Building a Personal Brand On YouTube + Other Social Medias

[Diego Liu]

Hey man! I saw your post on my thread and came over.

I just read through your entire thread. Awesome progress! I picked up and learned quite a few things as well. It's also insane how many similar insights we both came to without first reading each other's posts. For example, regarding this post on the algorithm, I also found out the difference between flatlined and breakout growth.

Is The YouTube Algorithm Screwing Us Over?
​

UPDATE - So, I wanted to do a little bit of a test.

For most of my YouTube video content since I started, a lot of the traffic I've gotten has come from my tiktok following. I would simply just tell them to go watch my video and a bunch of people would come watch.

But recently, I noticed something. For the past 2 videos or so I did not do any promotion on tiktok, yet in my YouTube analytics I became aware of something very valuable that I think can help a lot of people with their channel.

YouTube is showing my videos to THOUSANDS of people. As a matter of fact, the 2nd most recent video I posted has gotten about 50,000 impressions and no advertising on tiktok.. It's all organic from YouTube

Yet only 3,500 of those 50,000 saw the video... HMMM..

I wanted to see if this would happen again, so I posted another video recently and even though it didn't blow up like the last one, my newest video has been shown to over 9.1 thousand people YET it only has 500 views currently..

Here's why this is so interesting and valuable:

It proves that YouTube is still a working platform that you can build a massive audience on IF you do it right..

What I mean by right is: Guess what the click through rate of the video that got 3.5k views was?

6.3% - Although that's not TERRIBLE.. It just goes to show. What if I absolutely NAILED the thumbnail and a ridiculous amount of those people clicked on the video?

Here's my guess as to how the YouTube algorithm seems to work in terms of this:

YouTube will show your video to thousands of people, but when they do this they're only TESTING your video. If you absolutely nail the video idea, title, and thumbnail, you will get a massive amount of clickers, and YouTube will WANT to promote your video..

Yes. They will WANT to promote your video and give you success on your channel because your video is keeping people on their platform.

But the title and thumbnail are HALF the battle. The other half is actually creating a video where people STAY and watch the whole thing, and like, comment and share the video.

In conclusion, the click through rate and audience retention percentages are the most important part of a YouTube video.

After seeing this in action I am officially out of excuses as to why the YouTube algorithm would ever "Work against me". Nonono, YouTube is gonna show your video to people no matter what. Even if you have the shittiest video of all time, they're going to test it.

The YouTube algorithm isn't "working against you", it's just that the audience that YouTube showed it to had 0 interest in your video, or your video just wasn't really that, good, or even your thumbnail just didn't make any sense.

BONUS Insight:

* I've noticed that YouTube never stops testing videos. Just because those 50,000 people saw my video and only 6% clicked doesn't mean my video was bad (it might), because that's just one audience. YouTube will continuously TEST the video through the years with new audiences. If it hits an audience that loves the video, the video could explode in the future when I'm least expecting it.


I hope this was valuable!

On top of that, you have a great attitude in recognizing areas that can be improved. You don't let your ego get in the way and are open to change:

At first it made me angry and I just labeled these people as haters, but no. It was true.

I'll stay updated with your progress. Keep up the great work!

 

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[Diego Liu]

Sure. I can explain how I do it but can't guarantee it will work for you.
Here's an example from one of my videos when you do a Google search.

You need to approach it a bit like SEO rather than you would YouTube research. I use a free account I created with SpyFu to do keyword research on the topics I'm thinking about. For example, if I were creating a video about watermarking photos using Photoshop I could search "Watermark Photoshop". It then gives the results below.

I can see this would probably bring an OK monthly search volume in the US (I usually check UK and US figures) but I like volumes to be +1,500 searches a month. I could make a good video about how to remove a watermark in Photoshop but I don't agree with that.

Now I research the same idea in the TubeBuddy Keyword Explorer to find out what people are searching for there. It's usually different to how people use Google.

I can see from this the volume is much higher than Google at 38k monthly searches but I might not be competitive against existing videos. I'll now try to find an angle I can use for the video. In this example, I can create a video explaining how to batch watermark multiple images because there are quite a few monthly searches but much less competition. I'll also check out the ideas on SpyFu to see if people are searching for similar ideas on Google.

When I upload the video I'm sure to add Tags for the keywords I've chosen. I also write a reasonable length video description (+200 words) that mentions my chosen keywords a few times. I've found this seems to be important for Google to pick up the video.

After this, it's a waiting game. Hopefully, either YouTube search will pick it up or Google will pick it up and start to promote you. Whichever pick you up first, the other tends to follow later. It's slow growth but it's regular. Here are the figures for the video I created.

Here's where the traffic is coming from.

External is 88.8% Google in this example. Here are the traffic growth figures

The green line is YouTube search and the blue line is Google. The video only pulled around 200 views in the first week so was very disappointing. The CTR was only 1.2% at that time but it's now 10% - 15%.

I guess this is an example of an evergreen video and it's the approach I had been following until around 8 months back when I started to experiment with trying to make more popular videos. The nice thing about the evergreen videos is that my viewer figures don't fluctuate a lot. A typical new release will get me around 1,500 to 4,000 views in a week but look at my 30-day stats and you don't really notice the weekly video releases.

BUT there can be problems when you get picked up by Google. For one, it can make your viewer retention look like this

The graph looks terrible because Google picks out the key points in the video that might interest the searcher and recommends they watch that section.

Overall, I've had reasonable success with this approach and after experimenting with another approach for 8 months, I'm going back to it. I'm not on YouTube to be famous, I'm there as it's part of my promotion strategy.

I don't know if this will help you but hopefully, it's given you something to think about.

Wow, kudos for doing such a thorough walk-through.
(25% CTR is INSANE by the way!)

I'm in the self-development niche, and only 7.3% of the views came from YouTube searches and 1.4% came from External in the last 28 days.

However, I've recently noticed some videos with decent CTR and AVD (of course, there's always room for improvement) yet still not getting many impressions. Some keyword research might be worth looking into. One thing I've found out doing YouTube (applicable to life in general too) is that oftentimes just a few low-hanging fruit changes can make a world of difference.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[Cameraman]

Wow, kudos for doing such a thorough walk-through.
(25% CTR is INSANE by the way!)

I'm in the self-development niche, and only 7.3% of the views came from YouTube searches and 1.4% came from External in the last 28 days.

However, I've recently noticed some videos with decent CTR and AVD (of course, there's always room for improvement) yet still not getting many impressions. Some keyword research might be worth looking into. One thing I've found out doing YouTube (applicable to life in general too) is that oftentimes just a few low-hanging fruit changes can make a world of difference.

Thanks for sharing!

I think you are spot on with your thoughts on just a few simple changes can cause dramatic improvements.

The 25% CTR is insane when it's taken out of context. Imagine someone searching for a topic where there aren't many relevant videos. Also when most of the videos are between 15 and 25 minutes whilst yours is only 8 minutes, a 25% CTR isn't that extraordinary. If you look at the typical browse CTR on my videos it's more like 4% to 6%.
Context is everything.

 

[mikecarlooch]

Sure. I can explain how I do it but can't guarantee it will work for you.
Here's an example from one of my videos when you do a Google search.

View attachment 43497

You need to approach it a bit like SEO rather than you would YouTube research. I use a free account I created with SpyFu to do keyword research on the topics I'm thinking about. For example, if I were creating a video about watermarking photos using Photoshop I could search "Watermark Photoshop". It then gives the results below.

View attachment 43490

I can see this would probably bring an OK monthly search volume in the US (I usually check UK and US figures) but I like volumes to be +1,500 searches a month. I could make a good video about how to remove a watermark in Photoshop but I don't agree with that.

Now I research the same idea in the TubeBuddy Keyword Explorer to find out what people are searching for there. It's usually different to how people use Google.

View attachment 43491

I can see from this the volume is much higher than Google at 38k monthly searches but I might not be competitive against existing videos. I'll now try to find an angle I can use for the video. In this example, I can create a video explaining how to batch watermark multiple images because there are quite a few monthly searches but much less competition. I'll also check out the ideas on SpyFu to see if people are searching for similar ideas on Google.

When I upload the video I'm sure to add Tags for the keywords I've chosen. I also write a reasonable length video description (+200 words) that mentions my chosen keywords a few times. I've found this seems to be important for Google to pick up the video.

After this, it's a waiting game. Hopefully, either YouTube search will pick it up or Google will pick it up and start to promote you. Whichever pick you up first, the other tends to follow later. It's slow growth but it's regular. Here are the figures for the video I created.

View attachment 43492

Here's where the traffic is coming from.

View attachment 43493

External is 88.8% Google in this example. Here are the traffic growth figures

View attachment 43494

The green line is YouTube search and the blue line is Google. The video only pulled around 200 views in the first week so was very disappointing. The CTR was only 1.2% at that time but it's now 10% - 15%.

I guess this is an example of an evergreen video and it's the approach I had been following until around 8 months back when I started to experiment with trying to make more popular videos. The nice thing about the evergreen videos is that my viewer figures don't fluctuate a lot. A typical new release will get me around 1,500 to 4,000 views in a week but look at my 30-day stats and you don't really notice the weekly video releases.

View attachment 43495

BUT there can be problems when you get picked up by Google. For one, it can make your viewer retention look like this

View attachment 43496
The graph looks terrible because Google picks out the key points in the video that might interest the searcher and recommends they watch that section.

Overall, I've had reasonable success with this approach and after experimenting with another approach for 8 months, I'm going back to it. I'm not on YouTube to be famous, I'm there as it's part of my promotion strategy.

I don't know if this will help you but hopefully, it's given you something to think about.

This is amazing. Thank You ! Didn't know this could be done..

I'm assuming that for the most part this strategy is for videos that do mostly tutorials rather than other types of information/entertainment content?

 

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[mikecarlooch]

UPDATE -

I've always made my tiktok videos on my phone and started posting some of them to YouTube shorts with no luck. The process was just: record a video on my phone, edit it in tiktok, download it, post on youtube shorts.

The reason I did videos this way for so long was simply because I thought posting videos that you made on an external camera or app simply would not do as well.

Recently, I decided to test that limiting belief. Whenever I go on social media I see a lot of people making higher quality videos with subtitles.. that were performing extremely well.

I decided to find out exactly how they were making these videos, the exact fonts and edits they were using.

Something awesome that never occurred to me is that I have so many key points in my YouTube videos that can literally be turned into tiktoks. I NEVER thought about this.

I decided to test it out: If I take clips from my youtube videos, and add subtitles using "The Bold Font" in premiere pro, and sized the videos for tiktok, would it work?

You bet.. 10's of thousands of people were watching each one of these videos and it's definitely a strategy i'll continue using.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a video I watched that taught me how to make these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqylhHsT9fE

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqylhHsT9fE

 

[mikecarlooch]

Hey man! I saw your post on my thread and came over.

I just read through your entire thread. Awesome progress! I picked up and learned quite a few things as well. It's also insane how many similar insights we both came to without first reading each other's posts. For example, regarding this post on the algorithm, I also found out the difference between flatlined and breakout growth.


On top of that, you have a great attitude in recognizing areas that can be improved. You don't let your ego get in the way and are open to change:


I'll stay updated with your progress. Keep up the great work!

Thanks man!! I'll be following your thread too!

 

[Andy Black]

UPDATE -

I've always made my tiktok videos on my phone and started posting some of them to YouTube shorts with no luck. The process was just: record a video on my phone, edit it in tiktok, download it, post on youtube shorts.

The reason I did videos this way for so long was simply because I thought posting videos that you made on an external camera or app simply would not do as well.

Recently, I decided to test that limiting belief. Whenever I go on social media I see a lot of people making higher quality videos with subtitles.. that were performing extremely well.

I decided to find out exactly how they were making these videos, the exact fonts and edits they were using.

Something awesome that never occurred to me is that I have so many key points in my YouTube videos that can literally be turned into tiktoks. I NEVER thought about this.

I decided to test it out: If I take clips from my youtube videos, and add subtitles using "The Bold Font" in premiere pro, and sized the videos for tiktok, would it work?

You bet.. 10's of thousands of people were watching each one of these videos and it's definitely a strategy i'll continue using.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a video I watched that taught me how to make these videos:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqylhHsT9fE

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqylhHsT9fE

I’d thought of creating shorts out of the 90 minute video “pinned” on my channel. I’ll check out this video. Thanks for sharing.

 

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[Cameraman]

This is amazing. Thank You ! Didn't know this could be done..

I'm assuming that for the most part this strategy is for videos that do mostly tutorials rather than other types of information/entertainment content?

Yes, it works well with tutorials because it creates "evergreen" content for you but you can use it with anything that people might be searching for. Here are examples for three of my videos which are all software reviews but all are featured in the Google videos section on page 1.






The trick here seems to be to get the videos out as near to the software release. With these videos, I was able to review and create the video before the product launch. Because I knew when the software was released I timed the video to come out an hour after the release. An hour is a sufficient time for search demand to build so the video hits the ground running. In all of these cases, the video appeared on Google after about an hour but I've seen it picked up almost instantly as well.

I'm sure there could be other opportunities to do this with a little thought. Let me know if you manage to get some ranking.

 

[mikecarlooch]

Update On My Personal Content Journey -

It's been a long while since I posted to this thread because I got caught up building LoochiMedia (my media company).. Which has been a much better use of my time than making YouTube videos for hours every single day..

But recently I got a spark of motivation to continue building my own personal brand on the side.

However, this time I plan to do it the way I like to.. Instead of a YouTube channel, I am creating a blog. I will use my short content from instagram, tiktok and youtube shorts in order to funnel readers into my blog.

As of right now, this is just a side project where I hope to make some connections and maybe it will indirectly lead me to new business for my agency (here's my NOTABLE Process thread on the forum)

I don't know what it is, but I've always been the type of person that just wants to help people with so many things and it actually sometimes used to frustrate me when people wouldn't take action on things I would tell them to do even if it would help them. I've always been a great writer and I feel like I can get so much more out blogging rather than making YouTube videos. I've got a burning desire to spread a message and help people my age or younger get on the right path.

It is something I don't plan to spend a ton of time doing, and plan to blog once a week and post videos once or twice a day, but only in my free time after I've gotten my most important work done.

I'm completely aware of the amount of blogs that are out there, and that's why I have no expectations.. Even if one person reads something on my personal blog that helps them, that's enough to light a fire inside of me to keep going. I feel as if I can be a voice for younger people.

Who knows? Maybe just like how this forum turned into a fastlane biz unexpectedly, maybe one day I'll wake up and have a cult following of blog readers that then becomes a fastlane biz.