Last updated on June 14th, 2024
I did a collab with YouTube on a study about how powerful the word YOU is in driving more views on YouTube. Then we did a collab on video to talk about the study. Also, here’s the study: Harnessing the Power of YOU in YouTube: a TubeBuddy/VidAction.tv Study. Enjoy!
ANDREW KAN:
Are you aware of the power of you in YouTube? Our good friend Dane is going to tell you some more.
DANE GOLDEN:
Thanks, Andrew, for having me on the TubeBuddy channel, this is so exciting!
I wanted to talk to you about the you in YouTube study that we did, TubeBuddy and VidAction.tv last year. The idea behind the study was super simple, and it was just this: That the most important person in any video is the viewer. That’s you.
Why is the viewer the most important thing on YouTube? And when I say “viewer,” I don’t say audience, I don’t say viewers, I say “viewer,” one single person. Because this is a very personal medium. This isn’t broadcast. Each person is generally watching alone on their phone or on their computer, and they’re making an individual decision about whether to keep watching or not.
I wanted to know could we use math to prove whether the word “you,” the actual word “you,” or some words like it, could keep people watching longer. And if you said the word “you” in the first few seconds, could it keep people watching longer?
I worked with Phil from TubeBuddy, Phil Starkovich, and we did a very intensive study on 30,000 videos. We studied the word “you” and synonyms between zero and five seconds, six and 10 seconds, and 11 and 30 seconds. And what we found was the more you said “you” at the very beginning of the video, the better your video did.
How much better? If you said it in the first five seconds just once, if you said the word you once, you would get 66% more views. Now how does that work? Why is that? Well, my theory is is that if you say the word you it gets people’s attention, they say, “Oh this is for me, I should keep watching. They’re speaking to me. They’re talking to me, they’re looking at me.” And then they watch longer.
As we know, YouTube Watch Time is the main factor in driving views, so saying “you” at the beginning gets me to watch longer, and then because I’ve watched longer, the algorithm sends more views to that video, so other people watch it.
So if you say “you,” you get more views. 66% more views if you say the word “you” once in the first five seconds. Ninety-seven percent more views if you say it twice. And what do I mean by twice?
“Hey, today we’re going to show ‘you’ how to fix ‘your’ car.”
That’s “Show ‘you’ how to fix ‘your’ car.” In this instance, I’m saying the word “your” is essentially the word “you.” So 97% is almost 100%, that means double the views. One hundred percent more, ninety-seven percent more.
If you’re getting paid by ads, the likelihood is that would double your income. Or if you’re a B2B business and you’re looking for leads, that would get you twice as many leads.
Why did we do this? We believe that looking at the camera and saying the word “you” is a lot better than these so called professional videos where you’re interviewed off camera by someone who is a professional producer and you’re not. You don’t feel good on camera, so you just feel more comfortable talking with someone.
Well, there’s a number of tools that you can use now, and we put those in the study, that help amateurs look at the camera. But the important thing is that you should just look at the camera and address the audience with the word “you,” and tell them why this video’s going to be valuable for them.
You can’t just say the word “you, you, you, you, you.” That’s silly and that won’t work. But if you can find a reason in the first two seconds to tell them why this video is important to them and why they should watch, that’s exactly what they’ll do. And we’ve proved it by looking at 30,000 videos. In addition, we also found that if you do it in the six to ten seconds, that’s also helpful. Not as helpful as saying it in the first five seconds. It’s also helpful to say it in the 11 to 30 second range. But not as helpful as saying the word “you” earlier.
We looked at other words like your, Y-O-U-R, Y-O-U’-R-E, Y-O-U’-L-L, Y-O-U’-D, so “you’re,” “you’ll,” “you’d,” “yourself,” “yourselves,” – “y’all” even. And a few others. The important thing to remember is that the video is always about the viewer, it’s never about the subject. It’s just the reverse of what television has told us. It’s about the customer. You have to address them and tell them right away why this video’s important to them, and that’s why this study’s so important.
You need to harness the power of you in YouTube.
Oh, I did want to tell your audience, if it’s okay, that I’m usually not on camera, and clearly I’m not a high production person. You can tell this. But I am going to be offering some tips to people, and I have started a VidAction.tv channel just recently. It’s simple, the URL is @VidActionTV, or you could just look for VidAction.tv YouTube, and you’ll find it. This is really for people who are in business and want to use video content marketing to drive business. What I mean by video content marketing is that if you use your expertise and you give it to the customer, you give it to the viewer, you will earn their loyalty, and their trust and their business.
So check me out on VidAction.tv. Yay YouTube Buddy, love the service! Thanks very much, Andrew.
ANDREW KAN:
Thank you so much, Dane, for all of that useful information.
Let us know in the comments below, were you aware of the power of you in YouTube? Do you like this collaboration format? We’re calling it TubeBuddies, and if you want to see more, we have a playlist on the screen now, so you can check out more collaborations TubeBuddy has done. If you enjoyed this video, please consider subscribing and hitting that bell notification icon to stay up to date on all things TubeBuddy. I’m Andrew Kan from TubeBuddy. And thank you all so much for watching.