Cutting Edge Youtube And Video Marketing Strategies With Derral Eves

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap them in bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business, pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. All right, welcome back to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is your host, Brad Costanzo, and this is my platform to talk to some incredible people, business owners, marketing experts and thought leaders about what is really working in their business today. I like to think of this as your opportunity to eavesdrop on conversations that I I'm having with people that I would want to have whether I was recording this or not. So you can be sure that I'm going to ask questions that I want to know the answers to. And oftentimes I hear back from listeners such as yourself that, man, you asked the exact question that I wanted you to ask. And that's because I'm doing this for my benefit as well as yours. And I appreciate every one of you listening. By the way, if this is your first time tuning in because you saw the topic, you thought this sounded interesting, and you're not subscribed yet to the show, go ahead and hit that subscribe button if you're listening on itunes. And if at any point you want to reach out to me, ask me any questions or make any suggestions, don't hesitate to send an email to askbradbaconwrappedbusiness.com that includes if you want to potentially get some of my thoughts, second opinion on your business strategy and marketing advice, I'm happy to see if there's an opportunity to help you. So today's episode should be a fun one because I've got Derral Eves on the line. He's one of the world's top YouTube and online video marketing experts. He's helped generate billions with a B of views on YouTube, and some of his top clients have included Red Bull, NBC, abc, Adobe Software, and many more household names. His areas of expertise include generating and converting traffic into revenue, social media management, search engine optimization, and consulting successful creators in the online video world. He was also an executive producer on several viral video campaigns, many of which you've probably seen, including the Squatty Potty's ice Cream Pooping unicorn ad, which did win the ad of the year at the 2015 Webby's. If you have not seen that, I will put a link in the show notes. It is a remarkable viral video. Now, we were introduced via mutual friend named Rob Burns, and I am excited to have him on the show because a few of the other YouTube and video marketing episodes we did were very big hits. So this should be no different. So without any further ado, Darrel, welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business. It's great to have you.

It's great to be on.

Awesome, man. So, as I just mentioned, several of these episodes have been really big hits where I just talked about YouTube and video marketing specifically. And things have changed since I've been in the game 10 years ago, just the rise of video marketing from YouTube to Facebook to everywhere you go now, video is really just overtaking things. You've been in the video marketing game for how long?

Well, I stumbled upon this little website called YouTube back in 2005. It was November 2005 and kind of been a great journey since then. It's been really interesting because that first year when YouTube actually started, they started in May, but realistically they launched about September. So I was kind of an early adopter there.

It's funny, I remember I was working in a corporate job. I was in a cubicle at the time. I think back around that same time. And I remember we always had the TV on cnbc. I was in the financial services field. And I remember a story came on about like, I think it was two guys who created this thing called YouTube. And I mean, it was like the very first thing I'd ever seen. It was just a news story about them. It's kind of funny to see.

Yeah, there's actually three guys, but one guy got the shaft. Isn't that usually the case?

That definitely hurts.

But he got paid out though. When Google bought him the next year for like 1.3 billion, he got a third of the profits there.

Did it only take a year to get for Google to buy them?

It was crazy. It's like, you know, Google was trying their own platform at the time, you know, just Google Video and it just was bad. It was a horrible user experience and it didn't take them long to see the right writing on the wall. And they actually purchased it the following news I think about October 2006.

Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. Man, how time flies. So have you been kind of Both feet on YouTube since?

Yeah, my background was, you know, in 99, started my company and we did a lot of search engine optimization back in that day it was called spam, but trying to get our websites to be found on the most amazing search engines like Altavista and Ask Jeeves and Yahoo. You know, stuff like that. And then Google came along, and I think it kind of changed a few things for us. And, you know, we were able to kind of predict where it was going and kind of the direction that they were doing. And we always try to stay a couple, you know, couple months ahead of Matt Cutts, a couple years ahead of Matt Cutts, you know, of the adjustments that they'd make. And when we stumbled, like when I stumbled upon this website, YouTube, and I really always had a fascination with video. What we were seeing that first year, 2006, is that a lot of those videos are ranking very easily on the front page of Google. And at the end of 2006, when YouTube actually was purchased by Google, it became super easy to be the number one spot on the front page. Right then and there. I made a very big decision. It was called a huge pivot for my company because we went and sold off every one of our SEO clients that we had doing marketing, and we focused just on video creation, getting videos placed, and lead generation off of that. That first year, 2006 to 2007, we ranked 865 videos on the front page of Google through YouTube. And we learned a lot. We learned a lot. How people interact with video content and what they're wanting and some triggers that would cause them to do things. It was really interesting to see. But since that point, yeah, all in, we pivoted several times after that. I think the biggest thing is the industry is so vast and there's a lot to understand, but each of the principles that you learn can apply to something a little bit bigger and greater. And that's kind of where we, you know, where we're at today.

Nice. So the area of YouTube, especially marketing in this, I mean, it's so vast and wide, right. There's the people who are just online content creators. They're doing stuff out of their hobbies and their passions and they're becoming YouTube influencers, which is not what I want to talk about as much here. That's kind of interesting, but I don't think it's as much of where myself, my audience is looking to go. But it's more of the pro, you know, the companies, the both companies who sell a product and a service, where the product or the service is the thing. But then there's also the whole area of personal branding and people who are trying to use YouTube to build up thought, leadership and awareness, etc. Those are the two kind of areas that are the most Interesting to me. And I know that it feels as though sometimes if you're not, you know, sharing videos of your cat or falling down and breaking something, right. Like you're just, you're always just. Or sharing your video game exploits that you're always got like a little micro community on there.

Right.

But I would love to know a handful of the things that came to my mind as opposed to asking you these linearly. I'll just kind of throw out a couple of the big questions.

Yeah, go for it.

You know what, what is some of the biggest either untapped opportunity out there right now for both business owners and personal brands to capitalize? What are some things that people should be doing but shouldn't? Are there any trends or new developments coming up that people should really be paying attention to? And what types of content, what types of content, especially with those people in mind, are working the best? And maybe lastly, for somebody who's starting off, they've got some good video production skills, they got some ideas, but the idea of standing down at base camp of Mount Everest, looking up, going, oh man, this is just going to take me forever to create an engaged channel, etc. What are some of the things they can do to kind of get that ball moving so that they're not so intimidated from just starting and getting that momentum?

Yeah, Brad, those are all great questions and I think I want to start a little bit different, but it's going to answer those questions appropriately. I think the first thing is everyone should have a video strategy, regardless of what they're doing. They can look at, hey, how can we actually use video marketing video to connect with our audience, our clients, our potential clients, our potential audience, and give them exactly what they're needing. Let me give you a good example of this, of how it can actually save business owners a lot of money too, by very simple things. Because what changed the society now is not YouTube, it's not anything like that, but it's the device connected to the Internet that gets us access to anything that we need. And looking at it from that perspective, that there are different types of people wanting different types of information now and we have a thing, and this is more Google's kind of their little terminology, but talking about micro moments that people really want to do things right now, the audience that's consuming video and making purchases and getting engaged in that is really a different type of audience than it was five years ago because of the mobile device, because of the Internet and how connected we are and how we engage this company, it Was a trucking company. They had 500 employees, and they're like, we, you know, we really should do something on YouTube. And they basically called me, says, hey, we want to, you know, get a consult. We went in and had some ideas for them. And what ended up is we actually saved them $2.1 million because of a video strategy. And it was simple as this. They had an HR department. And their biggest issue that they had was getting people trained and up to date on the latest policies and procedures of the company and that they were all in line. And the first thing I say is, look, you get one person with a video camera and you get one expert that's mic'd up and let's go through this. They were able to make a series of videos that they were able to do on intake of new employees because they actually have attrition in that company. There's a lot of new drivers and a lot of drivers leaving for other opportunities. It would take them through the process of being orientated, going through the policies and procedures and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, they didn't even know what to do with the extra time that they had. And it's like everyone that was driving truck, they had an iPad, you know, they were connected. And so it's just getting the right information to the right people. And it saves so much resources for that company. They were able to apply it to other things and make more money just basically off of something that really only took them about 22 days to create. And just using internally and using it internally. And so my thing is, don't always look at YouTube as the thing that you want to do. Look at video, because video is a way to engage now better than ever before. And it's so accessible bandwidth is cheap, and you can put it on places that people can get access to private access or limited access or full access, public access. And it's just like, what is my audience? Where can I actually utilize it? So don't necessarily pigeonhole yourself in and saying, hey, this is the only way that we're going to use it. We want to have it grow. But two, it's just like, that is for internal. Well, there's another one where you might want to connect with your current clients, that your current clients have questions, and there's a lot of phone calls that are being made. The biggest thing that we need to be careful of in this day and age is our reputation online. And it's so easy to really get plastered by a bad reputation, by not communicating properly with our current people that actually purchase a product or a service and they're not able to get the information that's there. So doing a channel that's really geared towards those common questions that people would have, and having an interactive session of getting people engaged with your product, service, or whatever it may be, and answering those questions and making it more of a community, then you're able to, first off, resolve a lot of. Lot of issues that people would have. And naturally they'd be looking for it before they'd actually call into tech support or whatever it may be. They'll look for it online. That's just the human nature. Number two, it's like you're providing for them some value that they actually have a voice that they can actually communicate some issues that you might not be aware of in a different forum where you're not as defensive or whatever, and people can discuss it and give you great ideas. I've seen a lot of companies put this in place, and it not only increased their sales, because what they did is they actually created this active following of people that were just adamant about it. So when they'd have questions, it wasn't tech support sending them this stuff. It was people that were connected in this community. Then lastly, it's like looking at, okay, how do we actually get a new audience? How do we actually get new people that we're being aware of and going from there. My approach is I did the SEO game for years, and I really got sick of whenever Matt Cutts just decided to change his mind on things that we would adjust and lose. For me, there's a couple ways to do it very naturally. Number one, paid to play. You can get the right message in front of the right people at the right time, and if your message is right, it can convert. For example, Squatty Potty. You mentioned that their company was doing about 2 million a year. They were on Shark Tank and they plateaued, and they knew that they needed to do something else from there. So we actually, the Harmon Brothers and I, were involved with this ad that was going on with the Pooping unicorn, and in one year, they had $45 million in sales. $45 million. And why was that? It's because they had a strategy of getting the right video in front of the right people at the right time, and they were pulling out their credit cards to purchase. And two, they were creating this organic swell of getting people to see it. So we had a lot of earned views and a lot of interactions sharing online as well. I Think the big thing by this Brad, is look at the opportunities, look at who your intended audience is. Don't always look for potential clients or potential audience. Sometimes you need to start with your current audience, your current clients right now and kind of branch out from there. Then two, you mentioned where's things going? I've been preaching this for the longest time, for the last four years. I believe everything's going down this path where it's social live and everything's kind of mingling together. But there will always be a place for longer form evergreen content. That means if somebody wants to learn how to do something that there's generated traffic because YouTube is the number two biggest search engine in the world and I think it will overtake Google at one time just because the way people consume and learn through watching it on video and such. But two, that social and online video component coming together is really just paving the way for what I believe is down the pipeline. People think this is, ah, this will never be adopted. But I totally disagree with it. Just because of the R and D budget that Facebook has, the R and D budget that YouTube has for this and other companies that are out there, which is AR and VR. So augmented reality and virtual reality is literally where we're going and we're going to get there. How long it's going to take for adoption and for equipment to come down. Well, it's getting pretty impressive. I just watched an Apple announcement of their new computer that's coming out.

Oh, the Mac Pro.

Oh yeah. It was just amazing. But this technology is here already. But what I loved about it was that people are literally now programming and designing in VR and getting it so that hey, you know what, I travel quite a bit. If I don't have to travel quite a bit and be in the same room as somebody in Poland or wherever I'm supposed to be, that would be nice because I like my family, I want to be around them and I want to choose when I travel and not have to feel like I need to be to every little place from there. But I think this is the direction where it's going and there is some hurdles to get over, but that's kind of where it's going to. What I would do in any case is start now with some type of strategy and try to build an audience. That second pivot in video that we did was we sold off all our lead generation clients that we had and we went all in on audience development because truly the power is in the audience that you can grow organically and Then also with a paid strategy, because that audience, if you can resonate with them, will engage at a level that you can't do off of just a cold video that people searching or typing in through Google or YouTube. That's true. And so that's kind of. I don't know if I answered all those questions.

No, you did. You did. And you brought up a couple other new ones. So circling back to where you said social and live, I totally get the live stuff, especially with. I know I've done a lot of Facebook Live. Some of my clients have been doing Facebook Live videos. Not as many of the YouTube live. I'm familiar with it. I've kind of watched. I haven't really done so many. Is that first question then, is that still. Is that hot right now as well?

Feeling is.

And then when you mentioned the social aspect, that's such a broad term. Can you kind of clarify what you're.

Saying to kind of define what that is? Well, yes. So YouTube actually introduced Live back in 2013. They did a horrible job with it. I mean, a horrible job. And they had a lot of years ahead of anyone else. They were able to do some great things and they made some decisions, but they didn't put a lot of research and design in it. And really, it was just, hey, we got this. This is kind of one of those things that we're offering for our CRE creators, But they really didn't put any time into it after that. And then out of nowhere, not really out of nowhere, but Facebook came along with the live video, and we had Periscope and a few other things like that before. But it's just like, Facebook is a great way for this to happen. Now, the social component to live is instead of just recording something and putting it out live, that you're interacting socially on the video. So you are answering questions that people have comments in. You're engaging with them on a level that people want to connect with. So one of the big things that if you release a video on YouTube that is not a live video, people will come in and they'll say first on the first comment, yeah, I've seen that. And people will say, hey, you know, we're part of the notification squad. They want that recognition. And when you can engage with them live, that literally sets them off to a level of really being a part of something bigger than just themselves and their apartment.

You mean going in there, engage with them live, go in there and reply to their comments.

This was a live interview, and we were going online and Doing this live. And if someone commented, I'd say, oh, yeah, no, Austin just mentioned this and had that question. That's the type of engagement that people. There's some sense of euphoria that happens to the person that says, oh my gosh, they just answered my question. Or I was just in this thing. And then they go out and share it with everybody and so on and so forth. But I think it's going to get to the point where live is completely accessible. The way that we communicate with big audiences are going to be really easy to do and really give people what the viewer is looking for, a more authentic view of your reality. So whether that's at a concert, whether that's Q and A's after some presentation or engaging with someone, or even just a recital, at someone's dance recital, whatever it may be, that's actually happening and people can engage with it live. Now, my daughter just graduated high school and she livestreamed her walking through and getting her diploma, and that was the coolest view ever. I mean, we were there at the event, but we were actually watching it as she was doing it. We had a totally different perspective than we did from up in the bleacher view, right? We had this more intimate, personal view of her interacting, getting her diploma and that excitement that was there. And so that's what people are craving for, and especially the millennial and younger generation. And you can put late Gen X in this as well. And it's something that they crave for and they'll engage with on a little bit higher level and they'll have a higher level of tolerance for this as well. They won't get so happy to bounce off and go something else as long as there's that social connection.

Now on the live video aspect, are you, are you seeing or recommending either one that more so like on Facebook.

Or other platforms versus YouTube 100% on Facebook more than YouTube. That's what I thought. YouTube has its live features. I encourage live features especially for audience development as a way to connect. That's super easy. But the shareability aspect is so much easier to. People just hit that button more than they hit the like button. Right.

And are you not to interrupt here, but along that line, do you ever recommend strategies like, okay, so Facebook videos, you want to share more, your snackable content and your, your. Maybe the live ones and YouTube should, should that be typically a little bit more produced and thought out?

Do you know? I don't know. I don't. I think any video platform, like any video Method could live anywhere. But I think it's just what does the audience want and how are they gonna find it? Yeah. So Facebook, the decay rate on your video being found after seven days is next to impossible the way that they have it set up.

Absolutely.

But on YouTube you can find it for. I mean I can find content very easily. That was done, you know, in 2005, 2006, you know, and it's there, it's still there. So look at YouTube as the evergreen strategy of having your content being found for years to come. But when you're looking at Facebook the way that they have the platform set up, they're trying to overcome some hurdles to make it more searchable. But there's so much going on with Facebook they're going to have a difficult time doing it. But two, that instant connection is what I look at with Facebook and then the long term connection, I look at other platforms like YouTube.

Okay. Are there any things when people are just really starting off, maybe they've got a social following, they've got some momentum. Not so much on YouTube, but they're looking to get that going. Are there any ways to help Turbocharged their.

Absolutely. Now the biggest thing is to understand that YouTube has an algorithm and it's a predictive algorithm to try to help people really get promoted. Now the difference, the reason why I love YouTube so much versus Facebook. Facebook, you have to pay to play, you build an audience, you pay to build an audience and to get your post reach out there, you have to pay them again. Get that? I mean, that's just the way it is. The reality of it, I don't see that changing because of their relationship with content creators and also advertisers. And you don't make, I mean you can make money, but it's not through sharing with ad revenue or anything like that. Now YouTube on the other hand, they will promote the heck out of anyone that is doing the right things for them. And what I mean by that is just to give you an example, I've helped start 13 different channels from Xero to get over a million subscribers. And those 13 were all in different verticals. And what's crazy about it is that the mechanics is always the same and there's certain elements that you need and those things, once you have it in place right now, it can really catapult. So like to give you an example, we started a channel literally in the end of March and we now have almost 170,000 subscribers on that channel just because we know what we're doing. Just because the audience, we know the audience so well. And so we'll be at a million subscribers guaranteed by November.

Are you at liberty to share what channel they are?

Absolutely not. Just making sure I'll share this. We own channels and we know our niche and we make a lot of money off of that.

So can you share some of the things that help you?

That's what I wanted to do, is literally share what they're looking for. The algorithm is real and it's not like any other platform. It will benefit you as long as you're doing some very consistent things. The first thing that I always say is it's really tough to, to get your voice down. And so a lot of these other things you can do before you can get your voice down, but it is going to be, at the end of the day, your content. Is your content going to resonate with your audience. But the biggest thing is consistency, consistency of uploads. So if they really want to, if they really want to do it, they should upload daily. That might be overwhelming for some. And so you don't necessarily have to do it. You just won't grow as fast. There's just some triggers. And if you do these things consistently for 100 days, you will grow, you will grow at a fast rate. But it's really understanding. And then you have to look at the elements where I would put my attention and time. But it's the consistency of upload, which is uploading frequently daily would be preferred to get to where you need to be. Number two would be the consistency of time, so that you're doing it at the right time of when you're releasing. And so give you an example, like, if we were, if this show right here was something that we would be doing on YouTube, I would be releasing it right around 4 Eastern time, 4am and the reason why is because you'll get commuters that are actually consuming the content as they're going to work. And it'll start in the East Coast. Well, actually it started the uk, but then get to the east coast and kind of transfer all the way over to Pacific and it's just hitting the people at the right time. And then ultimately people want to look globally, but you shouldn't do that. You should always look at having one core country as the one that you're trying to optimize for. And then your global views will come as well. But for me, the bulk of the audience is in the United States and Canada, so that's what I actually go after. So you have the consistency of frequently uploading and then consistency of your upload time. The next thing would be really getting it so that you're providing people what they're wanting. Depending on the style of channel that you're doing. If it's how to really finding out how to do the things that people would do, don't draw the videos out. But there's no time limit. If you can have an interesting video for 30 minutes, then do a 30 minute video.

Yeah, people ask me all the time on that how long should my video be? It's like exactly how long can you be interesting for?

2 minutes. Don't dry it out, just do it 2 minutes.

And at the same time don't truncate it and make it too short just because you think that attention spans are short. They're only short in, you know, lack of quality content.

But, but those two things are basically what YouTube's looking for. And then yeah, of course there's some, you know, other factors that will trigger. But that right there, just uploading and going from there, it literally sets YouTube off to says, hey, these people are serious, let's start promoting them. And as you actually have a video that takes off, that's how your channel grows is as an individual takes, individual video takes off. So where will you promote you in time is not perfecting your content. You're going to do that along the way and you're getting pretty dang good at it as you, you know, put out more content. But I'd spend the time on the thumbnail and the title. I would make a clickable thumbnail and a clickable title that will engage. So let me give you an example for this, Brad. Before we did Squatty Potty, we tested 126 different titles to see which we converted the highest. We tested. You know, I don't, I can't even remember. It's 40, 40 plus different thumbnails to see which one converted the highest. And we found the ones that converted the highest and it was a lot higher than what we anticipated. What that needed to be between the titles and the thumbnails. That's where I'd spend the most of the time. Now don't do clickbait. It needs to be clickable. So it would be more making sure that whatever you're saying is relevant to the content that you're actually putting out there. And then the next thing would be is getting your hook. That's the five to seven seconds on YouTube. It's five to seven seconds of really pulling someone into it whether it's a highlight of something that happens really cool in the video, or it's something that just engages them a little bit quicker. If it's a how to video, it's really simple. You're probably wondering how to do this. Well, in this video, I'm going to show you how to do that. And so it's really simple to just hook up them into watching your content now on Facebook, mind you, you have to do that without sound, and it's only three seconds. So keeping that hook. And this is the formula you can use pretty much on anything. But after that, it's just your content and then your call to engagement and then your call to action. The call to engagement is have people engage. Like on the beginning of this podcast, you're like, hey, if you haven't subscribed yet, go ahead and, you know, hit that. Subscribe. That's a call to engage. Engaging with them there or getting them to comment or whatever it may be. And then the cta, your call to action can be whatever that one thing that you're looking for. Don't do multiple calls to action. Just do one thing. People need to be told what you're wanting to do.

Okay, so going back to, like I'm looking at right now, I just typed in Squatty potty under on YouTube and this is the one with 31 million views. The. This unicorn changed the way I poop. Hashtag Squatty Potty. So is that. And is that one? Because obviously some. There's been a.

Several other uploads going. So that's our organic video on YouTube. If you go on to Facebook, you'll see it's over 100 million. So that was really the bulk of our attention.

That's where all the sharing really, really happens.

Yeah, absolutely. We had like 1.7 million shares plus the tagging was another 3 million that people were tagging each other in the commenting. But yes, that would be the one that we actually spent some time on. And the title. Absolutely. There was four of us that was really coming up with the ideas of what would work. That was my first title, by the way.

Yeah, a lot of times that happens, but that's great. Now, do you suggest people putting the like on the thumbnails as opposed to just leaving it a picture? I guess this kind of depends on what it is versus having actual title card on the thumbnail.

You're not talking title card, you're talking about just having text on it.

Yeah, sorry, text on the thumbnail.

You know, it really depends on what you're doing and if you can draw them in. I think the biggest thing is can you tell the story without words. That makes a good thumbnail.

That makes sense. So the other things that you were saying to do, you know, the consistency, the frequency and the thumbnail title, I mean like you said, YouTube will typically reward you if you're doing that by promoting you. You weren't even talking about having to do a bunch of ninja hacking together optimization off site things. I mean it's just good content consistently and frequently YouTube warranty, right.

It's, it's like, it's really weird. But everybody wants this ninja strategy, right? And the reality is, is don't do it. It's just like give YouTube what they want, which is consistency and, and literally make content that people will want to watch. And if you can improve the content and you keep your consistency, that's when you literally grow on YouTube.

Nice, nice. And then when you say they'll promote you, that would that does that mean.

They'Ll show the number one traffic source on YouTube of where all the views come from is suggested video. Right. So when, when they're swiping up to watching a video and swiping through to what to watch next, your video would show up there if they're on mobile or you know, it'd be on the right hand side if they're on desktop. But it's like people are programmed to, to, you know, be there and want to watch different things or they're engaged and they're like oh man, this looks really interesting. They're looking at the thumbnail, they're looking at the title and when they click on it, that's when you know, if you have that little formula that we just talked about that will engage them and you'll be able to grow. But the reality is that's how YouTube will promote you. And based on your click through rate, based on your audience retention, the more you're going to get some suggested out of there. And so good youtuber if you type in what's inside, it's a channel on YouTube. They actually had a series of videos that they were getting ready to do where they cut things open and look to see what's inside, right? What's interesting from it is they got kind of a, they thought what would be really interesting series of videos and they had the number one video that you're thinking about to do was cutting open their silver play buttons. Now silver play button is when you get 100,000 subscribers and it's a very Coveted thing that people want. And you can get a gold and a diamond play button just as you get more subscribers. They decided to do that now, before that, they realized that YouTube really goes off of your previous upload. So if your previous upload has a lot of momentum, then your next video you release is going to have a lot of momentum too, just based on the algorithm. So they actually cut open a wasps nest, showed you what was inside that, and between that video and the cutting open the silver play button, they went from 100,000 subscribers to a million in just weeks. Really? Yeah. The thing that I'm telling you is once YouTube was started saying, hey, this is something that's really hot, let's promote it everywhere. And anyone could do, they're like, hey, this is a really interesting thumbnail. I always wanted to see what's inside that. Then they actually followed it up with what's inside a rattlesnake rattle. And I'm telling you, that exploded. I think it has like 55 million video views on that one. But it's just, it's crazy. It's just YouTube was promoting that channel so much, I think they're over 5 million now, if not more subscribers. And the amount of views they have is just ridiculous.

I just searched that. What's inside the YouTube silver play button has 16 million views.

Yep.

That's nuts. So if you've got a, if you've got us a bigger following on other networks like Facebook and Twitter and you know, elsewhere. I know like in Facebook, if you really want to share your video, you share natively, you upload it to Facebook as opposed to sharing a YouTube link. However, if you want to give your YouTube video and channel some boost, does it. Is it really helpful to get, whenever you upload, tell your people over on Facebook and elsewhere to go watch it on YouTube. Does that help it inside YouTube?

So here's the thing. You put it in a post and Facebook will suppress that post.

Correct.

You'll never get the reach that you want. However, in a live video, if you say, hey guys, I'm just getting ready to launch this video, we're going to talk about this, this and this. It's me on YouTube. Just jump over to YouTube, go ahead and do it. And then in the comments, you know, have someone put the link to your YouTube channel. Absolutely. That's a great, great way to do it. They will suppress it. You know, when they, when they. Enough people do it, they're going to suppress it. They want to keep people on their platform. That's how they make money. They don't want people leaving. And so that's a. That's a big deal. And same with YouTube. They don't want people to leave on that as well. But that would be the only way that I would actually use Facebook. And I usually say, look, if you have a good email list or you have some type of following, a quick email can get them to YouTube and grow fairly quickly where it would make it interesting. Or you could even do, hey, look, this group, this following likes a specific thing about what I'm talking about. And they would all have a common interest. For example, people want to know about video, and they're learning about video strategies. They're learning about how to, you know, do videos better, like produce them better and the right equipment. And giving away a video package that include a drone and maybe a camera as a contest that gets people to subscribe and to watch your content, too, is a fast way to grow as well. And you just have to make sure that you're in YouTube's terms of service and you're just running it legit and you're. You're good.

I like that.

I like that.

Yeah, that's. These are all strategies that I, you know, I know I can definitely utilize that. I think my clients can. Speaking about clients, you work. You've got a great YouTube channel here. You work with some big names. You probably work with some names who aren't household. But tell me more about your consulting business and your, you know, how you operate.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty interesting. My YouTube channel, I started it because I got sick of answering the same questions for my clients. And so this, even to this day, I only spend 20 minutes a week on recording a video and putting it out, just answering questions for it is. And I was able to grow. I'm almost at 400,000 subscribers.

Nice.

Just by doing it for 20 minutes a week. Realistically, could I grow it further if I treated myself like a client? Yeah, absolutely. But do I want to do that? Because I make a lot more money doing other things than, you know, answering YouTube questions and stuff. Right. And so for me, it's about quality of time. But, yes, I do a lot of consulting. I do a lot of training, I do a lot of speaking, and I'll go anywhere in the world to speak. Like, I've been to Europe like four times in the last eight months, you know, at just different conferences and stuff like that. I'm getting ready to speak at VidCon. It's the biggest YouTube conference in. I got two sessions there, which is good. But for me, I'm at a point where I'll help the smaller creator just as a way to give back. So I have a forum on my website that people, if you have just common questions or whatever. But for the higher end type of contracts of really going in and setting up a strategy with their team and really going into depth, I'm very selective of who I take because of the amount of time that it actually takes to really get all the components in place. And I'm not opposed to doing it. It's just. It just needs to be the right fit.

Right. Well, what is the right fit? What is your ideal?

Well, like for me, I'm here to like. Okay, I'm really weird, Brad. I'm not fascinated by money. By no means. I like to earn money. Yeah.

But it's not the number one driver.

I love challenges.

Okay.

And so that's why I got 13 different, you know, channels over a million is because the channel of doing it in every single niche on YouTube, I wanted to do that.

Nice.

So I just spent time find opportunities to do it. So I'm kind of one of those weird guys of, you know, looking for the next challenge. And I think for me, I like to push the envelope to a level that it's never, you know, where it's never been.

Squatty, potty. Definitely pushed the envelope in a great way.

Absolutely. And that's why I was a part of that. It's just like, hey, this is a concept, what we're going to do. I mean, when we first put out that video, it was, you know, everyone in the marketing, video marketing world says that video is too long. And I looked to the other executive producer, I'm like, man, they're off. I go, we're either off or they're off. And he goes, dude, he goes, we're not off. We're right on. Our gut tells us this is gold. And when we got the data back before, because we did a little, we tested out a little bit to see how we optimize the video, which we didn't optimize it at all from our first original one just converted quite well because we had 92.6% of the people that started it, finished it. Oh, wow. And I've never seen numbers like that before. No, it's crazy. Crazy. But. But yeah. So challenges like that is for sure anything that, that I'm passionate about. Like, for me, it's like really making a difference in the world and getting good content. I think we live In a. In a world that there's a lot of bad content and.

But at the same time, it's never been easier to create really good content.

You can create movies like, it's like. One of my clients is Studio C. So they're like the snl, but you can sit down with your grandma and not be embarrassed.

Yeah.

You know, it's not like something that's coming out of their mouth and your grandma says, oh dear, what did they just say? You know, it's just clean, family friendly and, you know, stuff like that. To get them to get over a million subscribers was a big deal for me because I think the world needs more of that, you know, I think the world needs more good quality, family, wholesome, you know, content out there, because we already have the complete opposite that's just, you know, inundated online. Yeah.

Well, now, is there a type of. Is there a type of challenge more specifically you're looking to work with? You never know who might be listening.

Not like for me, it's just, you know, I don't know what. I don't know. I mean, there's some people do it and if it just like, I'm like, man, that would be fun. Then I can get behind it. You know, ultimately, I'd love to do something in AR VR because I know that's where it's gonna be.

Yeah, I love that. And I remember when I first, like, I guess the very first inkling of that with YouTube was just the whole introduction of the 360 degree videos, you know, was that a couple years ago, where you're able to actually use it and look around and.

And whatnot.

I remember how, like, crazy that was and thinking, yeah, if you have a headset on, this becomes virtual reality.

Absolutely.

So that'll be interesting to see how quickly that starts to get moved and adopted. I know some other people, some friends of mine, who are trying to make waves in that department. And it's still so early on, but.

If you can be, you know, it really is early on. But then it's not like there's a place in Linden, Utah, of all places, in the middle of nowhere that there's a place called the Void. And if you go and type in thevoid.com and you see what you're walking into a movie like, we just took my kids. I've been there several times. Take my kids several times. But we walked in and we were in a scene of the Ghostbusters and you are literally fighting ghosts and you can feel things, you can Smell things. You're, like, totally immersed, and it's like, the coolest experience ever.

It's kind of freaky. Headset. If you wear a headset.

Absolutely. Yeah. You not only have a headset, but you're actually. You have your. Your pack on, and you have your gun, because you got to fight.

Really? That's all.

And if you don't get rid of them, I mean, yeah, it's a bad thing, but anyway. But, you know, watching and being a part of them, you know, taking out the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I mean, that. And then when the marshmallow man. Except explodes, you can smell marshmallows.

Oh, so they really do it.

All this little mist of stuff. Come on. I mean, it's really cool. So, like, for me, after it, my son's like, dad, can we live here? Because I. I don't want to leave. And I'm like, well, I mean, just.

The other day, I went to Best Buy, and they were letting people try out the Oculus Rift, and I threw that on, and I was just like. I was, like, holding my. Holding my wallet into my pants really hard because I was about to reach out and buy one of those, but that was. It's fun to see where it's going. Have you ever read the book, by the way?

Just ready, player one.

Ready, player one?

Absolutely, dude. Ernest Cline's a good author, but that book is. I don't know if it's foreshadowing what things are coming, but that's what's nuts.

Is it's not science fiction, I don't think. I mean, I think it is about as close to what we're going to experience.

I could, like, totally. Like, you're going to school in virtual. I mean, that's the best type, the way I look at it. And you can kind of pursue. I just. The only thing I didn't understand is them sitting at a desk, you know, in the virtual world.

Oh, that's true. That's true.

That's kind of weird. But other than that, it's just like. I think that's what it's going to be. Yeah. And I. Apparently, they're making it a movie.

Yeah.

Yeah, they are.

I've heard that. I think it's going to come out in about, like, next spring, like, next Memorial Day. We may have to wait a year, but Spielberg's on it, and that should be interesting.

Yeah, absolutely, man.

Well, this has been great. Is there any nuts you're trying to crack right now? Whether it's, like, we kind of mentioned clients you're trying to work with, maybe people you're trying to meet, resources.

Yeah. Like, I think the thing for me, Brad, is where we're talking about education, where we're talking about knowledge, and I think this is the biggest thing for me is I really believe that knowledge is open source and we should share it as much as we can. And ultimately that's why, even with my busy schedule, that I take time to make a video because I know it can benefit someone. Absolutely, that's there. And for me, going through the educational system the way it's set up here was horrible. I wasn't able to grow as fast as I wanted to. And so to give you a little bit of background, I got a four year degree in two and a half years because I didn't want to wait. I want information and I don't like to be in a box. That just irritates me to be in a box. And I have to do certain things a certain way. I think my perspective is I know I can learn something from someone in the world and it doesn't matter who they are. You just want to be observant. And so this education aspect of my life is really, really critical. I try to learn and grow every day and it's part of who I am. And then two, I actually started a conference. It's a video marketing conference. It's all about knowledge. It's all about, you know, helping people get more out of what they're doing. And we've had some great successes there. And I don't know if this is kosher or anything. If it's not, just, it's no problem.

Go for it.

I actually have access to the last VIDSummit. It's like 32 hours of just presentations of the very best in the industry. We're talking of the top 10 most viral videos of all time. Eight people of them were actually presenting at the Vids Summit. And you know, there's a lot of great content. It's like 32 hours worth of content. I'd be more than happy to give your listeners to that for free.

Absolutely, that'd be. That's very generous. That's amazing how.

We give you a link that you can kind of do it that way or I can give it over, you know, the podcast. You just tell me how you want to do it. It doesn't matter.

Put it in the show notes.

Just. Okay, yeah, look at the show notes, guys. Call to.

That's a call to action. If I've Ever heard one? I like it. I like it. Well, man, Darrell, this has been great connecting with you today. You've been a wealth of information. It's always cool to be able to talk to somebody who's playing the game at the highest level and has insights to what's working and not just the, you know, the stuff that you see out there, like the, the little hacks that are, you know, they work today and then they don't tomorrow, etc. This has been a real pleasure for me, hopefully for my listeners as well. If folks want. Besides the link in the show notes, if they want to follow you or more information on. You want to go ahead and give a website or two or.

Yeah, just go to just anywhere on any social and type in D E R R A L spelled a little bit differently eves E V E S derraleves and you'll find me there. You know, and if you want to go to derraleves.com, that's my website that can take you to wherever. But ultimately I spend the bulk of my time on Twitter and YouTube.

Nice. Fantastic. So all of that will be in the show notes. If you guys as listeners have enjoyed this and gotten a lot out of it, go check out Darrel Watch's YouTube channel. I just pulled it up. That'll be in there. There's just a plethora of really, really good stuff. And if you have any cool challenges for video marketing, you got anything that, I mean, you've heard him for the past hour here talk about the things he likes. Feel free to reach out to him. Maybe you never know what my listeners can bring you. For everybody else, I appreciate you listening and I would love your feedback. Feedback. Just email me at askbradaconwrappedbusiness.com it's the number one thing you can do. And if there's any topics or questions I didn't cover, shoot me an email. That is my personal email. I read every single one of them and I reply to the ones that I can. But I look forward to hearing your feedback on this and sharing the next episode with you. By the way, the best thing you guys can do to pay me back for this is just share this episode on social media and you know, to other folks you think will get something out of it. Until next time, Darrell. I really appreciate your time, brother, and I thank you. Look forward to connecting later on.