The “Lazy” Entrepreneur’s Guide to YouTube in 2026

YouTube in 2026 doesn’t have to be overwhelming. I’m sharing my favorite shortcuts and strategies for busy entrepreneurs who want to see real growth without burning out. Discover why consistent long form videos are still the best investment, how to repurpose content, and which features are truly worth your time. If you want YouTube to feel effortless, this is for you!

My 3-minute Email Marketing Hack for YouTube Creators: https://youtu.be/r9EnzVH0q8c

🔥 Build your Binge-Worthy Video Brand with EASE + simplicity: https://videobrand.link/wV72LsI

📹 Be Binge-worthy on YouTube: https://videobrand.link/become-bingeable

🟣 Video Brand Academy: https://videobrand.link/vba

🎥 CRUSH IT ON CAMERA GUIDE: https://vidpromom.com/crush

🎧 Video Brand Infusion Podcast: http://meredithmarsh.co/podcast

📲 Download my FREE Video Brand Academy app! 👉 https://videobrand.link/app

👉 Consistent Sales of Your Course with YouTube: https://youtu.be/GBhulsp0s-4

📹 Follow on YouTube for Video Podcast: https://youtu.be/zkscCExxg9Y?si=B2EAIPxJV0-jEP-7

Transcript

Don't be mad. I'm not calling anybody lazy, and I certainly know that if you are a solo online business owner, lazy is the last thing that you are. But if you've ever looked at YouTube and thought, I really wanna get in on this, I really want to go all in. Be consistent, but it seems like so much work, like there's so many moving parts.

There's so many things to know in this episode, I wanna break down how you can be a lazy, putting that in air quotes, a lazy entrepreneur on YouTube In other words, how do we make YouTube feel easy and effortless while still being effective at growing your audience and growing your business in 2026?

Let's dive into it. If you're new here, my name is Meredith and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business so that you can become a binge worthy video brand.

And like I said, I know that you are not lazy, but I do know that when you're wearing all the hats in your business. You're looking for the shortcuts, right? You're looking for the, the secret passageways to getting from here to there without having to spend a ton of time and a ton of effort or a ton of money so that you can continue kind of running your business without having to be.

You know, a full-time YouTuber or a full-time social media content creator. So how can we be efficient? How can we make it easy? How can we make it feel effortless for you?

Okay. There are a lot of features on YouTube that you could use to grow your audience and grow your business. We have regular long form videos that's like 8, 10, 15 minutes, 20 minutes longer than that regular long form videos. YouTube likes to call them video on demand or a vad. Sometimes they hear people refer to it as a va.

I don't know if that term is really gonna stick. I just say regular long form videos, regular YouTube videos. You have live streams. You have community posts, which are like similar to a social media posts with texts or images or polls. Plus you have shorts, and we also have podcasts.

So with all of these different mediums and features on YouTube, how do you know what to take advantage of to actually grow your audience? Well, of course, you know, I'm gonna say that consistent long form videos on YouTube are really the simplest way to grow your audience and grow your business with YouTube. So I'm talking about the video on demand, the regular long form videos on YouTube that is like the bread and butter of YouTube still, even with the other features like shorts and podcasts.

The regular long form videos are still the bread and butter of YouTube, and even though it sounds like long form videos take a long time to create and so therefore they might not fit under being lazy or efficient or easy or effortless. The results that you get from long form content on YouTube far outweigh the energy and effort that you put into it, meaning. The videos get views for weeks, months, and years down the road. Those views turn into subscribers. Engagement. They help continue the growth of the audience. The algorithm is a little bit like a snowball, but the algorithm is based on audience behavior.

On top of that. The more people that see your videos over time, the more opportunity you have to generate leads and sales. So as a business owner, long form videos are a great investment of whatever time and effort you spend putting into them.

with my clients and students members of Video Brand Academy, it's like the, it's the foundation of, of everything you do on YouTube is based on having a good, solid, long form video strategy. Use the spider web strategy, that's the way that I teach it. And everything else on YouTube, all the other features, including shorts are.

Nice to have things not strategically important, if you will.

So let's talk about some of those other features. There's a lot of confusion around YouTube podcasts and video podcasting and how that works, and what's the difference between a YouTube podcast and a regular podcast. Or what's the difference between a YouTube podcast and a regular YouTube video? And I've done videos where I explain this before, but a YouTube podcast is essentially a playlist on your channel that you designate as a podcast.

And when you do that, then it gets into the YouTube, Google. Podcast of fear. That's not a word, but it is. Now. It doesn't go anywhere else. It doesn't go directly to Apple or Spotify. That's a separate thing. We'll talk about that in a second Now if you have an audio podcast and you're not recording video, but you want to record video, I honestly think you could just turn your webcam on and record video. All you have to do is be comfortable with your camera on and you're good to go. Yeah, you want to, you want your videos to look good. You wanna sound good? If you have a audio podcast, you probably already do sound good.

You probably already have a good microphone,

but if you want to be like low effort, easy, efficient. About your podcast and taking advantage of video content and video marketing, all you really have to do is turn your webcam on. And I honestly think even if you never even look at the camera. Address the camera or anything like that. I still think having that video version of your podcast on YouTube is going to result in more views, more audience, more leads, more sales than just audio alone.

But the reality is a, a YouTube podcast that is a video where you're like talking to the camera and recording yourself is really no different than a regular long form video. Like it, it, it can perform the same for you. It can grow your audience. You can use the same exact strategies that I teach, like the spiderweb strategy inside Video Brand Academy and apply that to what in your mind is a video podcast.

It's really no different. The piece of content, the medium is really no different. The only difference is when you upload it, you, you add it to your podcast playlist so that YouTube knows that it's. Podcast.

nothing magical about designating something as a YouTube podcast as far as reaching more people necessarily. At least not that I have seen in my analytics. It's just having a long form video on YouTube. That's the magic, like that is the secret sauce.

Another YouTube feature that is a little bit of a mystery for many people. A lot of people, um, that I work with don't even know. That this exists, and that is the community posts feature. And YouTube has changed this a little bit over time. I, I think they're still in the middle of changing this, and so I'm not super clear what, where, like, where YouTube is thinking community posts lie on their platform, but you can make a post, a text or an image or even a poll on your channel.

And it's part of your channel. It's kind of like posting a video, but it's not a video. It doesn't go into the same algorithm. It doesn't go into the same feeds, but it can show up on your homepage. Especially now, you can customize your YouTube homepage to have a section of your community posts posts, so you could be really strategic about, and I think it'll show three posts at the top.

You could be strategic about exactly what posts you pin at the top of your channel. I've heard people say that posting, you know, on their community posts consistently helps to kind of get a little more reach to their, uh, to their channel a little more reach like to their audience. And there was a time that when I would scroll YouTube, like scroll the homepage, I would see community posts from channels that I wasn't subscribed to.

And there was like a button to subscribe. I think at one point YouTube was kind of testing whether these texts or image or polls, posts were like a viable medium for the platform, and I, I don't know if they have an answer, so for sure I don't have an answer. But there isn't really a known solid community posting strategy that I know of if you're a business owner growing your audience and business with YouTube. So I think you could pin some really good, high engaging, interesting posts, um, by having that section in. Your homepage customization area, or if you, you could do this or you could have a VA do this.

If you have somebody helping you with social media posts and things like that, why not take a look at your threads posts, your ex posts, your Instagram, your Facebook posts, see which ones have kind of performed the best, got the most engagement, and. Turn those into a community post on YouTube. That's one way that you could kind of do it in perhaps the most effective way, but the easiest, less effort way so that you have something there and you are able to kind of test what works for you, for your channel, for your audience.

live streaming is something I get questions about every once in a while inside Video Brand Academy. Some of my clients and students do consistent live streams like same day. Same time of day, all of that, and really like the community engagement aspect of it. Me personally, I mean, if we are, if we are looking at this like a, like a lazy entrepreneur's guide, me personally, I.

I don't love the idea of the commitment of the live stream. Now, I've been telling myself for like two years, we should do consistent live streams on YouTube. Meredith, that would be a good idea. That would be something fun to try. You know, I have regular meetups inside a video brand academy. Why can't I do a regular live stream?

And I might, I've been talking about it for two years. I might do that however. What I experience when I do live streams, again, I haven't been consistent with them, is there is like a core engagement, uh, a core community engagement, um, uh, a thing that happens, but they're not necessarily, they don't necessarily perform after the fact.

It's not like the live streams are somehow bringing in viewers, subscribers. Leads and sales after the fact. Unless your live stream's topic, title, thumbnail and like the structure of the live stream kind of hits all of those good green flags that YouTube wants to see, needs to see. That your audience needs to see in order to be really excited about hitting play on that.

So I think this is definitely something you can experiment with. But like with most things, most experiments, I always encourage my clients and students to do something for at least like 30 days or 90 days. Don't just do it once or twice and decide whether it worked or not. Give it some time to really, actually.

Build some momentum, build some consistency, so you feel like you really gave it a hundred percent in your experiment.

But again, I think live streaming is. Supplemental. I think it's a nice to have if you like it, if it's effective for you and if you have the time and the energy to do it. It's a nice to have thing on top of your regular long form YouTube content.

but what I get the most questions about and the most pushback about is shorts, YouTube shorts. Because YouTube shorts being short form content, short form, vertical content on YouTube has to be three minutes or less, and it has to be vertical, short form content. Seems like logically it seems really.

Easy, effortless, efficient, because if it's a short video, it must take a short amount of time. To create long form video must take a long time to create short form video. Must take a short time to create on paper like logically. Yeah, that would make sense. In reality though. doesn't exactly work out.

That way, 

Now if you just wanna talk about efficiency, I think it sounds really efficient. If you already create short form content on like reels and TikTok, why not just repurpose those over to shorts? And it's definitely something you could try. But I'm telling you from my perspective, when I have tried it, it doesn't work.

Those videos do not perform well. They don't, they don't get views or they get some views and then they plateau. And if you go into your YouTube analytics and look at, just at your look at your individual shorts analytics, what you're probably going to find is that you get views and then they plateau, meaning they.

Got in front of people and then they stopped getting in front of people. That's the shorts algorithm. That's why this, this concept of, well, it takes me less time to create a short than a long form video. What people don't realize is you have to create so many more pieces of short form content. To get the same number of views that you would from a long form content, you have to create like five videos, five short form videos, or more to have the same positive effect on your channel in terms of views, engagement, subscribers, leads, and sales, than if you just did one long form piece of content.

everybody's channel is different. Your analytics are gonna look different than my analytics, of course, but most people do not look at their analytics. Most people do not open up YouTube studio and actually ask themselves, our shorts working on my channel, our long form content working on my channel.

Are live streams working and what does working even mean? We'll get to that in just a second.

Because I'm not saying I don't personally like short form content. I actually love short form content. I, I scroll TikTok probably spend more time doing that than I should. So I like short form content. I have no beef. With shorts or short form content, I have beef with spending time, energy, money on creating content that has no return on that investment.

No, ROI. That's what I have beef with. And if you're a business owner, that's what you should have beef with too. If there was a winning shorts strategy for. Business owners, I would be telling you about it. All of Video Brand Academy. My membership exists to help solo online business owners grow your audience and generate consistent revenue in your business. You better believe I would be all over the shorts strategies that grew your audience and generated consistent revenue in your business.

If there were. Shorts strategies that did that, But the reality is, right now, as of this recording, October 31st, 2025, which is my birthday by the way, there just isn't a good strategy that has like a return on that investment of time and energy that you would want to expect from. From content creation, it just doesn't match up to what you can get from your long form Videos, eight minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes or longer.

regular long form videos on YouTube are. The only video marketing platform or the content actually gets more views the longer it's on the platform and you can open up your analytics. So I mentioned this a little bit, what do you even look for in your analytics? Because all, like everything I've just told you in this episode, long form content is king.

Everything else is nice to have. You don't have to take my word for it at all. You don't have to listen to any, uh, YouTube gurus, marketing gurus, anybody out there at all. All you have to do is open up your own YouTube analytics. Go to YouTube studio, go to your analytics. If you go to the advanced analytics, there should be a button somewhere in the top right.

You can compare how your shorts perform to your long form content, to your live streams. You can actually see how many views, how many impressions. That's the, I like to say, the number of times that your video had eyeballs on it, like before somebody hit play, showed up on the homepage, or a search result, or the sidebar.

Those are impressions, so you can see how many impressions did this video get, how many views, how many people actually hit the subscribe button. There's a metric you can add to your advanced analytics to see subscribers gained.

You can see engagement comments, likes if you are monetized with AdSense, you can see how much ad revenue you gained from these different types of formats on YouTube.

Now, in an ideal world, it would be great if you could. Tie the format of the video to your list building, um, efforts, right? So you could see like, well, which type of format actually build, built my list generating leads? And then you could see what actually generates sales for you. I don't know of a way to do that, unfortunately.

You have access to your own, you know, your website analytics, your email analytics, and your YouTube analytics, and you have the ability to track how much time you spend on the different types of content you create. so if all you do is shorts on YouTube and you. You know, promoting a freebie or something and you are seeing that people are opting into that freebie and you know, you can trace that to your shorts efforts, great. If you're not, then you know that it's not working for you. Same thing with long form content.

Same thing with live streaming. Maybe you have a freebie or a lead magnet that you only promote. On specific mediums on YouTube so you can actually track. Where that traffic is coming from and what medium or what feature on YouTube is the most effective for you for actually growing your business? Not just getting subscribers, not just getting views.

You're here to grow your business, not just grow your audience, right? So when you have the audience growth metrics and the business growth metrics, and you are intentional about tracking that that is the only way that you are ever gonna know, truly know if the energy, the time that you put into. Any amount of content creation is paying off for you.

so, if you want YouTube to be easy and feel effortless and have the maximum amount of results and. Positive effects on your business. You have to know your numbers, but at the end of the day, nothing. I mean, nothing beats consistent long form content on YouTube for consistent audience growth and consistent revenue, consistent long form content, building a library of binge-worthy videos.

Is the absolute no-brainer way to go. I've seen it for myself. I've seen it with my clients and students. I see it with members of Video Brand Academy

However, you might still be wondering, okay, I wanna make long form YouTube content. How do I make that easy? How do I make that feel effortless? So I wanna share three quick things with you as my last point here. Number one, simplify your process. Simplify and order to stay consistent.

Complexity will kill consistency like. Real quick, and I have a lot of videos on my channel where I talk about recording editing efficiently. I have an entire course called video editing made easy. That helps you to well, helps you, helps you learn video editing the easy way, right?

You can also let your VA go through that course and do all of that editing for you. Simplify the process. For yourself, for your own workflows, for your business. Number two, I already mentioned video podcast. If you have an audio podcast, a lot of people think there, there are so many more steps, things they need to add to their workflow to turn their audio podcast into a video podcast.

Just turn on your camera because you can edit your, you edit the podcast the same way, whether it's video or audio, without any extra editing. You know, when I first started this podcast, this video podcast, I had a separate outro for audio, and I, after a while, I, I went back to point number one, which was simplify and thought there's no reason why these have to be two different things.

So I made them one thing I record with E Camm. You could use Riverside. You can record with Ds script. There's a bunch of ways that you can easily and effortlessly record and then edit with something like Descript so that you have one video file that gets uploaded to YouTube and that file can be uploaded to your audio host.

I use Buzz Sprout. And I pay extra for, I think it's called Magic Mastering. So I can upload that video, file that MP four file to Buzz Sprout, and it turns it into an MP three. Or you can export. Your video as an MP three and upload that as audio too. Kind of depends on your hosting company and kind of like what's possible there, but you get the best of both worlds in that way.

You get the video podcast out there, you get the audio out there on RSS. It's not really any extra time, it's just a few extra clicks.

And number three, repurpose your long form content into emails, blog posts, social media posts. I'm talking about repurposing long form into text, repurposing long form into a totally different medium, not repurposing long form into short form content. That's a whole other topic. I'm talking about repurposing the content of your, uh, videos into your emails, your blog posts, your social media posts, the text posts. You can do that, your VA can do that pretty easily. And I have a video on how my emails actually write themselves for my YouTube videos, so I'll link to that down below.

And if editing long form videos is truly what's preventing YouTube from being easy and effortless for you, I think you're gonna love the bonus training that I have on how to crush your YouTube edits in two hours or less. So I will link to that down below as well.