NEW YouTube Growth Hacks from 600k Sub YouTuber @VanessaLau

This next session is with Vanessa Lau. She's a YouTuber, she's an Instagrammer, and also she is a course creator. So her session, she's gonna be talking about how she built her YouTube to about 600,000 YouTube subscribers. Without further ado, enjoy the session.

I really want to go down to the basics and the fundamentals of what is actually required to grow on YouTube. First thing is choosing the right topics. Second thing is increasing your click-through rate so people are actually clicking on your videos, but it's also about increasing your view duration. So the moment someone clicks on your video, are they watching the full video or not? Ultimately, the most important thing is increasing your watch time. Are they not only watching majority of your video, but are they watching multiple videos of yours? This is what YouTube is. People think about YouTube as a search engine. Optimize for search, optimize for search. I did this for a really long time until I actually realized that search isn't always king. How I understand this is when I look at my analytics, search is really great to get clicks because that person is searching for a very specific problem and they're looking for a specific solution. If you actually look into the analytics, and I've asked other channels about this as is those people who come through suggested, they actually watch your videos for longer. They watch for longer, which increases the amount of watch time that you ultimately get. Not only do you want to optimize for search, which is great, it's a low-hanging fruit opportunity, but I want to also share some strategies on how you can get recommended more in suggested that I honestly wish I knew sooner to grow faster. One of the most game-changing things that has also helped me grow in my channel is actually investing in third-party plugins like TubeBuddy to actually do A/B testing. If you run ads, you're doing A/B testing. Testing already, but did you know that you could also do that to your YouTube videos? I'm constantly looking at which thumbnails are getting more clicks versus others. At the same time though, and by the way, this is kind of what it looks like. It gives you a lot of data. You kind of run it until there's statistical significance or you run it for a certain timeline, but one of my learning lessons of doing A/B testing and really investing in this is also understanding that a higher click-through rate may not always be the goal. For instance, let's say this YouTube thumbnail that I was testing out didn't get as many clicks as my original thumbnail. If I actually look at the data further, what I noticed is that even though that thumbnail didn't get as many clicks, it actually attracted a viewer that watched the video for longer. You don't necessarily want to blindly do split testing and only looking at what's getting the most clicks. You want to actually look at the data and understand which thumbnail is also attracting the right audience that's watching that video for much longer increasing my watch time and therefore helping me get on suggested. This is one of the most game-changing shifts that I made in my channel that's accelerated not just my growth but also my AdSense revenue as well. Another learning lesson, the 7th one that I want to share with you that really changed the game for me, is understanding that longer videos are actually better on YouTube than shorter ones. Longer videos is what's ultimately going to get you recommended in suggested. For a really long time, I created 10-minute snappy videos on YouTube because I prioritized view duration. I thought, okay, if someone's watching a 5-minute video, they're likely gonna watch all of it, which is a good thing for me. But what I realized is if I actually put my attention to watch time, which is what's the most important metric on YouTube, even if someone finishes 100% of a 5-minute video, that's 5 minutes of watch time. If I put out a 30-minute video and that person only finishes 50% of it, I'm getting 15 minutes of watch time. So what am I gonna prioritize, a shorter video or a longer one? I'm likely going to prioritize a longer one in order to get more juice in the algorithm and get my content pushed out more in suggested. The 9th learning lesson, and this is one thing that I learned this year and I really kick myself for not doing it sooner, is stop sharing the standard YouTube link. The standard YouTube link is this standard link that we all see when we're watching YouTube videos. Here's what you want to do instead. You want to use the list link. When you go onto your YouTube channel, you'll have this row that says uploads. You want to go to Play All. When you get there, there's going to be a list link. It's and list yada yada yada. Copy that link. Then what you're going to do, anytime you promote a video, you want to add that list link at the end. What that's going to do is that's going to suggest your other videos that you've uploaded rather than auto-suggesting your competitors' videos. Doing this alone has increased my watch time significantly and doubled my AdSense revenue. What I simply do now is I've got a weekly newsletter. I call it the Content Crew, and I literally tell my audience when I'm posting a video, what that video is, and I make sure I embed that list link because most times people might just leave their YouTube player on without even realizing it, and that's when you start really seeing that increase in watch time. Now finally, a lot of people are talking about short-form content. Some of you guys are TikTokers. Maybe you want to learn how to bridge the gap between short-form and long-form. Well, the 10th lesson is leveraging YouTube Shorts. There's a new recent algorithm update that just came out literally last week, and it's about how YouTube will now recommend your long-form videos to users who watch your short-form content. Back then, it wasn't the case. If you posted short-form, it doesn't really translate to long-form. Now it's different where if you actually do a short-form video, if someone watches that, they're going to be suggested your long-form content as well. So now there is a way to bridge the gap between short and long form. YouTube has also updated features that allow you to do this in a sense where let's say you create a long-form video on mobile, you click that button create, you're able to edit that into a short directly on YouTube, and then once that's all edited and chopped up, if someone clicks created from Vanessa Lau, that little button right there, it's going to lead them to the long-form video directly. That way, you're able to leverage YouTube Shorts to attract the viewer because it's great for traffic, but then also you're able to rack up more watch time, more view duration, also nurture the person who's watching your videos and get them to buy your products and services by getting them to watch your longer form video. YouTube is really changing the way that they're doing short form and how they're marrying long form. I really think it's a missed opportunity for a lot of business owners if they're not tapping into this. Because if you're already doing content and you're already doing video, YouTube is the platform that I really believe that you should be on. Even Eric says himself, what is the value of 1 million followers? Is it more valuable on YouTube? Is it more valuable on Instagram or TikTok? Most people will argue that YouTube is the most valuable when it comes to the value of a follower.

All right, so that's it for this session. Hope you enjoyed it. If you are interested in learning more about the Leveling Up Founders Private Event. It's basically an annual thing where we gather the top founders and also the top speakers and ultimately just help each other grow our businesses faster. Last event was rated a 9.8 out of 10, and everyone said it was more so about the people. The speakers were amazing, but the people are even more amazing. So you can go to live.levelingup.com to learn more if you are interested, and we will, we'll catch you later.