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Sample: VlogBrothers

Lesson 19 from: Grow Your Business with YouTube

Tara Swiger

Sample: VlogBrothers

Lesson 19 from: Grow Your Business with YouTube

Tara Swiger

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Lesson Info

19. Sample: VlogBrothers

Lesson Info

Sample: VlogBrothers

So we have a sample from VlogBrothers, which is a huge, a huge YouTube channel. It's two brothers that talk to each other. One posts on Tuesday and one posts on Friday. They've been doing it for years. They're very funny and super, like, short and to the point videos about all kinds of topics that they're just interested in. So I want you just to listen to how this opens and how he immediately dives into it. Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday. My new book, Turtles All the Way Down comes out in exactly one week. In a related story, the sound my anxiety makes is: (makes loud high-pitched beeping sound repeatedly) But today, I want to talk about other books. (Tara laughs) Right? So, A) it's funny, so you're like "Oh, it's funny," cause they talk about his anxiety making that noise but also, he just like, "Hey, it's me, this is what we're going to do." Yeah? Totally, like, right, right to the point. And you can see how that just takes away all of your over-talking, you just jump right int...

o it. Now the third way to open is to do a teaser clip. So this requires a little editing. And what I'm talking about here is you just start recording your video. Let's talk about non-verbal communication today. You start talking about non-verbal communication. And then, you go in, because maybe your first thirty seconds wasn't great, or maybe you got interrupted or something so you lost your train of thought. You go in and you take your most smartest thing you said and you clip it and you put it at the front of your video. Now, you keep it where it is, but then you also, you have it at the beginning as a little teaser, right? Just like when you go see a trailer for a movie, they take all the best bits and they show it to you. So that's what you can do in your videos, you can take that and copy it and put it at the beginning of your video. So often, on a a vlog, what they'll do is they'll start with like the most interesting part of the day or some really great conversation or some beautiful vista, they'll put that at the beginning and then they'll start the video. And then you'll see it in the actual situation, when it happened. Does that make sense? So it takes a little bit of editing, but it's a really great way of you not even having to come up with an opener. You just wait till you say something clever and then put that at the beginning of the video. Do we have any questions in the chat room? About openings? Not for openings, people seem quite happy. Excellent. About any of the other stuff? With the tags, titles, descriptions? Are we good? Yeah, with tags, I mean people were asking about changing and editing and, I guess as we said before, you know, the great thing with YouTube is that often you can go back and that you can edit. They'll give you that ability to change keywords. And somebody was also asking just if you had a preference over whether you'd kind of focus more on a title or whether the description, like what you found you got more hits from? Or more, you know, more people seeking out your content from either of those? Well, you can't tell. So you can't tell what, why people chose to watch a video. So, obviously, do both. Like, work on making your title great, to the point, very short, very to the point, and then write two good sentences for your description. So it's not an either/or. So you do them both at the same time, right? When I uploaded my video, you guys saw that I wrote the title and I wrote the description right then so you might as well make them both great right then. And it's worth it to take a little extra time, maybe even before you upload, and make some notes, what is this about, what will people search for? The question that I ask in the workbook will help you identify that. Like what are, there's a workbook page about the title and tags so you can do some brainstorming. Right, what are some possible titles? I do this when I title my blog posts or anything, I will brainstorm three or four and then pick my favorite one and go with that. Cause sometimes your first is just lame. (laughs) And you need to like generate some different ideas. And then the same thing with the description. I'll often write, you know, six or seven sentences about the video and then find the best two and put the best two at the very top. Like she said, those first two are going to be what comes up in the search and what the search actually goes off of. Yeah? Okay. So, I wanted to go to page seven in your workbook. When we talk about, so before we move off the it's-not-about-you thing, even though we are opening and we are talking about you, one of the ways you're going to make it not about you, is to really ask yourself the question, "How are you serving your audience?" Like we talked about who your audience is, we talked about what our questions are, but how can we serve, or what does she want from you? So does she want ideas about how to use your product or service, is she asking you questions about resources that have to do with your product or service? So write down how you can serve her. And then, also, when we are thinking about topics, the question to always ask yourself, before you hit record, is "How can I make this more useful?" So say you get a question from a friend about something fitness related and you're going to record it, your answer, stop and ask, "How can I make it even more useful?" The most useful. Is there a book I can recommend? Is there another YouTube video I could link to? Is there a person I could interview for this that would also help add to it? Because when you are always stopping to think, "How am I going to make this most useful?" for the person, then people are going to become addicted to you. Because you're going to be the place that gives them the answers that they have. And then you can always add things, like you can add a Top Five list or a quiz, or links, or recommendations. And this going to come into play later when we talk about sending people back to your website because you'll put all these awesome extra things you create on your website, and then you'll invite people to go to your website to get it. So when we were looking at the title and descriptions with Jolie, in that long description, I don't know if you guys saw, at the bottom it said, "For a transcript of this podcast, go to taraswiger.com/podcast171. Because, what I do is I take the transcripts from my podcast which are really just the notes I write myself before I record and sometimes I make a worksheet to go along with it because as you you guys can tell, I really love worksheets (laughs) and I put those on my website. So if you're watching on YouTube, I'm sending you back to my website, where oh, I am also selling things. So you can get that transcript and to get that transcript, you have to put your email into the email thing, the little box and then it'll be that transcipt's emailed to you. So at that point, I've collected your email address. So now I'm not relying on you to remember and go watch my YouTube videos on your own, I'm gonna be emailing you updates about my new videos. Cause you've said you're interested. Then you can unsubscribe from that at any time but what it let's me do is actually serve you better by showing up for you more consistently and that's the part of the process of moving them from YouTube on to your own site. If you don't have anything that ever moves them from YouTube, how are you going to sell anything? Like you can't sell on YouTube, you have to send them to your Etsy shop or to your website, or to someplace where you have something for sale. So when you're thinking about your content, you want to also think about what could I add that they would want to go get someplace else.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

YouTube for Business Workbook

Bonus Materials with RSVP

YouTube Resource Guide

Ratings and Reviews

Linda E
 

Tara Swiger was amazing! Clear, concise and so informative. I loved this course! I am so inspired to get going with my You Tube videos and feel confident with her plan of actions. Thank you Creative Live.

Jennie Powell
 

Tara made so many excellent points and has made me have a long list of actionable points to help to grow my YouTube presence! She has such a clarity of expression and a friendly manner that I find very easy to learn from.

Lori Rochino
 

Great video, lots of notes were taken as I got a lot of takeaways to use for my new Youtube channel. Thanks, Tara for a great class!

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