:33And so I would just naturally search what I would think I would search, see what comes up. And what I look for is something that has a whole bunch of views in a short amount of time. And that's what we call an outlier, like something that there's a lot of views, short amount of time. And when you click on it, they don't have a lot of subscribers. So it's like, OK, so there's a lot of general interest in that. I usually copy that URL, put it in a spreadsheet or whatever where I can go back later and do it. or I might save it on YouTube and have a list that I'm able to go back later. But basically, I want to be able to start consuming.

24:12When I get to the part consumed, then I go into the comments. And comments will tell you psychologically how someone found value or not found value in it. That is by far the most important thing. Well, guess what? You can now take these URLs, put them into, you know, Claude or ChatGBT or Gemini. and really say, okay, what do these have in common based on comments? And so they're able to go and engage with the video content itself in the comments. And then two, what was valuable to them? Why was it valuable to them? What was some of the things they missed? And that's a big thing. It's like when you find something that has a whole bunch of views, they say, oh, you should have covered this.

24:54That could be a unique content for you to do something different and distinguish yourself different from that piece of content. And so that's one of the things that I look for very closely. And then too, I do look at the people that are making comments. And so when you're, you can go on and click on it and you can see their profile. And, and I can, I can tell, you know, if it's a young kid or if it's an older parent, or if it's a young kid, by the way they comment, you know, using a parent's account. But that gives us a little bit of context of who we're actually communicating with. But the biggest one is the format, the format of the video, because like, if it's a really quick, fast cuts, you know, that it's, it's made for, for someone a little bit younger.

25:38If it, if it's a little bit more established, it's still a great amount of views. It's not, it's more about the content in it. Um, then, then the edit is more about the delivery of it. Um, then, then the edit, then, you know, Okay, it could be a millennial plus, you know, Gen Xer plus boomer, you know, someone that's really wanting to get that information. Love it. Okay. That was really, really helpful. Hi, my name is Mandy Hedrick and I'm here at Social Media Marketing World. My first time attending Social Media Marketing World and I had won my ticket. And so I attended online and the impact it had in what I could do for my business.

26:14immediately. It was my goal as a business owner to be able to earmark the dollars. This is my second time in person. So I just love being in a room full of people that are like-minded. It's a big investment, but I'm not just investing in myself, but I'm also investing in my clients. And I will be coming back every single year. I'm already ready to buy my next ticket and book my hotel room. Get tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info. Now to the value side of things, You mentioned that there's different ways to create value in your video. You said you can entertain. Clearly, that's Mr. Beast's thing.

26:50You can educate like that example you just gave. You can inspire. Are those the main ways that you add value or are there other kinds of ways that we can add value just to help people wrap their brain around adding value? Yeah. So one of my favorite examples to do. So when you guys have a chance to go to YouTube, I want you to go to Dry Creek Wrangler School. you're going to see someone that is on YouTube. He just hits record and records himself and then hit stops record. He does not edit more than that. And he he's getting in some of his videos, millions and millions of views. And, and what he was trying to use YouTube for was to get people to come to his Wrangler school.

27:35What the heck is a Wrangler school, by the way, is this like for Cal? So it, you know, Yellowstone, how, Oh yeah. Yeah. Uh, so the Dry Creek Wrangler School is, they're going to teach you how to be a cowboy. You're like a cowboy for a week and go from there. But when, when you really break it down on it, I think he has like 1.6 million subscribers. I want to break down when he actually started to pop off. So during the pandemic, he started to pop off massively, right? He was getting ready to shut down a school because like nobody can do it, you know, there. And so he had a little bit more time and he's like, oh, I'm going to just, I'm going to give words of wisdom to people that watch my channel.

28:14And so he was very mindful of people leaning in on some of the comments. And one of the main comments he has is like, man, you got it all together. You know, I'm trying to still figure things out. I'm still in my 20s. And he did a video that has like 8.5 million views that says when you just doesn't, when you just don't, when you ain't got it together. Right. And basically it's like a 16 minute video of him just telling truths and validating kind of some people's thoughts of where they're at and, you know, and giving them hope, giving them courage, right? His next video that he has is how to deal with loneliness.

28:52Okay, COVID, there's a lot of loneliness. He addressed that based off of comments. And so here he is giving cowboy wisdom around a campfire. What's funny is he smokes and it's got his smoke break. He's either have a pipe or a cigar. And so you know that he's just taking a break, hit record, you know, and going from there, but you know, how to deal with loneliness. And his third most popular video is how to be a proper kind of man. Okay. And it's just like gold. You go through those comments, like some of those comments here, 18 ,000 comments on some of these, right? Is this an older guy or is this a, how old is this guy?

29:25I'll bet you he's in his, his, uh, sixties, you know, but he's rough tough. You know, you know, he's seen life, Right. But the value that he's bringing, the values bringing is the world's telling the youth, oh, you're not good enough or you need to be something that you're not. You know, you don't be alpha. Just just be OK. Be beta, whatever. You don't need to be, you know, competitive or you don't need to work hard or whatever that means. Be you're like a soft generation. Right. And he comes on and just tells him how he sees it. Right. And it's that authentic truth. And so the authenticity is his value prop.

30:03He's just authentically him. He's going to say it how he sees it. And he doesn't really care about woke culture or anything like that. He's just saying, I'm just taking it on. I'm going to tell you what I feel. Right. And so all these people that have these questions are coming to him to validate it. Well, here's the great thing, Mike. He went on YouTube to try to sell out and, well, to sell his Wrangler school. He sold out for three and a half years. Like you have to get on a wait list. Because everybody got to know, like, and trust him. That's the key to the whole thing, right? That's it. No, like, and trust.

30:38Absolutely. Okay. So this is a great transition into voice. I know you've got some things to say about voice. A lot of people don't know even what voice they should use and all that kind of fun stuff. So you've introduced this character who has an authentic voice. How do we find our authentic voice? Talk to us a little bit about that. I believe that there's a couple hats that we have on. Sometimes when we're out in our promotion mode where I'm like, okay, what's your elevator pitch? You know, I can't tell you how many times I go to a social media market world. Hey, what do you do? And I know that I need to do my elevator pitch, right?

31:13That's what you do, right? That just does not work on YouTube. Let's put that aside. What people are looking for is if you go to dinner with someone or you're just talking to someone naturally and they're your friend, right? How would you communicate to your friend? Are you going to try to sell them Amway? Well, I guess some people would. But it's just like, at the end of the day, it's like, no, you're just hanging out. You're just kind of going there. You're actually having a conversation. that's why podcasts rock it they're amazing because you're just having a conversation and then people are able to get that value out yeah you you and i are friends we've known each other forever people get a chance to just listen to two guys who are just being real and i guess what you're saying is if you can turn that on to the camera that can be an unlock is that right yeah it's it's like a big unlock it's just like who who you're approaching why why are you communicating with them, you know, and then just say, okay, well, what if it was a friend, someone that's really interested in what you're, what you're doing that you don't have to sell, but you're, you're just talking to them about it.

32:18Right. You're like, oh man, I mean, before this call, we're talking about AI, like that's the type of conversations that really work. It's like, Hey, Hey, are you using this? Are you using claw? What are you doing? We're having these conversations that we'd naturally be having, you know, around lunch or on a call or whatever. We're just going to be having those, uh, that type of, of, of, uh, conversations. That's the voice. Um, now I want to tell you someone that I met that was putting up YouTube videos for like 17 years and they had about 10 ,000 subscribers, but they'd only get like maybe 50 views or, you know, 7 ,000 views on something and then 25 views on the next.

32:54And anyway, um, when I watched his first video that he put out after I was like coaching him on it. I'm like, Oh, this just, just doesn't feel right, man. Like this just doesn't feel right. Like I've seen you do presentations. I've seen you do keynotes and you're magnetic, you're engaging, you know? And he goes, man, I just, I have a kind of a block, you know, I just can't perform to a camera. I can't communicate. I just, I just, I just freeze up. Well, I says, well, why don't you just record from a live studio audience? You got students, right? And he goes, yeah, they can get on zoom. Can't, can't they?

33:28Yeah. Well, then present to them because I know that what he needed was those verbal cues. Um, you know, the verbal cues of, well, nonverbal cues of the leaning in the eye contact, all that kind of stuff, right? Exactly. And so he did it and it was like a night and day difference between it and his first video that went out there. Um, he was able to get 1.5 million views on the first video. And it wasn't a short video either, guys. It was like - Because he had a live audience. Yeah, he did it in front of the live audience, but not like on stage. It was like in front of the camera, he just had a screen behind him that he was doing on Zoom and it was connected to Zoom and he was recording.

34:09Oh, it was a Zoom audience. It wasn't in his office or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So it was like literally in his office, in Zoom, but he was recording it on his camera and then he edited it. But he needed to just have that feedback of just seeing people's faces, right? And then after that, that became his way of doing it because then it was more elevated and then he knew exactly where to put the inflections in his voice. He knows how to lean in because he was a master at that, getting on stages all over the world to doing it. Then he actually found how to do it a little bit easier on camera so to get that camera, deer in the headlights look.

34:44And so for me, I like to find the voice. Now, one that I want to do is a friend of both you and I, which is Pat Flynn. Pat is one of the most amazing people I've ever met in my life. What I love about Pat is Pat is Pat. Pat is authentic. Like if you were to say one thing about Pat, I would say he's authentic and he's transparent. Like those are the two things that I see. You never have to guess what he's thinking. And then two, a third thing is he's super creative. Like he is a creative person. Oh, he is ridiculously creative. I'm in a mastermind with him every week. He's ridiculous. And the thing about Pat, he knows his audience, right?

35:27He gets it. He's able to grow and he's done so much in the space. Well, when he was actually trying to do a new channel for YouTube, I'm like, Pat, you almost have to unlearn what you've learned. You know, you almost need to just disconnect it because it's not working. Like what you do on this will not work for this other audience. and, you know, after, you know, in-depth conversation and then working very specifically on, hey, consider this, Pat's the fastest implementer I've ever seen with anything. He'll consume, he'll ask the right questions and he'll engage. But his audience for his new channel, if you could check it out, Deep Pocket Monsters.

36:07And then he has also Deep Pocket Monsters shorts. Short Pocket Monster, I think it's called. Or Short Pocket Monsters, thank you. But you can see that he's getting millions and millions and millions of views. Billions of views, actually. Yeah. And it's so, so crazy that he's built this whole ecosystem in a niche that already has an ecosystem. Right. And then, too, he didn't come in as the expert. That was the key for this. He came in as someone that was curious to get into the niche. And he wanted to learn. And he had challenges. And he wanted to do it with his family. And he wanted to kind of go through this whole thing.

36:42but it took him a good year to figure out his voice. He had a lot of success and it was like, where's my voice? Where's my voice? And I can honestly say you read some of the comments and he's a powerful storyteller. He understands how to bring people in through humor, how to engage them, how to get them curiously clicking. Right. But he'll put on like an hour 20 you know, video that has really, really high retention. and then some of the comments was, I don't even like Pokemon and I'm watching this and I'm crying like a baby. And it's just like these very, like these really touching stories. Now, folks, Pat, I just talked to him yesterday.

37:24He had 9 ,500 people come to his event that was in Florida. Okay. And that was his second event and he's doing a third one this year. So he has built his entire business on the back of basically doing, and he's been on the show, you all have listened to him, but it just goes to show you, you do not need to be the expert because Pokemon has been around for like 30, 40 years. Right. And there's a lot of big influencers, but he came in, like you said, and he studied this. He's a masterful storyteller and he used all the little skills to basically take off. And now this is kind of like one of his big things.

37:56So let's talk a little bit about the content strategy itself. Right. Let's get into this because like all these stories are really inspiring and hopefully everyone's taking a lot from these stories. but you know, the real question is like, how often do we make content? What kinds of content should we be making? Because there's a lot of talk about shorts, there's longs. I don't know what they're calling them, but what do we do here? When I kind of break it down, I want to look, look and understand who the audience is and what value that I'm bringing. And then the next thing I'm going to look at is, okay, what type of content will resonate with the people that I'm looking to, to watch this short form videos, um, are, are really, really good.

38:33Um, it's something easy that you can do, uh, very quickly and you can start mastering your craft really quickly of how to grab people's attention. Cause you only have a short amount of time to go from there. Um, but I don't like to say, Oh, do shorts, do long, do whatever. What I want to do is take a, take a step back and say, okay, now that I understand who the viewer, I want the viewer to be, what are they naturally watching? And that's where that list of videos come in. And then I want to say, okay, what do they have in common? And you will find that most of them have kind of a format that they're doing.

39:08Some might be, oh, there's a short video that is a clip from a podcast where the nugget is, and they've done quite a bit of that. So they might have 30 or 40 videos that are clipped out of a podcast that are titled in a way that in a short form video, you're like, oh, that was really good information. And then what the natural progression of a person that's watching that would be, man, if I thought that was good, I'm going to go search out that podcast. And if it's on the same channel or something that's named that way, they're going to be looking and finding, and then they're going to be watching a longer form video.

39:42In fact, that's how I do my podcast selection. I don't look at the top 10 of what's on Spotify or what's on YouTube or what's on Apple. What I do is I'm on TikTok or our YouTube shorts or Instagram or Facebook, and I'm just swiping up. I'm like, oh, that was a really cool segment. And I'm like, okay, let me, let me go watch that, that segment. And I go, I go search it out. And that's what natural people do is like, oh, it's using as a little bit of promotion. Now on YouTube, if you do it as shorts, You can actually attach it to the long form and they can go ahead and use that as a link and go from there.

40:14Great traffic source. Great traffic source. So I like to look at what do all those videos have in common? How are they engaging? And I want to look at from, you know, how are they delivering it? Most of the people are talking head like in the industry that we're at. Most people are the talking head and they'll have visuals come up or whatever on on whatever that may be. Well, I want to say, okay, I want to look at very specifically, you know, how do they grab my attention from the title and thumbnail? How do they grab my attention in the first 10 seconds? And then what is the format? And the content format, this is what I call in my book mechanisms.

40:52So you need to have a mechanism in the book where it's leading you along the journey. The easiest mechanism for people that are just starting out is to do lists, what they call listicle videos, like five biggest mistakes, 10 top foods, five things you didn't know, or whatever that is. If you do a listicle, then it's like a natural progression where you say, okay, number five to number one or number one to number five. and people retention-wise will do it as long as you don't get disengaged where you say, oh, this segment's going to be 10 minutes long and then this segment's going to be two minutes long.

41:29No, no, no. They need to know, oh, I'm going to get the information in the time that I have designated to go from there. So if you're bringing value in every little segment, which is a list, right, that number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, they'll pretty much watch the whole video. So that's the easiest way to do that. Now, other mechanisms would be, and this is a Pat Flynn mechanism, which is he's doing a challenge where he's collecting all the cards in a book. Okay. And so he's going through the whole thing and he's going to do it within a certain amount of time. Time bound is a mechanism.

42:03Fulfilling with a challenge of some sort is another mechanism. And so you can basically go through and understand, oh, there's a mechanism between it. Now, a lot of you will give information and you're like, I don't want to do listicles. I want to just give very, very specific information on a specific topic. And I'm like, that's great. That's a, that's a different type of format, right? Now that format is really powerful. It's probably the most powerful format that anyone can use, but it's the power of storytelling. And so you're going to need to set up a story, hook them into the content and set up a story where, where they'll want to go through that story with you to get the value out of the story.

42:46And humans for the longest time from the history of all mankind, you know, we love to tell stories. We love to listen to stories. And so by being a good storyteller and understanding where people are at on their journey of the story and setting things up and properly doing it, that is a mechanism to go from there. I prefer the ABC storyline structure, you know, and I get very, very specific for those that don't know what ABC C storyline is. A is what the video is about. That should be your title of your video. And your B storyline is the why. Why should someone care? Why should someone, why are you doing that video?

43:23And if you're kind of mixing that in together, those are two solid storylines. Now the C storyline is that common thread of something that's pulling you through the A and B storyline, You know, and so that's something super powerful. Now, you might not have any clue whatsoever of how to tell a good story, but you can learn it. This is one skill set. I do believe anyone that applies a little bit of time to really understand who they're talking to, be relatable, and go through the process of storytelling, they can make a very powerful video. And so I see a lot of people pop off where they're not doing listicle videos, they're not doing entertainment videos, but they're actually just being them telling a story, giving very specific information that they need to know a part of the story, you know.

44:15And so that is definitely the type of content. Now, the strategy I always do is like, okay, I want data. Data does not lie. Data tells us what's true and what's not. And so we can validate all our assumptions through data. In fact, YouTube has done more for data analytics than any other platform out there. Trust me, I use them all. And YouTube gives you every little minute things in real time. You can get real time data and know exactly where that's at. And then two, the big thing too is if you know someone's watching it on a mobile phone versus a TV. I would say, do you know what? If they're TV, they're not going to skip much.

45:01They're in a lean back experience and there's a high probability they're watching it with someone. And so they might be having conversations around. So maybe I want to go a little bit longer than instead of doing a six minute video or a 10 minute video or a 20 minute video, I might want to do an hour video because they're in a lean back experience. If they're on the mobile, maybe it's a quick question that they'd have. Maybe it's something that there is a quick break between work at their lunch hour. it could be that they're on their phone listening while they're working out or walking you know there's a lot of different things and so I try to understand what device type and then how they're actually watching it to to understand oh this what this makes sense you know of course they're going to watch 20 minutes of this video if they're watching tv and maybe only five minutes of it is because you know the the way that we engage on mobile phones is differently than on tv so I like to take all that together and say, okay, what worked, what didn't work.

45:56And when I say, hey, the content was really good, but you know, there might be people dropping off in the first 10 seconds. I know that I either attracted the wrong audience, number one, or I didn't entice them to watch the video in that 10 seconds. And I like to, I like to work on that 10 seconds and, and test it out with something new, right? A new video. And if I get better attention, let's say that I lose not half, maybe I lose 30%, then I know that it worked. I know that now I'm a little bit more mindful of where they're at, but I might lose them at minute marker three. Okay. What's happening at minute marker three?

46:32Am I taking too long to get to the value? Am I not persuading them to say, oh, you know, this is number tip number three, number five is going to blow your mind. But before we get to number five, we got to go to number four. Okay. That's an easy way to do that. Or it could be, you know, realistically, we have a lot of fun. The biggest value that I, that I can bring you in this video is at the end of the video. So then they're thinking, oh, okay, I want to, I know this is valuable, but there's something bigger, more value at the end of the video. So you're kind of persuading them in that. Folks, if you want to find a lot more value, there's a couple, there's two things I want to really have you focus on right now.

47:08Number one, Daryl's brand new book, the YouTube formula 2.0, I believe is dropping literally within days of this podcast episode. So get it wherever you can buy books. Secondly, I will be at Daryl's event called Vid Summit in Dallas, Texas, September 29th to October 1st. So if you want to go here, Daryl, speak about all this stuff, I strongly encourage you to go and I won't, I'm just attending. So go flag me down and say hi to me. Now, beyond the book and the conference, is there anywhere else you want to send people if they're interested in working with you, Daryl? Yeah. So I do group coaching.

47:41I don't do one-on-one anymore, just with my schedule, with The Chosen and everything I'm doing on that side, you can go to channeljumpstart.com and you can apply to be a student. And it doesn't matter if you're starting out, doesn't matter if you've been doing it for 10 years or you have billions of views. What I want to do is teach you how I see YouTube and then how you approach your viewer and how you approach content by understanding your viewer. And we use this mantra, plan, execute, analyze, and adjust. That's just basically the scientific process, right? So we just want to be able to have a plan and I want to help you create that plan and then execute on that plan.

48:18And then it's more about the data. It's like when you analyze and adjust, that's when you succeed. If you just don't do anything and you keep on putting it out, that's called insanity. You know, for me, it's just like hit or miss. What we want to do is see and understand what we did right, what we did wrong, what we can improve on, what are some other questions that we would have and adjust our plan moving forward. and I just know that as you do that, it gives you a better opportunity to really engage an audience. And then too, you might think, this is not for me in the sense of YouTube. That's okay.

48:51You will be left behind. And I want to tell you, right, because the biggest thing right now is authenticity and everything with AI and everything that's going on, people still want human connections and those that are actually building connections, i.e. communities are going to win. And I'm seeing it on a local scale right now in ways that is just blowing away any other forms of getting that word out. And then too, it's something that once you get in, like I said, YouTube pays you too. And I know a lot of people stopped doing what they thought they wanted to do and are doing more YouTube because YouTube has been so lucrative for them.

49:26Folks, start your YouTube journey today. Go right now to Amazon on your phone and buy Daryl Lee's new book, The YouTube Formula 2.0. Then book your ticket to Dallas and go to his conference. And then maybe you can decide to join his Jumpstart. How do they find that Jumpstart application? ChannelJumpstart.com. ChannelJumpstart.com. Folks, I've known Daryl for a very long time. He's a good friend. He's the real deal. Daryl, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thanks, Mike. Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at SocialMediaExaminer.com slash 735. If you're new to the show, be sure to follow us.

50:01If you've been a listener for a little while, would you leave us a review? I would love that. And let your friends know about this show. You can tag me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and or X. Do check out my other show, the AI Explored podcast. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. Catch you next time. The Social Media Marketing podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.

50:31Hey, before you go, we just announced our first speakers for Social Media Marketing World 2027. Two dozen practitioners, every single one, personally recruited, every session, pitch free. Go see the lineup and grab your discounted tickets right now at socialmediamarketingworld.info.