My lessons learned so far, from a viral video, in my first 6 months.

I understand that my channel might be an exception vs. a rule so take my lessons learned with a grain of salt. In fact, take any advice you ever receive with a grain of salt and weigh it against your own knowledge, and the knowledge of others.

1- QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.

I find personally that if I put more effort into a video, EVENTUALLY it will be rewarded with higher views and more engagement. The lazier it is, the worse. Don’t put out content just for the sake of putting out content. It needs to have a punch. Medicore won’t do, you have to stand out in some way. Cut aggressively. Put out only your best. I’m personally sitting on about 10 videos/songs/ideas that just aren’t quite there yet.

2- ENGAGE VIEWERS.

Talk to them. Like/heart their comments. treat them the way you wish your favorite Youtuber would treat you. Build that audience. Let them know they’re valued. Not by spamming “THANKS SO MUCH” in your video, but by taking the time to actually communicate. They want to talk to you, so talk back.

3- CURATE COMMENTS.

YouTube comments section can be straight up cancerous. It sucks to get some scathing criticism or get trolled. As you grow, it’ll happen more and more. First- Unless you’re Onison, or publishing controversial viewpoints, know that it probably isn’t you. The internet is full of trolls. Thing is, this is YOUR comment section. Trolls can troll where the fuck ever, but your comment section is yours. If there’s a post in there that’s obviously inflammatory, hurtful, or downright shitty, delete that ish. Constructive criticism? Fine. Asshattery? Nope.

4- LET YOUR SUBSCRIBERS/FANS HELP.

They subscribed. They like you. Encourage them to share your work with their friends. They likely run in a social circle that likes the same things they like. So encourage them to pass it on. Sharing is caring. Whether that be on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or (shudder) 9gag.

5- DON’T GIVE UP.

Push yourself out of your comfort zone. Do new things that are related to your niche. Try new things. Combine your niche with something new or interesting. Mash stuff together. Mix it up, baby, you’ve got a stew going. Make it funny, fresh, new, interesting. Keep creating.

6- LUCK

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Just like any other aspect of show business, luck plays a very large part.

Most importantly- if you do manage to somehow capture lightning in a bottle? Don’t hold yourself to that. Don’t compare every video against the one. Let them stand on their own. You can compare what works and what doesn’t, but don’t go “HOW COME MY OTHER VIDEOS DON’T HAVE AS MANY VIEWS AS THIS ONE?” Let that go. It’s the nature of the beast.

Enjoy yourself.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/emu4fx/my_lessons_learned_so_far_from_a_viral_video_in/

7 Tips to get better at playing support in DOTA 2

A few things I’ve learnt from playing as a Support:

1. Don’t feed by showing in lane and greedily farming multiple waves of creeps

(unless you’re creating space worth your death). If it feels like you’re “pushing the lane” you actually could just be a just a greedy pig.

2.If you find an enemy sentry on a high-ground ward spot, don’t kill it: place an observer ward there and beg your team to leave the enemy sentry alone.

3. Full mana during laning stage = major pussy alert.

4. Buy sentries as starting items especially if invis heroes on map.

5. Use observer vision in mid lane to scout out mid lane obs wards.

6. After dying, TP back to lane for XP, but also bear in mind that TP may be needed to save your mid / other lane from GANK.

7. My own: as a support in the offlane, if the enemy messes up their lane and a big push comes down early, it can be a good time to leave the lane and GANK mid. This helps win mid and also gives your offlane core some high XP while the enemy is trying to pull their lane and recover balance.

What you should know about making Thumbnails for YouTube

Thumbnails are the very first thing a potential viewer sees when they’re scrolling through YouTube — and making a good first impression is crucial, or else your video will get scrolled right past.

Why am I saying this?

Because someone asked me to review THIS thumbnail today:

I mean, sure… Content must always be king. It doesn’t matter how good your titles and thumbnails are if your videos suck.

But thumbnails must be perfect. Otherwise, your awesome content won’t be seen.

Let’s take a deep dive into thumbnails:

BAD THUMBNAIL linked above is horrid because it just simply doesn’t work.

It uses too much text to describe the video
Doesn’t have image assets
Black text on a colored background doesn’t create enough contrast to stand out

On the other hand, you have the IM-A-PRO-YOUTUBER-AND-I-THINK-I-KNOW-HOW-TO-MAKE-A-GOOD-THUMBNAIL thumbnail, but guess what? he/she actually doesn’t.

I’m talking about these kind of thumbnails (I just jumped into this one):

Why is it terrible?

First of all, this kind of “thumbnail style” is all over the F**KING FEED. These thumbnails just happened to be “the new meta” or “the new industry standard” that they just don’t stand out anymore.

Take a quick look at it. And I mean like a REALLY QUICK LOOK (as if you were scrolling through the feed).

What happens is that this kind of thumbnail style uses too many visual elements that picture gets lost.

I mean, I had to look at it like 8 secs to understand that there are 4 people but they are the same 2 persons in different positions; I still don’t know where they are becuase of the white clothes and the white background; it’s good to have an emoji accompanying the picture, but it’s completely unnecesary when having already too many visual saturation and when you already have like 3 faces making expressions.

Ok… hope you get the point: sometimes less is more.

Try to keep it simple (but not TOO simple as the first example I showed you). It’s all about finding balance.

So, what is a good thumbnail then?

Well, take this one for example:

It just does a lot of things right:

it uses faces that show emotions
it asks a leading question
it uses bright colors to add contrast
it has an harmonic background

If you are one of those who prefer to go more like the IM-A-PRO-YOUTUBER-AND-I-THINK-I-KNOW-HOW-TO-MAKE-A-GOOD-THUMBNAIL kind of style… it’s ok, but remember to find the perfect balance.

You can walk that path and have a perfect thumbnail. Just look at this example:

To sum up:

Make sure your thumbnail reflects accurately what’s actually in your video
Grab attention. Remember that anyone browsing on YouTube has an almost endless amount of content options.
Focus on faces. Close up shots, especially if the faces you are using convey emotion.
Keep text to the minimum so it’s easy to read at a glance.

Source:  https://www.reddit.com/r/SmallYTChannel/comments/emilf5/something_you_dont_get_about_thumbnails/

The Right Way To Promote Your Videos on YouTube (that actually gets results)

Context: Not claiming to be ‘the expert’, but I gained ~1000 genuine subscribers in under 3 months, and thought this may help a few others here who are just getting started.

“Build it and they will come” – NOPE! ❌

𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐞 it and they will come. ✅

If you upload a new video and wait for our almighty overlord – the YouTube algorithm – to make your video go viral, you’re gonna be waiting a long, long time.

Unless you have thousands of subscribers already, we have to get the initial ball rolling ourselves because we have to PROVE to YouTube the video is good by giving it some data (i.e. people clicking on the video, watching it, and engaging).

Firstly, you need to be advertising each video on your other social media channels, but that does NOT mean just sharing the video link. (I used to do that – big mistake).

For platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, they reallyyyy don’t like you sending their users over to YouTube, so instead write a normal text post that ‘sells’ your video, and attach the video’s thumbnail as an image. As for the actual link, drop that in the comments instead so the algorithm doesn’t restrict your post’s organic reach.

For platforms like Instagram and TikTok, your best bet is giving people a short preview of your video – and in particular, the best / most enticing part of your video! Simply cut ~30 seconds of your YouTube video into a new video file, and upload that natively to the platform you’re on. Make sure you include a call to action that the full video is in your bio link.

But, don’t stop there…

The people who will LOVE your videos have conveniently already got themselves into groups. You just have to go tell them about your content in a non-spammy way.

By this I mean, you join a relevant group/community, provide some real value (without any links) and then eventually share your video with some context of why it may be helpful/interesting for them.

Yes, this takes longer. But it’s 100% worth it.

So where are these groups filled with your ideal viewers?

Forums (search variations of your niche + the word ‘forum’ on google)
Facebook groups
Sub-reddits

And you can no doubt find other communities too with a little searching, but those 3 tend to have some of the best results.

Finally, don’t forget about promoting on YouTube itself. And I don’t mean ads…

If you’re not commenting on other channels in your niche every single day, you’re missing out. I don’t mean commenting ‘sub for sub’ or ‘come check out my videos’ – that’s obviously spam and against the rules. Instead, provide a genuinely useful or funny comment – not only will the creator appreciate that much more, in my experience those generally lead people to check out your channel much more often.

These things are fairly simple, but absolutely make a difference. Best of luck with your channel – you’ve got this!

Source:  https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/emcut8/the_right_way_to_promote_your_videos_that/

YouTube Trap That You Don’t Want to Fall Into

So I fell in the trap of promoting my actual link on Instagram, Facebook and some sub-reddits. It wasn’t spam, it was always relevant to the topic, but unfortunately things like that backfire. What do I mean by backfire? Yes – I might have gotten some subscribers and nice comments, but I also had the other 90% of people click on my video link, watch 30 seconds to 1 minute, and then get off the video – which really lowered my audience retention and average view time, meaning the YouTube algorithm want even consider me in its selection.

By all means, I’m starting to recover from that with my latest uploads. I feel like I deliver interesting content for those who are interested in tech/programming or learning about the life of a Software Engineer – but obviously that’s not everyone niche and fun concept. I could add on top of that, that recently I’ve altered the style of my videos a little bit more towards the cinematography side, and even non-coders and non-tech people told me they enjoyed my content.

Now, someone in the comments mentioned about instead of a link posting your YouTube channel name. It’s a good idea, but only for those that have a distinct channel name. In my case my channel name is “Filip” but you can never find it by typing that in because there are other YouTubers called “Filip” that are more successful than me. In my case you have to type “FilipGrebowski” to find me.

Now onto the best way of promotion I have found so far – INTERACTION. Yes, comment on peoples YouTube videos in your niche, and add valuable feedback to their video. It’s great to get your channel out there and allow others to organically find it, check your content out and and most probably subscribe. There is a but, and it’s a BIG BUT. If you won’t be one of the first few people to comment when the video gets released, it highly lowers your chances for someone to actually see your comment and check your channel out, so commenting on smaller channels is something that’s usually better. I’ve created my YouTube channel not even 2 months ago, and I’m already at 550 subscribers. I try to interact a lot on the platform, and make interesting and engaging content. You have to film with an idea up ahead, how and what will make your users stay on your video and watch it till the end. I’m in the process of refining and altering my style, video editing etc. and its so far working. I already have a 220% increase in user interaction in my latest video.