Hey, before we jump into the show, I just wanted to take a second and say thank you for listening.
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I just want to say thank you and I appreciate you. Okay, let's jump into the show.
Our views are going down and so what we need to do is get some fresh information,
a fresh perspective and invest in doing a fresh study.
There's a new set of problems so you need a new content strategy to evolve with the world,
with your subscribers, with what's happening on YouTube. So here's a few ideas of how you could
switch things up and try something new. If your YouTube views have been going down,
you're not alone. We've been getting a lot of feedback lately from creators and entrepreneurs
and all different industries that their views are down, their channels kind of in a plateau
and that they are feeling stuck. So in this episode of the Think Media podcast,
I want to share with you three powerful strategies for how to revive your channel,
get views going again and switch things up if you feel like you're in a rut.
Number one, evaluate your YouTube channel with fresh eyes. I was reading a book recently called
decisive and one of the strategies for making better decisions is attain distance before deciding.
What can happen with YouTube is we get so close to the problem. We get so emotionally wrapped up
in our channel that it can be hard to have a sober perspective and clear thinking when it comes
to really looking at the health of our channel. So the first thing I would suggest when seeing a
slump in views on your channel is attaining distance, getting a 30,000 foot perspective and asking
some questions. Could the degrees and views be related to seasonality? Perhaps it's summer and views
go down for a lot of channels during summer. Is it the season of the content of your channel?
Maybe it's going to be higher around January or December around the holidays and maybe it's
going to be lower at other times of the year. What are some of the factors that could be influencing
your views? Attaining distance could also look like asking yourself, what is the landscape of
my niche and topic? How has that changed? For some season creators, you may be have been consistently
creating content year after year, but now your views are going down. Well, chances are there could
be more creators and more options around that type of content today. And as a result, maybe the
views are being distributed across multiple channels. Furthermore, in general, there is just more content
option. It's not about having a direct competitor. It's about realizing that you're competing with
Netflix and Hulu and Max and these other platforms that people can give their attention to.
Additionally, have you done a deep dive audit of your YouTube analytics to see what you can find?
What are the videos and topics that are performing best on your channel? And what videos are not
performing as well? Are you in a rut or a slump of content in general? Have you been repeating
yourself a lot? Maybe creating content formats that are not resonating with your audience?
You want to attain distance first. We want to gather some information. And if possible,
we want to tamp down our emotions a little bit to try to just have an accurate look at the state
of the channel, the state of the market, get that 30,000 foot perspective so that you're not wrapped
up and being too close to the problem. Number two, do a fresh study of YouTube, culture and your
industry. When is the last time that you've went down a research rabbit hole when it comes to your
topic and industry overall? For me, my industry is the creator economy. My industry is video marketing,
my industry is YouTube. For many creators, they haven't actually clearly defined their industry yet
to figure out what publications, events, meetups, workshops, newsletters exist in your industry.
Once you've defined those, when was the last time you actually put some time aside,
attain distance before deciding and invest some time in doing a fresh study, reading about things,
maybe having some conversations with other creators, other peers, perhaps joining a mastermind.
Again, we get in a rut, our views are going down, and so what we need to do is get some fresh
information, a fresh perspective, and invest in doing a fresh study. What's happening in the
wider culture? What are some of the competing topics? Perhaps if at one point in fitness CrossFit was
blowing up, but now it's shrinking down in popularity, could that be because another workout or
type of fitness or trend is blowing up? The conclusion you make may be to still double down on your
channel and your video topic, but at least now you're getting insights because you're doing a broader
study of the wider culture, but even beyond your niche, what's happening in culture,
YouTube overall, what are some of the trends on YouTube? There was the era where vlogs were
really blowing up. Now they're not blowing up as much, and I'm not trying to come to any conclusions
for you. I'm just encouraging you to study to consider what content formats are maybe tired. Could
you ultimately switch things up, which brings us to number three, and that is try something new.
I love this quote from the Military General Sun Soo, and it says this,
Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be
regulated by an infinite variety of circumstances. This is a rich quote, because a lot of content
creators keep repeating the one tactic that worked one time and got them one victory, not realizing
that there is a lot of different variables, a lot of different circumstances. Again, there might
be something happening in politics, maybe we're in an election cycle, maybe a lot of people's
attention has been diverted from a particular type of content. The move could be to just stay
committed to excellence, stay patient, don't give up, stay in business, keep your YouTube channel
alive, because things are seasonal and it'll come back once that trend or cultural season
ultimately ends. But we can never rely on the one tactic or the one content format that worked
yesterday. We need to let our methods be regulated by an infinite variety of circumstances.
So here's a few ideas of how you could switch things up and try something new.
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One example is changing up your content format. Content formats include talking head videos,
vlogging as a style of video. And I don't mean like all of a sudden you start doing a daily vlog.
I mean that instead of just sitting at your desk creating content, you take your camera and you
maybe teach through the subject matter while you're in multiple different locations. You're moving
around. There's maybe a little more story to it, a change of scenery. Another content format could
be teaching in front of a whiteboard. Another content format could be doing almost like a webinar or
a web class and teaching off of a PowerPoint. Another content format could be faceless where you're
not on camera, but you just have a voiceover and there's B-roll throughout the video. Another content
format could be leaning into fair use content where you are narrating and sharing through a story,
but then there's other sound bites and video clips from movies or TV shows or other YouTube videos.
The point is not to go through an exhaustive list of content formats. It's the fact that we can
oftentimes get into a rut where we may be always sitting in the same place, talking head video,
doing the same thing. And if you're doing the same thing and your views are going down, we should
try something new. Another example of this could be pivoting your topic. Now what I'm not suggesting
is that you change your entire channel topic or switch your entire channel niche. That may be
necessary at some point, but when I say pivot your channel topic, I think a better word for that would
be an evolution. How could your content evolve? What is the 2.0 version, the 3.0 version of your
current channel? One story that comes to mind is my friend Judy Travis. Benji Travis is the co-author
of our book YouTube Secrets. The second edition is out now and if you haven't read YouTube Secrets,
that actually would be a very good book to help you. If your views are going down and we'll link
that up. It's on Amazon and Audible in the description down below. But Benji and I co-wrote that book.
Benji's wife, Judy Travis, had a channel originally called its Judy's time and it was a makeup
and beauty channel. And what she did was she started early on in YouTube when there was a lot of
kind of makeup channel starting. But when you think about makeup in general, it was sort of open
ended. There's a lot of niches within that niche. You could of course do and forgive me. I don't
know all the terminology here, but you could do smokey eye tutorials or you could also do foundation
stuff or you could also do hair stuff or you also could do nails. I mean a lot of things around
beauty. And the tagline of her channel was its beauty time with its Judy's time. And ultimately,
that was kind of a clear niche, but it gave her some creative playground internally to figure out
maybe different types of videos that she could do. It didn't have to be all makeup. And one of the
things that evolved on her channel was she found a particular content format that really worked for her.
She's doing makeup tutorials and at the time a lot of people were, but then she started to do
some hair tutorials. And she noticed those resonated even deeper. So she doubled down on hair.
The key here was that Judy's channel was evolving and she was experimenting with different topics
that were still clearly around the same category. It's not like she decided one day to say,
you know what, I'm going to switch to Minecraft gameplay tutorials or something like that. She just
kind of started going away more from makeup, more into hair and continued to evolve on her channel.
What would the next level of evolution for your channel look like? Perhaps you've been talking
about software or tech in some way. And now AI is coming. And so AI and all the AI software
and the different things that are happening there, that would be the evolution that didn't even exist
a couple months ago. Ultimately, it's growing in popularity. And so the pivoting of your topic
would be asking the question, what are my subscribers originally subscribed for? What are they
thinking about right now? What are their new problems? What are the new issues that are keeping
them up at night? The viewers and subscribers on my channel, what's stressing them out? What are
they thinking about now? For every problem they've solved, think about how audiences age and grow
and audiences evolve. Are you evolving with them? Are the problems you used to be solving on your
channel less relevant today? And there's a new set of problems. So you need a new content strategy
to evolve with the world with your subscribers with what's happening on YouTube. And so perhaps
this is an opportunity to launch a new channel or just completely change your channel topic or
niche. And that's a conversation for another day. But my suggestion is that all of us should probably
be evolving and pivoting our topic, honoring our current subscribers, but taking it to the 2.0 or
3.0 version. And actually, I do have some answers for you right now in case you're wondering, Sean,
do I need to actually completely change my niche, completely change my topic? And the third
opportunity would be, yes, to change your channel topic. So you could experiment with different
formats. You could just pivot and evolve your channel. But perhaps maybe this YouTube channel,
this topic is Brandon's course. And it's time to start something entirely new, not just within
your channel, but on let's say a new channel. And I actually have a whole episode on that. It's
on how to know when to quit YouTube. This is a must watch episode. And we'll link it up in the
description down below. Hint, it's not that you would necessarily quit YouTube overall, but it
could mean that you quit the current topic or channel that you're working on. That episode of
the Think Media Podcast shares multiple insights for how to decide if you should stick with your
current topic, double down, perhaps pivot. And it's all based on a book from Seth Godin called
The Dip. It's a lot of people's favorite episode in our library. And so of course, you can check
it out an audio in the show notes or the link to the YouTube video in the show notes as well. Now,
if you also want some more help and your views are going down and you haven't watched our free
on-demand class at thinkmasterclass.com. That is absolutely your next best step. The truth is,
on the other side of you just sucking it up, getting a better strategy and taking massive action,
you can have some breakout videos and get some views. Before you get to abstract and to email
worrying about if you should quit or not, you probably should go watch this class and just put out
a few bangers over the next month following the step by step tips that you're going to learn.
We actually talk about the one strategy we use at Think Media that's generating over 350,000 views
every single day whether we upload new videos or not. And this class is free. It's an hour long
and it's on demand at thinkmasterclass.com. So if you want to check out any of the past episodes on
Think Media, including that episode on how to know when to quit YouTube, that's in the show notes.
If you haven't watched that free on-demand class, that's in the show notes as well or you can type
in the URL thinkmasterclass.com. If you got value out of this episode, it would mean the world to me.
If you like, rate, and review this episode of the Think Media podcast wherever you watch
or listen to it, and I can't wait to connect with you on the next episode.