Becoming Martha Stewart: What I’ve Learned From Uploading My First 10 YouTube Videos
In the depths of a brutal Boston winter, I found creative salvation in the form of a microwave cake.
Mug cakes are single-serve cakes made in the microwave, often in a mug. They are the speed dating of desserts: low commitment, fast iteration, amazingly similar to the Real Thing.
Why make a series of YouTube tutorials on this niche genre for my channel, Hello Lana?
- I’d been making them for myself and as a party trick for friends. If you’ve never tried making one, you should. You will forever be chasing the dragon of your first mug cake’s magic. Seriously: 90 second cook time. Instant gratification.
- A lot of the mug cake recipes out there are terrible, including ones published in books. After developing my own recipes, I realized that basic baking ratios of flour to sugar to fat still applied, and a lot of (bad) recipes were ignoring these and using way too much egg.
- Ultimately, I want everyone to experience the feeling of creative joy I do in the kitchen, but I needed an easy place to start. Mug cakes happens to be that place. I’m now working on some other recipes… stay tuned!
So I set out on my noble mission to develop a set of recipes that would reward makers with the instant gratification of truly cake-like deliciousness. My primary goal was to reach an audience and get them to subscribe to my channel to follow along with my culinary adventures.
It’s been fun, challenging, and my numbers are modest so far. Still, I thought some of you would appreciate coming along for the early part of the ride.
My full-time job happens to be in marketing (albeit, B2B)… so some analytics nerdiness ahead!
My Video Production Setup
I’ve produced and edited every video on my channel by myself so far. So from recipe development, to filming (yay tripods!), to editing, to graphics, it’s been a one-woman show. Friends have generously made appearances and helped recipe test.
A few random thoughts about my crash course adventures in learning video production:
- I bought a Canon T5i and have been liking it. I shoot using the kit lens and a Rokinon Cine 35mm.
- I originally edited videos in iMovie, then moved onto Final Cut Pro. I enjoy the keyboard shortcuts. It must be the power Photoshop user in me.
- I use a $30 lavaliere mic for audio.
- I bought some basic studio umbrella lights, but don’t use them much. I just try to film during the early evening for the best light. If I were to do it over, I’d just buy a ring light for shots where I’m talking to the camera.
- Video requires an absurd amount of memory, enormous SD cards, and an external hard drive.
- I bought a steady cam, but cannot get it to work yet. :(
- Video is just expensive to produce in general. There seems to be no limit to the gear you can buy: fancier microphones! Rigging! Lighting! $10,000 cameras! High tech tripods!
- I am really enjoying designing graphics for the videos, although I tend to think about things in a web design sort of way rather than video sort of way. I’ll probably keep redoing and experimenting with the graphics as I figure things out.
One of the fun parts about video production is that I’m now watching videos, TV, and film in a new light. Instead of just absorbing the content, I pay attention to camera cuts, angles, and transitions.
I’ve also realized that video is the ultimate art form (aside from, you know, life). It pulls in art, music, acting, writing, lighting, costumes, makeup… just about every craft.
Marketing Experiments
Facebook Native Video Uploads vs. Posting YouTube Links
All hail Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm, the beast we all must feed. I found that I generally got about ~30–100 YouTube views by posting a straight YouTube link, whereas uploading natively results in 600–1200 views (holy 10x Batman!). I place a YouTube link to the video in the video caption with reminder to subscribe.
Creating an “Instructable” with an Embedded YouTube Video
I wrote up an “Instructable” for my blueberry muffin mug cake recipe with an embedded video and asked readers to subscribe. It was featured on the Instructables.com homepage (yay! thanks guys!) and has gotten 2800 views as of this writing. YouTube analytics tells me the embedded player for that video has driven 244 views and 4 subscribers, which doesn’t seem right since I noticed a larger bump after posting the Instructable, on the order of 20 new subscribers. They may have clicked through to the channel page and subscribed there.
What I’ve learned: About 9% of Instructable readers watch the video. Also, blueberry muffins make excellent breakfasts.
Collaboration Video with a Popular YouTube Channel
So far, the most successful effort at reaching new subscribers has been a collaboration video with my friend Ben’s popular DIY YouTube channel (we made fortune cookie s’mores with Nutella!), which netted about 100 new subscribers. Ben’s video has racked up about 11k views and sent over 218 views from the annotation at the end. The conversion rate on the views is pretty impressive (so seems like the content is fine), but dat clickthrough dropoff, tho.
Skills acquired: fortune cookie hacking. Marshmallow fluff dispensing. Sugar, sugar, everywhere.
What I’ve learned: Marshmallow fluff doesn’t extrude from a metal turkey baster easily. “Fantasy Fudge” is a Thing.
Few people watch to the end, so put your CTA near the beginning.
When I started out, I put my “call to action” — subscribe to my channel — at the end of the video. When I looked at my stats, I realized that the average percentage watched of each video was 40–60%. So in subsequent videos, I put the call to action at the beginning of the video. Also, YouTube has some seriously incredible analytics, like this sweet attention dropoff graph where you can visualize exactly at which point the audience went NOPE and hit the back button.
Search traffic feeds a steady, consistent source of views
So far, 40% of my views have been through YouTube’s internal search, and those viewers tend to watch longer than average. Most of that traffic has gone to the Funfetti mug cake recipe — who knew?
Viewers are a great source of new recipe ideas, and often generally entertaining/adorable.
Like pancake in a mug? That’s a fun idea. I’m gonna try that.
One viewer recreated my funfetti mug cake recipe at home in her own kitchen, and uploaded a video of it.
Another viewer was so excited that I followed her back on Instagram that she took a screenshot of the event and posted it to her feed.
I was incredulous at first. Didn’t she realize that I wasn’t, you know, actually famous?
Then I basked in the moment.
I felt like Justin Bieber.
Teenage girl fans are the best!
Nothing much happened from video customized for Instagram/Facebook
I crafted a video customized for Instagram — square, no intros, just quick tutorial.
Nothing much happened. Womp womp.
What I’ve Learned: Might be worth producing these if I have a larger following — for now, I have limited time and didn’t get enough of a reaction to justify cutting a second video.
Also, here’s another image I made that I’m fond of that I’m just going throw in there because hey!
Ultimately, the work is its own reward.
I keep coming back to this with my creative work.
Making stuff is hard. It can feel self-indulgent and silly. The path forward is uncertain, and the purpose is unclear.
I’ve struggled a lot with long creative projects that can’t just be banged out in an afternoon. I was working on a novel for a long time that didn’t go anywhere. I kept trying to convince myself that I just needed to focus more, write a better outline, try harder. But ultimately, there’s never any guarantee of anything, and grinding quickly gives way to paralyzing existential angst. (O hai! You again.)
I’ve found that I need to enjoy the doing itself, not just the idea of what outcome I want from it. The most rewarding part of making these videos is not any external attention (which has been nice, for sure), but the process of learning, improving, and pulling in ideas. It’s been wonderful to have a project where I can collaborate and bring friends in.
And it’s reconnected me with the Best Feeling in the World: the pure magic of converting a mental image into reality.
If you think about it, that is the most potent kind of magic that anyone can access.
You can find it through painting, writing, living, cooking, and well, making YouTube videos.
Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Hello Lana for videos on adding creativity to your food and your life.
