TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Everything You Need To Know To Start Your YouTube Channel in 2026

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 1

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We share a practical plan to get your channel ready for the new year, built on audience intent, packaging strategy, and consistent execution. Along the way we dig into collabs, AB testing, hooks that buy watch time, and how to turn strangers into fans without burning out.

• why understanding audience intent drives topics and tone
• packaging as title, thumbnail, and topic working as one promise
• simple thumbnails with a single focal point
• hooks that match the promise and buy more time
• consistency as a repeatable format, not a rigid schedule
• using collab tools to expand reach responsibly
• intentional AB title tests and when to use them
• deepening connection with comments and voice replies
• a focused checklist to clarify niche, value, and category
• answering why a stranger would watch with a sharp pitch




SPEAKER_02:

If you try to appeal to everybody, you you speak to no one. It it's super, super important to really, really put yourself in the viewers' shoes.

SPEAKER_00:

This is your one chance, your one pitch. Why would someone want to watch your channel?

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, welcome to the only podcast that has more co-hosts than we have listeners. No, I'm just kidding. We actually have many more listeners than co-hosts, but we have a lot of co-hosts today. My name is Travis, and I'm here with a lot of people. Let's start with the one face you really know, Rob. What's going on, Rob?

SPEAKER_04:

I do not consider myself a co-host, merely an interloper.

SPEAKER_01:

An interloper? Spell that now. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04:

I N T E R.

SPEAKER_01:

L O P E R. I hope L O that our editor editor put the letterings down as he said it. And of course, there's Dan. What's going on, Dan? Hi. What's your word of the day? Uh fart. Yes. I know how to spell that. P-H-A-R-T is how you spell that. And we're a bunch of guys here, so we're doing farts already. But of course, there is a lady here, so we need to be a little bit less uh brash if we can do that, uh Dan. If you can hold yourself back. Uh and it's Tori. Hey, Tori, welcome back to the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, thanks for having me, Travis.

SPEAKER_01:

So we're going to talk about how to get your channel ready for the new year. Now, there's a lot of things you need to know if you're a new content creator, or if you're thinking of pivoting, or maybe you just want to freshen up your channel. We're going to go through all that stuff so you know how to optimize your channel for the new upcoming year. There's lots to talk about. So if you're new here, sit back, relax, grab something to drink, grab a pen and paper. You're ready to take some notes as we take you on this journey to help build your channel into the new year.

SPEAKER_04:

Hey, Travis, I have a question as an interloper who wants to disrupt this podcast. What year are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01:

It would be the year 2080, as uh obviously AI has taken over everything. There is no YouTube anymore. And uh, you know, uh uh Rob becoming uh Dr. Savage here, which is really interesting.

SPEAKER_04:

Indeed, and in that time, I had a few modifications.

SPEAKER_01:

It's RoboRob. I like RoboRob. We need to have Robo Rob more often. Uh let's talk about a couple powerful features going into the new year before we start talking about specifics of channel things. Things that you should be, tools you should be using that exist on YouTube. I'm gonna start off by talking about my favorite tool, which is the collab tool. If you have the opportunity to collaborate with another content creator, this tool that YouTube launched, finally they got something launched that's actually really good, helps share your content with another creator's audience, which can help broaden your audience and vice versa. Of course, they can do it with you. You can collab with someone else and have the video on their channel. We've talked about that a lot on this channel and in this podcast. So make sure you go back and listen to those podcasts. But in general, I think it's great because what we all want to do is grow our audience. And to do that is kind of difficult. But when you have someone helping you by collabing with your video, uh it kind of uh is kind of the cheat code. Rob, we've used this on the channel quite a bit. Uh, what do you think about the tool itself?

SPEAKER_04:

We've used it today, whatever day and year that is. The day that is announced. As a result, that video is one of ten by quite a significant margin. And the impressions are, I would say, five or five to ten times higher than usual. And that is because we're collaborating with an enormous channel today that has, I think, 10 million subscribers. Uh and the the basic gist of it is it feels like a kind of an algorithm hack whereby you are latching onto the reach and discovery of the collaborator, whatever size they are, and that audience has been tested with your content. So it just works, it is available to everybody, and it seems to help you. It it literally feels like an algorithm change, and you know, we often see these headlines and statements, and it's hard to prove it. But in all of the experience we've used it so far, granted, we are privileged creators in that we do have some good network opportunity to speak to larger creators, but it it has worked for us, and we just hope that for smaller creators they can find opportunities to network with channels of similar sizes just to share their audiences across all of the contributors to the content.

SPEAKER_01:

Tori, you run the Discord for VidIQ. There's some really great opportunities to collab there. If you're a content creator in that Discord and you're like, oh, this sounds like a really interesting opportunity, what would you do in that Discord to try to find a content creator that would be able to collab with you? Because again, like if you're listening to this podcast and you're like, I don't I don't have VidIQ or anything, I just kind of fell across this. You can sign up for free today for not only VidIQ, but in our Discord and find someone in your niche. What would you do? What do you suggest for them?

SPEAKER_00:

So I was really excited about this feature launch. So I actually created a whole forum channel in our Discord for finding collab opportunities to help facilitate finding collabs with other creators. Um and then we have a collab showcase channel. So if you do end up doing a collab with another VidIQ Discord member, we're offering some prizes that you should definitely check out. Um, and I'm always in there trying to help facilitate collabs. I think it's so cool to be able to connect and create with other creators, especially since it tends to be, you know, very solo. Um, I thought it was a great opportunity that I wanted to help like push forward in the space. So definitely check it out. Those two channels are at the top of our Discord server and they will be ongoing, and I'm always hanging out in there trying to help move those collabs forward.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. Dan, remember back in the day when the closest version of this was to put the at in the title name and you just hope that people clicked on it to get the collab feature going. And it wasn't even a collab feature, it was just tagging another creator, and it didn't work from the other side. Like if they didn't post a video on their side, it didn't do anything. This seems to be uh finally them listening to what people wanted.

SPEAKER_02:

I I think so. There's a little downside to it, and the tagging still works too. Uh, the video that went out today, that is the day that of the year that is today, is great because we tagged a creator that with did the song, the intro song, and there's no reason we didn't collab with him. We just we tagged him because he did that one part of the video, and then we did the collab feature with the creator who's like heavily featured in the video. So kind of it's just different ways of providing credit to people who worked on it. So you still have all these tools. It's not like they got rid of one to do the other. The only downside I've heard about on a recent podcast that was released very recently as of this year, uh, was something something interesting that they brought up was hey, like this collab tool is a little bit annoying because I'm seeing videos now from people who I've like told YouTube I don't want to see anymore because they are collabing with channels I do watch. So interesting. That was one thing, and I'll I'll just say the channel that pointed this out was the Linus Tech Tips like podcast channel. That that was one thing that was brought up as like a criticism to Linus being on a collab. And I do hope like going into later years down the road, YouTube addresses that because I I've tur told YouTube to not show me quite a few channels, and if they started popping up again because they were in collabs, that would be I could see how that'd be a little frustrating, but that's the only downside so far that I could really find with this.

SPEAKER_01:

What is uh a feature that you think everyone should be using, Rob? Everybody should be using.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh that's a tough one because especially for smaller creators that don't have access to all of the tools. I think obviously collaborations is the tool I think from yeah, from what I remember, a person with zero subscribers and zero views has access to it. But it obviously needs to be an acceptance at both sides. You need to share the collaboration link with the creator, and the creator needs to accept it. So obviously, collaborations. I think now the A B testing is filtering down to almost all creators. Is that right? Or do you still need to be monetized? I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think it was released globally now.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, so like um with a B title testing, again, a bit of a plug here for uh our tools in whatever year we're in right now. But um, we can now A B test titles from YouTube, and we have a floating window next to those three options that gives you the title suggestion, so you like can literally click and add in those titles uh for testing. Although we do maybe suggest a little bit of caution and like don't just test titles for titles' sake, like be really intentional with it and think about what's the what what is your goal or outcome from doing testing. And then the final tool that I'm really interested in but hasn't yet been released in whatever year is next, is the sponsored segments whereby creators will be able to basically plug in brand deals and sponsorships. Again, we're still not sure we have a flexibility on that. How much will be uh control will creators have? And also, will creators use it in a a different way as intended? In the sense of I'm not gonna use this uh branded segment to uh put in a sponsorship, I'm gonna use this branded segment to add an update to this video. Our YouTube have YouTube thought about that.

SPEAKER_01:

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm pointing at a lens, even though this is an audio podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Dan, what what is the tool you think every creator should use in this year of Our Lord?

SPEAKER_02:

Which year is that? I don't know. Uh yeah, I forgot to. Uh I I think I'll jump on the A-B testing one, but add that like maybe not for every video. Like, once you kind of have like a good feeling about the things you're making once you test some things, uh that's that's always a good one. I'm gonna have to think about that a little bit more though. Like, what what else has come out recently that people should be playing with a little bit? I guess this wouldn't be everybody, but one feature I'm very curious about is the courses feature. Yeah, yeah. If you make content that educates people in any kind of subject, if you have expertise that you'd regularly put forth on your channel, putting together a course and like testing that out, I I don't know. I want to see that used more, which is not the question you asked, but I would love to see how that shows up as people start to adopt it. But Rob took all the good ones, so I have to make stuff up.

SPEAKER_04:

You know, we've got it done, and we we tried it with I think how to get more subscribers. I mean, obviously it wasn't a proper course per se. We just bundled some videos together.

SPEAKER_02:

It's also set to private, so no.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, oh well somebody's done that recently. Well, uh well, I say recently, it could have been years ago. We we just don't know. We just don't know. We don't pay close enough attention to our channel. It felt like it was still it was performing in a similar way to playlists, and that maybe it's just vidIQ doesn't know how to use playlists. Hold my hands up type of problem.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh the then the other one would I would just go back to collab. I mean, if you if you're already working with other channels. But I'm just trying to, I'm grasping at straws, trying to think of different tools that run it.

SPEAKER_01:

It's fine. It it's like I just want if you think that one of the things that everyone should be using, something we already talked about, then that just makes me look smarter. Tori, are you gonna make me look the smartest by saying the same exact thing that I said? That'd be great. I'd love that.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm actually really excited about the video responses to comments. I think YouTube is such a connection-heavy platform already. And that's just a way to even deepen that connection with your audience and have it feel so personal, especially as like a smaller creator. I think it's so important to engage with each and every comment if you can. And I think this is just a way to take that to the next level. And I'm really excited to see that used a little bit more.

SPEAKER_04:

Can we just audio? Yeah, you said video responses, Tori. Did you mean voice responses?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Sorry. By the way, I only had one cup of coffee this morning.

SPEAKER_04:

No, there used to be video responses. Remember that? And I was thinking, what, we're bringing this back. They should.

SPEAKER_00:

We should. I think that was really cool.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh yeah, okay. No, from the creator only, Rob. I'm not talking about from the commenters, from the creator only.

SPEAKER_04:

Can you imagine like me spending two hours doing video recordings?

SPEAKER_02:

You know, this is kind of a thing, though. People can respond, quote unquote, to your video by doing that thing as long as you've turned it on. If you go to videos on YouTube, you'll find this. You scroll down a little bit, you can see the people who have made videos using the content from the video you're watching.

SPEAKER_01:

You know what I'm talking about? Oh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that remix thing. Oh, for sure. You could see that being used in that way where someone you've posted a video and someone has something to say about it, so they they use it in like their remix, and now it's showing up below your video. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

I suppose that could happen now anyway. But yeah, that's uh I like the idea of being able to leave uh, and this is something that goes for uh, you know, any any year, you know, when you're a content creator, especially when you're smaller, starting to come up. Uh, engaging your audience in a way that makes you more relatable is super important because imagine watching a smaller channel that doesn't get that many comments. You leave a comment, you're like, ah, I'll encourage this person, and they don't respond to you. It's like, bro, you got two other comments here. You couldn't have at least liked my comment or something. Come on, just do the the least amount of work. So easy.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm like so big on voice memos too. I think that's like, you know, just like bringing that element of communication to the platform. I'm really excited for it.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh what I would recommend is if you are going to do voice replies, just after you've done the first voice reply, just make sure to play that back to yourself so that your microphone is working, so that you don't spend the next 45 minutes replying to everyone with silence.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04:

That was fun. Uh I got about 10 replies to that. Uh and also, do you think this worryingly carbon dates us creators in that not one of us has mentioned all of the new AI content creation tools that YouTube have released over whatever year it's it has just been.

SPEAKER_01:

I feel like um that stuff is obvious, and at this point, uh you know, the robot overlords that watch us now anyway are aware of this, and they've let us uh know that we need to be using it on a daily basis. So I feel like we don't even need to talk about that. Um, but here is something we need to talk about. If you're starting into any new year, it doesn't matter what year it is, uh, we're gonna help you plan that year by making sure that you have everything you need to be successful in the upcoming year, which is the three pillars. And I like uh that Tori, and I'm not gonna pretend like this was me. This is a Tory thing. Uh, Tori came up with this really cool um picture here. And if you're watching the YouTube channel, you can see it. If you're not, uh sorry about your luck. Um so here we see the three pillars of a strong content plan. We have audience intent, packaging strategy, and consistent execution. We're gonna talk about all of these things individually so you can understand what that means. Because one of the things we learned here on this podcast a long time ago is that not everyone understands every single thing we say. In other words, like one time I was talking about one of ten, and then we got an email and saying, I don't know what one of ten means. So we're gonna have to go through each one of these and explain like what is audience intent? So, Rob, since you are the most senior of uh people here, uh, and I mean that in the most disrespectful way possible. Wow, called you. Um yeah, basically. Um, what does audience intent mean to you?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, first of all, I'm gonna go back into my interloper um state. Can you bring that slide back up? Because I think for audio listeners, I think one of us has to uh say what's in the wonderful gift to the right hand side in the voice of the character. Who wants to volunteer?

SPEAKER_01:

Does it does that thing even have a voice? I don't think it does.

SPEAKER_04:

I mean, really of the species, it just makes noises. All right, I'll I'll do it then. Plan you must. Come on. I mean, he doesn't talk yet.

SPEAKER_01:

He doesn't talk yet.

SPEAKER_04:

Give me some looks. What are we doing? Plan you must, right? What are we talking about? Audience. Audience intent.

SPEAKER_02:

You know what? I don't think I don't think he'll sound like that because he's being raised by humans. That is true. We will have plan you must. Come on.

SPEAKER_01:

Come on, get along. What it what do you think audience intent means?

SPEAKER_04:

So this is about who you're talking to on YouTube, and the different audience intents kind of link what's to what's called like TAM or your total addressable market. There are occasions where you're gonna put a lot of effort into a content, in a into a piece of content, and you want it to reach as wide an audience as possible to bring in new viewers, and that might mean that it it slants to a certain style of content, whether it's more entertaining than usual, or it's more educational than usual, because you're trying to jump on the uh a trend, or because you feel as if you know you you want to talk at a much deeper level about this certain subject, but you want to have this uh accessible piece of content for a wider audience, and so that might be something that brings new people into the content and it raises awareness of you. But you can't just be at this surface level of, you know, I I watched this channel and this this brand, and it's cool and stuff, but I I'm gonna move on to something else pretty quickly. You want to try and build up this um relationship whereby you're trying to associate with certain values and messages and I I guess opinions of uh the the audience that you're talking to. You want you want to try and align as much as possible the the what is the famous saying along the lines of uh if you try to appeal to everybody, you are you uh you you speak to no one. And so it's like finding your try. Like if I was going to speak to the ideal viewer, who are they? Um, why should they care about my content? Because they're gonna start to feel something, and it's like building that know, like, and trust factor. And that might be what's called community content, where it's a little more casual. You allow the content to breathe a little bit more. Uh, it might be easy to make, but the expectation is that it's not gonna bring in a new audience, but it's gonna build closer connections with your existing audience, and then if you want to go really deep into this, this is where it gets to like a bit of more of a business side of YouTube where they're not just subscribers or loyal fans, they're now your customers or your um your your disciples or you know, whatever you might end up calling them. Like we have this phrase vid I crew that's kind of has it stuck, hasn't it? It's kind of kind of a loosey-goosey term that we sometimes use for our most hardcore uh audience. But yeah, this is where your the the viewer likes you so much and wants to now invest in you, whether it's through a product, a service, some merch, and you would expect even you're gonna get an even lower viewership, but it is the most valuable viewership you have because they are they are invested in your future and success as well as their own. I love that.

SPEAKER_01:

That's so accurate, and it's funny because plan you must. Plan you must, um, and plan for audience intent. And matter of fact, we're gonna cheat a little bit. Um, Tori, since you kind of came up with this, uh we're gonna show your slide of like what your thoughts of audio audience intent and for the audio listeners, kind of break this down.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. I love I've been loving audience intent lately because I always encourage creators to take it a little bit further than your target audience. I like to encourage people to think of like why is your ideal audience coming to the platform? What are they searching for? What are their current struggles that they might be looking for a solution to? Just kind of taking it that extra level further to really understand who you're making content for and why they're watching you. So I always encourage people to clarify what problem you solve. This is like your value proposition of sorts, and is a really key piece to channel growth, in my opinion, and what transformation they can expect to get from your channel. Because as a viewer, we're all coming to the platform looking for something. Whether it's entertainment, education, we're looking for some sort of value out of the content we're consuming. So I think it's really important to consider that as a creator, what value you're providing and then what emotions that your content delivers. This is such a like connection-heavy platform. And emotion is one of the best ways to connect with other people. It's a universal, you know, thing that we all experience. And I think taking it that extra step and bringing the emotion into it can be really, really impactful.

SPEAKER_01:

Dan, as a if you're a listener and you're listening to this, you go, okay, I kind of get it. But what why like why is this important to me now as a new channel? Because maybe I don't have an audience yet. But like what you're hearing makes sense. But as a new content creator, like I don't, I don't know how to make actions on what I just heard. What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_02:

It it really kind of like requires you to take a step back and maybe treat YouTube for a second as just something you watch, not create content for. And ask yourself these questions as you're watching these videos. What problem does this video solve for me? What emotion does it elicit? And I don't think you just go out and find any random video. Look on your home feed and like look for something you genuinely, genuinely want to watch and watch it with that creator kind of eye of like, is this delivering on the promise? Am I, you know, getting something out of it? Uh something that like uh John Scott, who used to work here, uh said recently in a video was that uh, you know, when is a video shareable? And it's shareable when it elicits some kind of emotion, it makes you laugh or it kind of blows your mind a little bit. And if you make a video that kind of like hits one of those points and it's good enough to where people want to share it, like that right there, it not only does it force you to think about your audience intent, it forces you to make something that can actually have potential to go viral, even if people aren't sharing it. It's just like the retention will be really high and it will start to spread. But it it's super, super important to really, really put yourself in the viewers' shoes. And you can't just do that through sitting and staring at a blank wall. Like you actually should go on YouTube and watch content for yourself that you enjoy. Maybe then take some notes as well, since you know you do still need to have the creator cap on to do that research.

SPEAKER_01:

It's funny because uh literally on the Discord uh stage I was with with uh Tori, we said this exact same thing. We're like just watch YouTube and write down why you clicked on a thumbnail, why you watched a video, why you didn't click, or when you click off a video, why did you click a write down and implement that into your own strategy? Like if you if the reason you clicked off a video is because they droned on too much and uh you know they showed B-roll that was irrelevant, don't do that in your own video because obviously someone is gonna feel the same exact way as you did. Um, and once you kind of understand your audience intent, you can then start packaging your videos, which some people are like, what does a packaging video mean? So we're gonna talk about a packaging strategy next. So, packaging strategy, packaging itself is the title and thumbnail and the topic of the video. It's so critically important because if your video is good, but your thumbnail and title are terrible, no one's ever gonna watch it. So it doesn't matter how much time you put into your video. A lot of times we hear from content creators, I spent so much time on that video and nothing happened. Okay, well, how much time did you spend on the title and thumbnail? And even the idea behind the video, more so than just shooting it and editing it. Uh, if if it isn't as much or more than the video itself, you might have failed yourself. Every once in a while, you'll get lucky with a video you just put barely any time on, and then it just does fine. But for the most part, if we're being honest, you need to stack the deck in your favor. And the best way to do that is to have a good content strategy that allows you to connect to the audience that you have identified in the previous step that we just talked about. You've already kind of identified who your audience is. Now you need to know what their sensibilities are. You probably know this. You probably know what type of content they're looking at. So go to those channels and take notes. What type of content is working really well on those channels? And for me, I don't even talk about just going to the big channels and you need to find some of the small channels that are killing it. Like a channel with like 2,000 subscribers but gets like 10,000 views. Those are the type of content you need to be looking at because they're breaking out beyond the kind of construct of being a small creator and they're reaching a larger audience. That's the type of content you want to learn more about. Go into the comment section, see what people are commenting about, and see what's connecting with them and make content based off of that type of connection. Rob, when you think of packaging strategy, at least at VidIQ, what type of things are are constantly in your mind as we're doing titling uh topics? And I know you do you used to do that when you did all the titling and thumbnailing yourself. You did it last. I don't want to have to call you out on this, you've been I've been calling you out on this on years. But generally speaking, when you're thinking about packaging a video, what what's your process? Thanks for uh drawing the illusion there, Travis. Yeah. You're too you're too hoity-toity to do it by yourself anymore. We definitely we have a whole team behind them.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh yeah, and I and I tell them to wait until I finish the video and then make the thumbnail in text. It's true. Uh the two things I always come back to, the the simplest piece of advice when it comes to packaging is however long you are spending on your packaging right now, so the thumbnail and the title, spend at least twice as long on your next video. Because the chances are you're not spending enough time. However, there's an inverse piece of advice here. Like however complex your title and your thumbnail is, you've got to make it half as complicated. I wish I could find a better way to explain that second half of it. And maybe I will maybe I need to ask ChatGPT or something to explain that in an easy easy way. But like spend twice as long, twice as simple. And that that is what we um see most often, Dan, isn't it, in terms of channel audits. There's too many uh objects or subjects on the thumbnails, and the titles tend to get too wordy because the creator feels as if they need to include as many aspects of a video as possible in the packaging. And then it gets too clever, or on the the other side of things, it doesn't uh uh clearly communicate anything uh valuable or it doesn't it doesn't make this one thing curious, and that's uh what you're trying to achieve with a packaging because you have let's say in an ideal circumstance, two seconds somebody's gonna see your title as a swiping through, and then if you win that battle, you've maybe got another three or four seconds of their time as they read the title, and if you win that battle, then you've maybe got another three or four seconds of them connecting in a title, but connecting a title and a thumbnail together to say, Oh yeah, uh there's something that needs answering there. I need to click on this to find out what it is. And that I think essentially is how I look at packaging.

SPEAKER_01:

Dan, um, I know you you kind of obsess over this in a good way, not in a bad way, in a good way. Um, what are your like your your the things that are your pet peeves about this pro this part of the process? I mean I obsess over it sometimes in a bad way.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh that's what I'm feeling. I I think pet peeve wise, uh it's and again, you you just you called Rob out for this. I think I'm guilty of it too. Like not planning ahead, because it's like I I just need to like get this out and want to, I want to say what I want to say, and then you finish the video and you're happy with it, but you're like, how am I gonna communicate this to people? And I think that's where packaging can go awry because you've you've kind of put like this maybe invisible timer in the back of your brain of uh like when you want to post it, you're excited to post it, and you're like, Well, I gotta put something, you know? And it's so it's so like clear when I look back at my own videos when I did that versus when I kind of planned ahead. And usually it's clear because the views are better on the ones I planned ahead with. So I don't know. I don't know when people are necessarily planning ahead or not, but I think like Rob, when you say like spend more time on your title and thumbnail, I don't think of that as spend more time in Photoshop. I think of that on at the at the planning level, like spend more time planning your title and thumbnail, spend less time in Photoshop. Well, if you plan it out, the Photoshop part's easy, even if you're not great at Photoshop. You'll watch a tutorial for the thing you want to do, you'll slap it together, and all the thumbnail has to do is communicate a message, you know. And if you load it with a bunch of gobbledygook, where it's like here's here's a paragraph of text plus four different things I talked about in the video just tacked on like a you know, a mood board. People are gonna look at it and not know what the heck is going on. It just should be like two to three elements at most on the thumbnail that just clearly communicate what the video is. As a viewer, that's my pet peeve when you're trying really hard to communicate something, and I'm like, I either don't care or I have no idea what's going on. You know, the audience intent part gets lost.

SPEAKER_01:

Tori, what is your process? I know it's probably uh really amazing and everyone's gonna be their minds are gonna be blown. Tell us.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, got a got a high expectation to live up to there. I always encourage people to look at their title and thumbnail with their hook. I feel like a lot of times we're focusing so much on the intros and the hooks, and we want to deliver on the promise of the title and thumbnail in those first 15 seconds. So I like to look at them as kind of a group of three. How are they all working together so that when I'm earning the click, I'm delivering on it and keeping someone sat past that intro because I have now kind of solidified the promise of the title and thumbnail. So I always encourage people to look at those as like a group of three rather than just the title and thumbnail and then the video separately. I think that can help a lot with retention. And then with click-through rate, I'm always thinking about the main character element of my thumbnail when I'm working on a design. What is the one thing that is most important for someone to notice in that visual? Is it a person? Is it a text element? But once you have that main character element, you can kind of build the rest of your design around it because having that one clear focal point is going to grab someone's attention much more and kind of helps me naturally reduce the clutter because I'm focused on that one message or that one visual rather than like telling a whole story in an image.

SPEAKER_01:

One of the things we talked about in the Discord stage was um buying more time. And it's a concept I've been talking about for a couple of years, which is uh when someone clicks on your title and thumbnail. And again, you can do this for yourself, probably write this down. It's really good to practice to do. When you click on a thumbnail, if it's not a channel I'm subscribed to and I and I know a lot about, I'm looking for a reason to leave. You just can't give people a reason to leave. But you've got me to the point where I'm clicking. So in other words, you've set an expectation from the thumbnail and title. Uh, I'm watching now. And for the first 10 to 15 seconds, I'm gonna hang out and see if that my expectations are met. One of the things that I've talked about many times on live streams is I hate when someone sets one expectation then immediately changes it. And those branded intros are the way to do it. I'll have this high-energy intro, and then you'll hear this meekly voice say, Hi, welcome to my channel. This week we'll be talking about trains. Yeah, you just hit me with the the the dubstep version of like 50 cents into club. I mean, it's not the same thing, bro. I need you to keep the same.

SPEAKER_04:

I love this character.

SPEAKER_01:

I want to learn more from Noble Rail where Travis. Even more of that. I don't know. I uh I don't know where that came from. But anyway, so you're buying yourself a little bit of time. You come in if you match the uh if you match the title and thumbnail, then they're gonna watch for a little while. Then the next thing is, and and Mr. Beast talks about a lot of people talk about this re-engaging uh at some point, another hook. So it could be as simple as, and by the end of this video, you'll know how to do this thing. So that's like within the first 10 seconds, or you know what's going on. Now um that's the uh Tim uses what is the but then or after what is the the phrasing uses like it's a connection between something. It's like, okay, so this thing happened and now I have this obstacle. So I I you know I want to build this this model train, but I'm out of glue. Okay, well, now what am I gonna do next? How am I gonna now? It just so happens I have uh I have something else. It'll stick, I have some honey. Let's see if this uh train will stay together. I put some honey. It's sticky, right? Let's see what happens. Now you gotta watch. I have a channel. This is exactly you gotta watch for another 30 seconds now, right? I need to see you do this. Is it the ABT that you're referring to? And but therefore. That's it. And but therefore. So using these words connects one timeline to another so that you want to stay on a little bit longer to watch longer. And doing that within your video can help uh your attention as well. So meeting that expectation and keeping people watching for as long as possible is how you grow your channel.

SPEAKER_04:

That's pretty much one of the most powerful words on YouTube, isn't it? But yeah. Moment you put in butt, you're adding uh twist, conflict, tension.

SPEAKER_01:

In in interpersonal uh conversation, though, it means everything I just said before that don't even pay attention. Yeah, it's very true. None of that even matters. It's like I'm gonna give you a million dollars, but like, oh, I guess I'm not getting the million dollars. Okay. They but what once you get all this stuff done, which is great, right? What happens if you can't execute consistently? What does that even mean? Like execution consistently, some people might think, oh, that just means I need to upload once a week or something, right? Maybe. But what if your execution uh is different every single video? So that when someone comes to your channel, none of the videos seem similar. That's a consistent execution or maybe a lack thereof. So, Tori, let's talk a little bit about since you brought this up in the slide, I'm gonna pull this up real quick. Um, what were you thinking when you were talking about consistent execution? Were you talking about like upload schedule or were we talking about something else? It's really interesting thought.

SPEAKER_04:

I was definitely talking this makes me really nervous now because you've gone to Tori first, which means uh it's gonna be Tori and Dan who get out all of a good stuff, and then I'm left with a dragon. No, I'm I'm I'm going random. I'm going random. I'm ready. I got an answer for this. Get all of a good stuff out of it.

SPEAKER_00:

I look I look at consistent execution as more of like topic and format execution because I think a lot of times we're focused on that upload schedule a little bit more than we should be when really format is what keeps viewers coming back for more. We all love when we find a channel that every video delivers a great experience for us. And typically that looks like a very similar type of video over and over again because we are just creatures of comfort and habit. And we love going to a channel knowing we're gonna get something that we enjoy every time. So to me, consistent execution looks like maybe you don't upload every week because your videos take a little bit longer to put together and they're really excellent, but the format is gonna deliver that consistently positive experience to your viewer every time they come to your channel. So whether this looks like kind of a repetitive video style, you're doing maybe a haul style video and you're doing that over and over again because you know that's what your audience loves. And this is kind of why we were talking about Stranger Wings in Discord the other day. Like if I'm sitting down with my favorite dinner on a night of the week that my favorite show is on, and I'm expecting Stranger Things to come on, and instead Grey's Anatomy is on. Like, that is not what I sat down here to watch today. It's kind of the same thing when people come to your YouTube channel. If you throw out a really random video format or topic, that's not what your viewer is coming to you for. And I think that consistency is becoming more important than like sticking to an upload schedule on the platform.

SPEAKER_04:

All right, so that's consistency equals familiarity. Can't use that. All right, done. What about this?

SPEAKER_01:

Here's some. Look at this. Look, Rob, here's a here's a slide right here. It's not about uh posting where it's about posting with intention. So here's here's one. You can maybe steal something from here. What do you think?

SPEAKER_04:

No, no, no, I I'm gonna challenge myself. I'm gonna take what's left. So done.

SPEAKER_02:

I don't think this will be too hard because I'm gonna use a creator as an example. Now, this the videos I'm about to reference were either posted very recently or very long time ago. I'm I'm gonna scroll way through the history of the channel back to 10 days, I mean 10 months uh or 10 years ago, when Drew Drew Gooden posted a video called Greed is Destroying the World. Now, this video, if you watch Drew Gooden, is quite a tone shift when you look at the previous video, which was called The Office Has a Sequel for some reason, where he's talking about the new uh show. The paper. Yeah, the paper. Which I haven't seen yet. I want to watch. And then before that was the greatest bad movie ever made. So he's like, you would think, oh, his his niche is like talking about movies and TV shows, but then he posts this other video, which is very real about problems that are happening in the world. And the thing that's consistent about Drew is the way he presents. Like Tori said, the format. Drew's format never really changes, and his sense of humor never really changes. You know what you're gonna get. Like when Drew talks about either an office spin-off show or uh, you know, problems, greed destroying the world. I I kind of know already what to expect a little bit, but I still I want his take. It's not like I know what the video is going to say, and it's you know, that's built over with trust over time and things like that, but you don't build that trust unless you are consistent for a long time. So people start to understand who you are. Drew does not post consistently. You could say about once a month, but sometimes he takes longer breaks, sometimes he posts a little more frequently. It can consistency is this word that I think people automatically assume to like time. And it's just that it's like could not be a larger misconception. I think there was a time where the consistent schedule made sense. And for some creators it might still. Maybe you post daily gameplay videos or whatever, but it really isn't about that. What can people expect from you consistently? And Tori, great example with the two totally different TV shows. Like, if you're posting completely different formats, all of a sudden, it yeah, it's confusing.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, Rob, we're all in anticipation.

SPEAKER_04:

Here we go. I didn't hear listen to anything Dan said there because I was thinking of what I was gonna say myself.

SPEAKER_01:

It's so rude to admit that out loud.

SPEAKER_04:

True, it's true. I'll just I'm just being honest. All right, so when it comes to consistency, what you're actually doing is you're building foundations, right?

SPEAKER_02:

I literally just said that. Wow!

SPEAKER_04:

I do not believe it. I do not believe you said foundation, Dan. I was listening that much, right? So, what I mean by all this is when you start a brand new channel, everything think feels new and fresh to you, right? It's exciting. And by default, you are experimenting. Now, think about things you've learned how to do, like playing the piano, driving a car, learning to swim. Again, these are all new things to you when you first start to do them. But eventually you learn a technique and a foundation, a baseline of where you feel comfortable doing something. And the difference with YouTube is that you get constant feedback on how you are performing, and the things that are positive, the positive signals you're getting back from your audience, those become your foundations. So that's where the consistency comes in. Realizing that the foundations are very good for both yourself and your audience. So you should both nourish that audience and sustain yourself with that content on a regular basis. However, this is where it gets really interesting. It does not mean that you should get comfortable in your consistency. What you should be thinking about is in this next video, I'm gonna keep everything 85% consistent to what it was before. But you know what I'm gonna try? I'm gonna try a different method of uh delivery. Or I'm going to try and introduce these new storytelling techniques into my script, or I'm gonna use a new camera with some different settings to see how that changes the aesthetics of a look. And then there may be occasions where every video out of five, so like you make four videos for your audience, but one video is for you to experiment, to try something new. Because all Ultimately, every success you have on YouTube is through experimentation. Now that success becomes consistency, but you allow yourself some experimentation to find the next thing for you and your audience. Everybody applaud.

SPEAKER_02:

I I have one last note on that. I think people are consistently changing as humans. Yes.

SPEAKER_04:

And that's a better answer than mine, damn it.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, you got me there. It speaks directly to what you just said about make a video for you, experiment because your interests are going to change. I'm going through that right now with my own channels. I've been doing gaming content forever. And there are times where I'm like, do I want to talk about games or play games? Because I really don't know. And I'm getting closer and closer to like my next video being like a video essay rather than a gameplay video. I'm changing as a person, and that's going to also be consistent. And it means you can be flexible while being consistently a human.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that. Yeah, because humans change. And anyone who's doing the same content from 2015 is probably not successful here on YouTube in whatever year this is. So uh last thing, the we're gonna do the final checklist of your content strategy for the year. And it it, you know, you can call a content strategy or just like generally uh what you should be doing. And that is do you have a clear niche or theme? And we we can talk a little bit about niches and stuff. Basically, you just want to think about the things you you have a superpower and that you're passionate about. Don't do a niche just because it's successful, because if you don't love it, you're gonna hate doing that channel very soon after you start. Do you have a clear viewer problem or desire? It could be enter just to be entertained, it could be how to fix something, could be you want to know reviews of things, whatever that is. You need to figure out what those are for your viewer. A clear category that your channel sits in, which could also be think of as a niche. What kind of things are you doing? And does it match with other channels that uh you maybe watch that you love that you want to be a part of? And can you answer why should a stranger watch? Which is perhaps the biggest question that you need to answer for yourself. You need to be very, very, very honest with yourself. Not just because, oh, I'm Mr. Cool Guy. I think people will watch me. Probably not. You're probably not nearly as cool as you think you are, um, but maybe a little bit. Like maybe you have a superpower of being cool, you just need to give people um value first. Any other things you would add to the checklist, Rob, we're gonna go to you first uh for like getting into uh the new year. Is there anything missing here or is there anything you want to double down on as far as what we say?

SPEAKER_04:

I think what I would add to is the final one where it says, uh, can you answer why should a stranger watch? Uh kind of underpinning that, and how do you make that stranger become a friend? Because you don't want that stranger inviting you to their van for some candy. You you want them to whoa, you want you want them to be like a a friend you can trust and have a uh a burgeoning relationship with. Um the one that I'm really fuzzy on right now is a clear category your channel sits in. I think over the past whatever year we've been in, uh that's become a really uh debatable question, I think, for YouTube education. Would you all agree just how uh the landscape is changing, not only uh through the the volume of educators around now, but how there seems to be this new intent on the short form uh style of content, the automation of that content, and how AI um is uh establishing itself more as a tool for creators, and so I just wanted to add that in as like I think I agree with all of these and I've added that extra one, but I'm also kind of being self-reflective of what's a challenge for us at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Dan, your thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I don't know. I want to jump on exactly what Rob just said, not that I'm I won't be adding anything to checklist, I suppose. Uh I the the thing that I've noticed about the shift in like our space, the YouTube education kind of space, is that I've been seeing channels that really are not YouTube education channels make really solid YouTube education videos. They'll just go completely off niche for a minute and say, like, this is how I got my first 500 subscribers. And it's a channel that does like crafts or gaming or something like that. And watching those has been actually pretty valuable to me because I've been thinking, like, I've been talking about this stuff for so long, I have not been at that size of a channel in so long. Uh, you know, and I I mean I could start a new channel whenever I want. I'm saying, like, my I I already have my patterns as a YouTuber, right? I'm never gonna not know what I know now. So it's really interesting to see those different perspectives from channels that don't normally educate. And that's why I think why we're seeing some of the education channels that are education channels shift to this more like, I'm gonna talk about AI automation because it's like the trending thing right now, but there's still a need for like I just want experiences from real people and seeing how they kind of like go through their YouTube creation. And we're seeing so many authentic stories come out of channels that don't normally talk about this stuff. So I don't know, that kind of like busts a lot of things. We're saying they went off niche, they're not being consistent, but those videos reach this totally different audience that I think even if they don't watch their other videos, they find value in watching that person and in their journey, even if it's just for that one video before that person goes back to making what they normally make.

SPEAKER_01:

Tori, this was your list. If you had to choose just one of these, uh it's kind of like a Sophie's choice, what's the one that everyone should be concentrating on the most out of all of these?

SPEAKER_00:

Why would a stranger watch? I feel like that was it when I was working in the coaching program, was the question that everyone hated when I asked them. Um, and I always encourage people to spend more time on this question than you think that you should. Um, Braden in a recent gaming stage that we did had a really good perspective on this. So you're in front of uh like a million people, an audience of a million people that love gaming, and you have 10 seconds, one sentence to convince them to subscribe to your channel. And that, like, I feel like just scenario took the stakes up for me a lot to really think that through. This is your one chance, your one pitch, and going with like, well, because my gaming videos are funny, like, so is the other 10,000 people presenting today. So to really take it to that next level, why would someone want to watch your channel? What makes your channel different and unique? And spend so much more time on that than you think you should.

SPEAKER_04:

I have a pitch. I have the pitch for a gaming channel. So I've had 10 seconds. My pitch would be if you hate Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, I'm the channel for you.

SPEAKER_01:

That is true. It's the only channel on YouTube about that. That's that's the thing, right?

SPEAKER_02:

No one else, camera. No one else would ever do that. Why it's unique.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, we hope that this has helped set you up for success. Of course, you can send us an email if you want to talk to us about the success you've had this year at the boost at videoq.com. We'd like to answer those questions. And of course, if you listen to audio podcast, there's a link in the show notes that will allow you to send us a text message. We'd love to hear from you about your successes in the upcoming year and questions even as well. Um, we're gonna go away and uh do I think it I think they just came out with a new floating car in this year uh that we can drive and float away. That sounds right, right? Isn't that right?

SPEAKER_02:

I think I think so. I think the floating car is a scam, but depending on when you're listening to it, there might be a totally different floating car that's actually not a scam. Sounds good. Yeah, we're gonna try that.

SPEAKER_00:

The only thing I've been thinking of this whole time, every time this comes up, is the year 3000 by the Jonas Brothers.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, everyone, thank you for joining us. Hit the subscribe button for the floor.

SPEAKER_04:

So, a little inside baseball here, folks. Um I am famous for prolonging meetings at work by just coming up with something randomly at the end.

SPEAKER_02:

Rob, I'm hungry.

SPEAKER_04:

I've decided I'm gonna do it in a podcast today. Nice. Being the interloper that I am, and I want us all to have a game of audio wordle. Oh, I love it. What?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04:

The question I need to ask you, Travis, Dan, and Tori is do you want to see the wordle, or am I going to explain all of this verbally?

SPEAKER_01:

Let's, you know what? I do are you you are gonna share your screen. Um, so for those who don't know, we might as well do this. I think this is fun. We should do this on the podcast more often, actually. Wordle is a game that you can play, it's free. Um, you basically have to guess what the word is um by letters that are on the screen. Now, if you're listening to the audio podcast, it's gonna be a little bit more difficult. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see exactly what's going on here.

SPEAKER_02:

So old at this point.

SPEAKER_01:

But people don't know what one of ten is, so I need to make sure I explain what Wordle is. All right. How about this? Google what Wordle is and you'll see. All right, so we're starting with a five. There's a five-letter word that we have to guess using letters of obviously from the alphabet. All from the alphabet.

SPEAKER_04:

And if if the letter is not in the word, if the letter is not in the word, then it we can't use that word again. So it can't cancels it out. And we've got six attempts.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

I thought we were keeping it internal, guys. How bad I am at Wordle.

SPEAKER_01:

No, you're doing the first word. You're getting exposed. You're getting exposed today. Um, I think we should just do what we always do in our meetings and put snake as the first word that tends to be.

SPEAKER_04:

So this is a five-letter word. S N A K-E. And it shows us that four of those letters were fails. The one letter that is in the word is a K, but it's not in the right place. So that K has to be somewhere else in this five-letter word.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Uh who else has an idea here? Pluck.

SPEAKER_04:

So Dan is going for pluck. So we're using new letters here. P, L, U, C, K. Oh, Dan has crushed it here early on. So the P and the L are not part of this word, but U C K R. The last three letters, and they're green. They're in the perfect place. You've cheated somehow.

SPEAKER_01:

You do. You know what the word is. I know it's not pluck. That's all I know. Or it's not stuck. It can't be stuck because the S was not there. So yeah, we have to just basically get the first two letters now. Yeah, this should be easy. Uh Tori, you're up.

SPEAKER_00:

This game makes me forget every word I've ever heard in my life.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, it can't be duck because you need two letters and not just the one. Yuck, you can't be that either. It's gotta be it's gotta have two letters in U C K. And then listen to everyone out there. I know what you're thinking.

SPEAKER_04:

I heard that I heard that from Tori. I think we should try try out what reckon.

SPEAKER_00:

Guys, I thought of a word.

SPEAKER_04:

What is it? What's the word? Oh, truck. Oh truck. It could be truck. Here we go. Could it be?

SPEAKER_02:

No. Oh, yes. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04:

Alright. There we go.

SPEAKER_01:

Did it work?

SPEAKER_00:

I love that we were recording this and I finally contributed to Wordle.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, you got it. It's been recorded. And then we need to cut this part out.

SPEAKER_00:

Three words.

SPEAKER_01:

No. Three words. That's better than our normal meeting. Totally. That's wild.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that was my only positive contribution to Wordle in my time with Media Hub.

SPEAKER_01:

People in the meeting are not going to believe this. Well if you like stuff like this, we do it all the time. Come through. We love to have your microphone keeps falling down. We love to have you come through and do more shenanigans with us because that's what we do here. And we'll see y'all in the next one.