Day 50 | Video #50 | 06/06/22
For those of you who do not know, I am on a creator’s journey of daily original uploads to YouTube. I have two main goals:
Provide value to my audience in the form of little stories
Build a community of creators to share, collaborate, and inspire
This is my first blog after daily uploads to YouTube. It is fair to say that it has been a ton of work but that work has also been rewarding. Rewarding not in a monetary way, more on that later , but in a creative way. I get the privilege of sitting at the head of a ship, navigating the endless sea of YouTube, and picking up subscribers stranded looking for a community. I know that all sounds ridiculous but YouTube is much like the ocean. It has the most uploaded content, largest creator fund, and is the most competitive. Also completing the analogy, content from most other mediums (Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, etc) eventually swim its way into the YouTube archives too. Where would you go to watch old Vine compilations or 1990’s MTV clips? That means if YouTube is the ocean then this blog is about my first 50 days since leaving shore.
To give you a little back story, I posted a YouTube Short everyday for the last 50 days. After some self reflection here are my key takeaways.
Consistency is key
In the world of videography, Story is king. On the Ocean of YouTube, consistency is key. Consistency is rewarded with accelerated creative growth and measurable community growth. If you are starting a new channel in 2022 like I did then posting on a rigorous schedule and understanding your channel’s analytics is key to optimizing content for success.
I say this from experience. I started a brand new channel with “0” subscribers and over 50 days of routine uploads I was able to achieve 87 followers and over 50,000 views!
(04/18/22 - 06/06/22)
This may not seem like a lot and in the grand scheme of things it is not. However, this is the most growth I've ever received for my video content. More importantly it is a bonafide method for measuring traction. Traction is everything at this stage. The more I post, the more I study, and learn to replicate what interests my audience. Frequent uploads are another point in the graph and are a learning opportunity. I have learned more about YouTube analytics, and storytelling in the past 50 days than in the last 5 five years combined. This is because I have more “at bats” posting daily than if I only posted weekly. Watching the lines go up and down with each video gives me energy to keep going. So don’t be afraid to delve into those YouTube analytics.
Key Takeaway:
Consistency is key to growth. Analytics are a must have to gain insights on how to grow.
Posting is easy, focus is difficult
Creating the script for a 60 second or even better 15-30 second video is pretty easy. Editing the footage to create the 15-60 second video is also easy. iPhone cameras are everywhere, rock steady, and have great image quality. Also, iMovie is literally free to use and there are tons of resources on how to use the software. There are very minimal technical barriers of entry for getting started. However, there are many non-technical barriers that may prevent you from creating daily. Yes, we all have lives. Yes, we all do other things like working a job, caring for a family, or having social time with friends. From my experience, maintaining the personal passion to create, will to start another video and the discipline to finish it everyday are the difficult barriers. These are difficult because everything is changing. Our environment is changing. Our moods are changing.
Daily uploading to any platform is not a test of creativity. It is a test of will. What are you willing to sacrifice to maintain focus? This naturally made me audit my life, especially my diet, sleep, and “free time”. Controlling my environment and my personal mood are huge.
Key Takeaway:
Maintaining the energy and time to create everyday is a test of how you control your environment, diet, and sleep.
Execution over Ideas
From my experience and many other creators would agree: Mediocre Ideas with an exceptional execution usually turn out better on YouTube than exceptional ideas with a mediocre execution. This topic hits me deep. I have spent hours on a video that I thought was going to be a banger. Editing scripts, sequencing the video clips, and recording flawless audio just to create a video with fizzling performance. Here is a great example about how to prepare seeds to grow in a home garden. This video had a catchy introduction, fast paced shot sequence, and actually included my grandma doing funny things throughout the video. It took about 4 hours just to edit and post. It was an absolute box office flop.
However, on the other hand, I may rush and throw something together just to have it explode all over my analytics page. Usually this is because I am starting with a great idea but the execution was bad. Usually this is in the form of misreading my audience. Here are a couple of examples.
The most viewed video I created to date is a video about my grandmother's adventures in Africa. “My grandma is an Elephant” is a movie where I fix a wooden elephant stool and to a voice over story about her. I would consider this a mediocre idea at best. I am not doing anything super exciting and the video quality is pretty “meh”. But it has a great title and the story triggered positive emotions in my mostly 27-40 year old millennial Woman audience.
As a final example. This video was literally 00:07 seconds of nonsense. In fact it was actually a low quality BLOOPER from another video series I was creating about setting up home Wi-Fi. However, the short punchline was enough to mildly entertain my audience and tickle all the right YouTube metrics for suggested videos.
The video had a slow start and then picked up traction. This was because it was (accidentally) executed correctly for an audience that watches my channel sometimes (GenZ Males).
Key Takeaway:
Mediocre Ideas with an exceptional execution usually turn out better on Youtube than exceptional ideas with a mediocre execution. Of course strive to achieve both but that's unrealistic for every video.
In Conclusion, consistency is a key but a test of your will. And don't get discouraged if you are caught in the doldrums without a good idea because some of our worst ideas become our best performances. I need to edit tonight's video so I am signing out of the captain's log.
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