This week on YouTube, August 15, 2024
Aug 15, 2024 – minute read
Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube, passed away this weekend. It’s thanks to Susan’s vision, determination, and leadership — and the unique partnership she sparked between YouTube and creators — that we’ve all not only been given a voice and shown the world, but that we’ve forged together opportunity, dignity, and legitimacy, set the foundations of the creator economy, and exemplified that true, meaningful, transformational success really is best achieved together. Our thoughts are with her family and friends, and the heartfelt words of Neal Mohan and Sundar Pichai, and everyone who, over the last few days, have shared their memories of a life so extraordinarily lived
✨ Join. You know how, when you say ‘subscribe’ in your video, the subscribe button will light up and animate to draw attention? Well, for creators with memberships enabled, when you say ‘join’, the join button will now light up and animate as well. Check out Creator Insider for more, and to find out how the feature works, hit play on this explainer interview
💬 Super. Remember ‘like and subscribe’? How about… ‘like and reply’? That’s a new feature rolling out for Super Chats, so viewers can better interact with the people who support your live streams. Likes will be displayed right on the Super Chat, and replies will go into the chat so they’ll be visible not only while live but on the replays as well. TeamYouTube’s post has all the details
🧠 Advice. Mario Joos and Paddy Galloway are two of the best YouTube strategists in the business and they’re sharing a ton of information with the community right now on social. Mario has been especially prolific lately, with a ton of posts and helpful messages, particularly around retention — earning and keeping attention. His how to make a video in 40 simple-but-not-easy steps is also terrific. Paddy also has a great thread on how one of the creators he worked with learned to focus on what’s working to really take their channel to the next level. Both well worth reading (and following.)
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🙋Q&A: “How can YouTube give me a community guideline strike for a private video? And why didn’t other, similar videos also get a strike?” I’ve asked Matt Halprin, YouTube’s Global Head of Trust and Safety about this in the past, and the interview really is essential viewing for anyone interested in community guidelines. The TL;DW is, any video you upload to YouTube, including the contents of the video itself and anything in the description, are subject to the community guidelines — whether it’s private, unlisted, or public. So always make sure you read and reference the guidelines before hitting that upload button. As to why some videos get flagged or actioned and others don’t, I’ve found it helpful to think like sports — if you’re ruled out of bounds, it doesn’t matter if anyone else was also out of bounds, you were still ruled out. If you want them to check the tape, they may see others also out of bounds. That doesn’t mean you suddenly weren’t, it just means they were as well. (Matt gives the technical answer in the video linked above.)
📈 Tip of the Week: When you scroll down in analytics to the retention graph, it doesn’t just show you how well you held attention throughout a video, it highlights how well you held it for the first 30 seconds as well. That’s something worth thinking about. Not only does autoplay mean those first 10-30 seconds are effectively the thumbnail for anyone lingering on your video, and they’ll have to be just as compelling as a thumbnail to win the click, but the better you can retain people through those first 10-30 seconds, the better positioned you are to retain them for the rest of the video. There’s no ‘good’ number for 30-second retention perse. If you’re currently at 50%, work on getting it to 55%. If you’re at or get to 55%, work on 60%. You’ll eventually hit diminishing returns, but it’s a good mental exercise to keep questioning your intros and hooks and seeing how you can improve. Some simple first steps: Pay off the thumbnail immediately. Show people they’re getting what they clicked on and they might keep watching longer. If you have an intro animation, try removing it and see if more people make it through those first 30 seconds. Watch other creators you find compelling and see what they do, and ask creator friends for advice and critiques on what you’re doing. Spend a few weeks and videos on it and you may be surprised how fast you improve.