Ben Relles lays out what works on YouTube: make videos about what you love, hook viewers in the first 15 seconds, edit ruthlessly, and turn viral hits into series. Skip overthinking your first video and ignoring what your audience tells you.
Hi, I'm Ben Relles from YouTube, and I'll be giving you some dos and don'ts for being successful on YouTube. So the first thing you want to do is make videos about something that you love. When you're passionate about a subject, that passion is really contagious in videos. So think about creating videos where you know that you know that subject inside and out, and you'll love making videos about it. There are 4 billion views on YouTube every day, so people make successful YouTube channels about all kinds of subjects, from education to comedy to cooking to artwork. So pick something that you think you'll be excited to continue to make videos about. The second thing I would say is look for opportunities to collaborate with other YouTubers. And this gives you an opportunity both to learn from people that have been successful on YouTube and also very often to share audiences with them and work on videos together so that their channels learn about your videos and people who watch your channel learn about their videos. The third thing I would say is go to youtube.com/playbook. At the YouTube Next Lab, we've actually created a playbook with hundreds of tips which can help you be successful on YouTube, whether you're brand new to the channel or you've been making videos for years. Okay, so now I want to give you some things that you don't want to do on YouTube. One thing I think you don't want to do on YouTube is overthink that first video. It's so important to Get that first video up, take the leap, and once you have it up, you can immediately start taking into account all the feedback that you'll get from your audience— what they like, what they don't. And ultimately, once you take that step, it's really important to just keep going. The second thing you don't want to do on YouTube is you don't want to ignore your audience. When you put that video up, it's so important to read the comments on it and read the feedback and think about ways to involve and engage your audience. So I always advise creators to think about how can they create a dialogue and a conversation with their viewers on their channel. So the last don't I would say is when you shoot a video, you don't need to include every single thing you shot. Videos on YouTube have been successful of all different lengths—short videos, long videos—but one thing that we find is that if you look at your video and you think about what can I cut out of this to make it as exciting, as compelling as possible. That can be really important. So think about those first 15 seconds, how you're gonna hook people in, and then think about how can you make your video as compelling throughout so people watch the entire thing. You know, viral video is such an interesting thing because it is fascinating now. 10 years ago, you couldn't just create something and within a week have millions of people see it. And YouTube really changed that. There are so many people now who have created a video at home, done something creative on their own, and ended up getting millions of views on it. My advice to people, though, is to think about ways to, if you have one of these hit videos, build that into a series of consistent videos. 'Cause what you find on YouTube more and more is that people have very loyal audiences. So if you can take these viral videos and figure out a way to keep people on your channel, that can really build your success over the long term. One thing that I love about YouTube is it really gives everybody a voice. Whatever it is that you're most passionate about, you can make videos about that subject. And oftentimes people actually build up enough of an audience where they're actually creating careers making videos about the things that they're most passionate about. So you see YouTube channels with huge audiences around all these different subjects, and it's really exciting to see how it's given so many people a voice. The final thing I would say is to head over to YouTube.com/creators where there are resources for creators of all kinds. And over 60 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded every minute, and we would love for you to join that community. So if you're thinking of starting a channel, you can go to YouTube.com/partners and sign up.
H.O.W. #16 with Ben Relles, Head of Innovation for YouTube Originals, and The Showman of the WG'04
