I am back. As promised, I’m doing my best to do one new post a week.
This last week I pivoted away from troubleshooting and digging into SEO and all of that. With SEO and the like, you want to give it time to produce results, and before I spend a bit more time there, I need to give the prior changes a moment to sink in.
Instead, I tried to focus a bit more on content strategy.
I published a few key posts that covered my top 20 albums turning 20 in 2023. I noticed that the first one spiked a bit on YouTube (in comparison to other videos I’ve published lately) and had some good traction, whereas the second seem to fall flat.
Here’s that one, if you’re at all curious:
Model What Works
At the same time, I picked up Darral Eves book The YouTube Formula. I’ve been digging into that, and looking into analytics a bit more deeply.
Big “smack my head” moment. I’ve always been a bit resistant to watching what others are doing, consuming similar content, etc. for some strange reason. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one.
In doing that, I have likely missed out on observing trends that might have worked for me, seeing gaps that I could fill in my own content, and getting ideas for elevating everything I do.
Don’t copy what works, model what works.
I broke down and followed a few YouTube Channels that are in my same niche. By doing this I’m hoping to gain some insights I don’t have on my channel simply due to the fact that I currently lack the audience.
I’ll get there eventually. I have faith.
Insights I’m hoping to get include:
- What time do they publish during the day and during the week?
- What kind of content are they creating right now?
- What is their top content of late?
- How have their titles, descriptions, and thumbnails changed over time?
- Who engages with them on a regular basis, what does that engagement look like, and how do they respond?
By analyzing similar channels, I hope to glean some useful information that can help me accelerate the growth of my channel subscribers and my watch hours much more quickly.
Always Be Learning Based
I know this about myself: I am learning based. You can tell through some of the other posts I’ve published here.
One look at the list of books I’ve read over the past few years and podcasts I subscribe to are a clear indicator of this as well. Lately, I’ve pivoted from binging Adam Grant’s Re:Think podcast (which replaced the two from Brene Brown after she stepped away from Podcasting) to listening to Russell Brunson’s The Marketing Secrets Podcast.
Still, I did devour a few of Grant’s books. Just finished Expert Secrets from Russell Brunson as well.
Following the learning based trend, I followed a few YouTube Channels devoted to teaching other content creators how to produce better content, grow their channels more quickly, and gain insights for YouTube analytics, audience targeting, and more.
Already, it helped me write the script for what I feel might be one of my better album reviews yet. That one will be coming soon.
Data Driven Insights
I am really trying to lean into YouTube Analytics so I can start gaining insights into WHEN I should post to leverage my target audience’s viewing time. I started to track when spikes occur in the daily watch counts so I can leverage when my audience is consuming content.
If I can get a solid idea of when they are active, I can start publishing my videos 2 to 3 hours prior to that when I have new content to publish.
Conclusion
A lot of this post has centered around YouTube and what I’m doing there. FensePost has remained at the forefront as well, though. I’m trying to keep a keen eye on not overdoing it, which I came close to at the tail end of last weekend.
It can be hard to find balance.
Rather than overdoing it to produce daily content, I’m going to take a step back and produce a few pieces a week and work at making them better while simultaneously analyzing the data. This should free me up to continue the WordPress tag optimization project I started taking on.
Bonus
In other news, it’s right around the 21st of the month, which means Keller Williams Profit Share! I’ve been working to grow my downline at the company for nearly 10 months, and today I earned my first profit share check.
I pulled in $228.
While it doesn’t seem like much, when added to what I’ve earned from real estate school affiliate accounts, it pretty much offsets everything I’ve spent so far in my 1099 “National Career Consultant” role with the company. This is exciting stuff, and I’m thrilled to continue sharing the KW culture and change the lives of new and existing real estate agents alike!
