youtube channel case study

Find Keyword Ideas in Seconds

Boost SEO results with powerful keyword research

How to Grow Your YouTube Channel

Written by Brian Dean

Today I’m going to show you how to grow your YouTube channel in 2024.

This is the same step-by-step process that I used to grow my channel to 451,000 subscribers:

And in this guide you’re going to learn exactly how to get more views and subscribers.

Let’s dive right in.

Step #1: Find Untapped Video Keywords

Step #2: create videos optimized for “watch time”, step #3: optimize your youtube videos, step #4: use thumbnails that stand out, step #5: create (and promote) optimized playlists, step #6: promote videos to your audience, step #7: turn viewers into subscribers, bonus step: rank videos in google search.

When it comes to YouTube, video keyword research is SUPER important.

In fact, choosing the right keyword can make or break the performance of your video.

For example, one video from my channel ranks #1 in YouTube for “YouTube Views”.

And largely thanks to that #1 ranking, that video generates over 30k views every month.

With that, here’s how to find keywords for your YouTube videos:

1. First, create a list of “Seed Keywords”

Seed Keywords are terms that describe super broad topics.

For example, if you were in the digital marketing space, your Seed Keywords would be things like:

• Social Media
• LinkedIn Marketing
• Facebook Page
• Content Marketing

See how that works? These are broad topics that you can create videos about.

Now, to be clear:

You’re not going to optimize your videos around any of these terms (they’re too competitive).

But a list of Seed Keywords is super helpful for the next step.

2. Next, type your seed keywords into YouTube search

Now it’s time to turn a seed keyword into dozens of long tail keywords .

YouTube Suggest.

This works just like Google.

Pop a Seed Keyword into YouTube…

…and check out the keywords that YouTube suggests.

If you want to scale this process, head over to KeywordTool.io .

When you enter a seed keyword into this tool, it’ll spit out hundreds of terms from YouTube Suggest.

So at this point, you should have a list of long-tail keywords.

3. Finally, look for low-competition keywords

Finally, you want to optimize your videos around keywords that:

a) Get lots of searches

b) Aren’t super competitive

How do you find these magical keywords?

A helpful Chrome extension called TubeBuddy .

( VidIQ also works well.)

This tool shows you stats for each keyword right in the search results:

That way, you know whether or not a keyword is too competitive…

…BEFORE you make your video.

Pretty cool.

Now it’s time for step #2.

YouTube’s #1 goal is to keep people on YouTube .

(After all, the more time people spend on YouTube, the more money they make from ads)

And that’s why YouTube’s algorithm puts so much emphasis on Watch Time .

Never heard of Watch Time? Here’s a simple explanation:

The total time spent watching a YouTube video since it went live.

And here’s what that report looks like in YouTube Analytics:

As you might expect, YouTube loves videos that rack up lots of Watch Time.

In fact, YouTube has gone on the record saying that:

“Watch time is measured in cumulative minutes watched, and each video uploaded – as well as every channel on YouTube – is “ranked” by watch time. Channels and videos with higher watch times are likely to show up higher in search results and recommendations.”

– YouTube Creator Academy

In short: the more time people spend watching your video, the more views it will generally get.

The question is:

How do you create videos that keep people watching?

Let’s find out…

1. Create long videos

All things being equal, long videos perform better than short videos.

And there’s data to back this up. We conducted the largest YouTube ranking factors study ever (we analyzed over a million YouTube videos).

What did we find?

That longer videos tend to outrank short videos.

And this data confirms what I’ve seen from my own experience.

Back in the day, I tended to publish short videos like this:

And that’s one of the main reasons that my videos were practically invisible on YouTube.

Today? I focus on packing as much value as I can into a single video.

This means that my new videos tend to be around 10 minutes or longer:

And because my videos are so long, they rack lots of Total Watch Time automatically.

2. Cut out the fluff from your intros

According to YouTube, the first 15 seconds of your video is KEY.

Back in the day, my video intros had A LOT of background info.

For example:

Here’s an intro from one of my early videos (before I knew what I was doing):

Now check out this fluff-free intro from one of my newer videos:

See the difference?

My intro previews exactly what you’re gonna learn. No background. No fluff.

And that effective intro is one of the reasons that this video racked up over 5.4k hours of watch time in 30 days:

As you can see, your video’s intro is really important.

3. Incorporate “Pattern Interrupts” into your videos.

Want people to watch your video all the way to the end?

Use Pattern Interrupts.

In fact, Pattern Interrupts are one of the main reasons that my Audience Retention tends to be so high:

So: what are Pattern Interrupts?

Pattern Interrupts

How about an example…

My old YouTube videos didn’t use ANY Pattern Interrupts:

As you can see, this video is super static.

It uses pretty much the same exact shot the entire time.

(The video also lacks visuals, cuts to different shots… or anything else to break up the pattern.)

Flash forward to today, and my videos are packed with different Pattern Interrupts.

My videos use tons of B rolls:

Along with on-screen graphics and animations that explain key concepts.

And it should come as no surprise that these changes helped push my average view duration up to a very solid 4 minutes, 55 seconds.

4. Plan your videos in advance

This is a biggie.

Unless you’re one of those people that’s a complete natural in front of a camera, you probably want to script out your videos.

(Or at least follow a detailed outline.)

In the early days of my channel, I would fire up the camera and start talking:

(There’s also the issue of my hair. And my shirt. But that’s another story 🙂 )

Sure, I knew the general points I wanted to cover.

But I didn’t have a script. Which made it hard for people to follow along with my tips.

Today, I know better. That’s why I outline and script my videos before I shoot.

In case you’re curious, here’s what one of my scripts look like:

Because I script every single line in advance, my delivery is super crisp.

(Which keeps people watching.)

You probably already know that YouTube SEO is important.

So let’s dive right into the steps.

1. Keyword-optimize your video title

Here’s the deal:

Keyword-optimized video titles aren’t as important as they used to be.

In fact, our YouTube ranking factors study found a weak relationship between keyword-rich titles and rankings:

That said, using a keyword in your title DOES help (a little). So I recommend doing it.

For example, one of my videos is targeting the keyword “SEO tips”.

So I make sure to use that exact term in my title.

2. Write titles that maximize CTR

Unlike Google, YouTube has confirmed that they use click-through rate as a ranking signal.

In fact, a YouTube research paper states that, when it comes to recommending videos to users:

“To evaluate recommendation quality we use a combination of different metrics. The primary metrics we consider include click-through rate (CTR), long CTR (only counting clicks that led to watches of a substantial fraction of the video)…”

– The YouTube video recommendation system, Research Gate

Put another way:

The more people click on your video, the more YouTube will promote it.

How do you create YouTube titles that people want to click on?

You want to write titles that have a clear benefit…

…without resorting to clickbait.

3. Write SEO-friendly video descriptions

Most video descriptions on YouTube are super short:

According to YouTube, short descriptions can hurt your video’s ability to rank in search.

In fact, they officially recommend long descriptions:

“Write full descriptions: up to one to two paragraphs.

Some creators only put their social media links in the description, potentially missing out on a lot of extra views.”

This is why I write in-depth descriptions for every video that I upload to my channel.

4. Optimize your video tags

Here’s how to create SEO-friendly YouTube tags .

For example, check out this video from my channel that’s optimized around the keyword “link building”.

A handful of my keywords are either my actual keyword or long-tail versions of that term.

Others are other ways of describing my video’s topic.

And three of them give YouTube context about my video’s broad, overall category.

YouTube reports that “90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails .”

How do you create eye-catching YouTube thumbnails ?

Here are two quick tips that are working really well right now.

First, use lots of contrast.

You want the colors in your thumbnail to clash as much as possible.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

See how all of the different colors in the thumbnail stand out?

In fact, they even add tiny borders between text and objects to increase this contrast.

Second, use colors that stand out on YouTube.

As you know, the YouTube platform is mostly red, white and black.

So to stand out, you want to use colors that aren’t red, white and black in your thumbnails.

Playlists are an underrated way to get more views (and subscribers).

Playlists can significantly increase your “Session Time”.

Session Time is the amount of time someone spends on YouTube after they start watching your video.

And Session Time is a ranking factor that YouTube really cares about.

In fact, YouTube says this about Session Time:

“Your channel also gets a boost when people watch anything anywhere in YouTube after watching your content.

…and when you make content that makes people watch more from your channel, then you’re helping us out.”

For example, let’s say someone starts watching a video from your channel.

And right after they’re done, they close their browser.

Your video is causing people to LEAVE YouTube. So they’re going to demote that video.

On the other hand:

Let’s say someone starts watching your video. And after they’re done, they watch another video.

This time, your video is KEEPING people on YouTube. So they’re going to promote it.

That’s where playlists come in.

When someone’s done watching a video from a playlist, it automatically plays another video.

In other words, playlists automatically improve your Session Time.

That’s why I curate my videos into playlists…

…and feature those playlists on my channel page.

You already know that YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine.

But that doesn’t mean you can just upload a bunch of optimized videos and expect people to see them.

Just like with blog content, you need to give your YouTube videos a little “push” to get going.

That push can include sharing clips of your video on social media.

Sending an announcement to your email list.

Or even promoting your videos using email outreach .

If your video is optimized for Watch Time, that initial push is all you need to get going. YouTube will pretty much take care of the rest.

No amount of promotion can make up for a bad video.

For example, a few years ago I published this video.

Because I promoted that video on social media and to our email subscribers, that video got a view spike in the first few days.

Unfortunately, that video wasn’t all that great.

This is why that video barely gets any views today.

So yeah, promoting your YouTube videos is a key part of growing your channel. But it only works long-term if you have awesome video content in the first place.

The steps that I outlined so far should help you get more views.

But views are only one part of growing your YouTube channel.

The other part? Getting more subscribers .

One of the best ways to get more subscribers is to add a subscribe button to your End Screen .

Here’s an example from my channel.

Obviously, only a small fraction of viewers will make it all the way to the end of your video.

But those people that DO watch your entire video are super primed to subscribe.

And that End Screen button makes it easy for them to subscribe to your channel.

Ranking your YouTube videos in Google is a great way to get more views.

In fact, 34.6% of my “External” views come from Google search.

And the best way to rank your videos in Google?

Target keywords that already have a video section in the SERPs .

As an example, the keyword “ video SEO ” has a video section.

When you see a video section, you know that Google wants to show people video results for that term.

And if your video performs well enough on YouTube, Google may start to show your video in the SERPs.

For example, one of my YouTube videos ranks in the top 3 of YouTube for “How to get more views on YouTube”.

That same video also ranks in Google for that keyword.

What Did You Think?

That’s it for my guide to growing a YouTube channel.

Now I’d like to hear from you:

What’s your #1 takeaway from today’s post?

Or maybe you have a question.

Either way, let me know by leaving a quick comment below.

Wow, this is great.

I’ve run lots of tests w/ YouTube and video marketing in the past, but they’ve usually fell flat. I see now it’s because, while I thought I had a strategy, it didn’t really fall in line with what naturally works.

-We didn’t optimize for keywords tubebuddy looks amazing btw! Gonna try that out). -We didn’t optimize for watch time (in fact, we always though short = better).

So next time I take a crack at it, I’m gonna look at it similar to how I look at creating any web content.

That actually makes me wonder what the scope of YouTube SEO will look like in the future. General web SEO seems pretty flooded w/ products (pretty darn good products too) for keywords, content optimization, etc. Doesn’t seem like there’s many aimed at YouTube. If it’s such a big search engine, I’d expect that to change though

Thanks for a great post brian!

You’re welcome, Alex.

I had the same experience when I first launched my YouTube channel. I optimized for keywords, but I pretty much plucked them out of thin air. And my videos were super short.

Over time, I figured out what actually worked for rankings in YouTube. As it turned out, it was similar to Google SEO: create awesome, comprehensive content. And optimize that content around keywords that people search for.

(Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that. But that’s the foundation)

The part that boggles my mind is how much time is spent on all of this. The content, the video itself, the graphic design for the thumbnails, the “blog” post description, this blog post, etc. etc. etc. How did you find time to help him out even? Wow!

Hey Timothy, That’s what it takes to stand out these days. There’s SO MUCH content out there. To stand out you really have to bring it.

Hey Brian, these are some excellent and refreshing tips (the same ol’ tips that YouTube wants to give you never work)! Thanks so much for presenting us with it!

I have a gaming YouTube channel (as do millions of others) which is aimed heavily towards sports games but also has some non-sports game content as well.

I noticed that on a recent video I uploaded about Everybody’s Golf, it received a substantially low amount of views (well under 20 views). This is while using a custom thumbnail, proper keywords (I think), etc.

The weird thing is, this is occurring with most of my latest videos. In the past, I would on average get 100’s of views and have at least 10 videos with well over 1,000 views, so I feel a little confused by this.

Why do you think this is, Brian? Are there certain things within your tips that I am missing? By the way, I’m definitely bookmarking this page! Thanks again!

Hey Colin, I was originally going to say that it might be a fluke. But considering that it’s affecting your last 10 videos, there might be something there. What’s your channel? I’ll take a quick look.

Hey Ghost Panda!

I took a look at your channel, your videos that used to receive thousand of views are VERY old. Youtuber was easier (less competition) and the videos have had time to get more views.

Do like Brian said, niche down… A LOT. I was a youtuber gamer a long time ago, what worked well for me was:

Tutorials (make sure to chose a game where people search for tutorials and the market isn’t saturated).

New Games (this one is hard, you can’t chose AAA games usually – there are exception – chose a niche/indie new game which has some hype but isn’t big enough to be taken by big youtubers)

Hey Brian, I have to say this is the most unique advice I’ve read since I’ve been doing my research on YouTube’s algorithms. Me and my boyfriend recently started a channel, trying to get in on the “couples niche”… definitely competitive. Would you consider this as it’s own niche or can it be narrowed down even more? I’m having a tough time coming up with unique videos that won’t drown in with the rest. Any tips? Thank you for the great post!

YouTube: Kam Productions

Is there a tool that checks search volume on Youtube? I’m very interested in this, but I’m not sure people are searching for my company’s niche on Youtube. There are a lot of Chrome plugins to search keywords on Google

Kelsey, VidIQ and TubeBuddy both have search volume estimates. In my experience, YouTube search volume data isn’t as accurate as what you get from most Google keyword research tools. But it’s better than nothing.

Which tool is your #1 top tool that gives the best Keyword research data having to do with volume/competition (that can be used for youtube as well)? Hrefs or SEM rush?

Neither of those tools give you YT data. For that, I’d go with TubeBuddy or VidIQ.

Brian, Thanks for putting this great resource together I have struggled with having success on Youtube, I usually have no problem getting my single property listings found on google for property address but have had little luck on YouTube Search. I am going to be sure to put these tips into action!

Thanks for ALL you do!

You’re welcome, Brandon.

That’s common for sure. I struggled A LOT when I was first starting out. But if you’ve had success on Google, then you have a good shot at succeeding on YouTube too.

This article was so informative. I am going to create a new Youtube Channel right now. love your efforts. Keep updating the readers of Backlinko with such good posts!

No problem, Sanjeev

Great article, and very insightful on how to start racking up some serious Youtube views.

A quick fix in the article, however. Looks like this might be missing a “was” or “is” after “intro.” “And that effective intro one of the reasons that this video racked up over 143k of watch time minutes in 30 days:”

Thanks again for the great information, you have some of the most helpful SEO tips on the web!

Glad you liked it, Derek.

And thanks for the typo heads up. Fixed!

Thanks for another great article. This is something i will definitely try out. I have been doing same mistake as many by creating short video without really looking at keywords.

Thanks again.

You’re welcome, Serge. There’s definitely a place for short videos. But as you saw, longer videos work really well for ranking in YouTube.

Awesome case study, Brian.

Here lot of images at end of this article are not working perfectly please fix them. Either way, I’m in love with you and BACKLINKO.

Glad you liked the case study, Arjit.

Which images weren’t working for you?

Thank you for the revelations. It is encouraging to learn that YouTube traffic depends less on the number of videos published and more on keywords, Watch Time, and Pattern Interrupts. I had been under the impression that a run time of three minutes was the “sweet spot” for YouTube video length, so I am surprised to read here that longer videos (like ten minutes) are popular.

You’re welcome, Anthony.

Totally: on YouTube it’s quality >>>> quantity. Which is great for people like me and you who aren’t full time YouTubers. We don’t need to spend 40 hours/week creating videos.

Thanks for such a helpful article! I recently started a channel for kids. I have read online the YouTube academy section for kids channels, but curious to hear if you have any specific advice for channels that are geared towards kids?

Also, my channel name is Sunny Days. Would you advise that I change it to Sunny Days for Kids so it’s clear what the channel is about?

Thank you!! Kristina

This all sounds very useful and I can see how you would see benefits if the correct methods were applied but (and I realise I might get flamed for asking this) how would these methods be applied to a gaming channel ?

Much the same or a completely different strategy altogether ?

Either way, I’m going to bookmark this for constant reference. Good job!

All good dude. You won’t get flamed for asking a question 🙂

And it’s a good one.

The only thing that might be different is your intro. Unless you’re doing “how to” gaming videos, it might not make sense to start your videos off with: “In today’s video you’re going to see my play Fortnite”.

But, in my opinion, 90%+ of the strategies here apply to gaming channels: keyword research, longer videos, audience retention, watch time etc.

Does that make sense?

Thanks, Brian!

Your tips helped me grow from 10k to over 100k in about 6 months.

Love reading these case studies from other successful creators! 🙂

You’re welcome, Jeff.

WOW. I didn’t realize you packed up 90k subs in 6 months. That’s amazing.

Guys: I HIGHLY recommend checking out Jeff’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/goodfinancialcents/

If you watch some of his latest videos you’ll get an idea of how a GREAT YouTube video is structured.

First, thanks for this super-helpful and comprehensive guide, Brian.

Everything was laid out so clearly and it was such a pleasure to read (I notice you use Pattern Interrupts in your blog posts as well, with visuals, bold lettering, bullet-points, etc).

Even though I don’t use YouTube for marketing, I have clients who do, and the information you provided was gold.

I especially appreciate the info on optimizing for Watch Time, long, keyword-rich video descriptions, and creating playlists (I had no clue about this, but it makes so much sense!)

Thanks again for all your amazing work!

You’re welcome, Heenay.

That’s true: it also helps to use Pattern Interrupts in blog posts too. Otherwise it’s just a big wall o’ text.

Anyway, glad you enjoyed the case study and learned some new stuff!

Ditto about the blog posts.

And I agree with Chris below; this post is really well-timed.

Thanks again for all your hard work.

I found your post really timely Brian as I’ve just started thinking about how I can start incorporating more videos into my business as well.

I liked your tip about writing a script, which I think would be very useful for me. But are you reading from your script as you shoot the video live from like a teleprompter? Or are you just going over it beforehand? I’m curious about that part of your process.

You’re welcome, Chris.

Good question. I actually practice the video a few times beforehand. Then I have my laptop next to me with the script open in a Google Doc. I read the line to myself. Then look up and read it to the camera. Rinse and repeat 200-ish times per video 🙂

I was also wondering about how you retain the script in mind while doing the video. I only rarely do video & find it hard to memorize the script.

If you keep looking down at your laptop for the next line, I assume you edit out all those moments? How do you avoid having choppy video? thank you.

Exactly, Leslie. It’s all chopped up and put back together. The final video does actually come out choppy…but in a good way 🙂

Great case study, Brian; packed with useful tips.

How would you rank a song writer youtube channel?

You don’t have any generic keywords, only song names. Would love some advice on that. Thanks

Hey Amit, great question.

That’s tricky. Do you mean cover songs or original songs?

Let’s say 90% originals, 10% covers

In that case, keyword research is a different animal. YouTube actually has a solid guide in growing a music channel: https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/music-strategies

Thanks for the quick response.

I can certainly see how some of the above can be applied to my situation, especially the audience retention, watch time and thumbnail sections.

Perhaps in that case a better question would be to ask which sections would NOT be applicable to a gaming channel ?

What would you say would be included in the 10%, so to speak ?

Thanks again

No problem. Like I said, intros stand out as something that should probably be a lot different. And you probably wouldn’t want to script out your videos. I think that might literally be the entire 10%.

Is it helpful to provide a word by word transcription of the video. Would You Tube tank that for keywords?

Hey Steve, yes that can definitely help. YouTube does it’s own transcription automatically, but it’s not 100% accurate.

Apologies for the double post !!

Great article!

I was looking for such article from a long. Is there any tool to make animated youtube videos?

No problem. There are tools out there, but I don’t have much experience with animations.

Another great article from you, rule of the house :). I am following you for quite some time. Within this article and others, you mentioned about that Youtube is using CTR as search metric. However, if you carefully ready the citation about, it says “watch a substantial fraction of…”. Therefore, if videos are too long you will never reach a ‘substantial fraction’ watched out the of whole video, and you will lose in terms of ranking due to low CTR. Which would be the proper video length? in order to obtain maximum impact of CTR on video rankings.

Good question. That’s YouTube’s way of preventing clickbait from getting lots of views. A few years ago, clickbait was KILLING IT on YouTube. So instead of just CTR, they also see how long people spend on your video. The longer, the better.

Is that what you meant?

Dude as always – outstanding content here and real actionable tips. That “watch video and close browser” = bad and “watch video and watch another one of my videos” = great is an amazing tip, I never thought of that before, so including a line about “like this video? watch my other video which goes deep into X” to videos must really pay off?

Question for you in general: how much does the actual content structure of the video impact the ranking?

I am guessing a HUGE amount right? That watch time is crucial, you MUST keep them watching throughout most of the video to rank better.

You must have some tricks up your sleeve to make them do that?

Thanks Dmitry!

Yes, exactly: including links to other videos in your end screen helps that a lot. I just use the text “next video”, but you can also use audio over the end screen that asks people to watch another video (a lot of YouTubers do this).

To answer your question: absolutely. The structure of your content is huge. I didn’t have room to cover it here, but it’s important to have a structure that keeps things moving along. Otherwise, as you said, people will stop watching and click away (which is NOT good).

Brian, thank you for these we tips! You’ve again given us a wealth of information! I have a channel based on metal guitar techniques, tutorials and anything related (I also do a ‘Metal and Beer’ series that posts every Friday night). I have a decent fan base and they’re seemingly hardcore, but dude, I struggle tremendously with getting subscribers and substantial views. I’m going to read this again and re-read it. and start making some changes!

You’re welcome, Jason. If you’ve already built a fan base, you’re on the right track. It means you’re creating content that resonates with people (which is the hardest part).

Once you have that down, it’s a matter of optimizing your videos for search and Suggested Video. Once you do, that… kaboom!

Great info—thank you! If seo and keyword analysis wasn’t originally done, would you recommend going back through already-published videos and changing the titles, descriptions and keywords?

Good question, Steve. I’d try it for sure. But it doesn’t always work: https://youtu.be/aJFK9k5i1ew?t=6m25s

I can’t help but to keep saying Wow Wow to myself!

This is an amazing long great SEO tips for YouTube. You really do well here Brian especially with the real life Examples:)

I had a question, does “keywordtool” list out suggestion or the keywords being search on Google?

Thank you, Tunde. Yes, keywordtool also generates suggestions from Google search.

Thank you Brian, another awesome read.

After youtube stopped putting annotations, am finding it hard to get people click on cards and be on my site.

What would you recommend for bringing youtube visitors to website?

You’re welcome, Goldy. That’s true. The key is creating something in your card that’s like an opt-in bribe (a free report, ebook, checklist etc.). As you’ve seen, cards aren’t as eye-catching as annotations (and you can’t do as much with them). So its important to have something that pushes people to click on the card.

Thank you again for all of the incredible YouTube advice, Brian. Our channel continues to grow using all of the tactics and strategies outlined in this post. Couldn’t have done it without you 🙂

If anyone ever has any questions, I’m more than happy to help!

You’re welcome, Brian.

But I have to give serious props to YOU for implementing everything. You did an amazing job with the videos you put out. And you added some cool twists that I hadn’t heard of before (like creating the seed keyword list and popping each one into YT Suggest). So I also learned a lot along the way.

Hi, Brian! I use all of the mentioned methods from this article on different Youtube channels (mine & clients).

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it don’t.

Following this formula doesn’t guarantee success at all.

Without external traffic (free or paid) in the first 48 hours you have only 10% to succeed.

Especially on new channels with less than 100-1000 subscribers.

So you should update on this, because in my tests this is number #1 step of success.

All mentioned in article + traffic.

The more real & active subscribers the channel has, the higher is the possibility of organic reach 😉

That’s true: there’s no guarantee of success using this or any other formula. But it definitely increases your chances vs. posting random videos and hoping for the best 🙂

Hey Brian. Nice case study. I learned a lot. And I think you’ve become a true expert on YouTube. Recently I listened to the podcast you did with Noah Kagan, and you mentioned that you took several courses to completely master YouTube. I think that is the ideal approach to learning anything and I know I will do the same when the time comes. However, I have a problem. I am very shy in front of the camera and English is not my native language (I have a thick accent); So it’s a perfect combination for making me a nervous wreck:) My question for you: I noticed you are very confident in front of the camera. Did you have a teacher who taught you: How to stand, How to breathe, Where to look, What words to stress, When to speak slowly/fast, How to gesticulate.

You get the point.

I ask because I know I’ll need that training. I am not that charismatic (because I’m shy). But I can change and I want to change! Hey, thank you for your reply, and keep up the good work!

I’m glad you learned some cool new stuff from the case study.

To answer your question: it came from A LOT of trial and error. The most important part is to practice speaking in the mirror, in front of other people and in front of the camera.

In fact, I remember the first time I spoke in front of a group. I was SHAKING.

But that helped me get more comfortable with speaking in front of a group. I was also nervous in front of a camera the first time (I’m definitely NOT a “natural”). But over time, from hours and hours of filming, I eventually got pretty comfortable. Hope that helps.

Top notch stuff, as per usual. I love case studies. Especially from successful companies. Great read, Brian. Keep smashing it.

Thanks Gareth. I appreciate your support.

Great article as always Brian! I love your work and have learned so much from you. I have two online business at home that my partner and I run and we have this joke at home. We call you the SEO king. Anyways, I have some small questions I am hoping you can answer. 1. Is it better or worse to put your keyword in the front? Example: Keyword: attract love (1.Attract Love Now: 5 easy steps or 2. 5 easy steps to attract love now! ) 2. I noticed that I am ranking on the first page for a lot of my videos for only the keyword in the video none of the tags. How can I change this? Appreciate you taking out the time to read this!

Thanks Apollonia. Happy to help.

1. In my experience, putting your keyword in the front of your title helps a little. 2. Not sure what you mean. Do you mean that you say the keyword in the video? But that keyword isn’t a tag?

I think she’s saying that she’s ranking for her keyword in the title of the video, but not for any of her tags.

That could be, Matt. If so, that’s normal. The video title carries a lot more weight with YouTube’s algorithm than tags.

Hello Brian, Thank you so much for this blog post. We are still struggling with our channel. Hopefully with the help of your tips, we can increase our subscribers and views. I’m glad I found your website. I think I will implement that pattern interrupt and scripts. If you can check out our channel and give us some tips I would really appreciate it, I know you must be very busy. Thanks again! – smashkidstv momster

You’re welcome, Momster. I just briefly checked out your channel and it looks great.

My only suggestion would be to add more pattern interrupts to your videos (camera angle changes, etc.).

Thanks for the fast response, I just started implemeting keyword seo on our videos when I found your website last week and now you’ve given me another great advice. I will implement it on our next video. Keep the blog posts coming, they’re very helpful. Thank you!

Wow Brian, I thought I knew quite some stuff about youtube but keyword optimized tags was new to me. Thanks!

You’re welcome, Pete. Yup, tags can make a small but significant difference.

Excellent article. As mostly a YouTube fan, I can see how channels I follow successfully do all of the above. I’m struggling to figure out how I’d talk about what I do without boring people to tears and how to integrate it into my current marketing strategy without taking away too much from my actual work. But you’ve definitely helped me see how I would start with the best foot forward and that’s greatly appreciated!

You’re welcome, Ariana. What is your channel about?

Exceptional Post Brian! (on Hero Formula) it’s very actionable and easy to use:) Keep the extraordinary content coming…

Thanks Kaushal. More cool stuff on the way.

This is certainly really good information. The issue that I often have so this – you get a lot of views but do a lot of views actually translate into sales?

David, it depends on a lot of factors (like how well your YouTube viewers align with your target customer, your CTA to get them back to your site etc.). But in my experience, yes, views directly lead to more sales.

Awesome man , I was exactly looking for it , thank you

You’re welcome, Raju

Thanks so much for this post.

I love YouTube. I really do. It’s fantastic for a content creator like me who is 100x better at speaking than writing.

I started an educational YouTube channel about CBD oil 1 year ago. It was monetized with affiliate links in every video description box.

I got my channel to 6K+ subs before YouTube terminated my channel without any explanation. I tried everything I could to get an answer from them on why they killed my channel. I could never get any answer beyond “spam” or “inciting violence / drug use”.

None of my videos ever encouraged violence or drug use. I never spoke about recreational drug use — only therapeutic use of the supplement, CBD oil, which is not used for its psychoactive effect like marijuana.

On top of that, there are way bigger channels than mine on YT which specifically promote recreational use of marijuana.

I have to admit – I first thought they kicked me off b/c I used your earlier mentioned tactic of using your competitors channel name in your tags. I thought maybe YT considered this SPAM? I still have no idea…

The first ban happened in January of this year. About a month ago, my channel reappeared out of nowhere. But it didn’t last. Two weeks later, YT killed it again.

To add salt to the wound, I am now getting email spammed by them. For some reason, I get 50+ automatic generated emails a day notifying my my channel has been terminated. So weird.

Brain, do you have any insight on this? I would really like to be able to use YT to grow my online business but this volatile atmosphere makes it really, really hard.

Sorry to hear about that dude. I don’t have a ton of experience with channel terminations. But I’ve heard of plenty of cases where YouTube was wrong about shutting down a channel while leaving others alone that are clearly worse.

Thanks, Brian. I want to confirm from new research, it seems to be a purge on YT related to cannabis content of any kind. Source: https://www.leafly.com/news/industry/youtube-continues-its-cannabis-purge-and-nobody-knows-why

The depth of this highly informative article is incredible. It’s solid information that, if implemented, creates success stories for people who might otherwise struggle for years. I can’t say enough positive things about Brian’s helpful articles. I recommend and share them as often as I can. Thank you, Brian!

You’re welcome, Erik. That’s the goal of these case studies: to help people avoid common mistakes and to learn what actually works.

Crazy results!

It’s so funny how people take YouTube for granted. I know you talk about YouTube a lot and it is a great strategy, but not enough people take it seriously when it is one of the most popular sites in the world.

Hey Neil, I’m 100% with you on that. YouTube always seems to be something people are going to start “next year”. But like you said, it’s the #2nd most popular site in the world right now . So it’s time to start taking it seriously.

wow. Pattern Interrupts. this is great. i suspected this was true but i didn’t have a way to describe or explain it. For example my slide decks typically have 140 slides in them, changing every 12 seconds or so. I know this does better than just having 10 slides and changing every 12 minutes. But your explanation makes perfect sense.

Also, this blog post follows this rule. when i scroll down, i see text, then image, then call-out, etc. (as opposed to just boring text, all the time) it’s so great!

Hey Larry, definitely. Pattern Interrupts also applies to presentation (and as you pointed out) blog posts too!

I don’t have much experience with podcasting, but I imagine Pattern Interrupts can help keep people’s attention there too.

Is there more value or benefit for YouTube SEO to doing a live YouTube broadcast rather than uploading a video?

Love your content so much, Brian! Thanks for this post.

You’re welcome, John. From what I’ve seen, YouTube Live broadcasts can help you get more views early on (because the live video gets promoted while it’s live). But over time, uploaded videos tend to do better (mostly because you can edit them, add graphics etc.)

If you miss the mark on a video SEO, can you pull it down, tweak it and then re-upload it? You’d think that would be a fix for the “48 hour clock”

Julie, I wouldn’t even reupload it actually. I’d just change the metadata so it’s SEO-optimized.

What do you think of posting transcription of video in the description?

I actually prefer to write a unique description and upload a transcript to YouTube as captions.

Great post as always, and targeted 🙂 It’s so much info that a “non-Youtube” guy like me have problems getting all details right 😀 But at least I get some main points stuck in my brain.

Thanks Tonny. That’s good, actually. The details help, but they’re not so important when you’re first starting out. Over time you can start doing the detailed stuff.

Brian, I know it is pretty important to keep people on youtube, but one thing that I have employed is even though i lead people OFF of youtube to join my mailing list, nearly every email in my autoresponder sends them BACK to youtube starting a new session.

I think this is helpful and can balance out the negative effects, driving new viewers off of youtube, but bringing old viewers back over and over again.

Do you think constantly bringing people back like that helps counteract driving them off in the first place?

Hey Chris, good question. I’d say yes, sending people back to YouTube helps your channel get more “Session Starts” (which YouTube also likes). That’s a smart way to help balance out a low session time.

Great post, Brian. This is the type of information I wish I had when I was starting out a year ago. Someone above mentioned that they have a music channel, and I’m interested how to best implement your advice since I have a channel that posts music instrumentals-beats. It’s an extremely competitive section of YouTube and very difficult to rank in. So can the high search volume, low competition key words be used as my video tags? It seems to me that using similar tags as popular videos has only helped me get buried in the search results. Keep up the good work, this is by far the most in depth, practical advice I’ve found.

Hey Ember, happy to help.

To answer your question: it depends on how people find your type of music on YouTube. If they search for it, then you want to go with low competition keywords. But if most people find your content from Suggested Video, then you might want to optimize around competitive keywords (that way, you show up next to other popular videos).

Also, this guide from YT has some tips specific to growing a music channel: https://creatoracademy.youtube.com/page/course/music-strategies

Brian, thank you for sharing your insight and knowledge. I have a small e-commerce start up and new to SEO however you have an exceptional talent and translating complex information into easy to understand and digest knowledge. Thank you

You’re welcome, Hulusi

ncredible publication, we have forgotten a bit our YouTube channel, it’s time to take it up again. Thank you Brian

You’re welcome guys

Great post – thanks for posting it!

Yes, using power words and testing headlines IS key. Great point.

The title/headline should be compelling so people think, “oh, I don’t want to miss out on something” and then they click. Like you said, this moves videos up in rankings. This works for pages on Google as well.

Throw in power words to achieve that effect but, of course, make sure you follow through with what you promise – or even under promise and over-deliver if you want some shares. Make “share-worthy” content!

You’re welcome, Tony.

And that’s an important point you made there. YouTube is VERY hard on clickbait titles. If lots of people click, but don’t watch, they’ll bury your videos. So, as you said, it’s important to deliver with your video content.

I found this absolutely amazing! Such useful tips. I do a few of them already but will definitely implement all of them.

I spend so long creating videos that are engaging, different angles, broll etc. I’ve got great feedback from them but I can’t get them to get lots of views. A couple hundred at best!

I think it’s the keywords that I need to improve but I’m not sure. Do you have any sort of youtube course or something, really looking to grow my channel.

Hey Shimmy, happy to help. Yup, in some cases keywords are the problem. YouTube themselves emphasize that the right keywords can make or break your video’s success. So I’d look at that as a possibility. I do have a YT course. It’s called First Page Videos.

Great post! Signed up for tube buddy because of this and can definitely see how that will help me pick better keywords etc. Thank you Brian!

You’re welcome, Rick. Awesome!

Awesome tips and so many insights – thanks so much for sharing this info!

You’re welcome, Tracey. Glad you liked it.

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5 YouTube Case Studies to Help You Get More Views and Subscribers

Did you know that:

• YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world
• YouTube has over 1 BILLION users worldwide
• 300 hours (12.5 days) of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• Every month, people watch the equivalent of 3 MILLENIA worth of video on YouTube

It can be hard to wrap your head around these numbers.

But all you need to know is that these statistics make YouTube a fantastic marketing channel for your business.

YouTube is still not as mature as channels like Google or Email, but it isn’t as new as social media channels like Facebook or Instagram.

What this means is that it’s large enough to be a big opportunity, but not mature enough that it’s too difficult to compete.

If you want to start or grow a YouTube channel, your main challenges are going to be:

• Getting more views on your videos
• Getting more subscribers for your channel

Before you get going, use our YouTube SEO checklist and our optimized YouTube description template to make sure you’re good to go.

On top of that, we put together a curated list of the best case studies out there that will help you achieve those two things.

YouTube SEO: How to Rank YouTube Videos

Without a doubt, one of the most successful digital marketers on YouTube is Brian Dean. He has managed to master YouTube’s search algorithm.

His channel, Backlinko, has over 200 thousand subscribers and some of his videos have accumulated over half a million views.

Click here to check out this YouTube case study

How Buffer Grew Their YouTube Channel by 59% in 30 Days (Step-By-Step Case Study)

Brian Dean not only grew his own YouTube channel but also helped Buffer, the social media marketing tool, grow their YouTube channel by 59% in just a month.

He explains the exact step-by-step process he followed to achieve that.

8 Steps to Capturing 500,000 YouTube Views in 10 Months: Case Study

In this post, the owner of a small business explains why he decided to stop competing for traffic on Facebook and Twitter and go for YouTube.

His results? He managed to get over half a million views for his content in just 10 months.

Click here to check out this case study

How to Get More YouTube Views: 20x Increase in 2 Weeks

This post explains how, with the right strategy, a brand new channel can increase its total number of views in a very short amount of time.

A great read for those who are starting from scratch.

Youtube Channel Growth Case Study

This is one of the most comprehensive case studies out there. It explains the process one YouTuber used to increase his subscribers by 150%.

It goes deep into the importance of figuring out who your audience is and discovering what they want to see.

In Conclusion

We’ve brought together over 7 marketing case study templates to help you convey your story more powerfully and make your marketing successful. Check it out by downloading the templates!

Recommended

Manage Your Social Media Like an Award-Winning Brand

Get the Social Media Calendar Template sent to your inbox, for FREE!

YouTube Case Study: How these brands and influencers are generating millions through YouTube marketing

YouTube is one of the biggest search engines in the world.  

And knowing the ins and outs of YouTube marketing is going to be key for online business success in the coming years.  

The short version of the benefits include…

• A huge platform with massive active user base
• A reticence from many professionals to being “on camera”
• Ability to improve the discoverability, reach, and optimisation of uploads
• A deliverable that can be used multiple different ways (transcription, audio, video, clips, still images etc.)

I think video marketing is where everyone should be focusing their attention right now. 

• It has a greater impact and more varied use. 
• The tracking of engagement stats is more detailed. 
• The “putting a face to a voice” element helps build trust. 

I’ve spent months looking at what the best YouTubers do well. Not in the way of generating ad revenue. That’s out of your control and a fool’s goal. YouTube could amend their algorithm or advertising rules and turn a solid 5-figure/month revenue stream to pennies. 

No, I’m interested in how smart marketers use YouTube’s organic reach to increase and improve revenue streams they wholly own themselves. 

It’s something few are good at, but when the model is used well, it’s one that provides incredible gains for a business.

Table of Contents

Why focus on YouTube? 

The majority of “organic” acquisition fiends are super bullish on Google.  

And with good reason. Google is the #1 search engine in the world.  

But depending on one channel is never a good idea. While most folk are talking about how to write articles that rank on Google, there are people out there generating 6-figure+ income streams from another source. 

YouTube.  

According to SimilarWeb, YouTube isn’t just the world’s second most used search engine, but is actually the world’s second most visited website. 

It falls far behind Google in terms of raw numbers. Google has around 88B visits a month to YouTube’s 33B.

But there’s more to this than volume. 

When you dive into the numbers, you’ll note YouTUbe has far better engagement.  

I’m also of the firm belief that YouTube is only going to grow.  

If you know any young people (under 20 years old), you’ll know how YouTube is often the first port of call when they’re trying to figure something out.  

There’s been a shift to video explanations for a while. But I’d bet my bottom dollar video is going to become the go-to online medium for education and entertainment in the next 5-10 years.  

Already it’s much easier to watch a 3 minute video of Gordon Ramsay making Eggs Benedict than sift through multiple written recipes to find the one that…

• Doesn’t begin with 2000 words of the chef’s thoughts on the origins of eggs
• Is written in an easy to read style
• Doesn’t link out to other articles that explain things like hollandaise sauce and how to judge whether or not your eggs are bad

Videos streamline the process for many people. 

And for more technical tasks ranging from cooking to impress or fixing basic faults with your boiler, having a visual representation makes the process so much easier. 

And Google seems to agree. 

Google results now include detailed explanations and “chapters” of videos to help you find exactly what you need directly from search. 

Video is easier for the consumer. Which means more people will be flocking to video. So you should start producing video content.  

And there are very few reasons to not attempt video marketing.  .

If you have a smartphone, you have everything you need to get started.

Before you run off and start recording though, don’t make these mistakes.  

The mistakes many make with YouTube

The problem with YouTube is it LOOKS easy. 

You might see a kid making $5MM / year doing simple unboxing videos and think “ if a 9 year old cn do this, I can totally crush it” .

But YouTube isn’t easy. 

Most of the people I know who have tried (and failed) at YouTube made the below mistakes. 

Don’t build on someone else’s land

If you’re considering starting on YouTube, or you’re already doing well, do not become dependent on their payments. 

This is always a dangerous game.  

YouTube (and any other platform that relies on your content) has a history of changing rules for their own benefit. 

Here’s an excerpt from a story in 2018.  

And here’s what a creator shared more recently. 

The question I’d have for any serious marketers is how much money could you generate from an audience of 500,000?  

More than $30, right? 

YouTube is a great platform to reach your audience. But it should not be relied upon as a monetary channel. 

View any ad revenue you receive from YouTube as a bonus, not as the core source of income for your brand. 

Understand what metrics to track

I’m not going to say that views and traffic on YouTube are not important. 

They are. 

But understand where they sit in the journey. 

In our GoPro study we talked about the need for a North Star Metric (NSM). 

You need to know how YouTube views are feeding into your NSM. 

Let’s imagine that you’re a media brand like Morning Brew . And that your revenue model is based on selling ad space within your deliverable. 

Your NSM would likely be something along the lines of increasing the size of your engaged audience. 

Yes, you’d want views on YouTube, but you want to track how those view levels turn into engaged people in your owned audience. 

And what you’ll sometimes find is that the video types with lower views end up contributing more to your key NSM metrics.  

In the above, the video with more views contributes less to the NSM. 

The top track would work better if you were relying on YouTube’s partner system payouts.  

But we don’t want that. We want to turn people into your owned audience so you can continue marketing to them. And for that, the lower track with lower views (and a seemingly lower value) wins.  

Short version here is be sure you’re tracking the success of your videos against your NSM.  

If you’re not, then you could be optimising for the wrong thing and throwing money away.  

Personal vs brand accounts?

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years of watching successful brands is how personal brands often outperform company brands, especially on YouTube.  

In fact, in the last few months I saw Ahrefs run a Twitter ad from…

• Their brand account
• The CMO – Tim Soulo – account

Same ad, different name next to it when running.  

The one from Tim’s account outperformed the one from the brand. 

Probably because Tim has created a great personal brand and people like to see what he has to say.  

People are less likely to immediately judge a post (even if it’s an ad) if it comes from a person instead of a faceless brand. 

You see this all the time.  

• Tim Ferriss is the known entity and influencer rather than the “4-Hour Work Week team”.
• Ramit Sethi is the face of his brand,  not the “I Will Teach You to be Rich crew”.
• Peep Laja at CXL. 

You can point to hundreds of examples of a brand being driven by the personality of a single person. 

It’s obvious when it’s the founder. But what if you work at a large brand where the founder is no longer with us or simply doesn’t have the time/inclination to create videos?  

You find someone who is invested in the company’s growth, will be there for a long time, and you get them to be the face and evangelist of the brand. 

Let’s once again look at Ahrefs.  

Tim is often the person people think of when it comes to the brand, however, it’s Samuel Oh who runs their product education materials. 

Sam’s now the face of the majority of Ahrefs’ training videos. And if you head into the Facebook community for the tool, you’ll see him as a frequent receiver and answerer of SEO questions. 

The lesson here is that by giving your brand a face, it makes it easier for people to relate, empathise, and grow to love what you do. 

A faceless brand is easily dismissed. 

But watching the same person week in week out on YouTube is a way to foster greater loyalty. 

This alone could keep your audience around and engaged, even if the quality of your content drops in the short term.   

Own your audience

It all comes down to this. 

Own your audience as a person.  

If you’re a current YouTuber looking to increase revenue, the best thing you can do is take your subscribers off the platform into something you own completely, like an email list.  

If you’re a marketer looking to start/grow YouTube, use it as an acquisition channel. 

And remember to put a friendly face front and center.  

Remember that YouTube doesn’t care about you, only how far they can use you to get money off of paying advertisers.  

Now, onto the growth. 

Attracting people to your YouTube channel

Acquisition is one of the hardest parts of driving growth. YouTube is no different. 

It’s not easy to ensure your videos are the ones people find and click on.  

I’ve been diving deep into people’s channels and various training resources to figure this out. 

Below is the basic process that’s both often used and often recommended. Before we get into the written analysis, here’s the basic flow of actions we’re going to cover.  

Finding your talking point

It’s easy to get your phone out and start recording what you think your audience wants to watch.  

But before any ideation happens, you need to think about the topic you’re going to focus on. 

Getting niche here is key. You want to get yourself a reputation as the go-to source of information in that particular niche. 

You might not always remain in that niche, but you need something to start you off. 

How do you find your perfect niche and talking point? 

You should already know what kind of topics you want to focus on. However, you need to take it a step further and find the overlap between your business / its features/skills and what your audience wants to watch. 

The easiest way to do that is to look at what’s already doing well.  

If you already have content that’s on YouTube, then look at your own channel. 

If not, find someone who’s the closest competitor and head to their video list.  

If we imagine that I want to grow a channel on business and marketing advice, I might pick someone like Noah Kagan .  

Go to the channel and click on videos.  

Sort those videos by “most popular” to get a list of the most trafficked videos on that channel.  

A quick analysis of Noah’s channel highlights the best video ideas as…

• Breakdowns of / interviews with profitable businesses
• Instructional videos on how to make money
• Business/job ideas

There’s a big overlap between all 3. 

These aren’t on the nuts and bolts of marketing and business. We’re not talking about “how to write a great headline” or some other such tactical thing. 

This is higher-level stuff.  

It’s aspirational for many. 

But it could be tied back into something technical later down the line. For example, an email service provider could riff on this and create videos like…

• How [BRAND X] make’s $100,000 / month through email
• X 6-figure automation jobs for 2021 and beyond
• The 7-figure message used by [BIG BRAND]

The core idea – aspirational money making – is the same. It’s just changed slightly to align with the brand doing the research.  

Of course, getting this right depends upon you researching the right person. 

If you’re doubling down on your own content, then simply use your channel (if there’s enough research material).

If not, you want to find someone who is as close a competitor as possible.  

All you’re looking for is the core idea here.

What you want to do is record the idea types in a spreadsheet to get a quick overview of what is doing well on YouTube for channels your target market enjoys. 

The more of this research you do, the more patterns you’ll see coming up.  

For example, in analysing just the first few from Noah’s channel we can see that the best performing videos are…

• Financially focused
• Some case study-type videos (on financial success)
• A couple of listicle-based pieces that have “backed by data” in there

From these alone we have a starting point. However, one channel is not enough.  

Once you’ve got one channel out of the way, research at least 2 others to get a better view of what’s working and round out your data. 

The best way to find those channels is to click through to the most relevant video on the channel you’re researching. 

On the right hand side you’ll be able to filter the recommended videos by sub-type. 

Once you have a few options, click through to a channel with the best views and restart the process. 

Again, look for the archetypes and ideas that have got the most interest by sorting by most popular. 

Add new info to your spreadsheet. Rinse and repeat until you’re happy with the data you have. 

But be sure to do it at least 3 times. 

Why are we researching channels that are already doing well? 

Because these people have spent time, money, and effort to figure out what topics get clicks and what videos show up in the “recommended for you” side bar. 

Don’t reinvent the wheel here. 

Steal it from what’s already working. 

All you’re trying to do is find what’s getting recommended and insert yourself into the existing conversation and demand. 

Creating video ideas

Years ago, I took a training course on using Google’s Keyword planner to find YouTube video ideas. 

The concept is good, but the execution is too laborious. 

What we’re going to do is reuse that same idea to refine the overarching ideas and talking points into actual video ideas. 

And we’re going to use a super cheap tool called Keywords Everywhere for this. 

Keywords Everywhere is a Chrome extension that simply pulls relevant Google data into your searches. 

Let’s continue with the idea of business and marketing ideas. 

We already have a start on the potential seed keyword ideas. What we want to do now is activate Keywords Everywhere and type the seed keywords into the YouTube search box.  

 What you’ll see is something like the below.  

The information to the right of the Google auto-complete data is from Keywords Everywhere.  

The sweet spot is a search term that has…

• At least a few thousand search terms per month
• A higher than average CPC (this tells us it’s commercially viable)
• A lower competition score (competition is ranked 0-1, with 12 being the “most competitive”)

If you can find something that hits all 3, you have something people are searching for, has the potential to convert into sales, and there’s not a lot of competition. 

If that’s not enough information, click through onto one of the best potentials to get the video results page.  

Keywords Everywhere adds a bar on the right hand side with more detailed stats. 

And if you click the “Find YouTube keywords for ‘[keyword]’” you’ll get even more information.

Just like that we have a couple of new ideas to run with. 

Add these to your spreadsheet to get a better spread of ideas. 

I’d also use this opportunity to make a note of which ideas have the best search and conversion potential. You only want to focus on the easiest wins right now.  

Pick the best potentials in terms of traffic, commercial viability, and ease of ranking and use them to come up with actual video ideas.  

When you have some actual video titles, assess them on the ICE framework.   

You analyse

• The I mpact the video is likely to have
• The C onfidence you are of its success
• The E ase of creation and implementation

Rank each out of 10. 

The ones with the highest score are your best starting videos. 

By going through this multi-stage process you’ll find video ideas that…

• Have the potential to rank well and get decent traffic
• Should help you convert watchers to customers
• Are the best use of your time

But if you’ve been reading our content, you know we’re not going to simply put something up on YouTube and wait for the Google Gods to smile on us.  

We have more plans on this later.  

For now, let’s move on to YouTube SEO to increase your video’s chance of success.  

YouTube SEO

We’re jumping ahead a little here and assuming you’ve created the video and it’s ready for upload.  

When it comes time to upload your video, you’ve got to make sure you hit the right SEO elements to increase the vid’s chance of ranking.  

Unlike Google, you can’t rely on things like…

• Keyword density
• Relevant backlinks

You have to make sure that the handful of written elements tell Google what the video is about.  

You also need to make sure that those same written elements are relevant to the search someone would make.  

Let’s look at some examples. 

We’ll head back to Noah Kagan’s channel here and his video titled “5 Best Money Making Business Ideas You Can START TODAY”. 

The seed keyword in the above is Business Ideas.  

• The description
• The video tags

Noah has also included a secondary keyword of “start a business in 2021” in both the description and tags.  

This is what you need to do with the keywords you’ve identified.  

Much like an article, you need to include the primary keywords you;re targeting in these areas. Without this, Google won’t know what to rank you for.  

One thing I would recommend is to use more and longer tail tags that are relevant. 

If we look at another YouTuber – Ali Abdaal, you can see what he does with this.  

The video is for aspiring YouTubers. And it looks like the seed keyword is “start a YouTUbe channel”. 

If you look through his tags, he’s included a lot of long-tail variants of that seed keyword. 

This is great because it covers more ground. It tells Google what other kinds of searches your video should rank for. 

All you’d have to do here is pick a seed keyword that you identified in your research, head to YouTube and tap it into the search bar. 

If we do it again with “Profitable Business Ideas” we’d see the below.  

The idea for the video might be “Profitable Business Ideas you can start at home in 2021”.

The Seed Keyword would be Profitable Business Ideas as it has the highest volume.  

However, the tags could be some of the relevant longer tail searches like…

• Profitable business ideas low investment
• Profitable business ideas 2021
• Profitable business ideas you can start at home

If you search for these, you might also find other ideas like…

A lot of these searches have too low search volume to justify a full video.  

But if they’re relevant to your higher search volume idea, put them in as longer tail tags. This way YouTube has a better chance of ranking your video for the terms other people aren’t optimising for. 

Do this enough, and those small 210 searches per month could add up to a couple of thousand extra views.  

That’s the core of YouTube SEO from what we’ve been able to analyse.  

Now let’s move on to what to do when you’re getting traffic.  

Engaging your YouTube viewers

Unlike Google search, YouTube doesn’t look at things like backlinks to judge the value of content. 

They instead look at metrics related to how long a viewer spends on YouTube.  

Specifically they look at…

• CTR from thumbnail to video
• Average view duration
• Video length
• Subscriber count

And of course the keywords you’ve selected. 

In short, if you can create videos that hold user attention and get them to like, comment, and subscribe, you’ll do well in the rankings.  

Easier said than done though, right? 

After watching a lot of successful videos, I’ve broken down the basic approach to creating something that ranks to the below.  

Now, this model isn’t 100% accurate. 

The general approach is the same. However, you might find that the “like and subscribe / comment” section works better in your video a little earlier or later. 

Maybe you have a key promo point earlier in your video and so will want to pull that forward. 

This is not set in stone. 

This is intended as a starting template. 

Let’s look at it in more detail.  

Thumbnail and headline

Earlier on I mentioned the benefit of having a single person to be the face of the videos.  

That face should also feature heavily on the YouTube thumbnails.  

If you take a look into the psychology behind why this is important, you’ll find studies like this one . It details how faces in marketing are much better at grabbing a user’s attention. 

In the above linked study, faces are detected twice as fast as images without faces, and they work to create a greater feeling of community and brand recognition with the customer.  

Take a look at anyone who’s using YouTube as a marketing channel well, and you’ll see faces.  

Some examples…

Ali Abdaal – Productivity YouTuber

12 out of 15 feature Ali’s face.  

Alex Cattoni – Copywriting YouTuber

15 of 15 feature Alex’s face.

Ahrefs – SaaS tool for SEO

15 of 15 feature Sam’s face.  

Corridor Crew – VFX studio

15/15 feature some form of face. 

What’s interesting is how the Corridor Crew do this.  

They could just lead with their faces in each video. However, they also make use of celebrities and recognisable characters they’re featuring in their videos. 

This is a great workaround for brands who have a “behind the scenes” staff that might not want their faces featured. 

In addition to the use of faces, note the use of language between the headline and thumbnail copy.

The two are related, but aren’t a 1:1 copy. 

The copy within the image is often a “quick reference” type piece of copy.  If someone was skimming through the YouTube results for a search, the image copy needs to stand out.  

Using the image copy to cover…

• A major benefit
• The key lesson
• Some form of transformation

Is key to grabbing attention. 

The actual headline should be optimised for keywords. But pull a short version of the message and include it in the video thumbnail.   

Ideally in a way that feeds the search term or question back to the searcher.  

Ahrefs video on What makes a backlink “good”?

Primary keywords used in headline:

• SEO course by Ahrefs

Query keywords used in thumbnail:

• Good vs Bad backlinks

Why it works:

This video is going to rank for searches around good backlink generation, and Ahrefs is an established name in the SEO space. 

So the keywords make sense.  

The primary questions they’ll be wanting answers to are how to get high quality backlinks.

So the image copy also works to grab attention.  

Alex Cattoni’s video on How to build a 7-figure business

• Build a business
• $1,000,000 secrets

Building a business is a common search term. Crafting a video around the topic that appeals to relevant keywords is a no-brainer.  

Alex has also put one of the primary benefits of building a successful business – financial reward – in the thumbnail. Not only that, she’s used the magic number that often gets attention. $1,000,000. 

Be sure to check the downloads for a checklist for the thumbnail and a big list of headline formulae.  

Tease (optional)

Not every channel or video does or needs this. But I personally think it’s a great addition.  

Often, when clicking through to a video you’ll be greeted with a very short ~5-10 second segment of something notable from later in the video. 

We’re talking something that grabs attention and makes the watcher think “my god, I have to watch this now”. 

The Corridor crew guys are great at this.  They lead every video with a ~10 second segment of high-interest point from later in the video.  

 In this video they tease 2 high-interest points. 

• The team talking about how good an old-school visual effects shot is
• A sneak peek of a call they have with the lead FX guy for The Snyder Cut of Justice League

Of course that intro is super flashy and attention grabbing as well. I mean, who doesn’t want to see Meryl Streep brandishing a shotgun? 

I love this as a tactic. 

It’s the same concept as an open loop. 

You feed the user a tidbit of information that piques their curiosity. Their brain won’t be able to rest until that loop is closed which increases their chance of watching more. 

Which, of course, increases your key metrics. 

If you want to implement this it seems the best YouTube open loops lead the video with a huge revelation, interesting point, major benefit. 

However, be careful not to give too much away. 

With the intro you want to continue on that open loop type approach. 

The best intros are super simple. You simply tell the watcher what they’re going to learn, see, or get from your video. 

You basically want to give them a reason to watch your video. Tell them why it’s important for them.  

Noah Kagan offers a good example in this video on the 9 biggest job opportunities for the next decade.  

Within 30 seconds, Noah has outlined why you should watch the video. 

The full script from this section is…

“So I made this video to help show you high-paying, cool careers I highly encourage everyone to consider for the next decade so you don’t have to waste your time in a dead-end cubicle job for years like I did”.

Is someone who’s looking to earn a lot of money with a cool job going to be interested in this? 

Yes.  

Will outlining the above to them within the first 30-seconds help retain their attention? 

Your intro should be as simple as that. 

Whatever the message your video is trying to communicate, the value sections are where you do it.  

Doesn’t matter if that value is…

• Entertainment
• Information
• Something else

Just make sure that you offer the value the user expects from you. 

Like & subscribe

One of the golden rules in marketing is to make the CTA easy to understand and obvious.  

Button CTAs say things like “Buy now”. They tell the user what they want them to do to progress to the next stage.  

It’s no different with your YouTube videos.  

As mentioned earlier, your video’s ranking is determined by engagement factors.  

2 of those are the number of likes and subscriptions it generates.  

So, rather than leave this to chance, you have to ask people to take the action. 

It appears that most YouTubers don’t lead with this at the start of the video. 

They wait until they’ve provided a little value in their video before asking the user to subscribe.  

As for that ask, it happens in one of two ways.  

• It’s a simple on-screen graphic that pops up as a reminder 

• They actively call it out by saying something like “if you enjoy this content and want more, please consider subscribing”. JackFrags , a video game YouTuber, does a good job of this as seen below.  

Promo / Traffic shaping

This is the difference maker in my opinion. 

YouTube is a great medium. And no doubt there are skilled YouTubers out there eating off their ability to craft engaging videos. 

However, in my opinion this simply isn’t good enough. 

You’re building your business on land you don’t own. If YouTube changes anything to do with their monetisation strategy, you could be left out in the cold and see your revenue fall through the floor. 

The best YouTubers use YouTube as an acquisition channel. And they use a promotion or traffic shaping strategy to make money off the YouTube platform. 

There are a couple of ways you can do this which I’ll explain shortly. 

However, in short what you want to do is recreate what is, in effect, a content upgrade on YouTube. 

Basically give a short, relevant tease of your product or offer within YouTube and tell people within the video where they can learn more. 

You can do this mid video with a verbal call out, or simply leave it to the end with YouTube’s end card. 

Personally, I’d recommend both.  

One other thing to note is that smart marketers generally don’t redirect directly to a sales page though. They’ll redirect to an email sequence that continues to build trust. 

If we were to visualise what that might look like, it would be something like this. 

The tease is something you’ll have to play around with. However, the most successful teases for traffic shaping follow the same principles as a regular content upgrade for written content. 

So you want to engage people with the primary content – in this case the video – and tell people where to go to get…

• A downloadable template
• The next edition or “editor’s cut” video
• A downloadable version

Or something similar. 

Anything that would make the act of clicking through form the video to your website a no brainer.  

Nurture and grow your viewers

So at this point you have engaging videos that increase the chances of people…

• Liking 
• Subscribing
• Watching longer periods of time
• Checking out your off-YouTube properties

But the whole model here is very one directional.  

You’re burning your YouTube bridges in a way by simply using it to funnel traffic to your offers.  

And if YouTube is providing you with good leads, you want to keep that going. 

The thing I’d recommend here is setting up a very simple engagement loop with the people you’ve directed to your owned audience platform. 

There are two steps to dominating YouTube.

Step 1 – Keep it going

I don’t think anyone should rely 100% on a rented audience platform for their revenue. 

However, that doesn’t mean you should ignore it.  

If YouTube is getting your brand in front of people, keep the momentum going.  

If you’re following this guide and…

• Choosing relevant topics
• Optimising for high volume keywords
• Creating optimised videos that increase engagement

YouTube will reward you with greater reach and a growing audience.  

You’ll find your videos showing up in search and in the recommended videos section. 

Don’t ruin any progress you have made or will make. 

The best advice is to keep things going and be consistent on the platform. Check any successful channel and you’ll see that they have consistent upload schedules.  

Here’s a look at XiaoMaNYC’s recent uploads.  

When it comes to your publication schedule, don’t worry about daily, weekly, monthly etc right now. 

Instead, focus on what is a realistic publication schedule for you to churn out quality videos that align with the template above. 

Quantity is great, but if the quality isn’t there then it’s useless. 

The other action I’d recommend is…

Step 2 – Set up smart engagement loops

I recently wrote about how Eddie Shleyner creates engagement loops to bring his owned audience into the growth of his rented audience. 

You should do the same with YouTube. 

If you’re directing people off YouTube to your email list, then use those people to ensure each new video gets off to the best start possible. 

Yes, YouTube will tell your subs that a new video has been published, but not everyone is sitting around on YouTube waiting for you to hit publish. 

The best marketers make sure that each new video is pumped out to their email subs.

Unsurprisingly you’ll see Noah Kagan doing a great job of this. 

At the start of his emails he’ll often link to his most recent video on YouTube. 

This is a great way to get the initial traction and show YouTube that the video is worth wider promotion.

Your email subscribers are super invested in your brand. Make sure they know about how they can get closer to you.

All it takes is a quick email to say “ check out the latest video here ”.

If you want to kick this up a notch, you could also incentivise people liking, subscribing, and commenting on your video with some form of giveaway.  

Just be aware of the rules YouTube has established for this though .

Again, Noah has a great example of this. He ran a giveaway for his Tesla. And to be in with a chance of winning, you had to be subscribed to him on YouTube.  

If you have a relevant giveaway that could drive engagement, use it.  

If I was to do this, I’d ask people to like and comment to be in with a chance of winning. Then I’d use something like WooBox to pick a comment at random as the winner.  

Basically, you want to ask your email subscribers to check out your latest videos. 

And maybe once a month or quarter, do a giveaway that incentivises people to take the engagement actions that boost your video’s reach. 

Visualised that might look like this. 

With this model you’re getting your owned audience to help boost your reach, thus attracting a greater audience on a rented platform. 

This isn’t anything new and is also the model I’d recommend for any social media platform. 

Step 3 – Video promotion tips

Waiting on an algorithm to rank your content and drive visitors for you is a fool’s game.

The wonderful thing about video content though is how it can be reused in multiple ways for promotion.  

You could quite easily take all the below from one video…

• A transcript to publish below the video on your site for SEO juice
• Multiple short clips (10 seconds, 30 seconds, 5 minutes etc) to promote on multiple networks
• Still images for sharing
• Audio for a podcast

This can be a lot of work though.

What I’d recommend is simply focusing on pulling multiple promotional clips from each video to be shared across other networks where you have an audience. 

If you’ve already edited the video, this is a pretty quick and painless approach. 

Just identify short segments that would work well as promotions and share them across multiple networks with the link pointing back to the original video.   

Here’s a visualisation.

This clip method works as a teaser. As you can see there’s still enough of the video left that, even if someone saw all your clips, they’d still want to watch the whole thing.  

The full YouTube model

Let’s pull all of the various sections together to create one, complete YouTube model and run through everything quickly.  

From a high-level, the model looks something like this.  

With a little explanation, that’s…

• Step 1 – Research high volume, low competition video ideas and the relevant keywords
• Step 2.5 – Take multiple clips from that video to promote it across social sites and communities
• Step 3 – Create an opt-in page for your email list, use a relevant lead magnet upgrade that’s hinted at in your video
• Step 4 – Send the viewer a welcome email series that promotes your paid asset
• Step 5 – Add the user into your usual newsletter rotation
• Step 6 – When you publish a new video, make sure you email your current email subs to check it out
• Bonust step – If possible, run giveaways on your YouTube channel that require likes/comments. Make sure to promote through the usual channels of social, communities, and your email list.  

Let’s also recap the model’s steps with simple bullet points.  

Acquisition

Follow this process to publish videos that…

• Your audience wants to watch
• Is optimised and so will have a better chance of organic rankings

And some more detailed explanations.  

• Step 1 – Identify a niche talking point to help you build authority and an audience faster
• Step 2 – Research competitor videos to identify topics of high interest
• Step 3 – Use that research to identify potential video ideas
• Step 4 – Find the keywords that have high volume, low competition, mid-high CPC
• Step 5 – Make sure your video uses relevant keywords in the title, thumbnail, description, and tags 

This will help give your video the best chance of ranking well and attracting organic traffic on its own. 

Optimising the video’s topic and basic SEO is one thing. However, YouTube ranks videos based on user engagement.  

After watching countless videos of channels that are growing right now, there is a general pattern to the kind of video that gets good watch time and helps to grow a channel.  That basic model is…

Here’s a run down of the steps. 

• Step 1 –  Lead with a tease of an interesting point that comes up later in the video to create an open loop and curiosity
• Step 2 – An introduction that teases what the viewer will learn or receive as a benefit for watching the video
• Step 3 – Start delivering value
• Step 4 – After a little value has been delivered, either ask the user to like & subscribe or put a graphic on screen as a prompt
• Step 5 – Continue with the value of the video
• Step 6 – At the point of highest interest for your owned assets, tell the user where they can go to get access to it. This should be to a free lead magnet to secure their email address
• Step 7 – Continue providing value 
• Step 8 – End card that keeps them engaged with your channel and offers a direct link to your owned asset opt-in

One thing to note here is that there are no hard and fast rules on exactly when you should ask users to like and subscribe or when you should try to shape traffic to your owned audience opt-in. 

We can’t say “at exactly 7 minutes and 29 seconds do X.  

It depends on your video topic, length, and the script you’ve written for that video.  

It’s similar to putting a CTA on a sales page. There is no one best placement.  

You have to look at where the intent for action is the highest. 

So, where in your video is someone most likely to think “ I can’t wait for the next video” ? That’s where you push for the like and subscribe.  

Find the place in your video where someone would think “ I wish I could do that ” to push them toward your owned asset opt-in which will set them on the path to solving the problem themselves (and adding them to your email list). 

The exact timing of these things will be different for every video you make. And you need to experiment and keep an eye on these to find the best possible location. 

Once you’ve got your videos on topics that people are interested in, and a template that fosters better engagement, it’s time to hit the growth.

The first thing you’ll want to do is increase the ToFu traffic.  

And the easiest way to do this is to make sure that your video is being promoted across any and all relevant social platforms, communities, or areas your ideal audience hangs out. 

Here’s how I’d recommend doing this.

• Step 1 – Pull short video clips, still images, or quotes from your video asset
• Step 2 – Share those short versions across social platforms, communities, and forums where your 
• Step 3 – make sure they all include a link back to the original video
• Step 4 – Rinse and repeat. Never let your promotion of videos (even old videos) die off

This will help drive new viewers from one rented audience platform to another. 

But to kick the growth machine up a notch you need to increase the chance of…

• Sales and revenue you control (not YouTube ad revenue)
• Engagement that increases the reach of the video

The best way to achieve both of these is through email.  

Here’s what the visualisation would look like.  

If we break it down, here are the steps. 

• Step 1 – Include a relevant tease and promotion of your owned asset in your video
• Step 2 – Offer the owned asset as a freebie if they join your email list
• Step 3 – Send a welcome email series that builds trust whilst also promoting your paid asset (generating revenue you own 100%)
• Step 4 – When the welcome sequence is done, add them to your normal newsletter rotation
• Step 5 – Email your newsletter subscribers when you have a new video out to get initial traction in terms of views

With this you’re bringing our owned audience back to the rented audience platform to manually increase the engagement, which helps increase overall reach. 

To kick that up another step, you can run a giveaway or competition on YouTube that requires engagement. 

Promote that through the same channels above (social and email) and you should see a drastic increase in engagement and new views.

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Youtube Case Study – Scaling From 2k Views per Year to 2.4k per Day, in One Month

• Dan Cucolea
• October 29, 2021
• 8 mins read

At the beginning of 2020, we took on the challenge of increasing the Kalari Lab’s YouTube channel. As you probably remember, that was when the worldwide lockdown started.

In this case study, I will go over our Youtube optimization strategy that helped KalariLab scale from 2,000 views per year to over 2,400 views per day , in a little over one month, without uploading any new videos.

The framework we use at Chillital works with any platform and type of content (see our process for a breakdown). 

We followed these 4 steps:

• Research – We analyzed competitors’ channels and what keywords we could rank for with Tubebuddy ( jump to section )
• Strategy – We put together a list of keywords and the most important channels we were going to associate with ( jump to section )
• Optimization – We optimized each video’s description, title, and tags by following the previously created strategy ( jump to section )
• Promotion – We promoted the videos using the built-in Youtube community tab and engaging with practitioners on other social media platforms ( jump to section )

How it started

KalariLab is a martial arts online school located on a remote island in Thailand. Due to the lack of access to the physical location, we had to show people how they can learn martial arts just by watching a series of videos.

Adam, the school’s master, put together a video course aimed at complete beginners. He used Teachable to distribute the content and, of course, charge for it.

On top of this, he had a presentation website that was mainly used to book appointments for his physical school, rather than sell online courses.

We could not completely redesign the website, as the lockdown could’ve ended at any time, but rather blend the online course presentation with the existing copy.

During the first months, we’ve tried to push traffic using influencers, paid ads, and email marketing, which worked, but the low conversion rate was making it extremely difficult to reach a positive ROI.

We dropped the introductory lessons price to just $1 hoping people would get a feel of the course before we upsell them the full curriculum. This worked for a short while but still wasn’t generating the results we were looking for.

Adam had a Youtube channel for close to 3 years, but he never really spent too much time on it. In fact, it took us a couple of months to even know it existed, and that was by pure chance.

Since I am an optimizer at heart I knew that some video reviews from students could do wonders for the conversion rate, so I asked for some. 

That’s how I discovered they had a Youtube channel. 

Your competitors guide your initial strategy

The first thing we did to grow the number of views and reach was to spy on competing youtube channels. The niche we were working on was extremely small compared to the mainstream ones. 

Even so, we were fighting against channels with over 200k subscribers and millions of views.

We started by peeking at what tags they use, how they structure their video descriptions, and what keywords they rank for.

Since the average search volume for most keywords was relatively small, we decided to go with general ones:

Kalari, kalaripayattu, kalari training, kalaripayattu training

One important point to keep in mind is that Youtube is not simply a search engine. It also has the functionality of a social network. Youtube will actively display your videos on the homepage, in the “Recommended” section of other videos, and even on other channels’ pages.

In fact, the absurd increase we’ve seen was because Youtube finally understood what each video was about, and it recommended it to the right audience.

The Youtube algorithm analyzes different components of each video (title, description, tags, subtitles, etc.) and decides who would be interested in viewing it. Then it displays it to a small audience to see how they will engage with it. If all the signals are positive, the algorithm will increase this audience automatically until it reaches everyone.

Keep in mind that you will experience a sudden and abrupt decrease in views once the audience has been exhausted. You should immediately start uploading new videos if for some reason you’ve stopped doing that, like in our case.

Piggyback on your competitors’ fame

With the main competitors researched and the keyword research done, we started looking for videos with the most chances of ranking. We were lucky to find that most were professionally filmed and edited, which was a big plus. 

Before we found out about the Youtube channel, we tried to convert users by giving them 6 video lessons for just $1. We’ve found 3 of them uploaded on the channel, so we decided to start by optimizing them.

These videos were 50 minute long introductory lessons, perfect for beginners or people looking to learn more about ancient martial arts.

We did several things for each video:

• Edited their titles to include the focus keyword; 
• Optimized the descriptions to feature the focus keyword;
• Tagged them in order to tell Youtube what the videos were about.

How to leverage video tags

Tags are still extremely important for Youtube. They literally tell the algorithm where it should display the video.

For the best effect you would have to use a combination that goes like this:

• 50% should be keywords you are targeting;
• 30% should be general topics of your video;
• 20% should be other channels’ names;

Remember that you can only write a maximum of 500 characters in the tags section, so stick with the most important ones.

We went with different variations of the same keyword because the name of the martial art is spelled differently depending on the region.

Use TubeBuddy to get a list of tags as we did. You can start with the free version and upgrade to the full one once you know how to fully leverage its power. 

Video add-ons boost engagement and views

Youtube is the second most visited website in the world according to Similarweb . Moreover, Youtube’s display language changes depending on your IP, which means that German people will browse Youtube in German, French people will browse it in French, and so on.

Our videos were narrated in English, so one thing we could do to increase reach just a bit more was to add subtitles in different languages.

This was relatively easy to do as Youtube has built-in functionality that would auto-generate subtitles for each video uploaded on the platform. All we had to do was to go in the settings, slightly tweak the auto-generated text and translate it into 8 different languages.

We’ve also created different descriptions and titles in the respective languages to further increase the chances of ranking.

Because the channel’s niche was hyper-targeted, subtitles did not boost reach too much. Even so, a few users that did not speak English highly appreciated the subtitles and converted to paid customers. 

Youtube Video Addons – End Screen and Cards

The first rule of UX is to make it obvious for people what’s the next step they have to take after they did something you wanted them to do.

This principle applies to Youtube videos as well. We wanted to tell people what they should do after they viewed a video by showing them the next one in the series.

To achieve this we’ve used the end screen functionality to display a subscribe link and the thumbnail of the next video.

Youtube gives you 3 different options to choose from: 

Depending on your channel type, you might want to go with the first option, but since this was a video series we picked the next lesson.

Taking it one step further, we’ve also added video cards. These appear in the top right corner of the video as some sort of native advertisement. At first, we pointed them to a playlist, but once we hit the 10k subscribers mark we used them to promote the website.

How to run on and off-platform promotions to increase views

When used properly, Youtube is a powerhouse when it comes to brand awareness. Besides simply posting and optimizing videos, we’ve also leveraged the community posts feature.

This functionality only works in the mobile app, and since most of our audience use their phones to view the videos, this was proven to be a gold mine. 

Unfortunately, only subscribers can view these posts, so this strategy worked better later down the line.

Cross-platform promotion

Simply creating posts for the community was not enough for us. We went one step further and created a 7-day challenge. The idea behind it was to encourage subscribers to practice a specific Kalari pose then take a picture or video and post it on Instagram using a specific hashtag.

This would help us engage existing subscribers and convert them into brand ambassadors. In addition, they would also have a chance of winning the full course for free.

Influencer marketing

The previous campaign went really well so we wanted to double down on Instagram. We got in touch with a few influencers offering them free consultation lessons and access to the full course in exchange for a shoutout.

The results were not really what we expected due to the nature of the channel. Most martial arts influencers already had their own courses or contracts, which made it difficult for us to work with them.

We’ve worked with around 20 influencers, but the community campaign has proven to be more effective than this one.

Youtube case study results

At the beginning of the optimization process, we’ve seen a spike across all metrics. Our main goal was to get as many subscribers as we can in a short amount of time (which represents a soft conversion) and later convert them into Youtube channel members or send them to the self-hosted online course.

During the first month, we’ve reached almost 250 subscribers in a single day, but that growth has stabilized once we reached the core audience.

Since that spike happened we have generated over $30k in combined revenue from Youtube members and self hosted video course.

Our content marketing strategy works for any format

Whether you want to dominate SERPs or build an audience on Youtube, you need a process that takes you from research to promotion.

To recap, make sure you follow these 4 simple steps, in order:

• Research – Know what your competitors are doing and what users want;
• Strategy – Combine the findings and put together an action plan;
• Optimization / Content Creation – Follow the action plan;
• Promotion – Boost reach by testing different promotion channels.

Our strategy works because it helps define your ideal customer. You will use that knowledge to create and optimize content that will dominate your target market.

Remember to always start with a small niche before going for a larger audience. We did an experiment to see what would happen if we had an incredibly large audience without focusing on a segment first. 

Our content reached every single Pinterest user in the US, but that was not enough. You can read all about that in our Pinterest Case Study . 

Don’t let competitors outrank you anymore

The faster you start working on your content marketing the sooner you’ll get results. It takes time to:

• build an audience;
• increase your email list;
• convert leads to customers.

Your Youtube channel can be your biggest traffic source . Drop us a line by completing the form on the “ work with us” page and see how you can reach more prospects and increase your brand awareness.

• Case Studies , Marketing , Positioning

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Picture the classic scene across sales floors from films like “The Wolf of Wall Street”: a confident salesman throws a pen in the air and challenges an employee with the task, “Sell me this pen.” The scene is iconic. It gives us the idea that to sell—to truly sell—is to convince someone of a need

In B2B SEO, the saying “content is king” has been taken to heart by many, but not always in the way it was intended. There’s still a prevalent but misguided belief that churning out content en masse is sufficient to “win” at SEO.  The reality is much more nuanced. AI has democratized content creation. It

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How One Creator Went Viral on YouTube (A Case Study)

Jessica Stansberry, a YouTube creator and educator, went viral early in 2022 with a video around selling digital products.

By doing so, she added over 10,000 new subscribers, increased her income from Google AdSense by 7x, and tripled her views and watch time . 

And that was only the jumping-off point to create even more content that would go viral for her. With the help of TubeBuddy, she intentionally created content that also blew up on the tail of that specific video . 

Going viral is the dream for many YouTube creators, but what’s the strategy behind that goal? Jessica broke this down into five easy steps. Read along for her top tips or watch the video below:

To get the most out of her example, you’ll need TubeBuddy’s Legend License access. It’s a paid plan but definitely worth it for the value it provides.

Going viral is subjective. For Jessica and her YouTube channel , it’s any video that’s going to get about ten times the views that she usually gets. 

#1 Identify What Content is Working On Your Channel Right Now

If you want any of your videos to perform above and beyond, the first thing you need to do is identify what viewers want to watch. 

An excellent way to determine this is with TubeBuddy’s Click Magnet tool, specifically the Power Rankings section of the tool. This feature will run an analysis of your content, and rank your last 50 uploads by performance. TubeBuddy will do all the work for you here and rank each video from 1-50.

To access the tool, open your TubeBuddy dashboard and click on ‘Click Magnet’ under the ‘Tools’ tab. Jessica used it to confirm which recently published videos performed well for her so she could repeat that success:

Power Rankings will give you real-time feedback on what YouTube likes, and what your audience likes. And that’s golden.

#2: Pick the Right Keywords

The second step is to pick keywords that you can actually rank for . While this seems an obvious strategy to take, consider one thing:

If your channel is relatively small (around 1,000 subscribers), you will find it difficult to rank against bigger channels creating the same videos. Those channels usually have more authority than yours.

However, by using TubeBuddy’s Keyword Explorer , you can quickly identify what keywords will work for YOUR channel. Keyword Explorer gives you two types of scores after you enter in a keyword or keyphrase:

Unweighted Score: This score pulls data from across all YouTube channels and videos to identify search volumes and competition. It takes a high-level and generalized view of any keywords. Based on the unweighted score, it might not be a good keyword to target if the competition is too high.

Weighted Score: This is the feature you want to use as it’s specific to YOUR channel. You can test the same keywords to see how they could perform based on the videos you’ve already published and the metadata you used for those videos. The weighted score is completely personalized for your channel and your content to give you the most accurate picture of what keywords will work for you.

TubeBuddy can also provide you with other suggestions for longer tail keyphrases that you might want to create videos for. 

So, based on the Weighted Score, Jessica was able to confirm which keywords would work best for her based on my channel’s previous content and authority.

If you have a smaller number of subscribers than Jessica (less than 140K), your keyword scores might only be fair. But you can use Keyword Explorer to keep drilling down until you find a score that’s excellent for you. 

Every time you use the tool, you’re getting closer to a keyword that will work for you!

#3 Get Found in Suggested & Recommended

The actual formula to getting your video found in YouTube Search is pretty simple:

• Use keywords that you can actually rank for, and
• Put those keywords in the right places (title, description, tags, script, thumbnails, etc.)

You should always optimize your videos to be found in Search. 

But where we really see virality happen is when YouTube says this video is good, let’s show it to more people. So focus on getting the video in Recommended or Suggested, as well as Search.

To give YouTube every helping hand in suggesting your content, ensure that you are focused on generating a high click-through rate. CTR is the number of people who are shown your video versus the number of people who clicked through to that video. 

The higher the CTR, the better that video will perform on the platform. To boost your click-through, the basics you should be doing is:

• Writing compelling video titles
• Creating engaging video thumbnail images
• Testing different thumbnail and title combinations
• Picking the best keywords for YOUR channel
• Focusing on video engagement

#4 A/B Test Your Thumbnails and Titles

If you want to increase your CTR, TubeBuddy has the perfect set of tools to help you! On the Legend license, you’ll have the ability to A/B test your YouTube titles and descriptions , plus your custom thumbnails .

Split testing these elements will help you determine which thumbnail and other metadata will boost the number of clicks you attract.

#5 Throw More Fuel on the Fire

If you’ve gone through the steps above, you’ve just increased your chances of going viral. But this next step is the most important; otherwise, everything will quickly fizzle out. 

Now is the exact time to throw more fuel on the fire! If a video is taking off, then:

• Identify your other top-ranking content.
• Find the right keywords. Make sure you’re not trying to rank for keywords you can’t rank for.
• Find a way to increase your CTR, so more viewers click on your video when they see it in their feed. 
• Throw everything you’ve got at your thumbnail and title. Use TubeBuddy’s A/B split test tool to identify what works best for you.
• Use Keyword Explorer to see what other keywords you could go after in that niche.
• Draw inspiration from other people’s videos to understand where you should go. 

The above strategy is not a guaranteed method, and you may need to try a few different things to figure out what works for you. However, using TubeBuddy tools to identify what’s working and what you can test and improve will be invaluable.

Sign up for a TubeBuddy Legend plan today and take those next steps to YouTube success!

Carla Marshall

Carla Marshall is the Content Marketing Manager at TubeBuddy. She has 10+ years of experience in video marketing, social media management, content marketing, DRM, & SEO

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24 Inspirational YouTube Success Stories & Case Studies [2024]

For anyone looking to start a successful YouTube channel, there are plenty of YouTube channel success stories that can be used as inspiration and encouragement. In addition, YouTube has an established monetization system and boasts incredible popularity, making it a potential platform for revenue generation.

In this article, we'll look at different approaches you can use to help promote your channel and grow your viewers. While there's no quick and easy way to success, you can take these tips to build your own YouTube Channel Success story. If you love content creation, you can capitalize on YouTube's popularity to earn extra income.

If you want to join the Youtube partner program to monetize your channel, you will need to reach a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the previous 12 months.

Here are some real life success stories of starting a youtube channel:

1. Pete & Pedro ($7.2M/year)

Aaron Marino, the founder of Pete & Pedro, came up with the idea for his men's grooming brand after his image consulting business struggled to make money. He started making YouTube videos to help guys with their style, and as his audience grew, he saw an opportunity to create and sell his own haircare products. With his existing YouTube channel as a marketing platform, Marino was able to successfully launch and grow Pete & Pedro into a multi-million-dollar business.

How much they make: $7.2M/year How much did it cost to start: $5K Current team size: 8

Learn how one man went from bankruptcy and driving a beer cart to launching a successful men's grooming brand, Pete & Pedro, featured on Shark Tank, by leveraging the power of YouTube and a slowly growing audience.

2. The Kavalier ($72K/year)

Jon Shanahan came up with the idea for The Kavalier after realizing the need for guidance in the exploding online menswear brand space. Modeled after The Wirecutter, Jon started the YouTube channel in 2015 with the goal of delivering helpful, in-depth recommendations by category. With a subscriber count of 57k and revenue of $7,000 per month, Jon continues to grow steadily and redefine the modern context of being a gentleman in the menswear world.

How much they make: $72K/year Current team size: 1

The Kavalier started as a YouTube channel in 2015 delivering honest and approachable reviews on men's fashion brands, growing to 57k subscribers, 500 videos, and earning $7k per month in revenue, providing helpful, in-depth recommendations by category with a YouTube strategy focused on standing out and niching down.

So... can you actually make money with a youtube channel?

Of course. There are millions to be made in this industry.

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3. MTN SIDE BUILDERS ($480K/year)

Cameron Vilcsak, the founder of Mountain Fire Woodworks, came up with the idea for his business through his passion for carving and building things out of wood. After documenting the process of building a log cabin on his YouTube channel, a viral video with over 25 million views, he realized the potential to turn his passion into a scalable business. With steady passive income, plans to release more content, and exciting future projects, Vilcsak's business is thriving.

How much they make: $480K/year How much did it cost to start: $50K Current team size: 5

Mountain Fire Woodworks founder Cameron Vilcsak shares how he used YouTube to promote his log cabins, chainsaw carvings, and passion for woodworking, culminating in one of his videos that has gone viral with over 25 million views and counting.

4. Cinquanta Cox-Smith ($120K/year)

Cinquanta Cox-Smith, a Multipreneur from South Carolina, stumbled upon the Print On Demand industry 12 years ago when she wanted to create a unique shirt and discovered Spreadshirt.com. Through her creativity and networking skills, she found success in designing and selling catchy, conversation-starting shirts. This eventually led her to create multiple POD brands on various platforms, generating an impressive $120k per year in revenue.

How much they make: $120K/year How much did it cost to start: $100 Current team size: 1

A multipreneur shares how she built a successful print on demand side hustle, generating $120,000 per year through multiple brands spread over various platforms.

5. Ask Holly Hall ($72K/year)

Holly Hall, a clairvoyant life coach, was introduced to the world of astrology and spiritual therapy through a book lent by a co-worker. With her unique abilities and a deep understanding of individuals, she launched her business, Ask Holly Hall, and has since garnered endorsements from esteemed figures like Dr. Shefali. With an average income of $5,000-8,000 per month, she aims to expand her reach through podcasting and publishing her book with a publishing company.

How much they make: $72K/year How much did it cost to start: $200 Current team size:

Meet the Clairvoyant life coach who has built a highly successful business generating an average income of $5,000-8,000 a month through her talents as an Author, LifeCoach Astropsychologist, Spiritual Therapist, astrologer, and Clairvoyant with the ability in remote viewing to help clients understand their existence, relationships, careers, and connection with the universe or source.

6. Biteplay ($72K/year)

Henrique Chappuis, co-founder of Biteplay, came up with the idea for his business after realizing the potential of YouTube ads in generating revenue. He had previously experienced success with YT ads and saw the opportunity to automate the process and target relevant video placements. Through beta testing and educational courses, Biteplay gained traction and has since been featured as a top product on Product Hunt.

How much they make: $72K/year How much did it cost to start: $5K Current team size: 0

Biteplay is a one-year-old SaaS that allows brands to place ads in relevant YouTube video content and create collaborations with influencers, generating up to $10k each month and growing revenue by 30% per month.

7. Delray Watch Supply ($3.84M/year)

John Pietrasz and Federico Iossa, co-founders of Delray Watch Supply, came up with the idea for their tech-driven luxury watch dealer through their shared passion for watches and their expertise in the industry. They launched the business with $4,000 in their kitchen and now see sales of over $3.3 million annually, attracting and retaining customers through engagement on YouTube.

How much they make: $3.84M/year Current team size: 4

Delray Watch Supply, a tech-driven luxury watch dealer, co-founded by John Pietrasz and Federico Iossa 20 months ago with $4,000 in a kitchen, has seen sales of over $3.3M annually, with sales expected to reach close to $4M this year.

8. Annmarie ($12M/year)

Kevin Gianni, the founder of Annmarie Skin Care, stumbled upon the idea for his business while researching natural health therapies. After traveling the world and discovering a line of skincare products that aligned with his values, he partnered with the owner to bring the line to the wider public. With a platform already established through their YouTube channel, the business was able to launch successfully and continues to grow.

How much they make: $12M/year Current team size: 26

Kevin Gianni, CEO and founder of Annmarie Skin Care reveals how he and his wife went from being youtubers to having the ability to run their seven-figure, natural, organic skincare and beauty company, with over 105k subscribers, using their existing platform.

9. Chicken Armor® ($9.6K/year)

Jill Bong, the co-founder of Chicken Armor, came up with the idea after her beloved chicken died from mating injuries. Unable to afford traditional saddles, Jill and her husband developed their own affordable and low-maintenance chicken saddle, which has since sold over 50,000 units and protected chickens in all 50 states and on 4 continents.

How much they make: $9.6K/year Current team size: 2

Chicken Armor has sold over 50,000 affordable and easy-to-maintain chicken saddles since its inception, and utilizes a no-strings-attached guarantee and extensive media coverage for customer acquisition and retention.

10. Mrs Daaku Studio ($60K/year)

Chhavi, the founder of Mrs Daaku Studio, had a desire to achieve financial freedom and work from home. After finding success as a freelance writer, she and her husband Amit realized there was a demand for information and guidance on working from home and starting side hustles. They launched their blog and YouTube channel, offering valuable resources and products like The Client Magnet Bundle and The Content Mojo, which have helped them earn $5-7k per month and live a flexible life.

How much they make: $60K/year How much did it cost to start: $500 Current team size: 3

Learn how this entrepreneurial couple made $5-7k a month by helping others find legitimate work from home jobs and creative ways to make money online through their blog and YouTube channel, as well as offering two flagship products designed to help beginner freelancers and new bloggers accelerate growth.

11. Rhett & Link YouTube Channel ($30M/year)

How much they make: $30M/year Current team size:

"Rhett and Link, who earned a combined $30 million in 2021, plan to invest $5 million in other YouTubers after their R-rated live stream garnered 70,000 viewers who paid up to $50 per ticket."

12. MrBeast YouTube Channel ($54M/year)

How much they make: $54M/year Current team size:

Discover how MrBeast raised $20 million, donated over 100 cars, gave away a private island, and $1 million in one video, all while building and growing his own successful business.

13. Kashvi Adlakha YouTube Channel ($16M/year)

How much they make: $16M/year Current team size:

A YouTuber attracts a whopping 331.82 million views a month, earning an estimated $19.91 million a year.

14. Rosanna Pansino YouTube Channel ($5M/year)

How much they make: $5M/year Current team size:

This case study shares the story of Rosanna Pansino, a YouTube personality who earns over $5 million every year from her channel which has 13.7 million subscribers, sharing cooking videos that are typically 15-20 minutes long.

15. Zoella YouTube Channel ($4.57M/year)

How much they make: $4.57M/year Current team size: 6

Case study: How Zoella earned over $5 million through YouTube, with almost a billion views and over 10.8 million subscribers, and leveraged her popularity to secure lucrative advertising and television opportunities.

16. YourAverageTechBro ($30K/year)

Dohyun Kim, the founder of YourAverageTechBro, stumbled upon creating social media content during the pandemic. After realizing the potential of short-form videos on TikTok, he leaned into his competitive advantage as a software engineer and began creating content that resonated with his audience. Currently earning an average of $3,000 per month, Dohyun plans to expand his revenue streams through original content and product sales in the future.

How much they make: $30K/year How much did it cost to start: $0 Current team size: 1

Dohyun Kim shares his journey starting as a software engineer on YouTube and pivoting into short-form content on TikTok and Instagram with 155,000 followers and 11,000 subscribers, currently averaging $3000/month across ad money, sponsored content, and course sales.

17. Part-Time YouTuber Academy ($4.5M/year)

How much they make: $4.5M/year Current team size: 21

How a junior doctor generates over $4.5M through 15 income streams from a YouTube channel with over 3M subscribers and over 218,836,000 total views.

18. Kirsty Partridge Art ($36.7K/year)

How much they make: $36.7K/year Current team size:

This case study details how Kirsty Partridge grew her art YouTube channel to over 1.3M subscribers and 81,296,486 views, and expanded her business by launching an art tutorials website and personalized art course which has taught 21K+ students.

19. Humphrey ($240K/year)

How much they make: $240K/year Current team size:

Personal finance expert Humphrey Yang made $20,000 a month from nine passive sources of income, including TikTok, YouTube, stocks, Turo car rentals, real estate, cryptocurrency staking, and writing, with an estimated net worth of $2 million.

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20. Pursuit of Passive Income ($264K/year)

Michael was looking for a passive income generating approach when he stumbled upon blogging and decided to venture.

How much they make: $264K/year How much did it cost to start: $500 Current team size: 0

This case study is about a blogger who turned his passion into a business that generates $20k per month, mostly through affiliate marketing and consulting, by focusing on long-term sustainable passive income streams through blogging.

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Home » blog » YouTube case studies: How brands are marketing through videos?

YouTube case studies: How brands are marketing through videos?

As a digital marketer, One should always be on the lookout for innovative and effective ways to reach their target audience. And one platform that has consistently proven its worth in the world of marketing is YouTube. With over 2 billion monthly active users, YouTube offers tremendous potential for brands to connect with their audience through engaging video content.

In this article, we will explore various YouTube case studies to understand how successful brands have utilized the platform to market their products and services. By analyzing these case studies, we can uncover valuable insights and strategies that can be applied to your own marketing campaigns.

Benefits of Using YouTube for Marketing

Before diving into the case studies, let’s first understand why YouTube is such a powerful tool for marketers. Here are a few key benefits:

• Massive Reach: YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google, and its extensive user base provides brands with an opportunity to reach a vast audience. Whether you’re targeting a specific niche or aiming for widespread recognition, YouTube can help you achieve your goals.
• Visual Appeal: Videos have a unique ability to capture attention and convey information in an engaging manner. By leveraging YouTube’s platform, brands can create visually appealing content that resonates with their target audience.
• SEO Benefits: YouTube videos are indexed by search engines, which means that a well-optimized video has the potential to rank highly in search results. This can drive organic traffic to your channel and increase brand visibility.
• Audience Engagement: YouTube allows for direct interaction with your audience through comments, likes, and shares. This level of engagement helps build brand loyalty and fosters a sense of community around your content.

Now that we understand the benefits of using YouTube for marketing, let’s dive into some fascinating case studies that showcase the platform’s potential.

Also Read – 15 High Paying Digital Marketing Skills

YouTube Case Study 1: Red Bull’s Journey to Viral Fame

Red Bull’s journey to viral fame on YouTube was fueled by a strategic and authentic approach to video marketing. They embraced their identity as a purveyor of energy and adventure, showcasing extreme sports and creating a lifestyle brand. By crafting compelling narratives, collaborating with influencers, and harnessing user-generated content, they created a powerful connection with their audience.

Red Bull’s YouTube strategy focused on authenticity, storytelling, and collaboration. They showcased genuine moments of adrenaline-pumping stunts and extreme sports, captivating viewers with their raw and unfiltered content. Collaborations with influential YouTube creators and athletes added credibility and expanded their reach. Moreover, by encouraging user-generated content, Red Bull turned viewers into active participants, fostering a sense of community and empowerment.

Reference – https://www.redbull.com/us-en/10-years-10-epic-red-bull-youtube-videos  

Impact of Red Bull’s Viral Fame

Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0jmSsQ5ptw  

The impact of Red Bull’s viral fame on YouTube was substantial. They built a global phenomenon, inspiring millions with their thrilling videos. By creating an emotional bond with their audience, they established a loyal community that embraced the brand’s lifestyle. Red Bull’s success demonstrates the power of video marketing to transcend traditional advertising and create a lasting impact.

The impact went beyond just brand recognition; it also had significant financial implications. The company experienced substantial revenue growth and successfully scaled its business through the power of their viral videos. The captivating content attracted a massive audience, resulting in increased brand visibility, higher engagement, and ultimately, boosted sales and revenue for Red Bull.

Actionable tips for brands to achieve similar success on YouTube:

• Authenticity is key: Be true to your brand and values. Create content that reflects your identity and resonates with your target audience.
• Craft compelling narratives: Tell captivating stories that evoke emotions and connect with viewers on a deeper level. Use storytelling techniques to engage and inspire your audience.
• Collaborate with influencers: Partner with influential individuals or creators in your niche to extend your reach, tap into their audience, and gain credibility.
• Encourage user-generated content: Foster a sense of community and empower your audience to contribute their own content. This not only enhances engagement but also expands your brand’s visibility.
• Optimize for discoverability: Pay attention to video titles, descriptions, and tags to optimize your content for searchability. Leverage keywords and relevant tags to increase the chances of your videos being found by your target audience.

By incorporating these actionable tips into your YouTube strategy, you can enhance your brand’s visibility, engagement, and revenue potential. Remember to stay true to your brand, tell compelling stories, collaborate strategically, encourage audience participation, and optimize your content for maximum discoverability.

YouTube Case Study 2: Influencer Collaboration and Samsung’s Success Story

Samsung’s success story is intertwined with their strategic adoption of influencer collaboration on YouTube. Recognizing the power of influencers and their ability to connect with audiences, Samsung forged partnerships with popular YouTube creators in their target markets. They executed this strategy by integrating their products seamlessly into the content of these influencers, creating authentic and engaging videos that resonated with viewers.

Videos – https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AhxrfuLgUw0 | https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qDRsaB8mJuo

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6AZ7caBbGMQ  

Impact and Benefits of Samsung’s Influencer Collaboration

The impact of Samsung’s influencer collaboration was remarkable, leading to increased brand visibility, customer engagement, and ultimately, significant revenue growth. By leveraging the influence and reach of popular YouTubers, Samsung’s products received widespread exposure to their dedicated fan bases. The result was higher sales, improved market share, and a strong brand presence in the digital space. The genuine endorsement and positive reviews from influencers also bolstered customer trust and loyalty towards the Samsung brand.

Actionable Tips for Brands to Achieve Influencer Collaboration Success:

To achieve similar success with influencer collaboration in today’s world, brands should consider the following actionable tips:

• Identify the right influencers: Research and select influencers who align with your brand’s values and target audience, ensuring a natural fit for collaboration.
• Create authentic content: Work with influencers to create content that is organic and genuine, showcasing your product or service in a way that feels authentic to the influencer’s style and audience.
• Foster long-term partnerships: Instead of one-off collaborations, aim for long-term relationships with influencers to build credibility and continuity in your marketing efforts.
• Encourage creativity and storytelling: Give influencers creative freedom to incorporate your brand into their content, allowing for unique and engaging storytelling that resonates with their audience.
• Track and measure results: Utilize analytics tools to track the impact of influencer collaborations, monitoring metrics such as engagement, reach, and conversion rates. Use this data to refine your strategies and optimize future partnerships.

By implementing these tips, brands can harness the power of influencer collaboration to drive brand awareness, increase customer engagement, and generate substantial revenue growth in the digital landscape.

Also Read – Top 13 Digital Marketing Trends

YouTube Case Study 3: Amazon’s Data-Driven Approach to Video Advertising

Amazon’s success in video advertising can be attributed to their data-driven approach. They leveraged their vast customer data and insights to develop a targeted YouTube strategy. By analyzing user behavior, search patterns, and purchase history, Amazon was able to identify and understand their audience’s preferences and interests. They executed their strategy by creating personalized and relevant video ads that resonated with viewers on YouTube.

Impact and Benefits of Amazon’s Data-Driven Approach

Amazon’s data-driven approach to video advertising resulted in significant impact, including increased revenue and enhanced customer engagement. By delivering tailored video ads to specific target audiences, Amazon saw improved conversion rates and higher ROI on their advertising spend. The ability to effectively reach and engage customers through personalized video content led to increased brand awareness, customer loyalty, and ultimately, revenue growth for Amazon.

Actionable Tips for Brands to Achieve a Data-Driven Approach to Video Advertising

To achieve success with a data-driven approach to video advertising in today’s world, brands can consider the following actionable tips:

• Leverage customer data: Utilize available data to understand your audience’s preferences, interests, and behaviors. This will enable you to create targeted and relevant video ads that resonate with your viewers.
• Embrace personalization: Tailor your video ads based on individual preferences and deliver personalized experiences. Use data insights to create dynamic and customized content that speaks directly to each viewer.
• Continuously analyze and optimize: Regularly track and analyze the performance of your video ads. Monitor key metrics such as engagement, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Use this data to optimize your campaigns and improve results over time.
• Test and iterate: Experiment with different video ad formats, messaging, and targeting strategies. Test and iterate to find what resonates best with your audience and yields the highest ROI.
• Invest in technology and automation: Utilize advanced tools and technologies to automate data analysis, audience segmentation, and campaign optimization. This will streamline your advertising efforts and enable you to make data-driven decisions more efficiently.

By adopting a data-driven approach to video advertising and implementing these actionable tips, brands can effectively target their audience, improve engagement, and drive revenue growth through personalized and relevant video content.

Also Read – How to crack your first job interview as a digital marketing professional

YouTube Case Study 4: Small Business Success on YouTube: Brand Dollar Shave Club’s Story

Dollar Shave Club’s success story on YouTube stems from their innovative and bold strategy. They adopted a humorous and relatable approach to connect with their target audience. Their YouTube videos featured witty and entertaining content that resonated with viewers. Dollar Shave Club executed their strategy by creating high-quality, low-budget videos that showcased their products’ value and unique selling propositions. They leveraged storytelling and humor to engage viewers and built a strong brand identity through their YouTube channel.

Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI  

Impact and Benefits of Dollar Shave Club’s YouTube Success

Reference Links: https://www.inc.com/magazine/201507/diana-ransom/how-youtube-crashed-our-website.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/business/smallbusiness/dollar-shave-club-from-viral-video-to-real-business.html  

Dollar Shave Club’s presence on YouTube had a profound impact on their business, leading to exponential growth, increased revenue, and brand recognition. Their viral videos garnered millions of views and generated significant buzz, attracting a large customer base. The engaging content on their YouTube channel resulted in high customer acquisition rates, boosting their revenue and market share. Moreover, Dollar Shave Club’s YouTube success helped establish them as disruptors in the industry, challenging established shaving brands and gaining a competitive edge.

Actionable Tips for Brands to Achieve Small Business Success on YouTube

To achieve similar success on YouTube in today’s world, small businesses can follow these actionable tips:

• Know your audience: Understand your target audience’s preferences, pain points, and interests. Create content that resonates with them and addresses their needs.
• Embrace creativity and humor: Find unique ways to showcase your brand personality through creative and humorous content. Be memorable and stand out from the competition.
• Focus on storytelling: Use storytelling techniques to create compelling narratives around your brand, products, or services. Connect with your audience on an emotional level and make your content memorable.
• Prioritize video quality: While a high production budget is not always necessary, ensure that your videos are well-produced, visually appealing, and have good audio quality. Invest in basic equipment to enhance the overall quality of your videos.
• Consistency is key: Maintain a regular upload schedule to keep your audience engaged and coming back for more. Consistency builds trust and helps grow your subscriber base over time.

By implementing these tips, small businesses can leverage YouTube as a powerful platform to showcase their brand, engage with their target audience, and drive business growth. Dollar Shave Club’s success story serves as an inspiration for small businesses looking to make an impact through strategic YouTube marketing.

Also Read – How does AI contribute to the transformation of the digital marketing spectrum?

Key Takeaways from YouTube Case Studies

After analyzing these case studies, several key takeaways emerge:

• Influencer Marketing: Collaborating with influencers can greatly amplify your brand’s reach and credibility.
• Authenticity: Creating genuine and relatable content helps forge a deeper connection with your audience.
• Compelling Storytelling: Engaging narratives can evoke emotions, inspire action, and create a lasting impact.
• User-Generated Content: Encouraging your audience to create and share content can boost brand awareness and foster a sense of community.
• Live Streaming: Hosting live events on YouTube allows for real-time interaction and generates excitement around your brand.

Tips for Creating Successful YouTube Marketing Campaigns

If you’re looking to create successful YouTube marketing campaigns, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Research Your Target Audience: Understand your audience’s preferences, interests, and pain points to create content that resonates with them.
• Invest in Production Quality: High-quality videos with professional production values leave a lasting impression and reflect positively on your brand.
• Optimize for Search Engines: Use relevant keywords, compelling titles, and engaging thumbnails to improve your video’s visibility in search results.
• Promote Across Multiple Channels: Share your YouTube videos on other social media platforms to maximize reach and engagement.
• Measure and Analyze: Track important metrics such as views, likes, and comments to gauge the success of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

YouTube has revolutionized the way brands connect with their audience. Through the case studies discussed in this article, we have seen how successful brands leverage YouTube’s platform to create engaging and impactful marketing campaigns.

By adopting the strategies and insights from these case studies, you can elevate your own YouTube marketing efforts and drive tangible results for your brand. So why wait? Start exploring the world of YouTube marketing and pursue a digital marketing course by IMS Proschool to develop these skills. Your audience is waiting to be captivated by your videos!

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7 YouTube Marketing Case Studies

Posted by Sharon Black on January 22, 2016

Social Media Best Practices

YouTube.com has become a goldmine of advertising goodness.

Guess what? Most businesses can find a way to use it. It’s not only another way to reach customers, it’s a way to deliver real value to all your social media accounts. What can you do on YouTube? To answer, let’s take a look at big and small companies in different industries using YouTube marketing in creative ways.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #1: GE

GE is a pioneer in social media. They consistently adopt new social media channels, connect directly with their customers by requesting and showcasing user-generated content, and post videos and graphics about every aspect of their business.

GE’s YouTube channel offers transparency, information, and experimentation. You can watch their commercials, see interviews with visionaries, scientists, and engineers, learn about future and current technology, and be generally amazed by everything they do.

GE’s audience includes customers, young people considering a career in engineering or science, and literally everyone interested in science, medicine, and technology.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #2: Eric The Car Guy

You might not have the deep pockets and professional video capabilities of GE, so meet Eric the Car Guy. He’s a mechanic with a website where you can order parts and find DIY help. His channel includes how-to videos for all kinds of automotive repairs, Q&A sessions, and general advice, like “Getting your car ready for a road trip.”

This video has 3.5 million views, so it’s clear he knows how to answer questions people want to know. There’s no fancy video effects, just a personable guy showing fans exactly how to do something.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #3: Photorec Tony

How-to videos work for many industries. Photorec Tony offers tips, equipment reviews, and other interesting content about photography. In this video, which has more than 118k views, he explains the difference between two different cameras.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #4: Cupcake Jemma

Cupcake Jemma is the YouTube home of Crumbs and Doilies, a London bakery, features how-to cake baking and other goodies, along with helpful equipment videos, decorating tips, and behind-the-scenes peeks at the bakery. This rainbow cake has nearly 2 million views!

YouTube Marketing Case Study #5: Keller Williams

Keller Williams Realty, Inc. is one of the largest real estate companies in the U.S. and THE largest international real estate company in the world. The Keller Williams YouTube channel is devoted, not to selling houses, but to attracting talent to staff its 700 offices.

Here, you can watch interviews with top executives and agents, learn more about the company, see the monthly financials, and get success tips from the pros.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #6: Caterpillar

A familiar B2B name in heavy equipment, Caterpillar decided to showcase its products in a very unusual – and memorable way. On the Caterpillar YouTube channel, you can see a big-scale Jenga game, watch a gigantic sand castle construction, see the tug of war competition below…or get safety tips and other useful information.

YouTube Marketing Case Study #7: AWeber Email Marketing

AWeber offers email marketing software tools to help businesses run and analyze email marketing campaigns. The AWeber YouTube channel offers helpful videos with how-to, strategy, tips, case studies, and industry news.

How You Can use YouTube to Market to your Customers

No matter what product or service you’re marketing, your customers are searching for information. Use videos to provide company information, product information, industry information, how-to instructions, reviews, and put a face on your company.

Just take a look at this adorable Christmas card by Wholesale Warranties.

Marketing just doesn’t get more endearing than that.

Sharon Black

Sharon Black is a veteran copywriter and marketer. She loves writing about the challenges and rewards of marketing, at least when she's not pondering the challenges facing her on World of Warcraft. She has been known to serve as part of the grammar police force, but mostly when she is in the official role as editor.

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A week in the life of popular youtube channels, an analysis of every video posted by high-subscriber channels in the first week of 2019 finds that children’s content – as well as content featuring children – received more views than other videos.

The media landscape was upended more than a decade ago when the video-sharing site YouTube was launched. The volume and variety of content posted on the site is staggering. The site’s popularity makes it a launchpad for performers, businesses and commentators on every conceivable subject. And like many platforms in the modern digital ecosystem, YouTube has in recent years become a flashpoint in ongoing debates over issues such as online harassment , misinformation and the impact of technology on children .

The YouTube ecosystem produces a vast quantity of content. These popular channels alone posted nearly a quarter-million videos in the first seven days of 2019, totaling 48,486 hours of content. To put this figure in context, a single person watching videos for eight hours a day (with no breaks or days off) would need more than 16 years to watch all the content posted by just the most popular channels on the platform during a single week. The average video posted by these channels during this time period was roughly 12 minutes long and received 58,358 views during its first week on the site.

A small share of highly active creators produced a majority of the content posted by these popular channels. As is the case with many online platforms (such as Twitter ) a relatively small share of channels were responsible for a majority of the content posted during the study period. Just 10% of the popular channels identified in the Center’s mapping produced 70% of all the videos posted by these channels during the first week of 2019. Similarly, the 10% of popular-channel videos that had the most views in this period were responsible for 79% of all the views that went to new content posted by these channels.

The total number of high-subscriber channels increased dramatically in the second half of 2018. The Center’s mapping process identified 9,689 channels that crossed the 250,000-subscriber threshold between July 2018, when the Center last conducted an analysis of YouTube data , and December 2018, when the data was updated for this analysis. That represents a 32% increase in the total number of popular channels over that period. By the same token, the number of subscribers to existing popular channels that had already been identified as of July 2018 increased by an average of 27% over the same period.

In addition to this broader data collection, Pew Research Center also conducted a separate content analysis of the English-language videos posted by these popular channels over the first week of 2019 (in total, 37,079 videos met this description). The Center used human coders to identify the primary category or theme of each video (such as video games, consumer technology or current events and politics), and also examined the keywords used in video titles and descriptions to identify words that were widely used and associated with higher view counts relative to other videos. Some of the key findings from this analysis include:

Videos aimed at children were highly popular, as were those that featured children under the age of 13 – regardless of their intended audience. Only a small share of English-language videos posted by these popular channels during the study period were explicitly intended for children (based on a consensus of human coders). But those that were tended to be longer, received more views, and came from channels with a larger number of subscribers relative to general-audience videos. More broadly, videos featuring a child or children who appeared to be under the age of 13 – regardless of whether the video in question was aimed exclusively at children or not – received nearly three times as many views on average as other types of videos. And the very small subset of videos that were directly aimed at a young audience and also featured a child under the age of 13 were more popular than any other type of content identified in this analysis as measured by view counts.

It should be noted that YouTube explicitly states that the platform is not intended for children under the age of 13. YouTube provides a YouTube Kids platform with enhanced parental controls and curated video playlists, but the analysis in this report focuses on YouTube as a whole.

English-language videos related to current events or politics posted by these popular channels tended to have an international (rather than U.S.) focus. Videos explicitly related to current events or politics were relatively common, comprising 16% of all English-language videos uploaded during the study period. However, the majority of these videos were international in focus and did not mention events, issues or opinions related to the United States. While channels that posted one or more U.S. current events or politics videos were particularly active – posting an average of 63 total videos during the week – U.S. current events or politics videos comprised just 4% of all of the videos that were posted by popular channels overall.

Content involving video games was a fixture of popular channels on YouTube. Meanwhile, some 18% of English-language videos posted by popular channels during the study period related to video games or gaming. Content about video games was one of the most popular genres of content as measured by total views during the seven days of the study period, and these videos also tended to be much longer than other types of videos.

Certain video title keywords were associated with increased view counts. An analysis of the titles of English-language videos finds that certain keywords were associated with much higher view counts relative to other videos over the course of the study period. Some of these point to the platform’s orientation toward entertainment. For instance, videos mentioning words like “Fortnite,” “prank” or “worst” received more than five times as many views at the median as videos not mentioning those words. Others were more substantive in nature. For example, the use of the word “Trump” in video titles was associated with a significant increase in median views among videos about American current events or politics. Indeed, some 36% of videos about American current events or politics posted by these popular channels during the study period mentioned the words “president” or “Trump” in their titles.

Cross-promotion of videos with other social media channels was both widespread and associated with an increase in views. Seven-in-ten of these videos mentioned other prominent social media platforms such as Instagram or Twitter in their description (either in links or in the text itself), and those that did received more views than videos that did not link to other platforms.

The above findings are based on an analysis of YouTube channels with at least 250,000 subscribers and the videos they posted over the week of Jan. 1-7, 2019, building on the Center’s previous study of the YouTube recommendation algorithm . Using several recursive and randomized methods, we traversed millions of video recommendations made available through the YouTube API and identified as many unique channels as possible. As of January 2019, 1,525,690 total channels had been found, 43,770 of which had at least 250,000 subscribers. For the purposes of this study, these are defined as “popular channels.” Using this list of popular channels, researchers collected every video published on these channels during the first week of 2019 and tracked each of them for the seven days following their publication.

In the same way that survey research involves a certain degree of uncertainty and error, “big data” projects are also subject to potential error as well. While Pew Research Center made every attempt to conduct this analysis with rigor and accuracy, there are several different ways a modest amount of error may have been introduced. The findings presented here should be considered with this potential for error in mind.

• Definition of popular channels. The Center chose a minimum threshold of 250,000 subscribers for the channels included in this analysis. This cutoff ensured that the analysis was focused on the most popular channels on the site while also limiting the analysis to a manageable number of channels that could be monitored and tracked in a timely manner. However, it is possible that the use of a lower (or higher) threshold and the inclusion of more (or fewer) channels would have yielded different results.
• Missing popular channels. Because there is no official, comprehensive list of YouTube channels (popular or otherwise), the Center used its own mapping technique to search for and identify channels. This process involved repeatedly following video recommendations from one channel to another for nearly a year until we could no longer identify any additional channels with more than 250,000 subscribers. It is possible that this process failed to identify all the popular channels on YouTube, but evidence suggests that the number of missing channels is likely to be negligible. During the final six months of channel mapping between July and December 2018, the list of popular channels that we had identified expanded by 44% – from 30,481 channels to 43,770. However, the bulk of these additions comprised known channels that had added new subscribers during that period. Just 12% of the new channels had not been previously identified by our mapping process.
• Problems with the YouTube API. During the data collection process, requests to the YouTube Application Programming Interface (API) occasionally failed for a variety of reasons. As a result, we were unable to capture 4% of the video time stamps we had intended to collect. Such hiccups are not uncommon when working with APIs, and can be due to bugs, issues with internet connectivity, changes to privacy settings made by channel owners, or simply because some videos were removed during the week. Because these errors were sporadic and appeared to occur at random, the Center was able to use estimation methods to fill in most of the missing values. While this introduced a small amount of approximation error, its impact on the findings presented here should be negligible.
• Language misclassification. Because it was unrealistic for humans to directly examine the nearly quarter-million videos posted by these channels, the Center trained a custom machine learning model to automate the process of classifying whether or not a video was in English. When compared with a sample of videos that had been coded by Center researchers, the classification model achieved 97% to 98% accuracy during various tests. However, 4% to 9% of the videos that it labeled as “English” contained content in other languages, and the model also misclassified 7% to 8% of the videos that human coders had identified as being in English. Videos that were incorrectly labeled as English by the model were later removed by human coders during content analysis, but it is likely that a small set of English videos were excluded from the analysis due to classification error.
• Coder misclassification. Pew Research Center used human coders to classify the content of the English-language videos examined in this study. Center researchers labeled a small sample of videos themselves, while the remaining thousands were each coded by three separate coders on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform . For each video, we then reconciled the results from the three coders using thresholds that maximized how much the crowdsourced results agreed with the Center’s researchers. While agreement was generally high, a modest number of disagreements and misclassifications are still likely to have occurred because the concepts studied here – such what qualifies as “children’s content” – inherently involve a certain degree of subjectivity.
• YouTube is constantly changing. The videos analyzed in this report represent those posted by channels with a certain number of subscribers over a particular period of time. Since then, many channels may have gained or lost subscribers, the publishing habits of popular channels may have changed, and the viewing habits of their subscribers may have as well. YouTube has also since made changes to its policies about the kinds of content that are acceptable to publish. Because of these and many other constantly shifting factors, the findings presented here may or may not represent the activity of popular channels at other times in the past, present or future.
• YouTube uses a proprietary algorithm to determine how many times a video has been watched by actual humans, as opposed to computer programs. While it has not released an official threshold, a number of third parties report that “views” do not appear to be counted unless a user watches at least 30 seconds of a video. ↩

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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A Case Study on MrBeast’s rise to fame and what lessons we can learn from his success

If you are a regular YouTube viewer, then there’s no way you haven’t heard of MrBeast, the second most subscribed individual YouTube channel. If you take all YouTube channels, including channels owned by both corporates and individuals, MrBeast is the fifth most subscribed channel. One video on the channel has an average of 60 million views, and the total number of views on his channel exceeds the population of the world. It’s said that MrBeast earns around $3 – 5 million just from his ad revenue. Of course, this is not counting sponsorships or brand deals. Everyone’s waiting with bated breath for him to become the first YouTube billionaire.

But did you know that MrBeast had no income at all in his first year? In fact, it took him a decade to reach the position he is in today, and this journey took a lot of hard work, patience, and failures. In this case study, we will analyze MrBeast’s success story and explore how he became so rich and popular on YouTube, while focusing on his success factors.

Table of Contents

MrBeast’s Journey from Zero to Hundred Million Subscribers

MrBeast is Jimmy Donaldson, and as of 2022, he is only 24 years old. He comes from a pretty humble background. He grew up in a small town in North Carolina, along with his single mother and brother. Back then, his mom served in the military, and they always moved around from one state to the next.

As a kid, Jimmy was an introvert, but he was very passionate about the things that interested him. He was never interested in academics, but he loved baseball and building Legos. But his first love was YouTube, which took the internet by storm in 2005.

One day, Jimmy saw one of the YouTubers he followed quitting his job to become a full-time YouTuber. That was when Jimmy understood that he could earn money through YouTube. The first challenge he faced was that others around him, including his family and friends, did not understand this. But one of his friends was willing to help him to achieve his dream, and together they created a YouTube channel on February 2012, when they were just 14 years old. In fact, Jimmy’s first subscriber was his friend. They had no fancy equipment or technical know-how. But driven by passion, they kept creating different kinds of videos: they recorded themselves playing video games and uploaded them to the channel, made reaction videos commenting on other people gaming or guessing other YouTubers’ income, etc.

Challenges MrBeast Faced in Early Days

The first challenge Jimmy faced was convincing everyone around him that being a YouTuber was a legit job. Jimmy’s mom had no idea about YouTube and what his son was doing on it. Like most conservative parents, she wanted him to do his studies well and find a good job. She convinced Jimmy to enroll in college and pursue his higher studies. She even threatened to kick him out of home if he didn’t go to college. Jimmy did accept her words, but even on the way to college, he kept on creating videos.

After a few weeks, he dropped out of college and was even ready to move out of his home. His mom was shocked but later realized that Jimmy’s YouTube career must have some potential for him to be so insistent about it.

The second challenge he faced was the lack of equipment. His first videos were created from a borrowed mike on his brother’s old laptop. He only started buying expensive equipment when his YouTube channel began to earn money.

Jimmy knew nothing when he started his channel, but as the videos gained more and more views, he and his friends started researching and learning more and more about videos and YouTube. For example, how to edit a video, how to find ideas for videos, how to make a video viral, how to make a video trending, what kind of videos become viral, the qualities of a good video, how to create a good thumbnail, how thumbnails affect video views, camera angles in videos, etc. They studied even the smallest details in videos throughout the whole day. Then the next morning, they would get on a video call and discuss these findings, sharing info with each other. Within a few months, they learned knowledge one person could gather over many years.

With this newfound knowledge, they experimented with different types of videos. They made sure that all of these videos were entertaining as well as unique. This research and self-study helped MrBeast to gain millions of subscribers, and the total views on his channel exceed the world’s population.

MrBeast’s Rise to Success

In 2015 and 2016, Jimmy slowly began to gain popularity with his “worst intros” videos, which poked fun at various YouTube video introductions. In 2017,  Jimmy broke the internet with his first viral video of himself counting from 1 to 100,000 . It took him more than 40 hours to achieve this feat, and even after editing, this video was about 24 hours long, making it one of the longest YouTube videos ever produced.

Based on this video’s success, he focused more on unusual stunts like reading every word in a dictionary in one sitting , filling a pool with ramen noodles and sitting in it for 24 hours, spinning a fidget spinner for 24 hours straight, watching paint dry for an hour, turning a backyard into a ballpit, and saying Pewdiepie 100,000 times non-stop . MrBeast even managed to turn one of his videos into the most-liked (non-music video) on YouTube just by using the title “ Make This Video The Most Liked Video On YouTube .”

On 8 th June 2019, his YouTube channel reached 20 million subscribers, and this achievement took him seven years, three months, and 20 days.

Once he got his first brand sponsorship for $10,000, he donated the whole amount to a homeless man he met on the street, recorded a video of this incident, and uploaded it on the channel. This was the first step in MrBeast’s philanthropist journey. He later made many more popular videos with such simple altruistic ideas at an extravagant scale. Here are a few examples:

• Tipping pizza delivery guys $10,000 • Ordering water then tipping $30,000 • Tipping uber drivers $10,000 • Giving $100,000 to a homeless person • Giving a homeless man a home • Buying all the groceries in a supermarket and distributing them among people • Opening a car dealership and giving out cars for free • Opening a restaurant that gave free food to people

When he was close to reaching 20 million subscribers, he got the idea to plant 20 million plants . A friend from NASA suggested collecting donations from viewers – $1 for 1 tree. The goal was to raise $20 million and grow 20 million trees. This fundraising campaign was called #TeamTrees and he estimated it would take at least 2 months to raise this amount. Many other YouTubers started promoting this campaign on their channels, and the project reached many people all over the world. Elon Musk also donated 1 M to the campaign. Finally, Jimmy was able to raise 20M within 1 short month.

MrBeast says the joy and happiness he sees in people’s faces when he does these stunts made him addicted to this kind of content. His role models were people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk, who wanted to change the world and help people instead of piling money. He realized that helping people made him happy, and it was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Today, MrBeast is known as “YouTube’s biggest philanthropist.”

In addition to his main mrbeast6000 channel he also runs five other YouTube channels. These are Beast Reacts, MrBeast Gaming, MrBeast Shorts, MrBeast 2, and a philanthropy channel. In total, these channels have over 186 million combined subscribers.

MrBeast Business Model

Jimmy uploads one video and then uses the income from that video to create the next video, and so forth. He considers sponsorships as a third party that helps to move this cycle forward. In other words, he created an investment loop – the more he earns, the more he invests in his next video.

As his channel grew, getting him millions of subscribers, he also hired some of his friends to create content. Currently, MrBeast has a separate channel known as MrBeast Philanthropy , dedicated to helping people. MrBeast believes his help is an effective and scalable model for uplifting people’s lives.

In addition to his YouTube channels, MrBeast has also started a number of other ventures. These include MrBeast Burger restaurant chain and Feastables chocolate bars. He also has an online merch store where his fans can buy branded T-shirts, stickers, face masks, posters, and more. All these initiatives helps him to successfully monetize the audience he has built over the years. As a smart business person it is very important to diversify your income portfolio.

Lessons Content Creators Can Learn from MrBeast

1. follow your passion.

For most people, finding their passion takes years and years, but MrBeast was lucky enough to recognize his passion from a young age. MrBeast wanted to start a YouTube channel and be a YouTuber – but he had no idea how to do it, nor did he have any fancy equipment or money to spend on it. But he didn’t let any of these obstacles get in his way and kept on creating YouTube video content. So the main lesson you can learn from MrBeast’s success is following your passion and never giving up.

2. Identify your success factor

What do you think is MrBeast’s success factor? Doing unusual things in an emotional and entertaining way. In fact, his videos are full of simple but absurd things. For example, spending 24 hours in a desert, giving ridiculously large sums of money to complete strangers.

Jimmy once said that negative content is easy to trend in social media, while positive content that is interesting is somewhat difficult to trend, and positive content that is both interesting and entertaining is the most difficult to trend. But he and his team have been able to achieve this feat and become ultra-successful on YouTube.

3. Identify trends as soon as possible

Did you know that people who realize the potential of new inventions are more likely to be successful? For example, small companies who realized the value of the internet early on are now major companies in the global market. One reason behind MrBeast’s success is his long history on YouTube. MrBeast started a YouTube channel when YouTube was just trending. When you start something when it’s starting to trend, there are only a few on it, and you become unforgettable.

4. Hunt for the Formula

Most people want to be successful, but they have no idea how to do it or what they should do. MrBeast, too was like this at first. He started YouTubing for fun and had no idea how to be successful. He researched and experimented with different types of content, trends, and videos over the years and identified the formula that was successful for him. If you want to be successful in content creation, you have to study the platform and identify a success formula.

5. Be Unique

MrBeast does entertaining videos, like millions of other YouTubers, but in his own way. His videos are different and unique. He uses the income from one video to create the next video, creating a huge impact on society. This is what makes him different from other content creators. If you are a content creator, identify what makes you unique from other creators on the platform, and focus on bringing out this difference in your content.

6. Diversify income portfolio

YouTube growth is not linear. If you have good content, content that trends, there can be exponential growth. This is extremely clear in MrBeast’s success story. Once there is considerable channel growth it is important to venture into smart monetization techniques like getting into sponsorships and building up businesses. This helps to diversify portfolio from typical Google Adsense earnings as the main source of income from a YouTube channel.

Now that you have read this article from beginning to end, you will have a good idea about what makes MrBeast different from other YouTubers and what makes him so popular. There are many lessons new content creators can learn from Jimmy Donaldson – Following one’s passion, not easily giving up, experimenting with different types of content, and identifying one’s success formula being one of the most important lessons.

If you enjoyed this article then you may also like to read our case study about TikTok .

Related posts:

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• How Nas Daily Made a Living By Vlogging His Way to Success
• Dana White’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Masterstroke
• How the Investigative Journalist Coffeezilla Became the Internet’s Favorite Scam Buster

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The 15 Best Study YouTube Channels for Students

The hustle and bustle of student life can be overwhelming. Fortunately, YouTube has become a valuable platform for knowledge, entertainment, and inspiration. From must-know study tips to insights into specific disciplines, plenty of YouTubers can cater to your needs as students and guide you in making the most out of your academic journey.

Looking for advice to help you navigate the challenges of student life? Or just daily student vlogs? Check out our handpicked list of the best study YouTube channels to help you unleash your full potential!

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Ali Abdaal, a doctor turned YouTuber and entrepreneur, has garnered a massive following on YouTube for his insightful content and down-to-earth personality. Aside from sharing invaluable tips on time management, note-taking, and exam preparation, he’s also known for reviewing and recommending various apps and tools to boost productivity. Whether you’re struggling with motivation or seeking innovative ways to retain information, Ali is your go-to resource for mastering the art of productivity.

Check out Ali Abdaal’s YouTube Channel

Tina Huang’s channel is a goldmine for tech-savvy students. As a data scientist, Tina’s channel focuses on coding, technology, career development, and self-study tips. With her expertise in efficiency, she shares her techniques on how students can maximize most of their study time. Whether you’re a beginner starting in the world of coding or someone seeking the latest tech trends, Tina’s videos will help equip you with the essential digital skills in the modern world.

Check out Tina Huang’s YouTube Channel

Cajun Koi Academy

Ready to step into the world of Cajun Koi Academy? This channel, started by brothers Mike and Matty, equips students with study techniques, self-improvement tips, and productivity hacks. You will also learn to explore the concept of different brain types (Kuma, Kitsune, and Tora), which will help you find your ideal study style. Up for the challenge? Join the academy and be prepared as they train you to become “rangers” of academic success.

Check out Cajun Koi Academy’s YouTube Channel

Feeling demotivated to achieve your goals? Mike Dee’s channel is the perfect channel to help you jumpstart your workflow. Formerly known as ProjectElon, his content covers productivity hacks, personal development, study motivation, and speed learning. Known for his heartfelt and dynamic videos, Mike had previously struggled with chronic procrastination but decided to overhaul his life completely.

Check out Mike Dee’s YouTube Channel

Ever wondered what it’s like to study in Korea? Dia’s study-with-me videos create an immersive study environment that allows her viewers to learn productively alongside her. As a medical student, she also offers valuable insights and motivation for fellow students who are on the medical path. Admiringly, her videos have subtitles for many languages, such as English, Spanish, Turkish, German, and Russian, which allow more people to find value in her content.

Check out 디아 Dia’s YouTube Channel

Thomas Frank

Thomas Frank is not just your average productivity guru — he’s a renowned name for being a productivity powerhouse. His channel contains practical strategies, time management hacks, and self-discipline advice to revolutionize your study approach. Also, check out his other videos, where he talks about fitness, finances, technology, and mental health. Applauded for his engaging and relatable storytelling, Thomas is here to help you enhance and maximize your student experience.

Check out Thomas Frank’s YouTube Channel

Vee Kativhu

As an advocate for girls’ education, a young leader at the United Nations, and a current Ph.D. student, Vee Kativhu is a true embodiment of inspiration and accomplishment. Her channel consists of study techniques, essay writing tips, stationery recommendations, book reviews, and travel vlogs that motivate students to embrace their education and make a difference in the world.

Check out Vee Kativhu’s YouTube Channel

Elena Handtrack

Looking for a real-life Elle Woods from Legally Blonde? Say hello to Elena Handtrack, a law student at Cambridge University. Aside from curating content tailored to law students, her videos include dorm tours, book reviews, get-ready-with-me videos, and her experiences as an exchange student. From tips on the best hairstyles to must-know productivity tips, Elena will help you channel your inner Elle Woods in no time.

Check out Elena Handtrack’s YouTube Channel

Kharma Medic

With his perfect blend of humor, engaging storytelling, and gentle personality, Kharma Medic (also known as Nasir) is a must-watch channel for aspiring doctors or anyone curious about the world of medicine. He is a London-based doctor who loves to share time management tips, tricks to study more efficiently, and the realities of medical school. From creating effective study schedules to daily vlogs that shed light on the life of a medical student, his channel provides valuable information that helps aspiring medical students succeed and find the motivation to excel in their studies.

Check out Kharma Medic’s YouTube Channel

Holly Gabrielle

Holly Gabrielle, a Cambridge natural sciences graduate currently studying cancer biology at University College London, is a valuable resource for any student navigating higher education. Through her soothing voice and insightful guidance, Holly loves to share her thoughts, life realizations, and travel experiences. Whether you’re looking for motivation or simply want to experience Holly’s captivating travel adventures, her channel is a must-follow for any student who wants to cultivate a positive mindset despite the challenges of student life.

Check out Holly Gabrielle’s YouTube Channel

Tamer Shaheen

Are you an engineering student or aspiring to pursue a career in engineering? If yes, then Tamer’s channel is perfect for you. His videos include tips for engineering students, emerging trends, and the realities of pursuing this career path. With his help, you’ll gain a much deeper understanding of engineering and find inspiration to excel in your studies.

Check out Tamer Shaheen’s YouTube Channel

Abao in Tokyo

Abao, an international student from China studying in Japan, is best known for his “study with me” videos which provide a calming and aesthetic backdrop to accompany your study sessions. Fan of the Pomodoro technique? Look no further as Abao uses this technique to structure his study sessions effectively. He also started a 24/7 music radio and chat room where students around the world can talk and inspire each other’s productivity.

Check out Abao in Tokyo’s YouTube Channel

Study to Success

As a treasure trove of informative videos on productivity tips, organization hacks, and app recommendations, this channel is a one-stop destination for those who want to optimize their study routine. With the help of this channel, you can guarantee that your notes will be both effective and visually appealing — perfect for those wanting a splash of creativity in their academic life.

Check out Study To Success’ YouTube Channel

Yoora Jung offers a diverse variety of videos on her channel as she talks about her lifestyle, tips on studying, her passion for K-pop, and how she stays fit amidst her busy life. Her campus life videos would give you an inside look at the day-to-day experiences of a student. If you seek inspiration on a well-rounded approach to student life, then make sure to add Yoora’s video to your watchlist. She offers sound advice to help you find the perfect balance between productivity and self-care.

Check out Yoora Jung’s YouTube Channel

Erika Diane

As the youngest student YouTuber in this list, Erika’s channel provides insights into the experiences and challenges faced by teenagers. Her videos cover various topics, including day-in-my-life vlogs, school morning routines, and stationery hauls. Whether you’re in the mood to seek lifestyle inspiration or simply want to connect with a fellow student, Erika’s channel offers young students a fresh and vibrant perspective on navigating their daily lives.

Check out Erika Diane’s YouTube Channel

Are we missing any student YouTubers? Do you have a student YouTuber you’re looking to share? Leave a comment down below!

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5 questions for YouTube’s lead UX researcher

As marketers, it’s our job to ensure all the interactions people have with our brands and products are as positive, useful, and memorable as possible.

At Droga5, where I lead data strategy, we believe the best way of achieving this is to have a deep understanding of our clients’ target audience, and more specifically, of their needs.

Of course, these change by platform. When you need to find out why your subway is delayed, you might head to Twitter. When you need to know when your local bookstore closes, you might use Google Search. Why does any of this matter? Because we know that consumer needs are far more powerful than other indicators that marketers use, such as demographics.

That’s why when I was given the chance to talk with YouTube’s Josh Lewandowski, I jumped at it. As the lead user experience (UX) researcher on the platform’s main app, he has a deep understanding of why users head to YouTube, what they expect when they get there, and what that means for brands looking to grab their attention.

Amy Avery: What does your typical work day look like?

Josh Lewandowski: On any given day, I’m trying to answer one of two questions: What are the desires, needs, and problems our users have that we should be anticipating? And once we know what those are, what’s the best way to solve for them?

To answer those questions, I’m constantly doing both qualitative and quantitative research—everything from talking to users and watching them use YouTube in their homes, to carrying out lab studies to see if people use our products the way we expect them to.

What has this UX research revealed about why people come to YouTube?

Users always act to solve some kind of need. The three most common ones we’ve seen in our research are the need for help (when you want to fix something in your house, for example) the need for entertainment (people say they turn to YouTube for entertainment just as much as they turn to TV), and the need to learn something new. 1

Why people turn to YouTube

Think with google.

Source: 2and2/Google, “The Values of YouTube” Study, (n of 1,006 consumers between the ages of 18-54, with 918 monthly YouTube users). Respondents were asked to choose which platforms they turn to for a range of needs, Oct. 2017.

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These needs can show up in broad or specific ways. Someone might come to YouTube knowing exactly what they’re looking for—to listen to a particular version of a song, say. Others come to browse. They know roughly what they want—to get caught up on the latest news, for example—but they’re not looking for one video in particular.

On YouTube, we’re now seeing more browsing than searching behavior.

In fact, as our recommendation algorithms keep getting better, we’re now seeing more browsing than searching behavior. People are choosing to do less work and let us serve them.

What’s new in the world of user engagement and behavior on YouTube?

Something that makes YouTube unique compared to other traditional forms of media is the depth of interaction users and creators can have with one another.

One example of this is with mobile live streaming, which YouTube creators beta tested from Disneyland last year. During the stream, they were asking viewers what rides they should go on, and fans were chiming in with their recommendations.

We’re seeing this direct form of co-creation more and more now, especially with our new community tab . Creators will use this to routinely ask fans what type of content they want to see, what their favorite videos are, and where they should go next.

These examples might not seem especially relevant for marketers, but I think they speak to a broader change in user behavior: people are no longer satisfied with just passively consuming content, they also want rich interactions.

What YouTube UX change has had the biggest impact?

Adding interactive features such as polling, live chat, and video infocards , because it has helped make video viewing a more active, engaging experience.

We originally assumed all YouTube users wanted to “lean back” and do nothing other than watch something. But our research showed that wasn’t the case. Interactive features like polling make content a lot more dynamic for those who want it. If creators think their viewers want what we call a “lean forward” experience, they can now provide one.

Source: Google/Ipsos, “Video Mobile Diary,” U.S., 2017.

As you think about user experience in 2018, what’s one big thing you’re focused on?

Assessing the quality of YouTube at scale. It’s great to see that people are watching more, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the experience has improved.

Look at website clickbait, for example. It might get you to look at more content, but it’s not a great experience. My challenge is to answer the question, “how do we really know the experience is good across the board?”

Answering that question involves looking at a few things: Can users discover YouTube’s features and experiences? Do they know how to use those features? And do those features improve their experience?

We’re really starting to focus on user satisfaction as a measure of success for product development, ads, and even our algorithms. If what we're doing makes users happier, we're on the right track. And directly asking users “What’s your biggest frustration today?” and “What’s your favorite thing about YouTube?” provides more insights than we could gather from watch time alone.

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Inside google marketing: meeting video viewers where they are in 2018, youtube's ad ux leaders on how video ads have evolved, 4 new moments every marketer should know, how one retailer is shifting to an ai-first mentality, 5 questions to ask yourself about your mobile strategy, sources (1).

1  2and2/Google, “The Values of YouTube” Study, (n of 1,006 consumers between the ages of 18-54, with 918 monthly YouTube users). Respondents were asked to choose which platforms they turn to for a range of needs, Oct. 2017.

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The NHS is a case study in how technology is ruining our lives

The speed, efficiency and convenience we keep being promised is a chimera. Instead, digital tech is becoming a form of corporate gaslighting

On the radio yesterday morning, the manager of a big NHS trust said the key to improving patient satisfaction is to invest more in digital technology. Just at that moment, my phone pinged with a message from our GP surgery, asking me to make an appointment for one of my children to have a vaccination. 

You can’t make appointments by phone any more, so I went online. But the first stage of the online access form requires me to click on an outline of a body, to identify the location of the ailment. Since there is no option for the entire immune system, I clicked on the arm, where the jab might go. Now I had to choose from one of 60 arm-related complaints, ranging from “lumps” to “paralysis”, but no mention of vaccines. At that point I gave up and – like some kind of crazed Luddite – tried calling the surgery instead. No answer. And so, unless I can work out some other way to breach the digital fortress, no vaccine.

In case you hadn’t noticed it yet, digital technology doesn’t actually make life easier. In fact, the opposite is so much the case that it sometimes feels like a giant confidence trick. The tech companies keep promising us more speed, efficiency and convenience; we keep buying into their awful products; and then – when the app keeps glitching and the broadband doesn’t work and the website can’t answer your questions and the customer assistant is actually a bot and the simplest task has somehow become impossible to perform – we blame ourselves for being bad at tech. 

It’s a form of corporate gaslighting: they are sending us mad, and then making us feel bad about it. As the Post Office scandal so painfully demonstrated, “human error” is not always to blame . Many, if not most, of the computer systems on which we now depend are unreliable, badly designed and prone to random malfunctions. Earlier this month, British Gas customers were woken at 3am by a phone call from an automated voice asking: “How did we do?” Since a phone call in the middle of the night usually means someone has died, this caused panic. What British Gas describes blandly as a “technical issue” feels symbolic of the casual rudeness of the flawed algorithm.

Computers can make companies more “efficient” by reducing the need to employ humans. But the cost of that saving is too often transferred to the consumer, who now has to contend with a chatbot instead of a knowledgeable employee. My husband spent an entire working day this week trying to order a basic piece of kit from our broadband provider – and he is a computer nerd who studied Physics at Oxford. How is anyone less digitally-capable – the elderly, partially-sighted, learning disabled or just old-fashioned – supposed to manage?

It would be one thing if the benefits of tech were so overwhelmingly wonderful as to balance out the bad stuff. But what, really, is easier now than 40 years ago? Watching cat videos, getting junk food delivered to your door, starting culture wars and destroying the mental health of a generation. Does that seem a fair exchange? 

I’ll tell you what would restore my faith in the NHS : considerably less digital technology. In an ideal world, there might even be real humans answering the phones, listening to patients and organising appointments. I think they used to be called receptionists.

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Music lyrics have become more repetitive since the 1980s, study says

(CNN) – Music lyrics have gotten simpler, angrier and more repetitive, according to a new study.

Researchers compared English-language rap, pop, country, rock and R&B songs from the 1980s to 2020.

They found the more recently released songs are more repetitive and emotional.

Songs use more rhyming lines, more chorus and more anger-related words.

The study also looked at which music genres people liked to look up lyrics for.

Fans of rap and R&B showed the most interest in song lyrics.

The study was published Thursday in Scientific Reports .

Copyright 2024 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.

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