Listened to a podcast this morning about how to get your videos discovered on YouTube. It was an excellent look into how you can improve the likelihood of having your videos featured more by YouTube.
This will depend on the length of time your video is watched by viewers, expressed as a percentage of the full video. Once YouTube sees your video is being watched for a long time YouTube will surface it as a recommendation for other users.
Tim Schmoyer, the YouTube expert, explained how the top YouTubers know their YouTube analytics data intimately and one of the most important factors they look at when reviewing their video’s performance is the point at which the viewer drops off and stops watching.
For example, the use of particular words will trigger a large drop off and if you avoid the use of these words you will increase your watch time, thereby improving your chances of YouTube putting your video in front of more viewers.
Another large drop off will be at the end of the video when the presenter gives an indication that the video is over-for example, ‘thanks for watching’ or ‘see you next time’. This will immediately trigger a stampede of viewers away from that video because they know it is over.
The obvious thing for me to do, then, is to learn these important lessons in order to increase my watch time for each video I make in the future.
But I’m not going to.
Why?
Because the way I make my videos allows me to make them in the most time efficient manner possible. I seem to have struck a sweet spot between a useful video that allows me to build my subscriber base and which people find useful, and the amount of time needed to make and edit that video.
I could certainly follow the directions of Tim Schmoyer and the other leading YouTube people and lengthen the view time. But the time it would take me to follow all the ‘rules’ is not time I am prepared to spend because I do not believe the return will exceed the time and effort spent.
So, I will continue to make the videos my way because they are working, they are effective, my subscriber base and influence is growing, and I do not want (or need) them to be perfect.
I want them to be authentic, real, and provide some value and utility to the viewer. That’s it.
So, no frustrating pursuit of perfection for me, even though I know I can improve them.
I am happy with the balance between time spent making them and the return I am getting.
There is a lesson here for other aspects of work, and life, because an unrelenting pursuit of perfection can lead to tremendous frustration.
You can take a look at my YouTube channel here.