SPI 882: What’s Working on YouTube Right Now

SPI 882: What’s Working on YouTube Right Now

Pat Flynn: About five years ago, I started a brand new YouTube channel from scratch in a topic that I knew nothing about. This was Pokemon, and today we are at 1.76 million subscribers. Exactly 368 days ago. I started a separate YouTube channel. Primarily to do shorts as an experiment. It was a 60 day experiment.

Many of you who’ve been listening to the show know about this because I’ve been keeping you updated, but I haven’t given you an update in a while. That channel has now 1.9 million subscribers, and in the last 48 hours has seen 24.2 million views.

Now that being said, one video has gone viral and it was my one year anniversary video for this daily pack opening channel, opening a pack of Pokemon cards. But initially when it started, it was completely separate. I did not link to it or even show my face. So it was something that has even surpassed the other channel. And of course, my Pat Flynn, AKA the Entrepreneurial YouTube channel is about to cross half a million subscribers, and so I know a few things about YouTube.

Not only that, there are many, several top creators, not just utilizing YouTube as well, to grow their business, build their following, convert a lot of people and get in front of the masses, but they’re also using it to convert into business as well. So in this episode, if you aren’t paying attention to YouTube, you should be and you should be paying attention to what I’m about to say because I’m gonna share with you a number of things, including three algorithm triggers that most people have never heard of, why 2025 is quite different for YouTube creators, and also some strategies that will go way beyond just making sure you nail your YouTube title and thumbnail, which is still important. That sort of click and stick strategy is key, but it’s sort of morphed. And we teach YouTube, in fact, in our course YouTube from Scratch inside of our SPI community. And the title thumbnail component is very, very huge for the click part.

People need to click your video in order to watch it, but also the retention, how to hold people. But there’s more than that and we’re gonna talk about that today. So let’s just dive right in.

Here are the algorithms hidden switches. That have recently happened. Here are three algorithm triggers. This is new insight coming in from a number of different creators who have shared this, and I’ve experienced this as well.

So we all know about watch time. Having people stick around after they click and watch your video is important. If they click to watch a video and then them leave, it kind of signals to YouTube that, okay, the video doesn’t fulfill the promise of the title, so let’s not share it out to anybody else.

So retaining and holding people throughout the video is important. However, it’s not just watch time anymore. That’s important. It’s about creating return viewers, YouTube tracks users who come back and report that content as valued. And of course the engagement within it does play a role. The likability or the liking of that video and also the engagement within it, the comments.

So it’s not just liking the video, it’s how much people are reacting to it one way or another. Sharing it is important as well, but that return viewer is key. Which leads us to some strategies related to this because. Still as much as I beat this drum about making sure that you start your videos not welcoming people back, people are still doing this and they’re not just doing it by saying, oh, welcome back to the channel.

They’re saying things like, oh, if you followed me before, you’ll know about this. If you, and this is in the beginning parts of the video, right? Including that more toward the middle for fans and for people to understand that there’s a culture, there’s a brand, there’s sort of a common language here is great.

But when you start with that, you leave people out and people will leave as a result of that. One thing you could do is go into your audience tab. This is something that is a huge benefit of YouTube, is the number of analytics that you get access to. Use the audience tab to identify the videos that are creating the most return viewers. I’m not gonna show you how to do that here. Obviously if you’re listening to this, that’s impossible, but go to the audience tab. You can go into your advanced analytics and see which videos are bringing the most people back. This also is why you see a lot of YouTubers like Ryan Trehan absolutely exploding right now.

He is very much almost done with his 50 states in 50 days series. This is why series are working really well, and I’m experiencing this myself with my Pokemon channels, both on the long form channel and the short form channel creating videos that are a part of a much larger story. So if you don’t know Ryan Trehan, he’s sort of made famous this idea of a series within long form videos. First with his penny series, taking a penny and sort of bartering and, and upgrading it, trading it all the way up to a house that he then eventually gave away as a part of a Shopify collaboration, which was really, really, really cool and, and put, kind of put him on the map.

And he since continued to do this. Now it’s a lot more work, but when you think about it, this is what brings return viewers back. If you watch the first state, then you’re gonna wanna know what happens in the next 49. If you watch episode 35, because it happens to be your state and you’re curious to see where he goes, well then now you’re going to be curious about where the other states he’s been and what those experiences were like.

So creating a sort of series, something that helps people understand what to come back and expect is really, really key. The siloed videos aren’t working as much anymore. The ones that were more created for search for, you know, random topic A, random topic B, random topic C. No, we want these things to be linear.

They don’t have to be viewed in a linear fashion, but when they connect together, they connect not just for the algorithm and for people to see in their home feed when they come back, the next video in the series, but it makes people expecting the next one or wanting to go back to the earlier versions.

This is really, really key. So get those returning viewers and think about the content that you’re creating before you hit record and how you might be able to do that. For example, I might be able to say that this month of August here is gonna be all about what’s working right now, that’s the theme of this month.

So you’re gonna see next week a what’s working right now in podcasting. You’re gonna see a, what’s working right now in social media, coming up in affiliate marketing and email marketing tips like this that are working today that are different from before is gonna be all what this month is about. So make sure you hit subscribe to this podcast if you haven’t already.

Okay. So let’s go to the next algorithm change here in YouTube. And that is community feedback loops. So what this means is relying on the audience that you’re building to help determine the next steps or the next video or the next part of the story to help guide you where to go next. Do you wanna create a community feedback council, if you will, of fans and critics.

The algorithm pushes videos based on what viewers are already enjoying, not what YouTube wants. So this might mean having a lot more interaction in your community. On YouTube, you have a community tab, and most people are not using it to its fullest capability. To be able to pull people to ask questions, to talk about the latest video together, live streaming is another important component of building community and seeing that community feedback.

I go live every single Monday on Deep Pocket Monster, my Pokemon YouTube channel for longs, and the community interaction is off the hook. It also brings new people in more than it did once before, and it also triggers algorithms to then share videos in my archive to those who are coming to the live stream.

And this was humble beginnings back in 2021, I started going live and back then we were seeing hundreds of viewers per live. The latest live stream we saw, I think concurrently at what point, 8,000 people. Yes. 8,000 people from all around the world. Watching a grown man open a pack of cards that has cartoons on them, but we have a great time.

People are getting sort of a insider look at the realness of the channel in that regard, and that’s why it’s key as well. You build your superfans through live streams and that’s why I would recommend, highly recommend everybody do live streams and create some sort of rhythm for your fans. And it doesn’t have to be thousands.

In fact, that can be really scary up front, but just even having dozens of people watching and building that audience of superfans. Through those interactions, people will start to feel a real connection with you. Because when you think about the macro environment of what’s happening in social and in the world right now, we’re seeing a lot of AI.

We’re seeing a lot of animation. We’re seeing a lot of crap being published into the world right now. A lot of authors are upset because people are pumping out books in the dozens by the week. They’re using AI to do that, and so the realness is going away, and that’s where the realness can come back by you going live, and it’s not just on YouTube as well.

I’d recommend going live on other platforms too, but creating a rhythm behind that. Going live every Monday at 4:30 PM Pacific, which is what the audience knows. They’ve built this into their weekly routine. It’s something that they look forward to every single week. They sit down and have dinner or eat popcorn and watch the live stream every Monday.

There’s also other important things like what to look forward to in those live streams. They could be either Q and As, they could be more structured. And then the last thing I’ll say about that is making sure that you update your thumbnail after the live stream is over. That’s something that we’ve been doing.

So whatever ridiculous card that I end up pulling, we turn that into a thumbnail and that way the live streams actually get a lot of views after, which is really cool. So the replays do extremely well for, again, doing all the things that I just mentioned, making people feel like they’re a part of the community even though they’re not able to interact, live.

Having the live chat be replayable shows that there’s that amount of commotion, excitement, reaction to the things that are happening. People like them there. That make them want to come and make sure they don’t miss it live the next time and or already feel like they’re a part of something. That, and also just the algorithm that then feeds them new videos immediately after it just puts it into your library.

We used to unlist our live streams because we felt it wasn’t a value, but no, they’re absolutely listed after and with a new title and thumbnail too. And then finally, in terms of the algorithm, before we get into more connection with your audience and that sort of revolution that’s happening over there.

This is what we call the Goldilocks zone of content. This is algorithm trigger number three, and this is content that’s neither too broad or too niche. This is something that I’ve mentioned before because earlier in the year I shared some and passed forward some information that I learned at Social Media Marketing World about what’s trending, not just on YouTube, but everywhere.

Viral growth and customers happen when you hit this sort of goldilock zone of not too niche, that it doesn’t spread to the masses, but not too broad that it has nothing to do with what you’re talking about. This is the goldilock zone. This is creating content that still hits the mark for people who aren’t even there for what it is you’re talking about.

And I’m seeing this on my YouTube channels as well, both on the shorts and the longs. So the long videos, for example, tell a story. They go into human psychology. Even though it’s about Pokemon, it’s about much more. It’s about the hunt, it’s about the adventure, it’s about the community. And people are commenting that even though they’re not fans of Pokemon or Collectors of Pokemon, they still enjoy the videos because we hit those psychological marks that are just based on good storytelling tactics, right? So you’ve heard me talk about this over and over and over again, the importance of storytelling that’s going to help you uncover this goldilock zone because you can tell a great story that hits more people, even though it’s about something very niche, right?

So think about that when you create your videos, when you create your content, how can I take this thing that I wanna talk about that is niche, but make it more applicable to more people? Cast a wider net out there. So others, even if they aren’t interested in the niche thing, are still interested in what I’m talking about.

And again, the story is sort of the hack there, right? So a balance between what you wanna create and what your audience wants is important too, but also how to find that sweet spot. And you can use some tools to do this. YouTube has some great search and suggestion tools for what you can create information about or create content and stories about.

So definitely go into those research tabs inside of your YouTube channel. But again, the main thing to think about here is hitting the mark that is not too broad, but also not too niche. Yes, the riches are the niches, but when it comes to YouTube growth, the algorithm, again, that’s what we’re talking about here, viral growth happens when you can reach the masses. And content that is too niche does not do that. Now, does that mean you should never create content that’s super specific? No. You should still create that content, but you should also expect that not to perform very well or grow with the masses, but it can still be a great tool for people who through other videos you create, can find specific things.

So let’s talk about an example. Let’s say you are a fisherman, and I’m trying really hard not to create a phishing YouTube channel because I love fishing. I know videos. I could do very well doing that. I want to enjoy it and not turn it into work. I want to keep it a hobby, but if I were to start a fishing YouTube channel, for example, I would create titles and thumbnails that would appeal to the masses, and I would create stories and tell stories.

For example, maybe do challenges where I try to catch one of every species in a lake within a day, right? Creating something that, whether you’re into fishing or not, there’s still some sort of challenge element within that, and then I tell the story and the ups and downs within that, and how much time is left, et cetera.

However, that’s one bucket that’s sort of fishing challenge bucket. There might be another one where I take regular things that everybody wouldn’t think would be used for bait and see if I could catch a fish with them. I saw somebody the other day on a shorts channel, for example, that inspired this. I follow a lot of fishing channels who took a blade of grass, just right in the grass right next to this pond and caught a fish using the blade of grass as bait. And it made me think, okay, what other common items could I use? Or things that are just around the lake that I could use that aren’t alive that I could use, or maybe they are alive, I could dig into the ground and find some worms or some bugs or something.

But that would make for a really cool video. Maybe it just kind of showcases this randomness that people who are interested in fishing or not would still be curious about. Can you catch a fish with dog poop. I don’t know. That’s kind of extreme, but you see where my head is at. And then the other part about this is the other buckets that are more specific that wouldn’t appeal to the masses.

How to use a spinner bait, how to fish with a jig fish. These are all things that are interesting to me that I would wanna create videos about but aren’t going to appeal to the masses, but may appeal to those who do find me from the other videos who wanna dig in a little bit deeper and go a little bit more specific.

If you have software, for example, in your niche that you wanna share information about, there’s likely videos that could appeal to the masses related to that, and videos that would appeal to those who wanna go deeper with that, that wouldn’t at all ever go viral. So case in point, I created a video at one point a few years back about Descript.

Descript is a really cool video and audio editor tool. It uses AI to help make that a lot faster and a lot more streamlined, and I created a video that did decently well, but it was about Descript and it was about editing and cutting the editing time, so very specific to a specific group of people.

But then I created a video, again, highlighting a particular tool within Descript, but it was formatted for the masses. It said, this AI tool copies my voice exactly. Now whether you’re interested in Descript or not, it doesn’t matter. You’re curious about that. And the thumbnail was me sort of acting surprised and it did very well.

It saw 1.1 million views within 10 months, and that also enabled me to build a relationship with Descript and become an affiliate for them and do very well and earn lots of money as a result of the exposure that they got from the masses video. But the ones that actually perform very well with the affiliate marketing are the specific videos that the masses video drove people to, to then see and then get fed the other ones.

So you see how this is working. You don’t have to stick with just one. As long as when you’re creating a video, you’re like, okay, this is a video that’s for specifically people who are in this niche already. I realize that I’m gonna talk to them like that. Not all of your videos have to be connected, but the ones that, I mean, again, you could see there’s different algorithm strategies here in one bucket.

For example, you could have the series that speaks to the masses in another bucket are the specifics that speak to these people who are in there for that niche. And it’s okay that all those videos don’t relate, but having some videos relate is key. Having some videos that are more specific if you want that is great. And that’s that.

I hope you’re getting some value in here. As you can see in this what’s working on blank month, we’re gonna get specific like this for each of these things that we’re gonna talk about. So make sure you hit subscribe if you haven’t already. Okay, next, let’s talk about connection, the connection strategy, revolution.

A number of creators are talking about this, and I’m not gonna talk about it too much because some of the tips based on the algorithm do cover a lot of this already. For example, not treating your videos independently like islands. You want to connect these things, create a chain, right? So let’s just dive into this a little bit more.

This is going to be a playlist strategy, so the playlist, putting videos that are in the same, not just ballpark, but literally in the same series, one leads to the next, leads to the next should absolutely be in a playlist, right? You want to have some similar titling within each of those so that not just people recognize that, for example, in my shorts channel, it’s should I open it or should I keep it sealed?

Episode 366, should I open it or should I keep it sealed? Episode 367. That’s great for people to find that, and it helps with those keywords that, yes, still get some viewers through keywords and search, but it helps the algorithm know that these things should absolutely connect and having numbers in there and perhaps some symbols or whatever work really, really well.

The next thing to do with the playlist is if you ever share it, if you ever share that playlist, copy the playlist URL. And just try this. So copy the playlist code, add the and symbol, the ampersand symbol, and paste that after any YouTube URL that you have. So when you share an individual video, what this does is it allows you to share that video now within the playlist.

So this forces people to when they are watching this, and if hopefully again, you do a great job of holding people all the way through, it will automatically play the next video in the series. Because they’re in that now playlist player within YouTube. This is a hack that I’ve seen a lot of people do. I need to do a better job of this, but I don’t necessarily share the individual videos as much as I do.

But in the Pokemon space, I don’t have email lists and things like that to do that. If you have an email list and you’re sharing these videos, share it with the playlist code and then add the and symbol after any regular YouTube URL. I don’t know if I’m explaining that it’s, it’s hard to do it without the visuals, but what that does is, again, it allows people to, when they play that video, they’re gonna watch it in a very similar way.

It forces your other videos and brings returning viewers right to those next videos, just like we talked about. So that, that’s number one. And then cross pollinating videos naturally in your content. This is something that we do a good job at and it’s much, much easier when you, again, have a series that you’re doing that spans across several videos because you can reference those older videos.

You can show little clips from those older ones in the new ones, and then in an info card or in the end screen. And of course, definitely in the description you can link back to them. And what this does is the cross-pollination again, helps feed the algorithm, helps show people these videos connect to each other, and also just the psychology of like, Hey, you’re a part of this sort of bigger story now for your audience.

It makes them want to kind of keep going with it. So I’m not gonna spend too much time, but this is again, just leaning into the connection part of this a little bit more. So let’s talk about some more advanced optimization strategies here for your YouTube videos too. This is something that is working really well, and it’s adding a year inside of your title.

I think it was Vanessa Lau, or it could have been Dan the Creator. Yes, Dan the creator. Two amazing YouTube creators who are sharing a lot of these kinds of tactics more ongoing. But I just am using ones that I remember that I also use as well that work really well on YouTube right now. So Dan the creator, Vanessa Lau, make sure make sure you follow up on YouTube, but adding the current year to title, knowing that you’re gonna go back and remove that after the year is over is key.

We’ve done this with a lot of our podcasting tutorials, a lot of our YouTube tutorials on the Pat Flynn YouTube channel. And it’s just a small trick that makes people see when they see these titles. Remember optimizing titles is key. When they see that, they’re like, oh, it is 2025, so this video is relevant, it is new.

I will click it. There are some bulk tools like Vid IQ that can help you do this in bulk. If you need to go back to different videos and do this much faster, it can be kind of a pain to go back and re-edit certain things, but this is how you take things where if you say in 2025, you can then edit those things out and say.

Today or recently, or what have you, once the year is over. There’s also the idea of using analytics to identify opportunity videos. These are sort of salvageable videos, if you wanna call it that. High watch time, low click-through rate. So look for videos that have a high watch time and low click-through rate.

You’re gonna find other videos that have a high click-through rate and low watch time. That’s not good either. That means that those are hard to salvage because you know, you can’t go back and add retention strategies inside of those videos. That’s just lessons for newer videos. But going back again into your analytics, identifying opportunity, videos that have a high watch time and low click through rate, that essentially means.

People aren’t clicking through, but when they do, they do watch all the way through. So let’s find a way to get them to click. That means you can change and update the title and or thumbnail. You can use split testing tools like the AB testing tools for thumbnails inside of YouTube to try to salvage that and don’t make incremental changes in your thumbnails.

This is such a pet peeve of mine, where it’s like, oh, I’m just gonna change the color of the sky and see which one. Yes. Certain creators who are at a much higher level are getting so much data that that little tiny change can make a difference. But for smaller creators, and especially newer creators on YouTube, you wanna make two completely different thumbnails using best practices, of course, in each but completely different, that’s gonna give you the best results to just quickly help you find out which one works better, and then you can micro test after that in different iterations.

But that’s really, really important, right? So the good news is we’re gonna hopefully see soon, there is chatter throughout the YouTube grapevine that we are also gonna see title AB testing within YouTube as well, which is huge. So we’ll be able to test titles and thumbnails within YouTube, get data to know which works better, and then hone in those things over time.

So that’s a great strategy that’s working too. And then finally, repurposing. We’re not done yet. We got a few more things to talk about, but as far as like optimization strategies, repurposing old content, so re-uploading old videos strategically, not necessarily all the way through. I like the idea of reusing older content, not just like moments from older videos that make sense for a series like I just talked about earlier, but rather like a majority of the older videos, but not just re-uploading them raw.

Right? Updating them a little bit, maybe even adding commentary on top of it. A great strategy that I’ve seen a lot of creators do is take their older videos that are outdated and actually react to their older videos and do a video. Similar to this podcast episode, here are the things that don’t work anymore.

Here are the things that are still working. Almost you going, Hey, creator, this is a, or Hey, viewer. This is a video that I published once before. It’s. Needs updated, but some of it still works, so let me help guide you through it so you can stay up to date. That can work too. You can even take parts of videos and the ones that are still relevant across several videos and then create a newer video.

That is sort of a compilation as well. Stitching multiple videos into like a, a grand masterclass as well is something that I’ve seen work well. This is something that we kind of did on the Pokemon Channel that worked really well. We had a series that spanned across eight videos. It took about six months to do.

It was very successful, and we experimented in at the end of 2024. I said, let’s just put all of them together in one video. Let’s remove the sort of transitions in the middle where I say, Hey, next week’s video has this. Let’s remove that. Let’s just like go right into it and create one long story. This was a four hour video.

I was actually so worried that it was gonna do something bad to the channel because it was 98%, literally the same amount of content or the same exact content that was already published in multiple videos prior to that. And what was really cool, it saw millions of views. I think it has over 4 million views.

It’s accounted for over, I think, 25 to $30,000 in additional revenue just from using the same exact videos, but in a much longer video. So if you can create a masterclass, and yes, you can come in in between each one if you wanted to create some sort of glue between them, adding some sort of additional bonus ending or something new that people have to get to the end for is great.

We did that in that video, which is what held people through. Really, really good. Really, really smart, and you’re not creating anything new. You’re using older stuff, you know, again, I’m not just talking the talk here and using these strategies just to point forward to you. We’re actually doing this ourselves and seeing really, really well.

Okay, so here are a few things to stop doing before we finish up. Yes, this podcast episode was about what to do and what is working, but we need to stop the things that are not working right. The stop and start exercise. So we talked about what to start doing now we’re gonna talk about what to stop doing.

Stop asking for likes and subscribes without context. Do not do that in the beginning of your videos. It’s like asking people for something before you even earned it, right? My strategy is make the video so good and put it in a series that people will wanna make sure they don’t miss. That earns the subscription.

The subscription there. Liking the asking for a like is fine. Don’t do that until you’ve earned it. Stop telling friends and family about your channel. This is where sharing your channel with already existing audiences, like many people will start a new channel and say, Hey, let’s kickstart this. Here’s my new channel.

Go and subscribe. It’s like, well. You are confusing the algorithm because people will come to subscribe because you told them to, but then when you come out with new videos, those people, well, they didn’t go to your channel because they watched your video and they loved it. They went there because you told them to, and they’re gonna be less likely to watch your videos than a person who is literally fed that video on their homepage.

Because YouTube knows them and their view, viewing habits and their history. This is why the Shorts channel did very well, despite not linking to it from an already existing successful channel. It’s because the algorithm did the work to find the right people. And it’s true. Even though I had a channel already about Pokemon, not a lot of those people probably would’ve been favorable to the Shorts channel.

Because it is a different style video. It actually targets a different audience, even though it’s about something similar, right? And then the last thing, and this is something that I’ve had to learn over time, is stop giving your audience what people call whiplash content. What that means is in one video you were over here and then in another video you talk about something completely different over there, and then you go, boom, back and forth, back and forth, that you’re giving people whiplash and they’re just not able to understand why they need to subscribe.

What’s in it for them? You’re mixing messages. Get honed in plan ahead is really the key here. Look at your content calendar and think about the next five to 10 videos that you’re gonna do across the next few months. See how they might connect together, and if they don’t, well then you’re gonna whiplash them.

You’re creating these little islands that have nothing to do with each other versus here’s this connector point between them all that would garner a subscription, but also excitement for the next video. And of course, triggering those algorithms that are really important. So yeah, that’s what’s working on YouTube right now and go ahead and implement those things.

I’m doing these things. If you wanna check out this stuff in action, you can find Deep Pocket Monster if you want, on YouTube and see it in action and see how these stories are told because they’re working and working very, very well. So make sure you subscribe because next week we’re gonna talk about what’s working in the world of podcasting very, very well.

And you’re not gonna wanna miss that too. And that does connect to video a little bit, especially if you’re doing video podcast too. We’ll talk about that as well. But thank you so much. I appreciate you, and here’s to you and your success on YouTube and all the other platforms you’re on as well. Good luck.