Last updated on June 14th, 2024
Here’s where I talk with Matt Ballek of VidiSEO about Vidcon 2019 – except I’m talking on a 1950s TV.
Matt Ballek:
I wanted to bring on a special guest of mine, a good friend, and brother in video marketing. I have my friend Dane Golden here, fresh back from Vidcon in L.A. Dane can you hear me? How are you?
Dane Golden:
Matt Ballek, how are you?
Matt Ballek:
I am doing well. Thank you so much for joining us. You’re a little blurry. No, I’m kidding.
Dane Golden:
Oh yes, I’m calling from the ’50s.
Matt Ballek:
Well thank you so much for joining. Dane is the CEO and founder of VidAction.tv, a fantastic URL grab I must say. And then you are a YouTube marketing expert. We share a lot of the same circles, sort of a lot of the same knowledge. And I always love to get your feedback and input, so what can you say to some of the folks here today? What do brands or agencies need to know about YouTube?
Dane Golden:
Yes. Well that’s a big story.
Matt Ballek:
Everything.
Dane Golden:
Should we start somewhere? Could you prompt me a little bit there? That’s a bit big.
Matt Ballek:
Well what’s one thing you think brands get wrong when they look at YouTube or they’re trying to formulate a strategy for a client?
Dane Golden:
Well I can tell you that.
Matt Ballek:
Well there you go.
Dane Golden:
The number one thing brands get wrong is think of only one metric and it’s the wrong metric and that’s views. It’s not that it’s not an important metric it’s just the seventh most important metric. The first one would be knowing what the quality of those views would be and how much were paid in organic. As you know, any video on YouTube can be a mix of paid and organic.
Matt Ballek:
Yeah.
Dane Golden:
And they never split that out unless you own the video. You don’t know what that is.
Matt Ballek:
Right.
Dane Golden:
That’s a helpful metric to know, and you can know that if you own the channel. Audience retention, click through rate, where subscribers are coming, and hey, we’re in the selling business, how about how many conversions did it make?
Matt Ballek:
Yeah, well that’s a big one, because other than views you really see the reports’ ads drop off from there. Where it has got this many views, this many likes, this many shares maybe, but when it comes to how many clicks or sales that usually seems to be lacking from a lot of reporting if you’re getting any on YouTube at all.
Dane Golden:
But there’s ways, as we know, of adding tracking in the videos, below the videos. Understanding how to do the ads better. And then as we talk about all the time, there’s several different parts to the marketing. There is your own channel. There is the influencer marketing. There is the paid. Your four pillars cover the different types of videos. And then within that there’s a number of different approaches. You talked about your push and your pull and your pop. I focus mostly on the pull part of it, which is those tutorial videos that get people searching if they didn’t know your business existed or weren’t thinking about your brand.
Matt Ballek:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dane Golden:
That’s what I gave a talk on at Vidcon, but there was… I think you wanted me talk a little bit more about some of the things we heard at Vidcon or is that what you wanted?
Matt Ballek:
Yeah, because you were just fresh off of the Vidcon circuit.
Dane Golden:
Yes.
Matt Ballek:
And speaking about educational content. So yeah. Were there any big takeaways or things that you got the hot scoop on?
Dane Golden:
Well I think that for people who haven’t attended it, and you know it very well, but who haven’t attended it’s like five conferences in one. There is the one with like all of the kids just being fans of the creators.
Matt Ballek:
Right.
Dane Golden:
Which is fantastic, and that’s the largest numerical part of it, and it’s almost a carnival atmosphere.
Matt Ballek:
Yes.
Dane Golden:
And it’s really exciting. And you don’t really understanding viscerally, but these kids will never watch television until you go there.
Matt Ballek:
Right. Absolutely. Yeah, the celebrity status of some of these YouTube stars. I mean, you’ll see lines around the block to get a picture taken with some of them.
Dane Golden:
Yes, until you see two football fields of people waiting in line to take a photo, a selfie, with a kid who plays his guitar on his couch in England, you never understand it in the same. But you will never know who this kid is ever.
Matt Ballek:
No, I could walk past him on the street I’m sure.
Dane Golden:
Yes, except he has taller hair than everyone else.
Matt Ballek:
Oh.
Dane Golden:
So that’s one part of it. Then there’s the creators, where creators help creators do their channels better. And it’s not just YouTube now. Of course, it’s all of the different video platforms.
Matt Ballek:
Sure.
Dane Golden:
And then there’s the industry. Then there’s like the concert type of stuff, which is a part that everyone can attend. And then there’s the industry mixers. Then there’s the industry conference, which we attend, and that’s big, but it’s also very geeky as well. People want to know about algorithms and what this media company is doing or what this technique is doing. TikTok is hot, you know? What’s TikTok? What do people think the trends are? That type of thing, where there’s more of an approach to ROI, rather than just being monetized as a creator.
Dane Golden:
So the types of stuff that people see on TV or whatever about Vidcon is not the stuff that as business people we’re as focused on usually.
Matt Ballek:
Yeah. Would you say that there was maybe a case study or a brand that was really sort of the bell of the ball at Vidcon?
Dane Golden:
I think of it in terms of sessions really.
Matt Ballek:
Yeah.
Dane Golden:
And what I’m learning about YouTube. I think of little nuggets that I get from each session. And as you know, even though we know these people, we can call them up, I’m still in the front taking notes. Some of the things we learned is about how Google and YouTube are interacting more. One of your clients, Lowes, how to paint a room shows up on Google. People can look this up later. Don’t kill the stream with your bandwidth. So people can look this up later. Just look up how to paint a room on Google. You will see that Lowes has a playable video right in Google. Not on YouTube.
Matt Ballek:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dane Golden:
These are suggested clips. And then there’s the carousel on Google. These YouTube videos are being bubbled up to Google, and so those are some things of interest. We learned more about cracking the algorithm from our other friend named Matt, who has talked about what types of videos are getting more length, more watch time, and then what traffic sources get larger watch time, because if you think about it if you… A lot of people watch just by opening their app or their YouTube.com, right?
Matt Ballek:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dane Golden:
But that’s actually a shorter… It’s getting more traffic, but it’s a shorter watch time. And as we know, longer watch times and greater amounts of traffic is actually the number one thing that gets people watching more and gets those videos ranked more and feeds more views to them.
Matt Ballek:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dane Golden:
But the watch time is actually proving to be very different depending if people come from suggested or search or browse. Browse is simply what is on that homepage. So that’s interesting to me. Derral Eves, our friend, talked about how YouTube is using more AI to understand what’s in a video or a thumbnail.
Matt Ballek:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dane Golden:
As we know, it’s just the fundamentals and everything you talked about just now continue to be absolutely what YouTube needs, but the spice and the variance and what people are actually finding out in data come back to support what you’ve been talking about.
Matt Ballek:
Yeah, well absolutely. It’s less about gaming the system, but working within this new system for discovery.
Dane Golden:
Everyone thinks they’ve got a trick. Hey, has anyone ever tried this? But if you did the paid and you had it coming from Malaysia, wouldn’t that make the videos better and they’d get more views? Actually no. Just promote it more in Malaysia.
Matt Ballek:
Right, oh yeah? Yeah. I’ve heard of that tactic. Pick a country with cheap views. Bump your views up for pennies and then switch it over. But yeah, there’s always little tricks. But yeah, sometimes the shortcut can take a lot longer to get you to where you got to go.
Dane Golden:
But what you talked about, our friend Jeremy did a talk just about thumbnails and all of the things you said about thumbnails. He’s just done more research to back it up. You’ve got to have thick heads. You’ve got to have faces and teeth. You got to be this close. Get up in their grill. One word or two maybe. Yeah.
Matt Ballek:
Oh, well fantastic. Well Dane, I want to thank you so much for joining us live here all the way from Portland.
Dane Golden:
Woo-hoo.
Matt Ballek:
Thank you so much for all the insight and for joining us. Yeah, just thank you so much. Any last words before we close out?
Dane Golden:
San Dimas football rules. I don’t know what to say.
Matt Ballek:
Well thank you so much Dane. We appreciate the insight.
Dane Golden:
All right, thanks.