6 Months on YouTube | What I've Learned

Key Takeaways

so it's been six months since i uploaded my first video here on youtube and thanks to each and every single one of you i've been fortunate to experience steady growth in both viewership and subscribers in today's video i've summarized a few key takeaways from this hobby of mine because as crazy as it sounds the learnings are surprisingly applicable in a real world business context first i'm going to share what i've learned about making videos specifically and how my background in marketing has helped me generate content that is hopefully relevant for most of you then i'm going to talk about how the past six months have contributed to my personal growth and how i apply some of the learnings from uploading one video a week to my day job as a product marketer at google i still have so much to learn when it comes to creating video content but i recently found myself reflecting on this pretty fun journey and thought some of you might find these learnings helpful so as usual let's get started diving right into the three things i learned about creating video content number one know who i'm trying to provide value for and this is something you hear a lot of the youtube veterans talk about when they give advice to new content creators like myself they'll always say to first know your audience find your niche and grow from there how i interpreted that advice was very simple basically i thought about it like a venn diagram and on the left were the things people wanted to hear about and on the right were the things i could actually speak to and for me that overlap was a tiny tiny sliver on the topics of interviews career and business so even before i make my first video i try to figure out that user insight who would benefit the most from the topics i'm somewhat qualified to talk about and why are they not able to get that content right now because that's basically my value ad right there long story short while i found there were tons of great content on career and interview prep they were all centered around very conventional and safe methods meaning everyone was doing the exact same thing and it was really hard to stand out and that helped me define my target audience college students and young professionals who may be looking for a better way to structure interview answers who may be interested in advanced linkedin tips that very few people use because these are the methods that have worked to some extent for me and will hopefully help my viewers stand out as well so that sounds like something you're interested in make sure to drop a like and subscribe for future videos second thing i learned about creating video content and this is mainly in regards to hardware is that lighting and audio matter way more than the actual video picture quality for example this is how it would look if i relied only on this room's overhead lighting that most of us have at home and this look is from a few well-placed and affordable lighting solutions crazy right and onto audio this is how it would sound if i relied on the camera's built-in microphone and this is how it should sound on what's called a shotgun mic that can be attached to the camera or a smartphone which leads me to a tip of learning that might interest those of you who are thinking of creating video content you really don't need expensive gear to get started it is actually true that you can make high quality videos with the phone you have provided that you have decent lighting and audio third thing i learned upload frequency really doesn't matter all that much when it comes to creating videos instead growth comes from the incremental improvements made to each new video huge disclaimer i know nothing about how the algorithm works for any platform these are just my observations from being a content creator on both youtube and red a chinese content sharing platform i bring this point up because there are a lot of videos talking about that perfect upload frequency and whether uploading monthly weekly or even daily is better and obviously this is something that matters a lot to new content creators i've done a bit of research and testing around this area and in summary i found that the one upload a week frequency by itself does not mean faster growth but rather it comes from improvements i'm forced to make on a weekly basis because i choose to upload once a week does that make sense in other words because i'm uploading weekly i get more opportunities to improve my editing skills cleaner cuts cooler animations nicer b-rolls and those optimizations are what's causing you the viewer to hopefully enjoy my content more watch for longer and that sends a signal to the platform saying okay jeff's content is progressively getting better let's recommend it to more people i wish i knew about this sooner as well because i definitely did stress about the upload frequency for my videos and whether i can maintain the high quality content if i had to push out two or more videos a week let me know down in the comments if you're someone thinking of content creation some of you have reached out saying you might start your own podcast or your own channel i'm not even close to being expert on this but i'm happy to try my best to answer any questions moving on to the second part of this video how uploading one video a week for six months have contributed to my personal growth and how those learnings are surprisingly applicable to my day job as a product marketer first and foremost i learned how to ruthlessly prioritize and when i say ruthless i mean ruthless this came in the form of number one time management and number two being selective when acting upon feedback number one time management i really enjoy my job as a product marketer here at google and so i made the decision very early on that this video hobby of mine wouldn't cut into my core job and right now if i add up the total amount of time i spend on both these activities it would be around 80 hours a week therefore i really don't have that much time to do other things and so i had to cut down or take out completely some of the activities i used to do for example i used to play computer games after work i wouldn't say i'm a huge gamer but i would play asian pirates hearthstone dota 2 dota underlords work after from throne shakiro and halo remastered and a few others but yeah not a huge gamer after i started creating videos i reorganized my timetable and prioritized the things that really mattered to me spending time with my friends family going to the gym and i basically cut down on the time spent on tv and video games to around one hour a week number two being selective about receiving feedback so after i started creating videos my family and some of my friends would give me their opinions about the direction i should take this hobby and while i realized it was important to hear everyone out it was just as if not more important to know when to filter out the noise for example i got some amazing actionable feedback that improved my video content and quality an ex-colleague of mine sent me a message saying my hand movements were really distracting and so i cut down on that and a high school friend of mine sent me some content ideas that really sparked some inspiration on the other hand there were feedback that had i acted upon them would have been time wasters at best and would have negatively impacted the viewer experience at worst for example i was advised to upload my content onto multiple platforms like tick tock and billy billy but i knew from watching established creators that was always best to focus on one to two platforms first before thinking of diversification and there's a common misconception that it is effortless to take one piece of content and upload it onto multiple platforms it's not it takes a lot of work per platform it's like saying the same runner will be equally good at 50 meter sprints and long distance running so the litmus test i go by now is whether the person giving me advice has expertise in that given feel if yes i'll most likely give it more weight if not i'll probably take it with a grain of salt so you might know by now where i'm going with this ruthless prioritization when it comes to time management and knowing which pieces of advice it takes obviously come to play in the business context as well one of the biggest differences i've noticed between marketing and sales is that marketers usually juggle a lot more requests different cross-functional teams that we work with all have their own objectives and they're all hoping to receive some sort of support therefore it is crucial for marketers to identify the areas where the biggest impact can be made and focus the majority of the resources and efforts on those areas and that often means saying no to a lot of great but not as impactful projects similarly marketers are flooded with different pieces of information data reports every day and it's our job to filter out the noise and determine what data can provide us with the meaningful insights we should act upon to give an extremely simple example a 90 product adoption rate by itself means very little if the benchmark for similar campaigns is 60 you know you did a great job but if the benchmark is 95 you should probably figure out what went wrong wow okay that was a pretty long rambly video about my first six months on youtube but i do hope the lessons i've learned are helpful to some of you if you have gone this far please leave some sort of emoji in the comments below like a snowman or christmas tree or something since it's december and just so i know how many of you are still watching i really appreciate each and every single one of you every view every comment i get positive or negative serves as motivation for me to continue creating helpful useful and somewhat entertaining content for you so yeah thank you again and let me know down in the comments if any questions about the topics i covered today and as usual have a great one [Music]