Get Views #1: Value to the community
In a previous post, I talked about several of the reasons why your video are not getting views. I can understand the strong feelings people have after hearing it. Many get into YouTube thinking they’ll make a quick buck and get discouraged after getting no views.
So in this post, I want talk about how valued content brings views.
Case Study: Summing Salt
Summing Salt is a video game speed runner, who posts videos of his runs. They produced modest views and only garnered the interest of the Mike Tyson speed running community at best.
This all changed in 2017. During this time, he started producing a series of videos talking about the development in speed running for other games. These videos were tailored towards the general gaming community and not just speed runners.
This was unique to YouTube, nobody had produced similar videos. It provided:
- Something interesting — These videos brought viewers from other speed running communities and the greater gamer community.
- No Duplicates— Though there were individual videos produced describing game speed running, nobody had yet created such a video series before.
- Unique Content — In addition to being a unique YouTube series, the information presented in these videos were unique compositions. This is opposed to other YouTube videos that simply convert existing published data to videos. The data presented was unique.
- Made the user crave the next video —The videos provided just enough content to make people interesting in the world of speed running but not so much detail to bore people. This drove subscriber counts.
It didn’t matter that the editing and audio weren’t great. It filled a gap in the gaming (and larger YouTube) community that wasn’t ever presented before. Though an individual game’s community may be strong, there really wasn’t anything introducing these communities to each other or to the outside world. These videos did just that.
The feedback on the videos continue to be very positive and we can see that it is content that’s driving viewers (not quality or quantity).
Value(Content) > Quality
It’s wrong to think quality will gain views. It doesn’t matter if you have 4k videos with amazing audio if the content is meaningless. But we see this everyday — creators trying to justify why their hours of commitment deserves views.
Trying to justify why a video should get views because you put a large number of hours into production will lead you to disappointment.
Good Content ≠Popular Content
If your content is duplicated or can easily found from established sources, then you are not going draw viewers. You might bank off some residual views by duplicating viral videos, but those viewers are not going to grow your subscriber base. The content isn’t valued by your viewers.
Quality Does Matter
But content is not good enough on its own. Quality does matter. When the quality of your video starts to affect the content, then you need to upgrade the quality.
Viral videos can be filmed on potato cams because their content value (whether it’s something funny, dangerous, tragic, or instigates anger) is high. Therefore, the quality isn’t as important. For most other YouTube videos, a 240px video will effect how people perceive your content — and this is bad. At the other range of the sale, corporate or sales content requires very high quality video and audio as viewers as equate video quality to the quality of your product or company.
Aim for watch time, not views
To be clear, we’re really talking about watch time, not views. You can spam your video URL all over the internet to get views. What you really want is to maximize watch time. It’s simply not good enough to draw users to your YouTube channel. Though this might make your view counters go up, it’s not a good indicator of valued content.
Valued Content Drives Views
New YouTube creators get dazzled by seeing existing vlogging, reaction, and rant channels and feel that it’s an easy thing to do. This is the mistake most people do — they see successful content and try to duplicate it. The reality is, its not content, but valued content that drives views. If your content provides zero value to viewers, they won’t watch it.
There’s nothing wrong with just having fun with YouTube. If you want to create vlogs, do it — just don’t feel views are your end goal. You will see, once people find interest in you (i.e. finding value in your videos), you will get your views..but in the mean time, don’t get discouraged. As a new creator, you need to find a way to create content that people will find value in and that should be your goal…and have fun.
I love to hear any feedback or if there was something something I missed. Leave a comment below!
