The Truth About Boring Videos You're Afraid to Admit | Ep. 58

Are you worried your YouTube videos are too boring to get views? In this video, I reveal the truth about boring videos and how to make even dull topics engaging for your audience. I’ll share strategies for business owners, like the spider web strategy, the three magical questions to spark ideas, and how to use tools like the Zinger YouTube title generator. We’ll cover content silos, decision fatigue, and how to create binge-worthy videos that grow your channel and business. ▶︎  3x4 Method: https://videobrand.link/7NmJLSs

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Transcript

So how can you get more views on your YouTube videos as a business owner when your topics are kind of boring or at least just not that exciting or juicy for what you might think of? On a YouTube channel, we're gonna talk about it here on Video Brand Infusion. My name is Meredith. I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business so that you can become the go-to person in your niche and generate consistent revenue in your business.

Yesterday as I was thinking about what to say on my podcast for this week, I felt like I kind of ran out of ideas, which wasn't really true. I have a list of ideas. I mean, there's always a collection of ideas in my head, I had a list of ideas and topics, but when I looked at them, I was like, I don't know.

They seem kind of boring. I don't really feel excited about them. I'm not really. Excited about talking about them. I didn't anticipate that if I create that video, my audience is gonna be really excited about that topic either. So I thought. What if I just make a video about what to do when your topics are boring?

You run out of clever, catchy, juicy ideas and you're not sure what to post on YouTube to grow your audience and also grow your business because that's why you're here. we're gonna dive into that today because I have a lot of ideas for you as I started thinking and sort of, uh, self coaching myself through that same conundrum.

Now there are two sort of sides to the coin here. There is you are thinking like, I've run out of clever ideas. I don't know what to post next, but you also might be experiencing. The fact that you are publishing videos and they're not really getting views or, um, it doesn't seem like people are clicking and you might think something's wrong with my thumbnails or something's wrong with my title.

And I mean, if you go to YouTube and you, I. Try to solve the, like nobody's watching my videos problem. You're going to get a lot of advice around titles and thumbnails, but before you can even think about titles and thumbnails, you have to think about is the topic even interesting? Is the topic intriguing?

So I think of this as being kind of like two sides of the coin. One where you are publishing your, like, I'm gonna say boring. Ish or just like not that intriguing topics, but they're not really growing your channel. The other side of the coin is you are looking at your topics like, these are not exciting to me.

YouTube's not gonna like these, so I just will sit here in inaction and not post anything. So we're gonna kinda talk about both of those things.

but the first thing I do and the first thing I thought to myself yesterday when I thought I've run out of ideas, I dunno what to post. First of all, I have recognized that's a lie. I have lots of ideas. And the second thing I did was ask myself these three questions. And if you don't take.

Anything else from this video, this podcast episode. If you don't watch the rest of it, I hope you at least stay for these three questions because these are kind of the three magical questions that tend to ignite something in me and I know exactly what my next video should be. The first question is, what do I feel excited about talking about right now?

Like, what's on my mind? What is exciting me right now? This is a little, um, could be a little tricky. You could go kind of, um, off the rails a little bit and start going outside of your niche because you find something that you're excited about if you can. Rein it in a little bit and make that thing you're excited about, applicable to your niche and your spider web that you are creating on your channel, which we'll talk more about in just a second then that would be great.

You wanna be careful about kind of like going all over the place and only just going by what you feel like talking about today, like keep it within your niche.

But maybe you saw something in the news that applies to your niche, or you saw another video someone created and you have something to add to that, or you have an opposite opinion, or it's just like something on your mind. What do you feel like creating? What do you feel like talking about?

The second question is, what do my clients, students membership members need to hear from me right now? I love this one because if you have an online business, which I am assuming you do, if you're watching, I. My podcast episodes, you have a course or a membership, or you work one-on-one with clients or some kind of thing where you're providing value to people who are paying you.

You have an incredibly insightful look into what's going on for them. What are the problems? What are the struggles? What are the fears? What are the mistakes that they're making? And you have access to that in like real time. So a lot of times my topics that I come up with, or topics that I talk about within my videos and within my video podcast are topics.

That came up that week or the week before on a client call or inside a video brand Academy meetup. You know, somebody says something, they ask a question, or just the conversation sparks something where I'm like, oh, that's a good, that's a good video topic. I need to talk more about that.

But there might be topics that you wish, that you wish that your clients and customers would ask you about, that you want them to know. So that's question number two. What do my clients, customers, students, members, need to hear from me? Right. No, the third question that I ask myself is, what does my audience need from me right now? So that's you, that's the people that are watching my videos, the people that are, um, showing up in the comment section. And this is actually one reason why. I resist, uh, batching, like heavily batching my content like weeks and weeks and weeks out, because then there's absolutely no flexibility or there's a lot less flexibility in.

What I publish from one week to the next, because sometimes I'll publish a video and then there's comments and things where people are asking questions or saying something that sparks another video idea and maybe that's the next, or you know, a couple videos from now that it gets added into the mix.

And so the third question is, what does my audience need to hear or want to hear from you right now? And I just really like to think. This is kind of an impossible question because everyone is so different and there's no one right answer. But I do like to think about the person who's gonna open up YouTube when, when I hit publish on this at 3:00 AM on Sunday morning when I hit publish on this.

Somebody's going to open YouTube or open their podcast app 'cause this is a podcast and they're gonna see that video. What do I want that? How do I want that person to react before they even hit play? 'cause obviously I want them to hit play right? I want you to hit play. If you're watching this, that means you did so.

Thank you. I appreciate it. But what happens before they hit play? What is the reaction that I want somebody to have when they see this video? Usually I think to myself, I want you to go, Ooh. I want you to have like just a little bit of like a little punch that makes you go, oh, I gotta watch that. Does that happen?

I don't know. Um, do you drop everything to watch my videos? I don't know, but in my mind, like that's the intent. I'm trying to create something that is juicy enough that makes you decide that when you open YouTube, my video is the first one that you hit play on.

So usually when I ask myself those three questions, what am I excited about talking about right now? What does my, what do my clients and students need to hear from me right now? And what does my audience wanna see from me right now? What's going to make. You go, Ooh, and click that video when I hit publish on it, or you know, within the next 12 to 24 hours after I hit publish on it.

And usually I can come up with some really good topics, some good ideas, and mold them into my next YouTube video that kind of meets all three of those questions, like all in one, like, you know, like a Venn diagram where they all meet in the middle.

and here's why this works, because. You have to be excited about what you're gonna be talking about in order for, um, I, I think in order for people to be excited about watching it or, you know, continuing watching it, um, like the only thing that's worse than a boring video topic is when the person delivering the topic is also boring, right?

And if you're bored and you are not excited, it's gonna be boring for the viewer if they even hit play on the video.

And like that's the whole point is for your viewers to hit play on the video. In order to grow your channel, in order to build a binge worthy video brand, you have to create videos that are. Binge worthy. I mean, it sounds kind of basic to say it out loud, right? But you have to create videos that people want to watch, that people already want to watch, which is, I think a key thing there that a lot of people miss.

You know, logic would tell you that, you know, of course my viewers wanna watch a video on how to read your Google Analytics, because I know that knowing how to read your Google Analytics is kind of like being able to look into a crystal ball and see where your channel is going and make decisions about where you want your channel to go.

I can see it. To me, it all makes sense. It's, I'm like a wizard in the analytics and I love it. But if I just make a video that's like, how to read your Google Analytics, um, that sounds kind of boring, even though I know you need to know that information. But if I'm asking my myself, like, what does my audience wanna hear?

What does, um, what do my clients and students need to hear from me right now? I already know I'm excited to talk about analytics, but how can I frame it in a way that's going to make you excited? About learning about analytics, right? And so now I get to go, okay, here's the topic, but what's the title? How am I gonna make that intriguing and package it together with the thumbnail to make the whole package intriguing.

And now as I'm saying this out loud, I'm like coming up with ideas for, for a video. So if you see a, a video from me in the next couple of weeks, um, about analytics, you're gonna know she came up with that while she was recording that other episode.

I am actually gonna write it down right now. Something about a wizard and a crystal ball and reading analytics. Now one of my favorite uses of AI in this regard is not to go to chat GPT and say, what video should I create today? You know, it might give you some good ideas, especially if you have a Pro Chat GBT account, and it's got the extended memory so it kind of knows a little bit more about, you might know more about your audience and your business but I programmed a specific AI tool inside of my tool suite inside of Video Brand Academy.

It's called Craft Zinger YouTube title. So I programmed this myself. It's. Way better than just going to Chad GBT if you ask me. But what it does is it takes your video topic idea, whether it's boring or maybe it's not super clear, or you just don't know.

Like, um, I do this a lot when the, when like the topic is long and I wanna figure out how do I pack the punch, you know, with like fewer words in the title. So for example, I put in here what to post on YouTube when you run out of video topic ideas. That's just the idea, right? And it's not really a fully crafted title, so it gives me, I've got 30 different zinger style titles here that are way more intriguing than just what to post on YouTube when you run out of video topic ideas.

Now, some of these are better than others. Um. One of them here is stop searching for ideas and start creating or quit now. Now that's like, that's a bold, I would never just come out and be like, look, if you don't do what I'm saying, you should just quit. Um, I would never say that. I would never even think that.

But that's a bold and catchy and like attention grabbing title, especially if you think about it in contrast to my personality. You know the way that you are used to me showing up, you know, I would never be like, just quit now. I would never say that. So if that's in my title or if that's in my thumbnail, it's going to get your attention and you're gonna go, what is this?

Your interest is now peaked. Now you have to click and watch. And that's the whole point.

So some of these are better than others. The dark side of YouTube, creativity slumps. You're afraid to admit. Ooh, so isn't that juicy? Don't you want to know? Even like I'm just reading it here. The video doesn't exist. I mean, I'm creating this a video right now, but that topic, that video doesn't exist, but I wanna click that and watch it.

Like, yeah, please tell me what, what am I afraid to admit? Now I wanna know. Right? It's just a title idea.

That's all it is at this point.

No more excuses what to post when your YouTube ideas are dead. I like that. It's a zinger, the brutal truth about running out of YouTube video ideas, and that's kind of AI sounding.

No ideas, no problem. Controversial YouTube topics that actually work. That's a good one. Not the no idea, no problem part. And that's kind of cringey controversial YouTube topics that actually work. I love that. I wanna make that, I wanna, I'm gonna add that to my list.

And we have some tabloid style broke post these videos, YouTube's last resort, stop making videos do this, YouTube's dying, post this. These are very short and very, uh, tabloidy. This was, this was programmed to give us some tabloid style, um, zingers, which usually when I see those, they're, they're so short and they're just very like, drama.

Some of those make really good, uh, like the words you put in your thumbnail to go along with your title. So if you're using the Zinger YouTube title AI tool inside of Video Brandand Academy, there's a little hot tip for you.

the way that you can use this concept is I like to call it justifying your titles. You just want to make your topics. Juicy enough for you and your audience to care about them, to be intrigued enough to click them and hit play, and. Every single time that I use this tool and see like my like boring topic presented in more of a zinger, juicy way, then I feel excited about creating the video.

Like you just saw it. You just saw it happen. Controversial YouTube to topics that actually work. I was like, wow. Oh, that's a good topic. I kind of like that And the dark side of YouTube creativity slumps. You're afraid to admit like, oh, okay, yeah, I wanna watch that video doesn't exist. Maybe I should create it. I don't know.

So if you're looking at your list of topics like I did yesterday and thought, Ugh, these don't really sound very exciting. I don't know, I'm not really into it. Nothing's really lighting me up. I could take those topics, plop them into the Zinger YouTube title tool, and maybe get some fresh new ideas that I'm actually excited about that I think you would be excited about too.

lastly, I mentioned that I would talk a little bit about the, the spider web concept, which I've talked about lots of times here on my channel, but it's kind of the basis, not kind of, it is the basis like foundational thing that I teach inside a video brand academy that all of the other growth strategies, titles, thumbnails, descriptions, SEO, um, all of the ways to like.

Trigger the algorithm. All of that stuff stems from the spider web. Strategy concept on YouTube, which is kind of like sticking to which is basically where you break your channel topics up into three or four or maybe five, like specific sections. You might even think of these as silos of content, uh, like silos of categories in a way,

when you're first starting out on YouTube, my recommendation is you stick to one section of your spider web really tightly at first to gain momentum and views and audience around that thing before you start like bouncing around with other topic ideas. But once you have an established channel, and this is basically what I do now, I.

I am basically sticking to some of the same kind of concepts or silos with my YouTube content. What that does is reduces decisions, it reduces the number of decisions that I have to make about what, what am I creating next?

And it's not like I stick to these things religiously, but like here on the podcast, you will find me creating videos around like sales, YouTube funnel generating leads. Kind of like growing your business with YouTube. That's sort of like a spider web section or a silo of topics.

I've talked about video podcasting specifically. Um, YouTube like strategy, like audience growth kind of strategies and like YouTube platform specific type of topics. And also like talking to a camera, confidence on camera and that kind of a topic. So that's four different topics. It really reduces my decision.

Fatigue really of trying to figure out where to pull ideas from if I know that well. Okay, last week I talked about confidence on camera. Um, this week let's talk about YouTube strategy and I can kind of just go through those cycles and I'm continuing to fill out my spider web and every once in a while I throw other, like random stuff in there when I feel inspired by something. I can look at, you know, my topics that are around, like talking to a camera, confidence on camera, that kind of a silo. I can look at all my videos on that and go, what is missing? What, what haven't I talked about yet? I can take a screenshot of all of those videos and throw that into chat GPT and say, these are my videos around camera confidence, talking to a camera.

What haven't I covered yet? What is missing?

Because we know that building a library of binge-worthy videos is the most powerful way to grow your audience

and the spiderweb strategy basically kind of fuels that, because you're just continuing to add on more and more and more to these topics that are already bringing traffic to your channel.

So if you feel like you're running out of ideas or the ideas that you have seem kind of boring to you and it's causing you to resistant to even hit record at all so that you could be consistent on YouTube.

I do have an additional hack for you. It's not really a hack. It's actually a really great strategy that greatly reduces the decision fatigue and increases your excitement over your topics. I call it the three by four method. I'll put a link to that down in the description below this video.

It's a bonus training that I created for members inside of Video Brand Academy, but I can give you access to it for free. If you use the link down below this video.