Rob Balasabas - How To Maximize Views And Engagement On YouTube

The first thing was be consistent. So if you're a new channel, you have a small amount of videos, then you need to just create more videos. One of our partners, Joshua Weathington, he's been in the YouTube game for a while. He just calls it the grind phase. It's like you just got to grind. You just got to put out content you can't be found. If you have Nothing out there, YouTube can't do its thing and help you and recommend your videos to other channels that are watching your type of content. If you don't have any content. So just create content.

This is an intro, intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy, my.

Boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Hey, hello and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. If you are a first time listener, thanks so much for tuning in. My name is Matt Wolf and alongside my co host Joe Fear, who will be jumping on in just a minute, we love to talk to influencers and growth market marketers and people that are just doing amazing things online to grow a community and generate revenue off of this community and platform that they're building. That is really our sole goal of this podcast is to learn more growth strategies for marketers, more monetization strategies for marketers and creators and all of that kind of good stuff. And today will not disappoint. Today we're talking with Rob Balisavis. I think I said his name right. I'm pretty sure that's right. But today we're talking with Rob and Rob is the partnership growth manager over at Tubebuddy. Before Tubebuddy he worked over at Thinkific. And we're going to talk a lot today about YouTube, not just TubeBuddy, the tool that he, you know, spends a lot of time out there evangelizing, but also how anybody can grow a YouTube channel. We're going to dive into how to get more engagement on your YouTube channel, how to get more subscribers on your YouTube channel. You know, how to create the perfect thumbnail, the perfect title, how to really accelerate the growth of your YouTube channel. And we're also gonna talk a little bit about Tubebuddy, his tool, and how that takes the whole YouTube acceleration and just, you know, blows it up even faster. So really, really, really cool stuff, a lot of cool strategies, a lot of deep dives on how this tool can grow your YouTube channel even faster. And Joe and I learned a ton about YouTube that we have never thought about before. Didn't really know you can do with you. So also, again, if this is Your first time listening. Thank you. I want to let you know that at the end of all of these interviews, stick around after the interview is over, because Joe and I, we have another discussion about all of our big takeaways, all of our big aha moments, all the things that really blew our mind about this episode. We have a little post discussion after every single interview. So make sure you stick around for that. And we're gonna go ahead and dive in with Rob. But before we do, one last thing. If you want the notes for this episode, we take notes. We call them action guides. Now, I need to remember they're called action guides and not notes. We take action guides on every single.

One of these episodes.

And if you want those action guides that are available for two weeks and all you gotta do is go join our Facebook group, go over to flowchartgroup.com, request to join our group. One of the questions when you request to join the group is your email address. If you give us your email address, it's not required, but if you give us your email address, we will send you the action guide from this episode with the step by step breakdowns and notes of exactly what you should do to take action from this episode. Okay, so you can get that for free by going to flowchart group.com requesting to join the group. And in the little questionnaire, if you give us your email address, we'll hook you up with those notes. If you don't give us the email address, you can still join the group, but we're not going to be emailing you the notes from the episode. All right, so flowchart group.com now let's go over and jump in with Rob from Tubebuddy.

Rob, welcome to the show, my friend. How you doing?

Thanks, Scott. I'm doing great, guys. Thanks for having me on and hanging out with you guys here. Jealous that you guys are in San Diego, but other than that, good.

BC is awesome. You're up in Vancouver area and we have a lot of buddies up there. Actually, one of them, I was looking back because I know Anthony Chatsonmuth actually introduced us. But then I looked at my Facebook messages and I saw Trevor Turnbull and this is where we totally dropped the ball last year. Introduced us to you and he's also up in BC in your area. So I'm like, dude, all right, this is a long time coming, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Now you guys got to come up here once, we can travel again and vice versa.

Yeah, for sure.

I've never actually been to Canada. I've been to Mexico a million times. I've never been up into Canada.

We're in San Diego.

Yeah, it is closer. Yeah, it is closer.

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Absolutely. Yeah. No, yeah, no, Trevor's great. And, yeah, I actually haven't seen him in a while, but. And Ants is awesome. I see him all over Facebook and just a brilliant market. I saw he was on the show, too.

Yeah.

As of this recording, he was one of our most recent episodes. But this recording studies. By the time this comes out, it won't have been a recent episode anymore.

A long time ago.

But anyway, so this is going to be a fun conversation because as I was telling you before we hit record, we kind of have a YouTube channel that's fairly new, just a few months old. We're at a couple hundred subscribers right now, and so we're hoping to kind of pick your brain a little bit about what we could do to grow this channel. Maybe how we can use leverage Tubebuddy to grow the channel, to find the right keywords and the right stuff to do to grow this channel. We mentioned Jacob. He's actually the guy who runs our YouTube channel. So he's really excited for us to be doing this interview because he's going to listen back to it and implement a lot of this stuff that we're learning on this episode. But before we get into that, get your backstory a little bit. Like, how did you get involved with Tubebuddy? What were you doing before this? Let's kind of get that story arc there, and then we'll dive into some tactical coolness.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Sounds good. So. So in 2000. No, I'm kidding. I'm not going to go back that far.

Yeah.

Oh, really? Okay. No, I would say. Okay, well, I guess I would say about. Actually 15 years ago, out of college, got into a digital agency as a sales guy, you know, hitting up, like, you know, different small businesses and stuff locally to, like, hey, do you guys want to get on social media? You know, so that's sort of like my entry into the digital marketing spaces in an agency. And so I spent about six, seven years there learning sort of all the, you know, sales funnels and click funnels and, you know, building WordPress sites and stuff. And so I spent my time there. That's where I got to learn, really, like, this whole world of online digital space and all the money that flows into the space now and sort of where the future is going. And. And then about six years ago, I got an opportunity to work with this Startup at the time called thinkific, Online course platform. Yeah. So I was. I was employee number 12 there and started in support. You know, I was like, kind of burnt out from digital marketing. And so, like, you know what? I'll take a. I'll take a desk job, you know, doing support tickets and tech support and answering emails and stuff. So I. It was about four or five months into that that they're like, hey, like, you know, we have an Instagram account. Do you. Do you want to. I'm like, yeah, I'll take over. I'll just like, I don't have to add hours. I'll just do it, you know, you know, off the side of my desk. So I started doing that for a while. Yeah. Just to, like, kind of break things up. And so I did that. And they're like, hey, that's going well. Do you know Twitter? Okay, I'm like, sure, I'll take over Twitter. Eventually I became the social media manager as the company grew and then moved into community manager for our online community and then into partnership. So I was there for about five years, and then that's where I started doing a bit of traveling. They would send me to conferences and stuff like that. Traffic conversion, social media marketing world, all those kind of conferences. And that's where I got to meet the Tubebuddy team, because they were going after the same type of people, content creators and YouTube creators. So that's where I got to know the Tubebuddy team and built a relationship with them. And we did some virtual summits together. And then the opportunity came up, and they're like, hey, Rob, we're looking for somebody to sort of be a brand evangelist, a brand ambassador for us. And I couldn't pass it up. I mean, there was a few companies that I would consider leaving thinkific for, because thinkific is like, top a class company to work for, and TubeBuddy was one of them. So that opportunity came up and, you know, here I am today.

Dude, that's. It's an amazing position that you've kind of engineered for yourself. It sounds like, you know, you kind of just put yourself in the right place and then, of course, met the right people at the conference. I mean, we talk about all the time. This is why, you know, podcasting for us is our networking tool. But shoot conferences. And you have all the cred from being at thinkific as well, so. Super smart. So at think or, sorry, TubeBuddy, you're the brand evangelist, and I know you have a lot of your own stuff as well. Like on YouTube, your videos rock. I know. I watched a few of your vlogmas and it's a little dated now, but yeah, it's what that's like an everyday vlog that you're putting out, right? For December, I think.

Yeah, for December, yeah. I have my own personal YouTube channel and it's, it's something I started even just actually just by chance, like before I started working at TubeBuddy, I just, you know, I was creating a lot of LinkedIn. I know you guys are on LinkedIn as well and so created a lot of, you know, native uploaded videos. So like videos that I would upload directly to LinkedIn and probably, you know, for about a good two years and before, you know, between 2017 and 2020, you know, really heavy into LinkedIn, built a bit of a, I guess personal brand, if you want to call it, and built a really awesome network of content creators and friends and opened up a lot of doors for me there. But then I started sort of seeing like, okay, well LinkedIn is awesome, but it's contained in LinkedIn. So how do I take.

These videos and this content that I'm building and creating and sort of like let it do better work for me and work better for me and you know, reach more people organically. And so I started looking around what other platforms are there and you know, you can't help, you know, but notice YouTube is like this open, wide open sort of playing field. And so I started repurposing some of the videos on YouTube and then eventually started traction, getting traction there on my personal channel and just like went way more into YouTube, you know, and that's kind of where that grew. So, you know, the whole YouTube journey started from there about, I would say about two years ago.

Wow, so you've made some monster moves in just two years. And that's, that's crazy. Okay, so. And you found the tubebuddy guys, what, right around the same time? Is that what it was or.

Yeah, I would say right around the same time we just, you know, started kind of connecting and hanging out and seeing them at conferences and stuff and started using it with no plans to work there, but just started using the tool. And you know, when I joined the team and they took me through, through sort of like an actual training, through all the tools, I was like, why am I not use. I was like using like 2% of the platform. So yeah, so that's where I've been at.

I feel like with every person we've ever brought on that's talked about YouTube. And we've probably had, over the last four years, we've probably had maybe 10 people come on and talk about various like YouTube related tactics. I don't think there's been a single episode where they didn't mention TubeBuddy as part of their tool stack. So that's pretty cool. As far as like the sort of brand that you guys have in the market that we're in. I'm curious, how big is the team over at TubeBuddy?

Oh man, you might be surprised. Maybe not, but our team, Tubebuddy itself is about, I would say 13. Thirteen? Yeah, 13 people now, which is incredible. If you kind of compare it to the fact that we have, I think over 5 million channels that have installed TubeBuddy. You know, so yeah. So, you know, recently, you know, if you guys check it out, if you guys search tubebuddy, you guys will probably read that we got acquired by Branded Entertainment Network about a month ago, which is exciting for us because they're very well established, larger company, it's owned by Bill Gates and they have I think over almost 300 team members in five countries. So it's gonna be cool to kind of see how they take this little.

12 person team and kind of blow it up. But yeah, our team is only about 12 or 13 people and after the.

Acquisition it's still kind of all the same brains behind it. That's just kind of a capital infusion is sort of what happened.

Yeah, I would say, yeah, more resources for sure. And then just, you know, both, you know, Ben, which is Branded Entertainment Network is. They're very much, they're a product placement and influencer marketing agency essentially. And so they're very big on AI. And you know, for example, I think they have placed, you know, like they, they're like over 30 years old as a company. And so they placed American Airlines on Home Alone and they placed, you know, Ray Ban into Top Gun and like, you know, huge, huge deals. And and now they're working with like, you know, David Dobrik who, you know, he did a recent campaign with Lamborghini and gifted it with, you know, to a YouTube gamer. And you know, so now they're getting more into like they're still in movies but now they're very much eyeing because the eyeballs are on social media and YouTube and so that's where the influencer agencies are going. So yeah, it's going to be more resources, more capital, of course, and just more brains to kind of take what Tubebuddy has and then add some more AI into it and things like that.

For YouTube creators, such a smart decision right now, especially in the current environment as we're recording this, the whole Covid thing still going on and it's like people aren't going to movie theaters anymore. And the new form of entertainment is finding what we can find online to stream.

You know, I've caught myself watching some vlogmas from some other people that I know and I'm just like getting sucked in. And even with my wife. Yeah, and some of these are. I know yours are like short and punchy, like five minutes or whatever, but like my wife works with another YouTuber and she's doing like an hour long a day. I'm like, what are you? But I'm like, who sits around and watch? And then there I was like an hour later I was like, dammit, dammit.

You are the guy sitting around watching hours weddings.

I mean, it's my wife's stuff, but still I'm like, I can see how you get sucked in with the right kind of message, you know, just the right person and we can all kind of be those influencers, you know.

It's crazy. It's crazy. It's like such an even playing field now, right? Like, I think there I saw a stat that I think something like 88% or something. I don't know where the stat came from. I saw it was like 88% of the content consumed on YouTube are from influencers or I guess individual ish kind of creators. Not like, you know, big brands, you know. So yeah, it's interesting. That's what people are watching. And then, you know, as you know, even for our household, we don't have like cable, we don't have TV cable anymore. It's Netflix, it's YouTube, you know, Disney, you know, you know, Amazon. Like that's what we're, you know, our. I think as a society, you know, even it started with Spotify. I mean it started with other things, but Spotify, Spotify, you know, broke the whole radio industry. And you know, we just listened to what we want to listen to. And so I think that's happening now for a while now. And I think it's just gonna, I think Covid has done it where we just watch what we want to watch. You know, we're not, we just pick and like. And it's interesting that it's going from, you know, movies and things like that to like individual creators. Like you watched an hour of a person's video, you know, and they're not like a celebrity or anything like that. They're not Hollywood, they're a YouTube creator. It's interesting. It's like such a weird time.

Funny you say that because there was. We were. She's actually in the wedding industry as a wedding planner and has been on YouTube, has a following and exactly what you said. They're not famous. But I remember walking with her one time in a trade show at a wedding and someone, I heard a whisper, she didn't hear it. And she's like, oh my God, that's Jamie Wolf. Like it was just like. And she didn't hear it. I was like, that is funny. Like, look at that. She thinks she's like the top of the. I'm like, dang, man. Like, it's just, it's the perception, you know.

Well, I also think the trend is, is moving towards the extremes. And what I mean by that is like in watch time, right, People are either want to watch something that's like 10 minutes, I need a, I'm on my lunch break. I need a quick hit of entertainment. You know, guys like Casey Neistat have, have figured out how to like fill that slot perfectly. That's like the type of content I watch while I'm like eating lunch real quick because I don't want to go spend an hour watching a Netflix show. And then the opposite extreme is you got like the Joe Rogan's of the world who are putting out three hours worth of content. It seems like the sort of middle ground is disappearing a little bit. Like the hour long, like content is kind of going away and now people are either I want the real quick hit or I want, I want to spend some time with this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it is actually really smart. Like that's something that a lot of YouTube creators are. Need to pay attention to. I mean, you know, like are you, are you a 10 minute content guy or person or are you that one hour binge watch, you know, kind of person? Like, you know, you got to understand your audience too, right? Like it is, it is hard. I get, I like mad props to people that can build like that can create an hour long or even 30 minutes long video on YouTube and have high watch time. Like to hold someone's attention from doing nothing else or like clicking out or watching something else for half an hour. I mean that is, that's incredible. Like you got to be super engaging, entertaining. Your editing has to be on point. Yeah. You know, you have to think about what are you creating and really plan out that content. Like there's so much that goes into it, you know, so much respect for those creators.

It's. I think that was partially why I was sucked into that video too, for like an hour long, because that's what my wife and I were like, how the hell does she do this for that long? And she's editing the. And it's engaging. It's like really well done. But you could see there's like, little quirk. There's little things to keep the attention going throughout the whole thing.

Yeah, yeah. Well, actually.

Fascinating.

I think that's a pretty good segue, in fact. So I'm curious, from your perspective, working with a lot of YouTubers and seeing a lot of what's going on, what are some of the ways you've seen people hold that engagement for longer than maybe a five minute video?

Yeah, there's a ton of different ones. Like, if I look at. There's different types of videos. So if I look at tutorial videos.

Guys that teach specific things, like, hey, this is how you get your first hundred subscribers. Or this is how you, you know, set up a Facebook ad. Or this is how you kill it on reels, you know, on Instagram reels. You know, there's different things that they do. They'll. They'll say like one of the things that, you know, Justin Brown, one of our friends in Australia, one of our partners, he does, you know, his stuff is always like live streaming tutorials. So he'll say like, hey, guys, in this video, I'm gonna show you five ways to get more viewers on your live streams. Right? Stick around. Stick around till the end. I'm gonna give you guys the one secret that I use that I've never shared anywhere else, and I'll share that with you guys at the end. So there's always like, they're like kind of dropping a little like, stick around, you know, stick around kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Or like, hey, stick around till the end. I'm gonna give away. I'm gonna be giving away, you know, blank, you know, some type of prize or giveaway. And so it makes you want to stick around till the end. Now for tutorial videos, like, a lot of the. A lot of the creators that I see that are doing really well is that they'll say like, you know, hey, five tips. So they go, first tip, second tip, and then they stop saying, like the number and they'll just say the next tip, the next. So people like kind of lose track. Like, hey, I'm already on the third. It's okay, you know, Just like the next step, next tip. Also, they try to preload, you know, they try to preload the best tips in the beginning so that people stick around. Like, hey, that was. That first tip was really good. Wasn't too heavy, but it was really good. The second tip was really good. And so now they're sucked in. You know, just like what you said, guys. Like, you started watching the first couple minutes, you're like, well, I'm. Now I'm invested. I want to see the entire thing. Exactly.

That's it. I'm sure. Like, countdown videos too. I see a lot of countdowns, like, or a list, you know, and it's like counting down from, like the top 10 things. And it starts at 10, but you, like, want to stay for number one, you know, whatever it might be around. Is that like a kind of an engagement tactic as well for certain videos?

Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, using graphics and this goes to editing. And, you know, editing is a whole nother thing. But yeah, putting all the, you know, sort of like. Like the way that ESPN if, you know, you guys are everybody watching espn, they have, like, on the side, they have all the sort of, like, what they're going to be talking about. And there's a bit of a countdown. I see a lot of people doing that. Yeah. So, you know, when it comes to tutorials, that's definitely one thing. You know, vlogs are a little bit more. A little bit different. Vlogs are a little harder, in my opinion, to grow a vlog channel because people are. People are. You're. You're sort of like your value proposition is, you know, your personality and your lifestyle and, you know, all the cool things that you're up to. And, you know, whereas tips and tutorial kind of videos, people are, you know, as long as you're providing value in terms of, like, answering the question that people are searching for, which is what Google, YouTube is. It's a search engine. People are searching. The majority of search queries are questions, you know, how do I do blank? Or, you know, and so you basically just answer the question, whereas a vlog is a little bit different. So, you know, I've seen a lot of vlogs where, you know, the first 10 seconds is sort of like they drop you into the middle of the vlog, you know, and then. And then it goes back to the beginning. So you're like, how did they end up, you know, doing, you know, jumping to that pool, and then it brings you back to the beginning where they're starting their day so then now you're like, okay, well, you know, it started sort of. It piqued your curiosity of like, how do they end up there? Okay, well, let's see how they ended up, you know, eating all those skittles or whatever. You know, whatever the first, you know, 10 second is. So. So that's vlogs. And then that's like more storytelling, which in my opinion is a lot more skills. So, you know, yeah, it's.

That's like the Casey Neistead type style videos. Like, it's like the Open Cold Open kind of thing. I mean, we use that on our blog, our podcast here as well. You know, it's like, here's some impactful thing. And it's like, all right, let's start you at the beginning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Little blur. But yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and, you know, they. There. There's even. But some. Some creators are just really good. Like, I know my son. So we have two kids. Our oldest is 10 years old, and he is watching this creator called the odd one sout. And it's an interesting case study on a YouTube creator who is now has merchandise. And it's like, in, you know, like the stores. Like, we can go to the mall and get his merchandise. This Guy is a YouTuber?

Yeah.

You know, and, you know, he's got millions of subscribers, but it's just animated cartoons. And so he. More subscribers than some, like, media channels out there, you know, some. And. And it's just all animated cartoons. And it's very engaging. And he does his voiceover on it, but he only publishes maybe one video a month. But, like, the kids are tuning in. They're like, oh, yeah, okay, he's gonna have a new video next week. Like, you know, what are we doing next week, dad? Like, I'm like, we're. We're going out. We're gonna go for, you know, a walk or a hike or whatever, or like, there's something we gotta do. He's like, can we be back by noon?

We can watch it anytime.

Like, why, like, why do you have to watch it right when he drops it?

You know?

So it is interesting. Yeah, it's interesting.

It's funny because just there's. It's the impact on the kids now and like. Because I've heard that there's a lot of kids that want to be a creator or a YouTuber as a profession now. And that's like, you know, when they ask them in elementary school, what do you want to do when you grow up? I Want to be a YouTuber or creator? And it's funny because I used to do some fostering. And we have a foster daughter. She went back now, but just yesterday we got this video of her acting like she was vlogging. And her mom, her bio mom was like, oh, are you doing a challenge? And she's like, yeah. And she smashed the. Like. I'm like. And she's three. I'm like, what is going on? This is crazy.

My daughter Cora, she's the same way. She's seven, right? And she has a Kindle that she'll play games on, but it's also got a camera on it. We'll find her walking around the house holding up her Kindle, going, hey, fam, how's everybody doing? Smash that, like, button.

So crazy. Yeah, no, it really hit me. Quick story. Last year, so 2019, I attended VidCon in Anaheim, and first time there, I didn't realize what a zoo is. This thing is like. This thing's like, right across Disneyland in this big convention center. There's like four floors. And the way it works is that the first floor is all community. So, like, there's booths from all the brands, like, you know, Lego and Nerf and Barbie and all that stuff. So the, I guess the community. So, like, you know, the general public attends and they get to see all the brands and they get to see some of their YouTube creators. They have booths there as well, selling their merchants. And then as you go up higher and higher, it gets more serious and businessy, you know, so industry is on the top. And anyways, you go down. And I was hanging out on the main floor and I forget who it was. There was like this like, sort of like quad size celebrity Hollywood celebrity. And like, he came in and nobody cares. Like, all the kids, they don't care. And then I think it was. I don't know if it was David Dobrik or somebody. It was a YouTube creator that came in. I didn't realize who they were at the time. I was like. I was like, with my colleague and they came in and all these kids started swarming this, like, person that I had no idea. And I was like, what? It's like, oh, no, they're on you. They're a YouTuber, that's what. But it was like, such a telling moment because, you know, if you're a brand, if you, you know, if you're a brand, like, that's what you need to pay attention to. Like, the next generation, they're not paying attention to Hollywood. You Know, they're paying attention to YouTube, you know, like, that's, that's where their eyeballs are at. That's who they know. They don't. They don't really necessarily know all the celebrities and, you know, TV and movie, you know, actors and all those famous people. They know, they're YouTubers. They're connected to them, you know, and they can, like, that's who they're gonna go chase after and go to conferences to see. So, you know, if you're a brand, you got to understand that if you're looking to, you know, put money out for advertising, you know, are you gonna get a TV ad or are you gonna, you know, try and, you know, sponsor a YouTube creator that is talking to your audience that can garner this kind of response from their community? You know, so it's a, It's a very interesting shift. And you mentioned Joe Rogan a little earlier. It's very interesting shift that. The power and sort of control that dictates the deal or, like, where I'm going to put my content. It's shifting to the creator. You know, Joe Rogan's like, hey, I'm going to go all in on Spotify. And it's like, he can say that and he can, you know, he can make that kind of demand.

I mean, and he owns his content still.

Yeah, and it's his content and his, his, his, his followers will follow where he goes, you know, so it is interesting. It is interesting. There's lots of. In the gaming space right now, like, gaming. You know, a lot of people may not be paying attention to it, but gaming is huge. Like, there's. I think there was a number of. I think in 2020 alone, there was 800,000 gaming ch. Hit their play button. Like 100,000 subscribers. I didn't realize there's that many gaming channels.

It's E Gaming, right? It's that whole trend. Yeah, it's taken off in esports and all that stuff. I mean, they're building arenas around the world around these things.

Like, yeah, they're getting traded like athletes.

They wear sweats when they play games, so they fit the part. Tracksuits.

Yeah, I know. I talked to. I talked to. To one of our partners yesterday, and he is putting his fitness and gaming, like his passion for it into his channel, where he's like, hey, if you want to be a serious gamer, like, don't just eat chips. Like, you know, these are some healthy alternatives while you're gaming, you know, take your new tropics.

And.

It'S A whole. Yeah, it's not pizza and soda anymore.

There's sports supplements for gamers now, I'm sure.

I'm sure there's a market there. Well, what's in one of the other questions? So Jacob, actually, we asked him like, hey, what do you want to learn? So he's on our team and this is the selfish part of us.

Yeah, we put it on Jacob so it doesn't sound like we're getting free consulting.

So blame Jacob if you don't like this. I don't think you might, but. So one of the other things that like something we do is we repurpose a lot of our episode, all of our episodes. If we have video on there in various ways. And I'm thinking as like a content type on YouTube. What do you suggest around repurposing content on YouTube and doing that effectively?

Yeah, yeah, I've always, I've always. I think about this a lot, you know, because we, we create content on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, inside groups, you know, all that stuff. So I've always kind of looked at it and it's not a new idea. I think Gary Vee has been very big about it. It's just like this content pyramid where at the top of the pyramid is YouTube. You know, that's like where you can see the full thing, right? This interview, for example, or if we do a live stream interview, you can see the entire thing on YouTube. And then from there we chop it up into smaller forms of content, into, you know, clips for Instagram, for Facebook, for LinkedIn, for Instagram stories, you know, and then everything pushes up to the next level, which is usually YouTube, because once they get on YouTube, then they can get into our email list. There's calls to action in the description, all that stuff. But, you know, as a company, that's where we want them to live because it's searchable as well, right? If you put it on Facebook or you put it on LinkedIn, it, you know, people aren't going to Facebook and searching. How do you do blank, right? They're going to YouTube, they're going to Google. And so, you know, we look at our analytics and we see that, you know, a lot of our. A lot of our views come from search. And so YouTube search directly. But then the second or third is usually external, which means external from like other sources, maybe from Facebook or an email, everything else outside of YouTube. But the interesting thing is even in the subcategory of external traffic, the first external traffic is Google, which means that like I think even for my personal channel, it's something like 65 hovers between 65 to 70% of my views on my personal channel is from YouTube search. And then around 20% of the external views comes from Google search. Sorry, external search, sorry, I'm mixing it all up here. So 65 to 70% comes from YouTube search directly. So people are going to YouTube. The 20% is coming from external search, but the external search is about 70% Google searches. So it's like almost like, you can almost say, like it's almost 80 to 85% of my traffic is coming from search. Right. So organic search, organic search on YouTube and Google. And so that's how powerful it is, you know, and then below, that kind of trickles in Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and stuff like that, but nothing close, even close to, you know, YouTube and Google search traffic. So, yeah, so that's, that's kind of. I don't even know how I ended up in this.

I don't know. But now you got me like, thinking about. Because that's one of the big things, because I would dabble a little bit on YouTube and kind of know a little bit, and I think a little bit more so than you. And then Jacob, I don't, you know, in our team, I don't think he did a lot. He kind of knew some tubers and all that stuff. But I know that, like the tags, there's, there's all these different elements that you really should be thinking of for SEO and to show up organically.

I guess what are a couple of strategies or tactics around showing up like you do in the search? Because I don't think that's just automatic, right?

Yeah, it's definitely not automatic. Especially if you're a smaller channel like mine. You need to really pay attention to keywords and doing research before you create your videos.

Understand first that YouTube is a search engine, so people are searching. So that's a huge opportunity. And we can talk about some other ways to get views through recommended and suggested and all that stuff. But the main thing is to do your research on your specific topics and keywords first. Because not all, you know, not all topics are the same, not all topics are equal. And so as content creators, as experts, we, we probably have more of a problem of, of having too much to talk about. Like, we have too many ideas, like, in my head right now, if I was, if you ask me if I could, like, I probably have 30 video ideas just like, oh, I could talk about this just because, like, you know, you see comments on your videos or like, questions that people ask you. And so it's understanding, okay, which ones are the, like the lowest hanging fruit, which ones have the most opportunity right away. And so to do that, you have to do the keyword research, you know, and.

It'S like, it's two parts too, you know, like, you have to be searchable, but then you also have to be compelling to the person that's searching. Like, you know, if you, if you look at your own behavior, if you had a title that just said how to go live on Facebook, it's like, it's kind of boring, you know, it's kind of dry, right?

So you don't stand out.

Yeah, you don't stand out. So that part is good. That part is good for the robots, the algorithm of YouTube. But then you need to have something, you know, like, that adds to that title, that compels the person searching and going through the search results to say, hey, that's an interesting topic, right? So rather than that, you'd be like, how to go live on Facebook with just your smartphone or in five minutes, something like that, where it then is like compelling, you know, like, you have to understand your audience a little bit. What would kind of what's their pain point? You know, and so that is the first key. Then, you know, you have to optimize your videos. You know, that's just simple as that. You have to put your titles, has to be in line with your description and then your tags, right? And so by doing those three things, those are sort of three things that you can, you know, control. And then the most important, like one of the next important thing after that is now you're sort like, let's say you're doing the optimization really well. Then, you know, you're showing up, you're getting what's called impressions, which is basically when someone sees your thumbnail for one second on YouTube, whether it's, you know, in their homepage when they go to YouTube.com or they see it on the sidebar when they're watching other videos or in the bottom of a video when they're watching on their phone, that's called an impression. And so now you have an impression means you showed up on search, you showed up on someone's browsing when they're browsing YouTube. Now you have to get person to click your video. So that's where your thumbnail becomes, you know, the thing that, that changes the game for you. So thumbnails are a bit of an art. I Guess I don't know. I kind of go back and forth. Is it art? Is it science?

It's got to be a blend, though, because you're constantly testing, I'm sure, in creative.

Yeah, yeah, you're constantly testing them. And this is why, even at TubeBuddy, this is a main pain point for a lot of creators. Like, the big problem with YouTube is that you only get one shot at your thumbnail. Like, you have one place to upload your thumbnail. You can only upload one thumbnail. And so the solution that we have so far is that we created a tool called. It's an AB testing tool for your thumbnail. So you upload two thumbnails, and then every 24 hours, we alternate between the two thumbnails, and then. Yeah, and so we recommend that you run it for at least 14 days. That way, you know, each thumbnail gets, you know, every single day a chance to see, like, you know, Mondays and Tuesdays and all that stuff. And then. And then at the end of that, then we tell you, hey, this thumbnail did better based on number of views or clicks. But then also we go a little bit deeper that this thumbnail, even though it got less clicks, people watched more of the video, which also. Which kind of speaks to, you know, was the thumbnail. Did it.

Did.

Did you deliver on what the thumbnail promised? Because even though people clicked on it, they didn't watch the video or as much of the video because maybe your thumbnail was a little bit, you know, clickbaity or whatever. Right? So. So yeah, we try to give that kind of, you know, data. And. And. And so we. We then went a little bit deeper and we created a tool called Click Magnet. And so what this is, is people would be like, hey, you know, does it matter if I have my face or no face or if I'm smiling versus when I'm surprised, you know, those, like, YouTube faces.

Exactly.

So, yeah, so we created the Click Magnet. You know, is it better if I have text or no text or what text? Because if we have, you know, again, we have direct API access to YouTube and Google data. We used a bit of AI face recognition and things like that. And then we can also see, like, of, you know, a lot of people use text on their thumbnails. So which. Which words actually got the most views or clicks and which words didn't? So we kind of like, you know, you know, ordered them in number of views. So it's a really cool tool if you really want to go nerd out on, like, Your thumbnails. But you know, if you can, I mean, like, let's just say you're getting, you know, you know, a thousand impressions on your videos. And then there's a metric called ctr, which is click through rate, which means like how many clicks versus how many impressions did you get? So if you had, you know, a thousand impressions, your thumbnail showed up a thousand times and you had a, let's say 5% click through rate, that means you had 50 views, right? 50 people out of a thousand. So if you could increase that, like, if you can increase it from 5% to 10%, then you double your views. Right. So what those tools do and what we try to do is, I guess in general is try to take sort of the guessing game out of being a YouTube creator and understanding the data because the data is available. There's no secrets on YouTube, right? The data is available in your analytics.

There's a lot of data in that analytics dashboard.

Exactly. That's it. There's just so much data though. So we try to make that understandable for the general YouTube creator out there. And so those are some of the ways. But yeah, I would definitely say optimize your videos, look at titles and descriptions.

Don't go so heavy on.

All your links. I see so many links out there in descriptions. Really think about. People are reading the descriptions if they want to, if you point them to it. If there's something in your video that you mentioned, something like, hey guys, in this video I'm going to show you guys how to set up this email campaign. By the way, I'm using insert whatever the email tool is, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, whatever it is. If you guys want to follow along, there's a link in the description. You can set up a free trial and you can follow along with me as I set up this campaign. That is a direct call to action and it also is to speak on monetization and it's a great way to get people onto your affiliate links. And dude, that's brilliant to like.

I like the whole follow along with me thing because like active campaign, you can give a, you know, like a sequence. You can even like share that and say like, hey, go sign up, import this sequence and follow along with me while I build it out together.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's a, it's a nice, like little subtle without being like, hey guys, make sure you click on my links down below. You know, it's like so salesy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the things I want to get into too is how to grow new subscribers on a fairly fresh channel. And I know we said we didn't want this to be like a TubeBuddy commercial, but I want the people listening to have the best path to grow their subscribers. So feel free to Talk about how TubeBuddy helps you grow subscribers. What sort of roadmap would you give somebody that's got a fairly fresh YouTube channel? Because I imagine that's probably the most people listening to this.

Awesome. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I can. Yeah, we can definitely talk a little bit about TubeBuddy, but I'll talk about. I guess the best example that I can share is my own personal channel. So my channel a year ago had something like 195 or 200 something subscribers.

And that's when I started thinking, getting really serious about YouTube and started looking at my TubeBuddy account a little bit closer. I wasn't with TubeBuddy yet. Wasn't actually by this time. Yeah, no, I wasn't with TubeBuddy yet and wasn't even talking about joining the team. And I was just using it for my own personal channel. And so some of the things that I started to do was the first thing was be consistent. So if you're a new channel.

You have a small amount of videos, then you need to just create more videos. One of our partners, Joshua Weathington, he's been in the YouTube game for a while. He's like, he just calls it the grind phase. It's like you just gotta grind. You just gotta, like put out content. And you know you can't be found if you have nothing out there. You know, YouTube can't do its thing and help you and recommend your videos to other channels that are watching your type of content. If you don't have any content. So just create content. And so I started creating at least one video a week consistently.

And then I started doing live streams as well. So one video, like recorded, uploaded video a week, and then I would do a live stream a couple days or a few days after that. So I would be like, I think for a long time it was like I would upload on a Monday morning, and then Wednesday or Thursday I would do a live stream. And so that is one. Like, the first thing is just if you're serious about growing your channel, you just got to be serious about blocking out time to film a video, edit it and upload it it like once a week. The second thing was I started, you know, I started looking and again, going back Optimization. I started doing the research on the videos before I created them, right. I was. I used to just kind of like, hey, you know what? That's a really good question. Somebody would email me something and be like, hey, that's a really good question. Let me just make a video out of this and then upload it. And then I would end up with, like, kind of cornered in. Into a really hard keyword that like, my videos would never have a chance to rank for. So now I like, flipped it around. I said, okay, well, you know, this is a good question, but let me see if, you know, I can actually rank for this term, imagining that I already created the video and now I was trying to upload it. So do the keyword research, find the opportunities, and then make the video. That way, all your work that you put into creating that video actually goes towards some results. So that would be the first thing. The next thing that I started to do was the live streams. So collaborations became really big, you know, even before, you know, growing a YouTube channel. One of, you know, Greg Smith, who is the CEO and co founder at thinkific, he said, like, you know, when people ask you for interviews or podcast interviews and speak at summits or whatever, just say yes. Even if you're super nervous, just say yes. And, you know, by the time you get there, you'll figure it out.

So that's, that's always been. That's always been my, my motto. And so, yeah, so I just did a lot of interviews, I did a lot of collaborations, and even on my own channel. So, you know, as I started working in the content space, I kind of understood to kind of notice that the currency that people are content creators, exchange is their own platform. So if you don't have a platform, there's nothing to reciprocate. Right? You know, you're kind of just like sitting and waiting for interview for invites. Whereas when I started doing live streams and interviews on my own channel, then I had like, I could reach out to people and say, hey, do you want to join me on my show? And then that would start opening up the sort of the invites to come back at me and say, hey, Rob, thanks for having me on your channel. Do you want to go on my show? And I was like, man, you have like, you know, play buttons. I'm like, I got like a little like, you know, 500 subscriber channel and stuff like that. But, you know, it was, it was interesting. So I started doing that and it was a really good way to get people to share my channel organically. They have a reason. You know, they weren't. I wasn't just saying, like, hey, can you like, you know, like, mention me in this, you know, on Twitter or whatever. I had like, actually a show where I interviewed them and now they can share my video and then people would be led back to my channel. So that was, that was. I mean, I continue to still do that today. You know, I like to think that now my channel is still very small, but it's picked up a lot of traction. And so I try to then kind of see who's on the. Come up on YouTube and try to invite them to the show and sort of try to start, you know, giving that opportunity back to, you know, creators that are coming up as well. So. So, yeah, those are three things that I would suggest. Like, it's a small channel. Just think about, like, you gotta be serious, you know, and, and really put the time into it, you know.

Yeah, sounds like collaboration is a big key there. And I mean, that, that's, that's huge. That's a big part of what we do with this podcast too, right? That's how we grow the podcast. We go on other people's podcast stuff and they come on our podcast and we share platforms. I mean, that seems to be the way of the creator these days.

Think about like YouTube, you're leveraging their platform so you're keeping more eyeballs there. You're using features that they probably want you to push out, like the live stream feature. And then, you know, you're collaborating. So then you're passing links back and forth probably between YouTube. So you're just again, keeping them on the platform and being consistent. Like you said, it goes back to just like how we grew our email list originally. It's like ad swaps. That's go to someone else with a similar list, roughly similar size, and then you can kind of exchange people or not exchange, but, you know, you're promoting each other. And that's how still, you could do that in so many different ways. Instagrammers I know, are doing that all the time with collaborations. Haven't thought about it with YouTube, but it makes perfect sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and when you, you know, when you interview them. And by the way, like, now that we've done a podcast, once this podcast goes out, exactly like, you know, we will share it on my personal channel, but we'll also share it on the tubebuddy channels, you know, so that's just how it all works. And then on YouTube, you get to mention Your guest, and sometimes your guests have a bigger audience, which is awesome. So then now when people are searching them and their names, then your video on your channel where you interviewed them will start coming up as well. So now you're getting into the ecosystem of that's when recommended videos and suggested and all that stuff starts to happen with your videos, and that's what you're looking for.

Absolutely, dude. All right. This is just freaking gold. And I love it because we've not covered that on any of the YouTube guys that we've had on here. All right. With the last final bit, I think we talk about TubeBuddy very specifically. Jacob was asking for beginner YouTubers how they can use TubeBuddy, and maybe even it's kind of cool who it's for and maybe who it's not for. It's probably for everybody on YouTube and then maybe some cool features that are on the roadmap as well.

Yeah. Who is it for?

Totally not salesy. It's like my worst trait is to sell, but it is. If I look at it, everyone is using it. We have people that are starting it from scratch. They're using it from a channel with zero subscribers. We have large channels. Evan Carmichael, Lewis Howes, like, big creators with, you know, large, large channels. We have, you know, across all the sort of niches on YouTube, you know, gaming, vlogging, beauty, you know, tutorials, business. Like, they're all, you know, using it. So that's the thing with YouTube, with TubeBuddy, is that, you know, candidly, that's something that we're trying to do better is because we have over, I think, 80 different tools inside of TubeBuddy. A lot of people don't know a lot of tools. And, you know, when they're coming in, they don't know, you know, which tools to use. It's kind of like, I think one of our partners kind of put it like, it's kind of like signing up for a gym, this massive gym, and then you go in, you're like, I don't know which machines to use, which classes to attend. So it's kind of like that. So we're trying to do a little bit better. Like, hey, if you want to get more views, you've got this many subscribers, then these are the five tools that you may want to focus on. On. But, yeah, in general, there's something. There's a tool set for every creator, but that's usually very different from creator to creator, right?

Yeah.

So somebody who maybe is listening to this, but this is their first time hearing about TubeBuddy. What would you say for a beginner YouTuber just hearing about TubeBuddy? What are some of the features you'd probably point them to first?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, good question. I would say the keyword explorer. That's how you understand which keywords are going to be really good for you. Then the second one right away after you find the keywords is you then go into SEO Studio. So SEO Studio is basically a tool that takes away the guessing out of like SEO, like optimizing your videos for search. And so we took everything like we took YouTube's best practice when it comes to optimizing your videos and we made into a checklist super like Real Time Interactive. And you change your title, we make all the suggestions and as you.

Change.

Your title and build out your title, your description, your tags, then we give you a score out of 100 of your SEO. So those two right away. And then if you're starting out, then probably the next thing would then be your canned replies. So the biggest thing on YouTube is you want to have engagement. And so as you start getting comments, you're going to start getting the same comments over and over again, sort of like frequently asked questions. And so we created a tool where it's basically like a, sort of like a knowledge base of your answers and can comment replies if you're a smaller channel or if you're, you know, maybe a one person team. It's a great tool to just, you know, hey, same question, here's the answer. And then you can kind of, you know, edit it a little bit and personalize it, but it saves you a lot of time. So I would say. Oh yeah, I would say those three, those three tools when you're starting up.

I know what, in the future you already mentioned some AI cool features coming out with the new acquisition. Any other cool things on the roadmap?

Yeah, there's a lot of, there's, there's a lot of talk. Nothing happens overnight, but there's a lot of exciting talk with. Yeah, with some of the like monetizing side of AI, you know, like we're thinking like, well hey, with this if, what are the, what are the, the best topics that I can create a video about that will generate the Most, you know, AdSense. So if you're like monetized channel, you know, which videos will get me the highest, you know, CPMs, you know, and things like that on Google, on YouTube, you know, so a lot of talk about that because I mean we're all about like a lot of our messaging out there is that we. You need to monetize, you need to build a business with your channel. I mean even if you're, you know, you're. Your channel is all about your passion and I would do this for free, that kind of thing, that revenue side of things helps all creators and then to build better content for gear and all that stuff which in turn is really good for your viewers and YouTube in general. So yeah, there's a lot of talk about AI being implemented more with our tools that will help on the monetization side of things and understanding, understanding how this can turn the videos can turn more into dollars for creators. So yeah, more to come but there's definitely lots of conversation around that it's.

Going to be rad. This is cool. But I know you already did hook us up too with a. I think it's a. I don't know, it's a pretty sweet deal for TubeBuddy and I know I'm just kind of like making up a link on the fly but I think if you check it out at hustleandflowchart.com TubeBuddy should redirect you right there. But give them like a scoop of really quick of what's involved. I guess what they'll kind of once they sign up, I guess what the next steps will look like or just quick start.

Sure. Yeah. So yeah, make sure you use that link and you can get a 30 day free trial on any of our paid plans. I suggest our top plan which is the legend plan. TubeBuddy. We don't work in contracts. So if you feel like hey, after the 30 days or you know, it's hey, you know what, I just need a free account. We're happy that you're using you were just happy that you're part of the community. So. So yeah, sign up for that. And we have a ton of resources on our YouTube channel, a lot of how tos. We upload one video a week and we live stream every Wednesday as well. So yeah, hop on, ask your questions. That's what we're here for.

Yeah, no, you have killer content, man. That's just like right there for everybody. So thank you for that too.

And if somebody want to check out your personal YouTube channel and follow along with you personally, where can they go for that?

That, yeah, just, just probably the best is copy and paste my name because I've got a long last name and then put that on YouTube and you'll find my personal channel. It's just under my, my own name. So yeah, you'll find my channel there. And I'm just constantly testing different things. So yeah, come and join us. And any questions you have, I'm just open book. So answer. I'll ask any questions.

Dude, this is rad, man. I've had a blast on this. I've learned it too. Thank you, Rob. All right, brother, we'll talk soon.

Thanks, guys.

I am starting to get a little buzz, I think from standing up. Nice blood flow just happens, I'm like.

We'll see.

Very good to hear that in our outro.

Yeah. Buzzing man, Matt, you're sneaky on the record button.

I was just telling Matt that I had maybe four and a half hours of sleep last night and the night before that was probably five. Night before that was maybe five again. This baby is killing me right now. But yeah, I popped all sorts of supplements and brain enhancing things and butter, coffee and I have yerba mate with it.

Let's just be honest. You started a couple lines of cocaine.

If I had. No, I'm just kidding.

Joe doesn't do that.

It was not done that.

I have all my teeth. No, no.

Just a nice little nootropic stack.

Yes.

And caffeine, Lots of caffeine.

Yeah, I need more. Maybe. So far so good. But two more podcasts.

I just love that. That's how the outro started. Woo. Getting a little buzz going.

That's the first time you caught me. I didn't know you recorded. There you go. Anything. Too bad that time. All right, so dude, I think it was partially this podcast too with Rob. Yeah, I mean the dude was lighting me up.

Yeah, well, he's got a good energy to him. Just talking to him, you feel more energized. He's a pumped up.

It helps.

Bubbly dude. That was definitely cool. And this episode, I think was really good. You know, we've had other episodes about YouTube in the past, but I almost feel like we approached it from a different direction in this one. Right. Like, we approached it more from like the. How do we be collaborators? How do we use these tools to grow our account and less of integrate.

With things and whatnot and people. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so I think there was a lot of value in this one and I, you know, I really love the sort of principle of, of collaborating with other people that are creators and you know, sort of cross platform creators too. YouTubers going on podcasts, podcasters going on YouTube channels.

You know, cross pollinate.

Yeah, yeah. So really, really good stuff.

Yeah, man, I mean, yeah, you're 100% right. Because we've had other YouTubers on, but I feel like they haven't really been like. I mean some are immersed but like literally Rob is now part of Tubebuddy, which like you said there was what, 5 million channels that people use tubebuddy on. So just imagine the amount of creators he talks with. And these are top level YouTube creators. So he's seeing the best of the best strategy. But he also sees all the data from all this other stuff. Yeah. Or all these other people out there. The other 5 million or maybe 4.9999 million people. And now he's distilling all that information into this episode.

Yeah, yeah. It's like past YouTubers. It's like they've got the anecdotal ev. YouTube account. He's got aggregated data from thousands of YouTube accounts on what works. And I, you know, just, I don't want this to be a Tubebuddy commercial. But we use Tubebuddy. We really like Tubebuddy. Jacob, he's, he's all about tubebuddy and growing our YouTube channel right now. Obviously his name popped up handful times throughout the show. He's our, he's our in house YouTube guru who's soaking all this stuff up like a sponge right now. But.

Yeah, I don't remember where I was going with that. I lost my train of thought right in the middle of the sentence.

You sound like me. I usually do that. And I'm the tired one over here. The nootropics are working. No, you were saying you don't want it to be a commercial or didn't want it.

Oh yeah, yeah, I was gonna, but. But Tubebuddy itself is like, it's rock solid. It's really, really rock solid. And I was serious. If you go back to every single episode where we talk to YouTubers, every single one that's ever been on our show has mentioned Tubebuddy as part of their tool stack to grow their YouTube channel.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's a, it is the number one tool recommended for YouTube. I mean, even before even talking with these folks, I was using it for just dinking around on my own stuff and on our channels. I didn't know what I was doing. And. And then Jacob finally got in there and we got connected to Rob. And then Rob's like, dude, you gotta do these things. And then. Yeah, like just get it. I would say. Okay. So I actually totally forgot there's like a trial to this thing. The TubeBuddy. But there is. That's what Rob said. So it's not a commercial. But get the dang thing. At least try it. Like, if you're on YouTube, just dink around with it and you'll learn some stuff. I like the dinking thing. Yeah. Makes you, like, easy sounding, you know, Like, I played pickleball a couple times. That's one of the moves. That's the kill shot.

Dink.

Kill shot. And pickleball. Dink. Very intimidating. That's what it sounds like, too.

Well, it's when you're expecting a ball to be hit really hard, but it's just dinked over, and then it's just.

A little ding, ding, ding. I win. But go to hustleandflowchart.com TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy.

You have to say it like that.

Tubebuddy. Yeah. And that's how Siri on your phone will get you to the URL. If that's how you choose. But, yeah, go get there. I mean, just sign up and try it out. It's kind of like.

Dude.

It's kind of like Ahrefs in a way.

Oh, yeah.

I was thinking in my mind the.

Whole time, because he's no longer sponsoring us, but we'll probably be back again.

We use the dang tool, so we love it and we're always gonna promote it.

Do you?

Even if they pay us, cool. Even better. But tubebuddy's kind of like that for YouTube. I mean, it's literally a similar kind of concept. You said there's like 80 plus tools inside of that thing alone. That's kind of like hrefs. Why do we love it so much?

When he told me about the. When he told us on this episode about the split testing tool for thumbnails.

I did not know that.

I did not know that that tool existed in TubeBuddy. And that blew my mind that now I know it exists. You could go load two different thumbnails in there, and every 24 hours it's gonna swap it out for you.

You.

And after a couple weeks, it's going to tell you. Use this thumbnail.

It's more effective with the impression data and all that stuff. I think we had Mark Gaberty on, and he does a lot of thumbnail stuff. I know that's a big part of his strategy, but he did not mention that.

Yeah, he may not have even realized that feature was in there yet. I don't know. I'm not going to speak for him.

Well, it wasn't mentioned on the Podcast. We'll just say that. So, like, yeah, that's why I wrote that down.

I literally wrote. That was like one of my notes is like, get in there and play with the thumbnail for tester.

Well, not you, just Jacob. Yeah, well, yeah, you liked it, dude. But no, I mean, like, legit. Like, we are going to nerd out more. And I would expect that we will probably create some tutorials about what we're learning too, and how to use it. Maybe Jacob will do that because we're empowering him to do that more. So. But yeah, man, it's exciting. A couple other things, actually. What stood out to you? I mean, we talked about the thumbnail split test thing.

Well, you know, for me, I think one of the most fascinating parts. And I love the tactics. We've talked about this all the time. I love the tactics. Tactics are, I think, what our audience wants when we've surveyed. That's what you guys want. I think the stuff that really lights me up with the conversation is less the tactical stuff and more the philosophical stuff and more of the high level stuff. Like, I feel like that's where I tend to get more lit up these days when we're on these conversations.

Who are you? When we started this relationship, you were the tactic guy. I became partners with you because I'm not so much the tactic guy. Yeah.

You don't, like. Are you resisting my changes?

No, I'm not.

My personal development.

I love your changes. Matt, carry on, please.

Just as you are in the beginning. I actually found the conversation really interesting when we were talking about how media in general is changing. The celebrities that were the celebrities when we were growing up are no longer the celebrities that our kids are gonna see. Our kids, the celebrities that they're gonna see are the YouTubers that they came up watching. Right? The celebrities they watch are gonna be their sports. Athletes of their generation are going to be gamers.

Right?

Like, how insane to think, like, why.

Would you run for a sport anymore? You could just sit on a chair and.

Well, just think about, like, just think about, like, the last, like, hundred years of human history, right? You had, like, TV and movie actors and you had athletes. And it's just within the last, like, 10 years or so, where, like, the new celebrities of the world don't need, like, a platform like the NFL, a platform like NBC, a platform like a record label, like, you know, a Geffen Records or whatever to blow them up.

Now all you need, like, I chose them Interscope. Okay.

Rca. I don't know.

You're so indie.

I don't even know record labels anymore. These are the record labels that were big 15 years ago when you were in the music scene.

I'm like, these are old, I think.

I don't even know if record labels exist anymore, to be honest.

Probably not an industry I'd want to be in.

But you know, the new celebrities of our kids generations are going to be independent music artists, independent YouTubers, podcasters, over radio broadcasters.

Well, think about the potential to. Because you know, it's not always gonna be independence. Like not everyone will be. Cause there's like, look at podcasts. Very independent. You have podcast networks now. You have these like bigger networks buying up the rights or licensing, like kind of like Joe Rogan.

They're trying to take these old school models and apply them to what's working now. But I actually, I don't think that that's going to play out maybe not very well. You know, this sort of like effort for people to consolidate under one larger brand I think is, it's a trend right now. But I don't, you know, I don't like predicting the future because if you look back 10 years from now, I don't want to be wrong, but you know, I feel like, I feel like that kind of model, like if you look at the record industry model, that model was not ideal. We're learning that now. Right. The movie studio model of creating these big budget films and having these studios put them out. Look at what happened during COVID Those companies are struggling.

Right.

Like, I don't think the model of sort of trying to consolidate a bunch of talent under one sort of header is going to be the model of the future. I think we're going to see this more dispersed model. I think we're going to see a more collaborative model where I'm a famous YouTuber, you're a famous YouTuber. So let's work with each other on each other's channels. There'll be collaboration in that way. But I don't know if I think that the future is, is trying to consolidate a bunch of brands under one company.

Yeah, it'll be interesting. Who knows? Yeah.

Interesting world we're in now because things are changing so fast and no one knows the future, I don't think so. You mentioned collaboration and one of the big takeaways was the live streaming aspect of like when Rob was talking about starting out his channel last year or like growing really his channel. From where we're at now, we're around 200, that's where he was around 12 months ago ago consistency. It's kind of like podcasting. You know, it's like when someone starts a podcast or comes to us for podcast growth advising, which happens occasionally. And maybe we say yes sometimes, but it just usually comes down to the grind and just being consistent because people from the beginning typically will be like, okay, I want to grow my show and this is my goals. And it's like, okay, cool, talk to us in like 50 episodes, but don't miss a week. You know, like, figure out a schedule of frequency that works with you. And that's exactly what Rob said, is every week upload a video. And then he did a live. Does a live stream still on the back of what? Later in the week, I think he said. But then the bigger piece, which I liked, was the whole collaborative thing. And you know, we talked about this on. We talk about all the time. And how can we collaborate with others like the podcast here? How can we get someone else to shout us out? How can we leverage someone else for their content or their brand and like, you know, like kind of share ideas? And that's how we grew our email list back in the day. That was the very first strategy we used. Ad swaps, emails.

We talked about that. Back with Shaker on was one of the most recent episodes before this one, for sure.

I mean, just think about, like, you don't need to grind. I mean, you need to grind out the content because no one else is going to grind up the content for you. You need to build your own platform within the YouTube platform, just like you would in podcast platform. And Shaq actually, Shaqer actually even said that he was like, one of the reasons I really like you guys is because you're so damn consistent. We're at like 350 episodes or something. He was like, cool. You're not like a fly by night podcast, so you're legit. And doesn't mean you're really legit. Just means that we're consistent. Anyone can do that.

The thing that the reason our podcasts have fallen apart in the past and the reason you and my personal YouTube channels before we started like a real systematic YouTube channel, the reason they always sort of failed was that lack of consistency. The reason we, you know, the podcast before Hustle and Flowchart all made it to a maximum of like 15 episodes is because of that consistency factor. Like maybe we're releasing them every Wednesday. You miss one Wednesday and go, ah, nobody's going to notice. And then it's a slippery slope. You start letting yourself off the hook for not putting out episodes, you get less and less consistent. You start to lose listeners. You don't lose. The next thing you know, your pod fade. Right. Same thing with YouTube.

I was just thinking of working out because it's same idea, you know, it's like if you, if you give up on something for like a day or a week, you're just like, okay, back into it. But the flow is not so easy anymore.

Exactly.

And your coach might yell at you, oh, wait, that's mine right now. That's me. And just joking. But yeah, it's consistency, man. That goes for everything. I don't know. This is. I think I'm good.

We're good.

There's a lot of stuff, but I mean, that episode was a lot. Get the Action notes, the action guides, this podcast, this episode, flowchartgroup.com is where you get them. So just plug that in your browser, flowchartgroup.com it leads to our Facebook group. But at the same time, if you provide your email address to us, we will send you the notes to this episode. Not the notes, action guides.

We're going to break the habit eventually.

Of calling them notes now that they're action guides. Take action with the dank guides. And they're free, so be quick. Go to flowchartgroup.com I think you'll enjoy them. And you'll probably get some other notes in the process too.

Yeah, and one more shout out for tubebuddy over@hustleandflowchart.com tubebuddy again. I believe he's setting you up with a 30 day trial over there because you're a Hustle Flowchart listener. So go check that out and let's talk about easy webinar real quick.

We got Easy Webinar. These are our boys. You've heard it before. Maybe, maybe you haven't. But yeah, Casey and the crew over there at EZ Webinar, they are up to some crazy ninja to re. I mean they have been for a long time. They've been at this webinar thing for a long time. So Easy webinar is basically your all in one suite for everything. Webinars live, automated. All the other things that I don't know about, you know, the different types because new types I guess develop like every day. It seems like, like shacker. We had recently we talked about types we never even knew about before.

15 minute webinars.

Yeah. So go. If you're even remotely interested in that, you probably tie it into YouTube somehow as well. Go, go check out easywebinar.com comm hustle easywebinar.com hustle and they are hooking you up with a fatty discount on one of the plans you choose. Go see what works for you and go dig it. Yep.

And if you know somebody that's trying to become a famous YouTuber themselves, please share this episode with this is your.

Episode to share and be their best friend.

Yes. You know, the the best way that you can possibly support this podcast is by telling other people to check out episodes like this if you think it will benefit them. So please, please, please, please do that. If you know somebody that is trying to get into YouTube and you think this is going to be a beneficial episode to them, send it their way and we will love you forever.

We will love you forever. But until then, our love is not as. No, we love you either way. So thank you very much. I'm not going to whisper at the end of this because I've been told that's not a good thing to do in these outros. So I'm going to emphatically say bye. Bye. Thank you. See you next time.

Thanks everybody for listening to this episode.

Of the Hustle and Float Chart podcast.

For taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.net find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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