Increase YouTube Watch Time Hours: Tips to Hook Viewers & Maximize Engagement

This is Feed you'd Brand with hosts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazzard.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd Brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard, and I had a guest on without Tom today, and I had Fran Acero, our YouTube expert extraordinaire. And she and I went on and on. Right, Tom?

You did? I was shocked. I thought it was never going to end. But it was actually really good information about video watch time hours. And there's a lot of really, I would say, mystery around it for those of us that are not YouTube experts, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it really took having this conversation with Fran for me to understand why I should care about this or if I should care about this. And I think that that was the biggest aha for me coming out of it. So you're definitely going to want to listen in, sort of unpack this for yourself, because there's a lot of layers.

To it, and I think there's a lot of considerations for podcasters. Is this really for you? Is it not? Or how much are you going to participate in YouTube? I mean, I think it's important as a podcaster, personally, when you listen to all of this, you really realize there's quite a rabbit hole you can go down.

Yeah. And, you know, I think this is really interesting to kind of like, play the two episodes one after the other where you were with Fran. And we did that pan about podcasts versus YouTube and sort of videocasts. Thinking about it from that perspective, I really do think, like, these tie together here in terms of thinking as, like, if I get my watch time hours up, maybe I can really make it on YouTube and this is gonna be worth it. Or do I just really take a podcast first approach? And so that's what I want you to weigh as you're listening in here. So we're gonna have this returning expert, our guest, Afran Acero. She's the founder of this senior tuber community, the president of Thrive Any. She really has this real world on the ground, putting up videos every single day. Practical experience to how an entrepreneur can really use YouTube. And that's why we invite her on again and again. And we want you to be a successful YouTube content creator if that's what you choose as your primary, your YouTube, or even as your secretary. We want to make sure you're not wasting your time. And that's why we have Fran on again and again.

All right, so let's listen to Tracy's conversation with Fran, and we'll be back with a few final Thoughts after that.

Watch hours. Fran, we're going to talk watch hours today. And like that, it's the most important thing. If they're not watching the content, they're not learning anything, and you're not on a path to earning anything.

Right. And a view and a subscriber does not equate to a watch hour. Right. That is not the thing. And that's where people get a little confused. Okay.

Because podcast listens and watch hours are like two different languages. Let's start by breaking it down. What's a watch hour?

A watch or watch time hour equates to how long your viewer stays on your video. Now, it could be that they watched half of it, but they went back three or four times into the same thing that the information that they wanted, that'll still count, but you're dropping off in the first minute. The first minute equates to a view, but it doesn't equate to a watch time hour until they stay on for some substantial amount of time. So I would say if you're not getting anybody to stay on, you want to look at your views first, because they can't even watch it if you're not getting them to click.

Right? So if you don't have 200 views, you're not going to get any percentage of that.

Right? So get the views first, get the intent to get them to click. Then they'll fall in love with your content or not, Right. So what helps with the clicks is thumbnail title and text, right? So once they click, because they're going to see it, you're going to be setting out like a trailer kind of thing, and you click on it, then they go, oh, this is interesting. First minute you don't use some of the other secrets to keep them on, which we're going to talk about. So you don't entice them with hooks and suggestions and something to tie them in, then they're done. They leave in a minute. So if you can keep them on there for the as long as you can on the video, those are. Watch time hours are worth gold.

That's what we really need. So let's talk about what the goal is. Because you can't Earn Money on YouTube if you don't hit a year's worth of watch time hours, like there's a minimum 12 rolling months. So you have to not only hit that number, you have to stay there.

Right. Which I call 333 watch time hours a month. This way I could just keep it and make sure if I'm way off to enhance or do something with it.

Right. So the current total watch time hours are 4,000 watch time hours to earn. There's a 3,000 level that people might have heard about. We want to make sure that you know that we know that. But that is really for qualifying for like open support, the title of YouTube partner and yeah. And so all of that is on the path, but it doesn't start earning you dollars till you hit 4000 watch time hours exactly. In a rolling year. And so that's really important. So if you're breaking that down and let's say your content is 30 minutes. Cause that's pretty average. Podcast video content, some of them are 30 minutes, that's pretty average. Then you need 22 hours a day, 333 hours a month, as Fran put it. Right. You've got to hit into those numbers. That's gonna be hard to do when you're only creating one piece of content a week.

Right.

You're going to have to really get your view numbers up.

Exactly. And if you're promoting it, that's going to help. If it's attached to a playlist, that's going to help because people will see it. If it's showing on your channel, that's going to help. If you have your sections created when people get to your channel that they know what they're looking for and they can keep binge watching instead of just see one video that they start going to other videos and then it starts mounting up. If you have a trailer video and you tell them what to look at, those are things that are going to mount up because people are going to be guided because when they get there and they don't know what to do, they're going to leave, they're going to go to someplace else. Or when they see one thing that you put out, what kind of flour do you use to bake bread? And you have a 30 second video or a 30 minute video, it doesn't matter. But if you didn't answer all the questions, they're going to go find it somewhere else. So you want to make sure that you thoroughly covered what other people are going to ask about that so they don't leave you.

Absolutely. So let's talk about those things. Because you broke that down. So they're sectioning. So what you were just referring to this is sort of like being the whole resource for everything. So you want to section it. And this is all about like the prep work to breaking bread, the temperatures for breaking bread, like section it all out and then have many, many videos on that. That's really helping them understand that you're a full and thorough resource.

You are the place to go. Yes.

So they get that. Playlisting, though, is a little bit different. We have a playlist for our podcast. There's playlists for, like, we have playlists for social media masterclasses. We have playlists for all of those things. Why does playlisting help so much into driving more views and more playthrough of the videos?

Some of it is because it just happens to be sequential, depending on how it's set up. In their own channel. On their own channel. So if they walk away and still playing, you're gonna be accumulating some watch time. But some of it, because if you see a card which we'll talk about in a little bit, or an end screen which says watch this next video, then they're being guided to watch longer. So you have it in a place that has. You can set it up. I always call it our free real estate. You have places that will set it up for people to go, what's next? Guiding them. Stay tuned for this next video with the right end screen, fingers pointing, telling them at the end, very important, tell them what's next. Instead of saying goodbye, don't ever say goodbye.

And the playlist kind of automatically does that because you've already put it in the sequential order. And you should be seeing the playlist out to the side if they're in it.

Right. And how you order the playlist is important, you know. And at the end of the playlist, do you send them to another playlist? So it's very. Now we're talking about how to set it up once you've got it. But there's also how to set up the video by strategizing the video itself to have people stay on, like using hooks. And how to set up the video itself so that it keeps people going.

Okay, let's dive into that in a second. I want to get to the third thing that you mentioned before, which was you called it promoting a video. What's that? Yes.

Well, some people actually can go out and spend money to promote their video. I don't usually do that, but you can just buy every bit. If you have two platforms outside of YouTube or 20, or if you use a email list and a blog and a, you know, whatever you use, whatever's in your wheelhouse, I always say, Let YouTube be the home base for everything you do and then share it everywhere you live. So if you send out a monthly newsletter, that's where it should be. If you use clips like we talked about before, you can make up to a one minute clip of it and share it somewhere on somebody else's page. So sharing it everywhere you go, anytime you're done with a video, you upload it, you've optimized it like we've talked about here, then share it everywhere.

So we get, and just to keep this in mind, we get, and our clients get much more watch time hours by yes, putting all of our videos in our channel and on our playlists and all of those things and sharing that playlist. But we get more watch time hours than views like because we have a higher percentage of that when they come from our website blog. So just keep that in mind that if you're embedding your videos somewhere, whether it's in your community groups, like if you've got a membership group or any of those things, use the YouTube videos for your tutorials. Stop using these third party places to stick your video. You can privately leave them in or unlisted. Leave them in. And they still work to watch time hours. Right? Unlisted videos count.

Oh no. Public videos, I am not sure.

Only public.

Thank you. I was going to cover that. I didn't want that to pass up public videos. And if they got them from years ago, it has to be new views. Okay. I can't use old views. So if you got something with old, it has to be new views this month.

Well, but over a rolling period those views are counting. It's just if they're older than that, they don't count.

Right? They're not going to count for anything older.

Yeah. Only within the rolling year do they count the views within that or the watch time hours within that. But that's what we find is that the ones that watch over our website watch more percentage through than the people who come from YouTube.

Yeah. Do you know why or.

Yeah, because if you're googling something that you want to learn and you find our blogs, which they're highly SEO ranked. Right. So they're search engine optimized already to answer the question. And you go there and it answers the question. And everything within our website is a resource for someone who's looking to podcasts for instance, or looking to learn about passive income real estate for some of our client examples. Everything within that is covering that topic already. And our blogs are already smart enough to send you to the next blog and the next blog and the next blog. Right. The other popular things or Give you a resource area where you can search through them and find out exactly what you're looking for so you don't ever need to leave. And once you get there, the content's great. So it's really useful and helpful and you'll watch it all the way through to get your answer.

You know what I was thinking first of all, that people get distracted if there's too much visual and they're going to go somewhere else. But if you're going to committed to listening to something while you're working out or driving, you want something long. And if they're done with what they're doing and they still may listen or if they just keep on there when they're committed to that time, if they have a two hour workout and you have a one hour audio, then they're going to stay maybe for what's next. So I think that's too what did.

They set themselves right. And so by creating that sort of stickiness on the website and the fact that it is all located in one place and because you're embedding the YouTube video so you're. And we embed it from, from the playlist. So the next thing that it does share and show is another thing in your channel. Whereas if you don't do it that way, it serves you up some other random video as the next thing and distracts them when if you watch in YouTube and they're not committed to your playlist or subscribe to your channel so they're getting alerts from you, YouTube is constantly distracting them. So it is hard to get your watch time hours up outside of it. But it's actually easier to get them if you've got them like in a loop of here's everything in the masterclass that you need to learn. Right. Like, and they're focused on doing that as their lessons. But why not get your watch time hours up by doing that Now I know a lot of people are like, but I'm charging for my course. Yeah, but that doesn't mean you need to make it organized over in YouTube it can still be all over the place. And that way it's not serving them as easily as it is to go through your membership area or your website. But you could raise your watch time average.

I mean people do that with blogs too.

It just depends on what your goal is. If you're not selling enough memberships to make the membership area worth it, then you ought to be trying to raise your watch time hours. So like do one or the other.

Yes, watch Time hours is another name for engagement. Okay. I think we've had a whole conversation about engagement. When you have people that stay on your watch time, I mean, get accumulate watch time hours, chances are they're doing something else with it. They're subscribing, they're sharing it, they're going back to putting it in a playlist, something that they've done. They've asked questions on it. So you. The things that are most important right now for you to optimize and monetize your channel is engagement and watch time hours. That's what. But watch time hours are not the. Nearly all you need to do to monetize your channel. That's if you want to be a YouTube partner.

So I've noticed this interesting thing, Fran, on the engagement side of things, the videos that are liked have lower watch time hours than the videos that don't have a like on them. And it's my theory, and I just have this theory and I'd love to throw it out and see if you think I'm right. But I think sometimes people like something so that it's like a placeholder, like bookmarking it. And so I like something so that I can come back and find out what I liked. Because it's just YouTube's all over the place, and it's really hard to get through your history of all the things you watch and you watch a lot of junk, and you're like, that's really good. But I don't have a time to sit down and watch the whole thing. So I'm gonna click the like button and I'm going to come back and watch it. Now, chances are they don't come back and watch it. But that's what I see is the ones that have high likes are not necessarily the ones with the high watch time.

Well, I have a friend that likes everything, so it doesn't really mean anything.

So maybe they have no relevance.

I'll be sitting on reels, and I'm very stingy with my likes. I want to like something, but I will see his name all the time. Matt, like this. Matt. Like this. Hundreds of them. And, you know, so I thought, okay, he's a. He's an over liker. I'm an under liker. Right.

I like that I'm an like her. I always say that I'm really stingy or discerning with my likes.

Right.

Like, that's the way I'm not gonna like something unless I really like it.

Yeah, that's what I do. And yeah, so I think that could be. I just want to answer that. It could be. And so you want to look at other types of things that. And you can see that in your analytics. What did they do to create engagement? Was the. Anything that they shared it or they reposted it or something like that?

Yeah. Really interesting. Okay, let's go back to the thing you started, because I knew it was going to be a much longer piece of what we're going to talk about, so I didn't want to kind of like, briefly touch on it. So let's talk about all of those different things that you can do to kind of create that video that people dive into and watch the whole thing. And please, Fran, when you do it, let's. Like you mentioned hook, line, but define it for us here, because we have lots of people who are not used to. They're used to the podcasting terms, but not the YouTube terms for things or the video.

And they're not used to somebody who talks, like me constantly, right?

No, no, they are. They listen to me.

So you want to start.

Yeah, let's start at the beginning. What are all the things that you can do? Now, you mentioned something really important, and I want to reiterate it here because I think it's so critical. You talked about that. The main things that you can do. Right. And this is very different from podcasting. So if you guys didn't watch the video where we pit Tom and Fran against each other. And the funny part is we're recording this video because we're replaying this.

We had fun.

Right. We haven't actually recorded that other one because it's going to be live in two days. But I know it's coming because we've already planned the content for it. But the differences between podcasting and YouTube, these are some differences. Right. The thumbnail is not as critically important in podcasting, but it's very critically important in YouTube. And you have to remember YouTube is a visual media. So it makes sense that the thumbnail would have outweighed importance in things. So you said the thumbnail, the title and the tags, the three T's, those are the most critical, important things that you can affect. But you must do that on each video.

I always say if you're not getting any attention, nobody's clicking. If you have no clicks or low clicks, it's the three T's, and they're clicking and nobody's engaging. It's the three C's. Content, content, content, which is several different ways. That's not Just one word repeated. Are you doing some of the strategies that are needed for your content?

Okay, well, let's talk about those content strategies now, and let's dive in from, like, the beginning of what you can do at the beginning of the video all the way to the end.

Okay. Can I say one thing about the three T's, though? I just want people to imagine if you're going scrolling and you're looking up the same thing, the baking and all that stuff, you put a search up on YouTube and anything that's rectangle is a video. And if you want to find out a video that is about the flour that you put in a bread, you're going to scroll down all of those and first thing you're going to see is the visual. And if they have something said, supposedly that's slowing down now, it's usually just the visual without letters, but whatever you want to do, make it very short in the letters and bold and contrasting. So imagine what you're doing. If people are going to your channel, they're going to look at that first. Is it enticing? And does it lead them to the title? And if it leads them to the title, that's the part of the segue you're trying to get. And then they're going to see whatever your description looks like, and they can click on it or not. And sometimes they search for the amount of views or things like that, so you have to be mindful of how you want it. Then they get in there. So I just want people to know why it's like that, because there's a whole system and I search for channels a lot. Channels are the round visual. So if you're looking for a channel that's you want them to search your channel, you want them to love you and everything you have to say. So if I'm looking for podcast support, right, as a podcaster, I'm looking for Tracy and Tom, right? So I'm going to go down there for their channel and I'm going to see them in their round circle, which is their profile image, and I'm going to do anything I want from their channel. I'm going to be able to find them easily. So I just want to make sure I can't.

So YouTube is giving you this. For all of you who've never searched on YouTube, go do this on the desktop, Go do it on your mobile device. Do it in both places because it's different.

Yeah.

And go search for whatever topic your content area is. If it's like I Said before, passive income real estate. It could be how to strategies. Whatever it is, give yourself a long tail keyword, not a really short one. Because you're gonna get a bunch of junk in there and you're only gonna get the ones who have like millions and millions of followers if it's too short. Right. So be a little more narrow about it, but be focused on the thing that you do best. And when you type that in, it'll give you videos up at the top and then it'll give you channels and then it'll give you more and more like playlists. And some other things will come up as the more that's below that and see what's coming up and see what that looks like so that you understand how your appeal needs to look compared to those things.

How do you look compared to them? Right. And why are they getting 3 million views and you have the same video with 12?

Yeah.

And that's when you do your research. Actually, if you want to have a ranking video, go to people who have a video that's ranking, meaning it keeps getting shown up, it's earning some money, it's consistent for years to come. Just go find out what they're doing. You can look at some of their keywords. You can go in there and get the content and see if you can make something similar. Don't steal anything, but it's really good to know who you're up against. Right. And try to get some role models out there and see if you can do some of the things that they're doing.

Benchmark. That's what we call it. Benchmark out there. Go benchmark your competition. Okay, so let's dive into the content piece. So now that you got your thumbnail, your title, your tags dealt with, you've got the video piece. And some of these tactics are very different from how you run your podcast. So remember, that's why we did the episode of talking about podcasts versus YouTube, so you can understand why these differences. But a lot of these go to watch time hours. That's why they're so critical. So go for it. Fran, tell us all about the details.

First thing I want to say is in that first minute before it counts as a view, it should not be an intro. Okay? If you have an intro, do it after this first 30 seconds where you're going to leave a hook, something that's going to entice them. If anybody ever watches Mr. Beast, they're going to see that he tells the end of the movie the video before he even Starts it right? So whatever you think it was, did you interview somebody that said something really poignant? Then go ahead and put that piece in in the first minute. And I go, oh, what triggered that conversation? And they click on it. And then you can go over to the intro and say, starting in just a minute, is this or music or whatever you want. But they now know they want to see stay if they usually leave within the first 30 seconds. So that's the absolute first thing is to make sure very quickly they know what you're looking for and they offer it. All right? Then you have to bring them through that the rest of the video. So how are you going to keep them there? Because I noticed me as well. I'll just keep talking and talking. You know, I'm Italian. I'm just going to keep talking. And then, oh, oh, by the way. And now that all said all that. Now I'm going to tell you what this is all about. You know, now you can do that as long as you say, I'm going to give you eight of my favorite, this, this, and this. And then I go through them and I'll say, number eight is my favorite. Now they're waiting for that. So you want to keep them holding on. Or if you want to tell them.

What'S coming up next, we call that in podcasting. You guys have heard us say this before. We call that open looping. Right? You say eighth is my favorite, and then if you don't get to eight, they're like sitting there going, what the heck, Tracy? Like, why didn't you say it right?

Exactly. There's something very simple that goes on, like a hook is that you want to distract your people. As many. They say within 30 seconds. Not many people, if they're newer or less experienced podcasters, they don't do this. But imagine if you start looking at videos, look at how often they change something in the first 30 seconds to a minute. What does it mean? They could put something moving, like an overlay, images, which they call B roll. If you put some video out there, you could change direction. You could have taken from two cameras. That's not as hard as you think. If you're going to use your webcam and you just have a little tiny tripod for your phone and you take both, and then you could insert a different direction. You could do sounds, so you could do calls to action that could pop up. It could be a thing that quietly pops on the screen just to wake them up from getting hypnotized.

Call that pattern interrupt Right.

Yay.

Okay, this is pattern interrupt. And you all have heard us say it before. So I hope know that. Yes, Pattern interrupted visual. Now we don't do that in audio. It's not the same thing. It doesn't work the same way.

So what do you do?

So it's a much longer time period because ears can take in sound. It's actually more. Consistency is better. And then so I would say five to seven minutes is probably somewhere around where you want to shift. It's much longer. If you want them to absorb the information, they're still absorbing it. Without the pattern interrupt, your eye is not. You've gone to sleep, right?

Yes.

That's why you have to do the visual wake up. You actually have to wake your eye up or it's not taking it in, but your ears are.

Yeah.

So actually interrupting them reminds them that they're listening to it and they may want to crash out so it can harm you rather than help you.

Yeah, okay. See, now they'll learn about all that too.

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I love this visual, but 30 seconds, that's a lot of work.

So they say 30 seconds to a minute. But you know what if you had a 10 minute video and you did it a few times where they didn't have to say more than a couple of minutes without any kind of interrupts, that's using your words. Here's some of the other things. If you have a list of your things of your interrupts or your calls to action, your call to action is another thing you want to do to interrupt them. By the way, if you like this, I have a key to, or a link to, or look up here for my book because there's a way to insert a card which again we'll still talk about. So a call to action could be anything from a product you're selling, somebody else is selling. If you have a guest on your channel and you want to put their book on there or any kind of call to action, like comment below if you have a question or if you want to ask a question. If you want me to answer a question or I have a question for you, answer it. You can send them to another video. So something that is a call to action does not have to be about money. It just has to be something that tell them to support, subscribe or like or share.

Well, you know, I think that asking a question is actually really one of the better ways to do that, Fran. So if you put that rather than a call to action, because I think too many of you out there, your videos feel so salesy that they're not worth subscribing to your channel on. And so I think if it's my first experience with you and every 30 seconds you're like calling to action something, so be really careful about that. But instead asking me a question every couple minutes that I feel like at some point I'm gonna comment.

Yeah.

And that gets the engagement something as.

Little as, like, does that ever happen to you? Well, and all of a sudden they go, oh, wait, they snap out of that zone that they're in, you know, who do you know that? Blah, blah, blah. And just snap them out of it just with that kind of a shakeup, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. And I could see them hitting likes and stuff because of that or whatever. So you're actually getting them to take action. So I think that's a really great strategy.

Yeah, but, you know, so many people ask, like we talked about, is they ask you to subscribe, and you don't want to ask them to subscribe in the beginning. They don't know. You haven't earned it. Right. But if you do a soft subscribe, listen, we want you here if you think you belong here. We have just come back. We put up a new video every week. Just go ahead and ring the bell so you get notified. And we want to hear from you. Not like, do me a favor and.

Just do this, download this. Right. Like, download my PDF, right? Like, yeah, I think that's a little much to ask when it's their first experience with your video.

It is, it is. So I want to talk about the cards a little bit, please.

That's what I was going to ask you next. So I beat you. Say you beat me. Yeah. All right.

I never beat Tracy. She's always ahead of me. She catches me when I didn't finish the cards. There are a couple of things that you want to. When you're optimizing your video are end cards, end screens that when you have the end of the video comes up, it'll ask you what your next step is, which is great. Definitely use them. And hopefully you'll keep them on the same topic so that your people are going to want to continue. But there's also this option, and you can have four elements, they call it. You could have a subscribe. You could have your latest video or something like that. But with the cards, you ever see people saying, listen, if you want my book point, and you think, what are they pointing at? Should I click it right? Well, it's this little Black strip on the top of your. If you're looking at it, it's on the left hand side that you can put anything you want that you're talking about. You don't have to talk about it.

Those are called info cards, right, Fran?

It was, but I don't see it called that anymore.

They keep changing it. Of course they do.

I don't want to break the jargon, but yes, it used to be called info cards and here's how you can use it. You don't have to be knowing the video to line it up because sometimes you might want to change the cards. You can have a maximum of five cards on every video and here's how you want to use it strategically. One on my. Almost every one of my videos has my welcome video in there because I have to presume my people are seeing my videos all over and maybe not even seen my channel yet. So I'll put my welcome video to bring them back and say if you want to know more, this is where you know more. Another one is I might want to put as many as I cards that will be related to that video. So if there's a playlist that has all of those videos on there, put the playlist on there.

Right.

And so any other videos that might pertain to that or something that you might want to give them that would bring them to a new aspect of yourself, right? Yeah, yeah. I could tell you about flower, but did you know I to tell you about eggs, you know, like whatever it is. So you might want to introduce them to something else.

So like a related topic.

Right. And so when you do those cards, you have an ability like let's say you have a 70 character long title. Nobody's going to be able to read that from that card thing because it truncates, it cuts off some of it. If you have to keep it long, at least put the most important words first so that if they're looking when that card pops up, they're going to see how to blah blah in 30 characters or less. That's all you get. So I usually just change it completely and said you're not going to believe this or look here right now or something very quick. And then they click on it and you have an opportunity to even have another sentence for 30 characters or less that tells them more about clicking on that video. Again, it's the free real estate I talk about, right. If you take advantage of those little places to keep unfolding and give them breadcrumbs, people call them right. And here's another big thing. I don't know how long you've been on. This is going to be a little bit complicated. But you're watch when people jump off your channel or jump off your video. And if you there's a place where you can see their activity. And if you can see that they got on here and they dropped right down within a minute to like, your audience is like 20%, then you don't want to waste your five cards on that audience. You want to bring them into the first 20% or wherever they dropped off. Put all the cards in there, you know, a few seconds apart. And then when you see that your watch time hours are going up and people are staying, you might want to spread them out a little bit. You have to decide what's more important. What.

Oh, so I'm sorry, you saw me, she saw me sit up. I was like, oh, I'm going to say something.

Cringe factor. Is this the cringe factor or the binge factor?

No. So, like, I think you have to be really clear here, audience. Like all of you listening out there, if your purpose is to increase your watch time hours to make money off your video, absolutely listen to every word Fran said. But if your purpose of creating your videos is for that 20% that are watching all the way through, because that's your ideal right audience, that's your right fit. Those are your binge listeners. They're your binge viewers. Right. They're the ones who are going to go to the next thing. You don't want to have nothing in it for them at that point when they hit it. Because what we've found is when they hit a certain point in the video or in the audio, they go, what's next? Their brain goes to the what's next? The ones that have been watching for quite some time. So I'm good with using like three up front, but save one or two till towards the end and definitely use your end cards.

It is a great strategy. I like this. Usually I'm thinking, do I want the 20% to have it or those people.

Who I could keep?

So I guess you could do both. Or you could decide what's more important. I want to grab more people with something. Maybe I'll think about it how I want to keep them, or go ahead and make sure the people who are supporting you are still getting honored. But I don't think they know they're missing something. You know, they're not saying, here's my end card.

I'm not saying that they are, but they're the ones that are going to buy your stuff. They're the ones that are already convinced you are the resource. So if you send them to the next thing, it's more likely they're going to buy from you. And that's why you do want to make sure that you have some way to keep them into your content and help them navigate to the next thing thing. Because they don't know what's the most important next thing yet. So keeping up with that, whether it's now, but the call to action, the info card or whatever it's called nowadays, but whatever that little black bar is with the thing that they could be getting, like buy a masterclass or come in and join my coaching call for free for this week. Like that call to action item is very valuable to somebody who's just consumed 80% of your content.

Right.

And so even if they know you already, you definitely want them to know what the right call to action is for them to stay with your community and buy the next thing.

Exactly. Okay, so I've never done this, just so you know, but if I might want to try this, say, listen, we're going to be inserting a couple of little gifts, a little, some Easter eggs or some gifts or something throughout this whole video. So then you can entice them. Because first of all, I think I mentioned it, but I want to say if you put your card in 32, because you have the option to put it up, that it goes on at a certain time and I always put it on after 31 seconds that it pops up. Because if you do it before then you haven't been considered a view yet. And if they really like that card and they want to click on it and get off of your video, then you just lost at least the view that you could have had. And so you may be pulling them off on those cards, but you're pulling them back to you, your own video, which is what YouTube does, they keep you on their own videos. So you're going to play like YouTube does and keep people on your channel not always on that video.

So I want to ask this clarifying question to, I mean, it occurred to me here that we use these terms and we throw them out. So views have absolutely zero to do with monetization qualifications. So you doesn't have anything to do with it. But it does have, I'm going to call it social proof to the audience that you're the right thing. And so it's more likely to get someone in that might Consume the watch time hours.

They want to say, hey this got 3 million views. I'm going to go look at.

They're important but the view numbers actually have don't come into the calculation that YouTube uses about what you whether you qualify or not. So just keep that in mind.

Yeah. Okay. Do you need more on cards?

No. The only thing that I have found and we've dialed the end cards that we create for our clients and what we've used is we find we get better action on two card instead of the four squares.

Okay.

Don't know why it is. I don't know that I have enough data to call it and say it's true.

Is it the same topic?

No, it's like if you have subscribe, let's say on one side and then the next video on the other rather than subscribe next video my channel. The well like having four things is too many choices is my perception is that I'm guiding them into the two most important actions they could take. If they're already subscribed, then the next video that I want them to consume is more important. If they have subscribed already, they're just going to go to the next video. But if they haven't subscribed, they might do both.

Okay, so here's where you can play because I used to always stop at 2 and I thought again, free real estate. Am I losing out on the free real estate? But if they don't click. So I'm trying out some new ways and in that 20 seconds for the end screen, you can actually adjust in the beginning and the end. So if you have something in the background you didn't want the end screen to pop up over. Did you ever see that happen? They're pointing to something in the end screen pops up and you don't know what you're missing and you can't even move it. And now that there's ways to change that too. But all you want to do is like say okay, I'm going to. What do you call it? Straddle them or whatever, layer them and have one pop up at the 22nd mark and then let it come off and let the other one come on and then come off and you can mark it the way you want so that the top one pops up and then another one pops up and off. So if it's not working and you want to and you want people to have more to choose from instead of just saying I'm only going to put two, it's like a five course meal you know, I'm not going to get the whole meal at the same time. They're going to give me this done, then I'm going to get this. You could do it that way as well.

So what we found in the statistics that I've reviewed From everyone whose YouTube channel we managed, so. Or we rebuild these. We build the bumper with a. I'm going to call it like a blank screen with just a general piece of information at the top so that you can make multiple choices about whatever you want to pull up there. And it's not interfering and visually overriding any. That is important. Right? Yeah. So we do that. So the last 20 seconds is basically this sort of like, I'm going to call it generically blank slide. But that's what it is as your music tails off and your video tails off. Like that's. There might even be voiceovers still going, but there's nothing on the visual screen. That's what we do. And what they end on, though, whatever that last closing screen is, that. That's where we see the higher clicks, whatever they are. And if the last closing screen are two things, they do better than if the last closing screen is four things. The static where they end, not where it's flowing through before then. I never checked what's flowing through before then. Fran, to be honest with most people, don't do it. I think it's a great idea, but I just don't know that anyone. I've not calculated that.

Yeah, that's okay now. I just forgot what I was going to say about that.

Oh, I'm sorry.

That's okay. I'm a little older than you.

Not that much. Okay, so end cards, closing screens, all of these things are really important.

I remembered.

Oh, good.

I'm not your normal podcaster. Right. Podcast guest. I keep telling Tracy. Do you sure you still want me to. Come on. I'm still talking all the time. But there are end screen and animated end screen templates in Canva. Maybe whatever else you have. So imagine that you finished a video, you insert this overlay or just attach. What do you call it? It's not an overlay, it's an attack.

We call it a bumper.

Okay, that's a bumper, too.

Yeah, we call it a bumper with this transition and Canva. Yes, absolutely.

You can't do it after you made the video. You have to do it and add it to the length of the video. No more than 20 seconds. Because you can't add an end screen to that. So you go at the last 20 seconds. And you put it there. And don't even put the squares in there because that gives you room to put them wherever you want instead of the way YouTube has it set up. And you can have a thanks for being here. Don't forget to subscribe. Anything you wanted. And it's all happy and colorful the way you want it to be.

Yeah, definitely. If you get a Canva template that has outlines on it, delete them now. Some of them have them in. They're just guidelines. They're not actually really there unless you had dropped content in there, but they're visually there. Sometimes when I see a template that has the four, I'll drop my logo of the my show in the top one. And then knowing that I'll put subscribe next to it. Right. And then you might put the video below it. So like, just depends on how you're planning to use your end screen end card. But those templates are fantastic. But you do have to physically add them to the end of your video.

Yes. You have to do it. You can't do it after the fact.

Right. You cannot do this. If you're doing a live stream and you end the live stream, you'll overlay off of something. Like, there's no way to do it. You're going to cut something off. If you put an end screen on it, it doesn't work there. It only works with an edited video. And you add this week. That's why we call it a bumper, because you're adding it to the end, you're bumping the end and call it that and put it there. But they're not hard to add.

What about outros? How do you put the outro before or after the bumper?

It is the bumper, essentially. So the outro is like 20, 30 seconds maybe, depending on what you're trying to say. But it's like, here's my community. Here's how you can find out more. Here's the website URL and then the 20 seconds that fades to the end screen. And that's how we do it.

Excellent.

Yeah.

Don't forget your playlist, that if you want, you put a playlist up on the end screen or the card. So you've just given them whatever amount of videos are in that thing and they have the opportunity to just keep watching and remember to use your end screen link instead of your video link. And then when you share that, all your viewers are going to get all the videos in that end screen. So if you want to know how to do that easily, go to the home page of your video, look up your menu tabs, click on playlist, choose the playlist you want and then if you have you want to do it as a playlist or as a separate video, just pick the video, copy the link. It's a longer link than if you chose just the video. And what that does is when you send it to your people or however you're going to distribute it, the entire playlist is going to show on the right hand side. Some of us may have said how do people get theirs there? And I only see everybody else's video. And if you just use the playlist link, it is going to change everything for watch time hours.

Exactly. Now we have a tutorial for that in the tip library@podcastersunited.org When Fran said this, we will link that to that spot so that you can go straight to that tip and watch the video on exactly how to copy and paste that playlist link.

It's amazing.

Yeah, it's such a simple thing, but it changes the outcome of how deeply people dive through your content.

Yes. And I know it sounds complicated the first or second time you hear it, spend the time to get it because it's really worth it.

It's really worth it. So anything else on the content side, Fran, that people can do to help zooming more of it. Stay in and watch the whole hour. Watch the whole 30 minutes.

Be strong, don't say goodbye. Make sure you leave them with something so you start off strong. Hey, what we're going to talk about today is my favorite thing type thing. But when you leave, say if you like this, we have plenty more. You know, make them know that you are not a one shot. What do they call it?

A one time, one hit wonder.

Yeah, you're not a one hit wonder. This is what you do. Thank you so much for being nice.

This is what sidekicks are for, right?

Oh gosh, I love being here. So you want to make sure you end stronger, don't waver, don't get a little less and less.

And like this is just the beginning.

I have so much more to share with you. Don't forget to come back and that how you insert your energy and letting them know. So you also want to use. It used to be called the community page but now it's called the posts and it's also another tab that you have. Don't hesitate to use it for your videos because people will go there and not a lot. If you're going to post on every other social platform, make sure you Use that. It's free again. And people you want, even if it's one person, it could be the person that's going to work. Watch it for an hour.

Absolutely. You know what I really love about what you said there is because we were just talking about bumpers. People rely on their bumpers to do the work for them. The bumper, if you've listened to it again and again, I mean it's a like outro. It's a like little bit of music and it says to find out more, go to the. It's a commercial to them. It's not an invitation. You still need to say this. Tom and I say it at the end of every single one of these. You're going to hear my conversation with Tom right after this, the segment with Fran. We're gonna come back and when Tom and I end that, we will say if you want all the tips from there, don't forget about the how to. For this, you're gonna need to go to podcastersunited.org so we're going to invite them in in that soft sell way to consume something that they want.

Yes.

But we are not gonna forget to mention it because hearing it from us is an invitation. Hearing it from the outro guy who happens to be my brother in law. But even with Chris, great voice. It' still a commercial.

Yeah. And that's it. You know, like, I love the way you say soft sell. Think of it as sharing. And all you want to do is share with them and not sell them anything. So what does that look like for you? Because there are people out there who are sensationalized. They want to be. And those of us who just want to be gentle, how can you do it if you don't know what it is? Then you need to maybe check with Tracy or Tom and say, what can I do that would sound like I'm offering them something without. Because I just gotta tell you, I always had no offense to used car dealers, but I was trained so strongly When I was in real estate for 20 years, I was. I sound like a used car dealer. When I was a closer. Right. I was a real estate agent for 25 years. So I just knew how to close people. And one day when I became a coach and I decided I don't want to sound like that anymore. So I sound like Rosie Perez and a used car dealer. I'm still trying to untrain myself.

Right.

So just think of it. Do I. Is this how I want to sound to my people or do I want to sound softer? Do I want to sound different than I do now and then ask for training. There's a video on that.

Yeah, there's a video on that. There's actually a feature brand episode on that. It's called the Perfect Timing to Sell on youn Podcast Episode. Without sounding too salesy, we'll add that here. So this is where she mentioned something. You have a great video for it.

Yes.

Now's the time for one of those info cards to send them to it because it happened to be right at the right place or remind them at the end, whatever that is. This is also a good place to create that commenting going on because it doesn't happen well in YouTube because you've got that long description and so much of it is truncated. Fran. Like, I feel like you should watch your own video and write a comment with the link for what it is to remind them what it is, where it is right at that moment in time. I think that's a good idea.

Your comments section are so big, nobody's telling you what to put in your comments section. More free real estate. Right. What do you want to say? That's a perfect place for a call to action or asking a question or asking them to put their own questions.

But if you're sending them to something that's already within YouTube, I think you have a better shot of it. Like helping to increase your watch time hours. Right. And that's the goal of our conversation here today. Right. So if you're sending them to the next video right there reminding them what it is and they don't have to go search for it, they don't have to like, oh, I missed the card. Some of us are not as YouTube savvy as we should be and we just don't click on it fast enough. But if it's right there in the comments, that's easy for them to go to. You've really helped them navigate your content more. Increasing your watch hours.

You can take your whole chapters. We advise you to use chapters in your description. Copy it and put it in your comments if you want to do that. Yeah.

So so many ways for you to, like, help them dive and navigate through your content.

Help them.

That's going to help increase those watch time hours, which is what we're here to talk about. Any other advice before we go, Fran, about watch time hours? I mean, it's daunting. I mean, it's a lot of hours and I create a lot of content. But getting that consumption level on YouTube has been extremely difficult. I feel like I Could do that in no time at all in podcasting, but I don't feel like I could do 4,000 hours. It just feels daunting. How can we cut that down?

What are my secrets? You're going to think it's counterproductive. I have this saying I've been saying for 25 years, don't say with blah. Blah. What you could say with blah. And that means give them very concise information. Don't just keep talking for 16, 20, 30 minutes to keep it a long podcast so that now you'll have 30 minutes worth of watch time hours, which may be working the opposite way because you. You just spoke too much. Give them about what the title's about, tell them what you want to tell them, tell them about it, and then tell them what you just told them. That's really all you have to do. You don't have to just keep yapping, by the way. I keep yapping.

We've been yapping. Yeah, you know, I do it too.

But if really focused, I could just make it very clear and concise. So I would definitely say that's important. Stop talking.

So then let's just mention briefly, YouTube shorts do not count to your watch time hours. They're their own separate thing. And we have episodes and stuff we're coming up, we're gonna talk about.

Yes, they have their own value.

Yeah, they have their own value. It's separate. But that doesn't mean they're not valuable in creating more watch time hours. If you're referring to one of your videos from them. And we get that all the time, like sometimes. So this video itself, I use it ahead of time, break up and get a bunch of YouTube shorts that we use to tease to this video when it airs. And people go from that to watching it. So if I get 3, 400 views of that short, I might get two or three viewers who actually watch the.

Whole video, and subscribers too, if they want.

Yeah. So it has a value in doing that, even though it doesn't contribute to your watch time hours. So don't underlook that YouTube shorts model. Right, Right.

Think of everything as a dance, and you'll find your own dance. How do you want people to dance through all your information? It may be that you have the call to action that's gonna be the dance the most. Or just think of everything you put up there. Oh, there's that move and there's that dance, and there's that dip.

And then you.

You put it all together and say, I've covered it. I now did the complete dance and it'll, it'll give you the no guarantees because we don't know what your content is or like how you did it and what it is about. But you'll give yourself the best opportunity. That's a whole nother thing about how to do your homework about before you make a video.

Absolutely, yeah. Do homework.

No, I said did we ever teach them how to do their homework before they make a video?

Oh, we do. We have pre recording checklists, we have topic planning, all of those things. We've had segmenting, so I think we've covered that quite a lot. So there is definitely a bunch of content there that we'll mention and we'll put them in our additional resources on podcastersunited.org and the bullet points at the bottom of the blog. So they're easy to find and get to. But they'll also be referenced, hopefully in the video. We can only reference so many, but we'll reference at least five of them so you'll get that through there. Because we're bigger fans at making. I mean that's the way we use info cards here is we don't use them to call to action to send you outside of YouTube. We send you within YouTube, don't send.

People to your website.

Yeah, we don't send outside, we send within. And so you won't see any call to action to download something or do any of that. You'll only see another video that's being offered. So, Fran, I'm so glad you come back again and again and I really do appreciate that you come back again and again.

Poor Tracy.

Two topics in one week for us to be recording is unusual for us. But hey, there's going to be a nice little dance, as you put it, between the two. So everyone, you're definitely going to want to go back and I am going to have for you some new features. So do not miss it. Check out the description for this, check out the outro that we created, the closing that Tom and I do. Make sure you stay and listen to that piece here because we're going to have something where we're going to make it easy for you to navigate to all of Fran's stuff and be able to find them. So might be a secret playlist, might be some other things, but you're going to have to check check out the blog post for this episode to find out what it is. Or stay tuned and make sure you're watching the whole video all the way through to get to the Announcement of what that is for, how to find more from Fran.

See what she's doing there. Does anybody see what she's doing there? Exactly what we just spoke about. She's keeping you here and moving forward. She's doing her job. And did it feel salesy? It sounded kind of exciting. She's giving you a gift. Right. So I think that's great. Yeah.

That's what I'm here for. Right. To demo what Fran tells us to do, to be her best friend, student.

I would like to make sure that we ask the audience to contact you or me for your questions. That's what we're here for. So anytime you think of YouTube and what you want to know, we may not know everything, but we'll make sure we get to the answers.

Absolutely. So comment. Right. You can comment here, tag us, ask us, we'll answer them right there. That's super easy. That's a. Like, you don't have to leave. You can go to Podcasters United. You can message directly to Fran there as well. And Fran has a profile, so you can go into her profile and you'll be able to connect with her. And I think we have your booking calendar in there, too.

Yes, you do.

And you know what else you could do?

This may help with watch time hours. Also, if you like our content and you create a playlist of our stuff, you could save it into a file on your own YouTube channel so that anything with Tracy or with Fran, and you want to save it. I have all my playlists saved. They're private. Make sure you keep them private or your audience is going to see what it is. And if you've got some crazy playlist, you probably don't want people to see it. But save it. Everything that you want to hear, anything I have to say, save it in a playlist so you don't have to watch it all the same day. Same with Trace.

That's right. Yeah. Just. It's better than liking and trying to go back.

Right, right.

Yeah, yeah. Playlist it for yourself so you can find it. That'll be easier.

Yes, that's what I do.

Well, everyone, thank you so much for being here, Fran. Appreciate you. Tom and I are going to be on the outside of this, having a quick conversation about what we thought and what we're going to implement and do from Fran's advice here. So you're not going to want to miss that. So stay tuned. Yeah.

Thank you. Bye. Bye.

What'd you think, Tom?

Wow. I mean, really? There was a lot packed in that Discussion. And it was eye opening to me, especially the difference between views and watch hours. And it's interesting to me that as consumers of video and if you're looking at anybody else's channel but your own that you have access to on the back end of YouTube, all we see are views. And we judge videos as to whether that's a good video or not or a popular video or not based on views. And it's interesting, the views don't really count as anything, if I remember right.

Well, the views don't count at this early stage of it, before you're into monetization, after it. The views count because you only need like a minute of video for you to get, for it to count and you to get make money because the ad ran before your video. Right. So it's a chicken and the egg kind of thing here, if you want to think about it, is you got to get your watch time hours up and you have to keep it at a certain level to stay qualified. And then you have to worry about your views because if you don't worry about your views, you don't make money.

Well, it's interesting to me, the views were kind of the vanity metric. We've talked about vanity metrics even in podcasting in the past, Tracy. And I mean, don't get me wrong, if you've got a million views on a video, I mean, that does mean something. But it doesn't mean people watch the video all the way through. It doesn't mean that you're going to get a lot of watch time hours. And really the watch time hours are how you qualify for monetization. And you always continually have to qualify. That was eye opening to me, really.

The biggest issue for me. And I've been diving deeper in it because they made some changes to how share links are created. And so it's created some problems. We always, and Fran says this and she said it and I don't know how many episodes, and we got trained by Fran to do this properly and then YouTube decided to change the process. But when you get a share link, when you're getting a share link for your video that you might embed in a web or even share somewhere else, what you want to do is make sure you're using the share link that comes from your podcast playlist because it serves up the next video and the next video, it serves up everything in your podcast playlist, where in RSS feeds, in our feed for the podcast, it's automatically we're within it. It's always going to serve up the next episode, in fact. So it'll just kind of autoplay if you have your settings. That way, it's not going to go on to the next show unless you've listened to all the episodes. So it's gonna go on within your show. So Apple is kind of geared towards keeping you within your podcast, and YouTube can't wait to serve up something else. And so they made it much more difficult for you to find the playlist share link and use it in order to keep that stickiness into your show. So YouTube's whole driver is to. For them to make more money. Right. So this is why they give you this high metric for watch hours, because they want more people sitting in their platform doing everything. But they honestly don't care if they're watching your stuff.

Oh, I don't think they care at all if they're watching your stuff. They want to keep you on YouTube any which way. So they're going to show you whatever kind of videos their algorithm thinks you're going to be interested in, and the most popular ones in those categories. So you will stay glued to their platform. And for most of us podcasters, that's not really in our best interest. So, Tracy, the playlist share link for a video is right on the money so that people finish your video, they're served up another one, and they have to voluntarily leave. They're not like, lured away by YouTube.

Right, right. And I think that's one of the sticky factors that you have to create. And then I think, think what we do with the embedding that playlist player, that version of our videos into our blogs, also keeps it contained because we keep the main videos on this blog on your website, which keeps them into all your other content, makes it easy for you to go to the next blog and the next blog or go down, your showcaster player in our case. Right. Go right down and listen to all the episodes in a row. Makes it really easy for them to do that, but it shows all of the other episodes to do. And then doing that tip that Fran gave where you're really using the, like, end cards, the info cards, you're really giving them up, the playlist view or the next video view. And what I do is I actually have mine slightly lowered. I only give six views, so I only give six videos that would show up. And I use the playlist view and I use it from recency. You can switch it and do it a different way and you can pick the videos you want in there. I just don't want to work that hard at it. I don't. Just wanted to make sure to keep people into my playlist and serve up whatever's next. But I've noticed that when you don't do it right, the stuff that YouTube gives you is a lot of times junk. Tom. Like there might be a couple of things that were relative and related. Like I did it with Fran's last video as I switched it out to the regular playlist to see what YouTube would serve me up. And there were a couple of things about YouTube, but there was stuff that was like politics and like how to videos for stuff that we'd never do or influencer stuff. Like, I couldn't believe the stuff that they put up. It was like gonna send you down a rabbit hole away from the topic even, which really surprised me.

From YouTube didn't surprise me so much. I mean, they're serving up really squirrels for people to chase is the reality of it. And I'm sure there's a lot of science to it. There's. YouTube is owned by Google. I'm sure they don't do anything by accident. I'm sure there's a lot of theory and science behind keeping people engaged and spending more time, which is how they make money and how a channel might, well, not a channel, many, many different channels might make a little money, you know, because they're going on to different things.

Right. But I think that I really still thought because Google owned YouTube, that it was still much more topic and keyword focused and not so much just ad focused. And so what I really think is happening here and this, what I was seeing by doing this, is they're serving up videos they know they can make more money on as opposed to a video that might be more relevant that isn't highly monetized.

And I think right there, Tracy, you've gotten one of the key differences between podcasting and videos on YouTube, video casting, I guess, and even social media use in general. And I know YouTube isn't necessarily a social media channel. It is. Is becoming one More so with YouTube shorts. But in reality, there's a big difference. People look to podcasts to educate, inform, or entertain themselves, and they take deep dives into niche subjects. They choose to listen to your show. And it's a different level of influence. It's people that really are going to spend time again and again and again on your show. And I don't think that is as realistic in YouTube. I just don't think it's why people go to YouTube so much. As I mentioned to Fran in the other episode where it was YouTube versus podcast, I'll go there for a how to video in a minute, but am I going to remember what channel name that is and go back to them for other how to videos? I'm like laser focused, searching for the one thing that I need and when I get it, I'm out, I'm done. There's no brand loyalty there, there's no long term relationship. And that's very different in podcasting. So I personally really do believe the majority of independent podcasters who podcast first or the podcast is more important to them than the video. I'm still a big believer in recording the video and putting it out there. There are lots of benefits for podcasters, but it is really what you said before, embedding that video in your episode blog. And if you're a podcaster listening to this or watching this and you don't have a blog for every episode, that's the number one thing you gotta do. Because you can't embed a YouTube video in a blog on your website if you don't have a blog for the episode. But we do that for ourselves, selflessly, for us to Number one, when people come to that webpage, either from a Google search or they're just navigating through your website and they want to watch, they can watch the video right there. But they're going to spend more time on your website while they do it. And that's why that playlist link is important, so they don't get served a bunch of other stuff on that page to take them away from your page when it's done. That's the benefit for podcasters and it's an SEO benefit. It's an engagement benefit. It's a way to serve your community.

Better, to close this out. So first things first, I want to make sure to mention that there will be a tip. We did a tip video and a tutorial on how to create that playlist share link. I've done that for our clients and I did it for our teams. It's done and it'll be in the blog post for this episode@podcastersunited.org so you can go get that and you can see, when you go get that, you'll see exactly how our videos are embedded in there and you'll be able to see how it looks. And then I did a demo walkthrough. So it's not. You don't see my face, you see this screen share. So it shows you exactly where to go on YouTube and how to get the link. So that's gonna be there. But the second thing is, I mentioned at the beginning, when we were doing it, it's like you kind of weigh the differences between do I really wanna be podcast first or YouTube first. I mean, you have to spend a lot of time and energy at this watch time hour meeting that metric or you will never qualify for monetization. And so when I think about that, the number one thing that keeps coming back to me is if you don't get them to watch all the way through your video, then you're not going to hit those numbers in any meaningful way because there's such a small percentage of follower base on YouTube that does that. So the way you're gonna do it is offline, in your blog, in your newsletters, do it in a webinar, make it live, because those live hours count, those watch hours count when you have them watching live. But don't have them watching live here in Zoom. Have them watching live on YouTube, make your watch hours over there and then have your conversation back in Zoom or other places. So creating this model by which you're driving and making sure that people are staying through the full hour or half hour or whatever it is, and in this case this hour episodes, it's more like an hour. So making sure that that happens is really critically important to getting the watch time hours up. And if you're not going to be able to do that, then I sit back and say, I'm going to focus on my listeners and focus on that listener first model and have the YouTube be an added benefit that maybe does some branding for my website, that does some stickiness for the SEO and it has different value and that could alleviate this pressure on yourself to be all things everywhere when it's just not going to be the focus, it's just not going to work out for you. And I know I disappointed Fran at some point when I had this conversation saying, like, if I'm not going to go for monetization, why do I have to do all this stuff?

I think it was a really good point, Tracy. I think everyone listening to this episode and watching it on YouTube, if that's where you're seeing it or on our website, I think you really do need to decide, are you a podcaster first? Is that how your community is going to get more value from you, or are you a YouTuber first? And it's okay to be either one. I mean, if you're a YouTube first person, it makes sense to put your show out there as a podcast because guess what, there's a lot of people that prefer to listen to audio versus watch video and then the same thing happens. If you're a podcaster first. That's great. You're still going to put your video out on YouTube because there's value in it definitely. But it's just a different value. And I agree it's very hard to be following all the best practices for each individual, let's call it YouTube platform for each different ecosystem. Maybe it's really hard to be doing everything that you can possibly do because some of these things are in conflict with each other and we actually go over that a little bit in that other episode. If you listen to that one listeners, the one with the YouTube versus podcast, there are some priorities. I think you just have to decide what's your priority gonna be and the other one is going to be secondary and that just accept it because that's the way it is.

Well, as always we have Fran back again and again because we know some of you are YouTube focused and we wanna make sure that we're serving you in providing someone else who can provide that information because we are very podcast centric and that's okay. Right? And just want to be able to provide both models for you. I do think this is kind of goes to our standing advice, Tom, for social media as well. Start with one and then go to the other.

Yeah, you're going to drive yourself crazy unless you're a professional social media person that your job is to get your brand out everywhere on social media, equally on all platforms because you're just trying to cover all bases. I mean if they have a full time department or you are a full time employee for that, maybe you can do that. Really the majority of us are not able to do that. Engage in the 1 or 2 maximum 3, but really 1. Where is your audience more? I mean most of us in business it's on LinkedIn.

I loved it. I read recently for one of our employees, I was covering the email for them while they're on leave and I loved that one client said, yeah, I'm not tackling the video yet. We're setting up our show, we're starting here and then in six months I'm going to look at the video side of things and so really said this is where I'm going to draw the line of what I could do. I'm capturing the video all along the way, but I'm just not going to tackle all the decisions that I have to made for creating that YouTube channel and doing all the things that I need to do over there. I'm going to do it at a secondary level. That's okay. At least you admitted that this is where my limits are and what I can do. So either get yourself some team and support, which is what we are hoping that we're providing for you here, is some access to that, or take it one at a time. It's perfectly okay to do that.

Very practical. What's most important is you keep showing up for your audience on a regular basis, wherever that is. Make sure you do that first and then layer in other things as you can.

Well, I know we went on and it was quite a long episode, so I thank you for hanging out with us that long. Appreciate you. We will be back next week when Tom has a discussion without me and we're going to do the beginning and end again just like we did here. But he's going to have a discussion all about some really interesting. I'm going to call it copyright and clearance issues. It's going to be really fun, so make sure you check that out.

Going to be a lot more fun than that sounds.

Believe me, I know it sounds boring. It's not. It's really cool. All right, see you all next week.

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