The Curse of a Viral Video

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

0:38Today, we're diving into the remarkable story of Colin Rosenblum. Wow. Did you pay it to say that? That's crazy. That's very kind. It's crazy, but it's my favorite way to learn about a subject matter. I'm learning about so much more now that I can turn this research into like a seven minute podcast that I can listen to just when I'm walking. Did you tell it that I worked at the front desk of a hotel? Dude, the prompt is just, make me a podcast about Colin from Colin and Samir. That's it. I may be biased, but I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm hooked. So if you guys haven't checked out Copilot, check it out.

1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. What's up, everyone? Welcome to this episode of Creator Support, the show where we answer your questions about the business of being a creator. On today's episode, we dive into the curse of the viral video. We also talk about some of the latest announcements from YouTube and Meta and what they mean for creators. Then we answer the question, how do you get your first brand deal after experiencing a viral spike on a video?

1:42All right, if you make it to the deep end, let us know. All right, a lot has happened since the last time we were sitting here on this show. What has it been, two weeks? Two weeks. We spent about like five days at YouTube and then following that up, basically went straight to Meta's campus and spend three days at Metta. Some days in between that were fun. You're just going to leave out Philadelphia? No, we went to Philly. Not just some days in between. We went to Philadelphia for the Premier Lacrosse League Championships. That was very fun. We sat on the field. That was very fun. Just some days.

2:13There were some days in between. Can't just call Philadelphia just some days. Well, here was my trouble with Philadelphia. You're a big Philly guy. Yeah, how dare you do that to the city of Philadelphia? It was really hard to find, like, a piece of spinach in Philadelphia is, like, one of the hardest things to find. Like, a kid from L.A. traveling through Philadelphia was hard. The, like, healthiest thing we ate was at a gas station. Samir, it's not a gas station. Wawa is a gas station. No, it's not. It is. You can get gas outside of the Wawa, but it doesn't make it a gas station. That's a gas station.

2:50It's a Wawa, Samir. It's a gas station. It's a land of opportunity where you can get anything you want. Okay. Well, we're going to talk to you guys about everything that we just experienced going and spending time at YouTube, talking with the CEO of YouTube for an hour on mics, which will come out on our main channel. And then we'll tell you about our experience at Meta, where we sat, I don't know, five feet from Mark Zuckerberg himself. From Zuck. Didn't get to talk to him. Yeah. We're also going to answer your questions on this episode. The first question that we found really interesting was from Prada in our Discord.

3:20said, new video just blew up. How do I have that traffic carry over to other videos? None of my other videos appear to be getting suggested alongside it. Will it naturally pick back up once people seek out the videos on my channel themselves? This is a plight that happens to a lot of early stage creators. It happened to us a lot when we were first starting out. This kind of curse of a viral video. And we'll get into it. Ah, the curse of a viral video. It's also almost Halloween time. Spooky. All right, we will get into that question, but first we want to thank the sponsor of this episode, YouScreen.

3:54Samir, question. Hit me. Why are memberships great for creators? Three words. Monthly. Yep. Recurring. Yep. Revenue. Bingo. Safety against algorithms. How many of these do you want me to do, Colin? That's good. Those are all reasons why memberships are great for creators. YouScreen is a company that helps creators build memberships that bring them closer to their audiences and build reliable recurring sources of income. YouScreen has helped creators earn more than$150 million and reach over 9 million users. And all of that is rooted in their belief that content and community are what make a great membership offering.

4:30One of the coolest things about YouScreen is that they will help you create standalone apps. A creator that Samir and I have followed for a long time, Yoga with Adrienne, has her Find What Feels Good community. And we've been members of it, actually, for a couple of years. Within the app, you get access to all of her videos without ads. you get exclusive content like her monthly vlogs, and you get access to the entire community, which is incredibly active. Every day, people are posting in that community, encouraging each other. It's pretty incredible. Uscreen doesn't offer just videos. You can also live stream within the app to your audience.

5:01Uscreen offers creators a membership expert to guide them along the way in launching their community. And if you're already using another membership platform, they'll actually help you migrate your content and your community over to Uscreen. They also have a resource called Membership Plus, where you can learn best practices for memberships and learn from case studies from other creators. You screen, I screen, we all screen. For you screen. But okay, if you're a creator and you're interested in memberships, check out you screen, click the link in our description, reach out to them and tell them Colin and Samir sent you.

5:31Okay, so let's talk about this question from Prada about a video that just blew up, but the traffic is not going over to their other videos. The question you have to ask yourself there is, do you want to repeat this style of video? And is this video an outlier because it's potentially a change in format, a change in concept? Like, did you hit a different community or did you change the style of the video to have it perform better? Yeah, I think what's happening right now is like people are potentially taking too many signals from a single viral video. And I think it does mess with your head. Like when we were first starting out and something would overperform in our library, or like we'd put something out and something would overperform, you know, there's parts of it that would indicate to me, okay, we should keep doing this.

6:20Um, but that can also put you in a bit of a box creatively and start to freak you out of like, oh no, I didn't really want to do that. Or maybe I didn't want to do that. Um, and it doesn't surprise me that there's not traffic going over to your other videos, unless it was the exact same style. If you enjoyed making this video, you should look now 12 months in the future and say, if I make two of these a month for the next 12 months, where am I going to be? Because then you're in a good spot. Because at the end of the day, like when I even look at the Colin and Samir channel, it took us years and years and years to develop a format where the viewership of the library is growing on a daily basis.

7:02And that has actually happened primarily this year. when we had a library of long-form interviews, that is what has been growing. You know, like the traffic to those videos now has substantially increased this year. That really wasn't the case last year. Yeah. I think it's important as a creator to de-emphasize the importance on virality because we seldom go viral. Yeah. Like our career is now a little bit more established. We are in this career of being creators, but it does not rely on going viral ever. Yeah. It's just not a part of what we need. And I would say most creators don't need to be going viral ever.

7:48Like it's a very small percentage of creators who are trying to hit that style of viewership. Now you do need viewership. Sure. Of course. No doubt. But what we're saying is you don't need like explosive viewership all the time. Yeah. You don't need it. It's great to have it, but you don't need it. You just also don't even really need explosive viewership. Like we have videos that have accrued in viewership and gone way outside of our maybe core subscribers, core demographic, but it happens at like a slower rate over time. You look back at a video six months later and you're like, wow, that one really performed.

8:20It's not always that viral pop. Yeah. And again, like there is a curse to it. We've talked to a ton of creators about it. Marques Brownlee said to us, the best thing that never happened to him was an early viral video. we can take way too many signals from the reward of virality. You know, we did make a, you made a YouTube short this year about the three oldest videos on YouTube that did 36 million views. And that is viral, in my opinion. That's a viral short. The strategist mind would go, we should make a ton of listicles about YouTube videos. But you take a step back and you go, does that actually add anything to our brand, to the brand of Colin and Samir?

9:00maybe a little bit of visibility, maybe a little bit of, you know, okay, that's cool, but it really doesn't add to the broader picture of the brand. And so then it's like, I think we've gotten to a point where we've done this long enough to go, okay, no, we don't need to take signals from that. That was a cool experiment, but let's not do another one. I do think it is important to think about over time, how do you make sure that if you do go viral, you can ensure that the maximum amount of people are interested in going and watching your library. And there are some good examples of this. I think the Styx guys right now who just released their video with Mark Rober about turning his life into a movie.

9:39In that video, they tell you that this is part of a series where they've been making it for other creators like Ryan Trahan and the goal is to do it for Mr. Beast. So even if you only watch one standalone video, can you make sure that audiences know the greater world that this is a part of? Agreed. Like even for us in a lot of our episodes, you know, in 2022, which was a major year of growth for us, if we brought up another creator that we had made an episode about, we would make sure you knew there was a full episode about this. Virality only matters if you have a consistent format. That's my opinion.

10:19Because now if our next interview goes completely viral, there are, you know, 10, 20 interviews that you can find yourself in if you enjoyed that style. I would say format and value prop. Yeah. Format and value proposition. You need to have a consistent value prop so that if someone does come across one of your videos that goes viral and they do search for another video, they get that same value. Yeah. I think, um, you know, we were just with Jack Coyne in New York who has a TikTok show called Trackstar, where you guess, you know, the, if you, if you guess the song, you win five bucks, it doubles every time.

10:55Uh, and he's starting to get, you know, major celebrities on the show. And I look back at that and, and you're referring to yourself because you were on the show. No, I was referred to, I was on the show, but I was referred to as a semi-famous person by who in the comments. It was like, I liked when the show was about normal people. Now you have semi-famous people on here. Okay. And I was like, you know what? I'll take semi-famous. Yeah, that's actually, That's fine. I'll take semi-famous. I did pretty well. With a house wide open. Yeah. I did pretty well on the show. Yeah. I just wasn't sure if you were referring to yourself as the famous people, the famous celebrities.

11:26No. Who are gracing the show. Also, not part of the point. The point is I can sit and watch that show. Like, I can just crush through that. Like, I go on the TikTok page and I just, I was sitting on the plane before we took off from San Francisco to LA and I probably watched 50. I go on the TikTok page. Is that like an old person type of thing to say? No, no, no. Like I log in to the TikTok website. No, I was watching the TikTok. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was watching the TikTok. Yeah. And the content was playing. Yeah. Okay. No, I go on their TikTok page. What am I supposed to say? How would you describe that?

11:59No, you just said like, I go on the TikTok page as if there's one page that's like the No, I was talking about the Trackstar TikTok page. I just, you know. Okay, the channel, the TikTok channel. Trying to make sure we're staying with the times. The TikTok? I don't know, man. I don't know. Maybe there's a cooler way to say that. Okay. All I'm saying is that if that comes across your feed and you click through, you can go back and watch a ton of them. They have the exact same format. They start the exact same way. You can get pulled into that format. And you look at even at the top right now with what Mr.

12:27Beast is doing, he's replicating formats. Okay, do you like$1 hotel versus$100 ,000 hotel? Let me show you$1 yacht versus a million dollar yacht. You like that? Let me show you$1 supercar versus a million dollar supercar, right? So like formats matter in the context of virality and library viewership. So viral videos can be a curse if you don't have a format. Or a consistent value prop. Yeah. I get stressed about adjusting format now on the main channel because I am looking at library views on a daily basis and they are like growing at a very rapid pace. And it's a really positive thing for us from a brand perspective and from a monetization perspective.

13:12Our AdSense revenue is the highest it's ever been. And that is largely because of the library viewership. Yeah. But don't you think YouTube knows how to deliver a certain type of format and video to someone who likes it? I think so. I'm not afraid that if we were to start uploading a bunch of 15-minute studio tour style videos. Yeah. Maybe this is wrong. I'm not worried that, you know, people who are used to our now hour and a half podcasts are going to show up on those videos and not like them or something, or the experience will be that different. Yeah. I would assume that YouTube will find the person who's interested in the 15-minute.

13:50Yeah, I think it's a safe assumption. But I look at channels like Diary of a CEO, you know, that's growing quite a bit as a podcast channel or Andrew Schultz's Flagrant. And I look at those and I'm like, they don't vary in format. and they're growing at a really rapid pace. Can we vary in format now? I don't know. I mean, I'd like to, but I don't know. I don't know the answer. Yeah, I think we can do whatever we want. It just depends how much we, how we interact with the signals that we get from putting out an experiment. Yeah. Do we get fearful because we put out a 15-minute episode of a studio tour or something?

14:31it doesn't do well and then we go oh we can't do it anymore we let's go back to the podcast yeah yeah i think that's also a zoom out of like what is the brand we're building yeah the brand we're building a podcast it is and that's where i get you know i'm like can we vary in format in that or is that a separate channel again it comes back to this this concept of like the library being one of the most valuable things so i don't know i'm curious to hear what you guys think this This is a creator support question from us to you. I don't think we can start any more channels right now. No, we can't start other channels.

15:06But we have enough that we can put other content on. We have enough channels. And I have a lot of domains, too. We have a lot of websites that we can put stuff on. That's true. We have a lot of websites. A lot of websites. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back.

15:38Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast for 40 % off. Terms apply. Let's talk about some of the announcements, how the platforms are about to change. We started the trip going to YouTube, sitting down with Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube. That interview is coming out very soon. I'm excited for everyone to hear that. Let's talk about some of the announcements they made and some of the takeaways from the time at YouTube. So a lot of the announcements were sort of focused on the mobile-first short-form creator, whether it be YouTube Create, which is the standalone editing app.

16:15Yeah, so let me read what they announced. So they announced YouTube Create, which is a new app that's similar to TikTok's CapCut. It's essentially a mobile editing app. It's only available on Android, which we can talk about in a second. They launched Dream Screen, which is a new AI feature, specifically for shorts, where you can use text prompts to generate AI-generated videos and photos. They announced Aloud, which is automatic dubbing. So in our YouTube backend, we can now dub our content into other languages using Aloud. They also announced an AI assistant in YouTube Studio who will help with music recommendations as well as topic ideas and outlines.

16:56for potential videos. I guess those are the announcements. Those are the announcements. Yeah, there's nothing else that they announced. Yeah, so these are primarily really outside of the research assistant and allowed, focused at the short form mobile first creator and really kind of focused at the hobbyist. Right, the like first time potentially uploader or creator. Yeah, because basically all of it is lowering the barrier, which you can zoom out and go, that's a good thing. But it also just creates more content. Now, is more content a good thing for the ecosystem? I think it's a good thing for the platform, right?

17:41More people uploading to YouTube is net positive. The challenge that YouTube faces is that it's way easier to make a Instagram reel or a TikTok right now, you know, and that they need to compete in that direction of like your first path into the platform to becoming a creator on the platform. So these make it easier to do, specifically YouTube Create, I think makes it a lot easier to do. Important that it's available only on Android to start. I think that's important just if you zoom out and think about the global creator economy. India does not have any ByteDance products, so they do not have CapCut.

18:15They do not have TikTok. So YouTube Shorts and YouTube Create have a massive opportunity there. Android is the primary device that's used over there. So that makes sense to me. Um, but yeah, it does seem like not there weren't, and we talked to Neil about this, not a lot of announcements that are geared towards the long form creator on YouTube. Yeah. Now that is to say you can edit horizontal videos in YouTube, in YouTube create. Yeah. It would have to be basically phone footage. So it's not super heavy. Right. Files aren't heavy. Um, but yeah, not that much of an emphasis on the, I guess I would call it like professional long form creator.

18:55Yeah. Which maybe that's a really small percentage actually. It might be a very small percentage of YouTube. That gets more specific high touch treatment when it comes to what they need. Yeah. I think I'll save some of this to say, listen to our interview with the CEO. Cause we give, we give our POV and our feedback on what we think for the future of YouTube. But I think for creators to just react to these announcements, like my biggest takeaway from all of this was like, focus on the timeless concepts, the timeless concepts of like storytelling and connecting with an audience. All these features are going to come.

19:30They're going to be new things on the platform over the next year or two. AI is going to accelerate a lot of this, but just get really rooted in the timeless concepts and just stick to those. You know, like how do I tell a compelling story? How do I connect with an audience on a deep level? How do I make sure I'm engaging with my audience on a regular basis? Just like, like really focus on those. How do I develop formats? How do I like, I would say even before that, is there an underserved market that I care about? Yeah. And which platform do they live on? Are they on YouTube? Do they watch shorts?

20:02Are they on Instagram? Like those are the two questions I think for like the early stage creator is an underserved market that doesn't have enough content out there. It doesn't have enough media about what is happening within that community. Can you be the person to provide that? And then where do those people hang out? So now let's go over to Palo Alto and Meta. Palo Alto was beautiful. Just have to say. The weather was great. It was a great time. We walked around Stanford. It felt like I was in the social network. Very nice. Interesting experience just because you and I are part of this generation that like got Facebook at the end of high school.

20:33Yeah. Yeah. Like knew what it was like to get what felt like, even though there was MySpace, the first real social network. Maybe I said the TikTok because it used to be called the Facebook. Sure, yeah. Yeah, so it's possible. I'm from that generation. But it felt like we were stepping into a bit of history by going to Meta and going to Facebook. We also haven't engaged with Meta that much. True. You know, like we've been so YouTube. We are very YouTube first creators. And we haven't engaged with Meta as much and went to Meta Connect, which is their event that's similar to Made on YouTube. It's where they're announcing new features.

21:07And they announced features in three different categories. One was mixed reality. One was AI. And then the third was smart glasses. There were some stark differences between, you know, spending a few days at YouTube, spending a few days at Meta. Mainly, you know, the announcements from YouTube, it's very clear they are driven towards helping creators make videos because it helps the advertising business. Like that's what it is. It's a little bit more niche. Head over to Meta and it's like, we are just focused on the future of human connection. Like not creators. necessarily, but just how you interact.

21:44And that's what their products are more geared towards. Creators are a part of that. WhatsApp is communication. Even Instagram being so heavily DM focused. Like this is more about communicating than it is a creator making something that someone will then consume. It's not as much about entertainment as it is about communication. And as we were flying to Palo Alto, I had this thought where I was curious about their announcements because I was like, you know what is interesting is my entire family, even my family in India, my 80-year-old aunt in India uses WhatsApp and Facebook and maybe Instagram, but would never use YouTube.

22:22Maybe watches videos. Like she probably uses, so, okay, sorry. She doesn't like create anything on YouTube. She definitely watches like music. And in India, people - But is not leaving a comment. No, is not engaging with YouTube in the same way. Doesn't have like a YouTube account necessarily. Yeah, my entire family uses Meta on a daily basis, uses a meta product on a daily basis. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp. Those are massive communication platforms. So the way meta has to move is to actually encompass all of those, like all of everyone. YouTube needs to consider everyone, but they're a little bit more targeted.

23:02Way more targeted. Way more targeted, especially with the YouTube app and YouTube shorts. YouTube TV is different. I think a more comparable, sort of experience would have been made on YouTube in New York and then an Instagram keynote specifically for how Instagram has changed. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So in this, like Meta announced Mixed Reality, which is their new VR headset, the Quest 3. Crazy experience. Like you and I got to experience that. That was crazy. You basically put on the headset and you're in a room and inside of that room, there's like another world. that you can access. There's things on the walls on this table in front of you and I.

23:40There could be a board game that we're playing. And we did those things. Yeah, we did those things. It was crazy. Bizarre. It was very bizarre. And the quality of it was substantial. A lot of people have been talking about the Lex Friedman, Mark Zuckerberg podcast and how the jump from last year, what the metaverse looked like, to this year, what the metaverse looks like. Those were photorealistic versions of Lex Friedman and Mark Zuckerberg. If you have not seen this, we will link it. You should absolutely watch it. And you know what, Jesse, let's play a clip of it right now just while I'm talking so you can get a sense of what is happening.