Jeff Sieh: [00:00:00] Welcome to Social Media News Live I’m Jeff Sieh.

Grace Duffy: I’m Grace Duffy. And this is the show that keeps you up to date in the world of social media.

Jeff Sieh: Are you having trouble getting your videos to rank on YouTube? Are you doing everything right? And still not seeing the results you want? We invited expert video creator and YouTube coach, Shelley, Nathan to join us. On this week’s show to troubleshoot your YouTube strategy. We’re going to be talking about the big payout.

Also that YouTube is going to be offering podcasters to help them expand their broadcast to video, and also how YouTube shorts are measuring up to TikTok. Shelly, thank you so much for joining us today.

Shelly Nathan: I’m doing awesome. It’s a little early in the morning. I’m excited, but I wouldn’t get up for very many people, but you are one of them.

Jeff Sieh: Well, thank you so much. I think that was know just was like, you got to make sure that she can do it because she’s got stuff going on. So I’m glad that you did it. So if you don’t know who Shelly Nathan is, you really should. Sh you might [00:01:00] know her as Shelly saves the day. Seattle-based video creator and YouTube coach.

She is passionate about helping creators learn how to share what they love with the world through video and make money doing it. She is the co-host of the video marketing value podcast to watch that last night and very cool. And she’s also the creator of I movie made easy, a comprehensive online video editing course and was a senior video managed senior video manager and product expert at two buddy.

So thank you, Shelley. Once again for being.

Shelly Nathan: That’s quite the intro out. Oh, can I live up to that? We’ll see. We’ll see.

Jeff Sieh: We’ll see what happens. By the way, I want to let you guys know that today’s show is brought to you by our friends over at Ecamm and you can find out more about them at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm

There’s some big news today. So here’s what happened. Their new version three point 10 dropped. And there’s some, a couple of really cool things that came out with this number one, virtual microphone. So now what you can do, if you’re doing [00:02:00] zoom and you can use Ecamm, you’re using their virtual camera, you can now use your microphone.

So you could bring in special effects and all sorts of cool stuff. Really big update for Ecamm. You can also now have a Mac OS shortcut. So what happens like if I start. I can turn on my lights automatically and I can go to do not disturb. So that is really cool. And also they have a ton of different things that you can do with these new overlay enhancements.

So if you haven’t checked out econ for a while, make sure you go to socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm. That’s Ecamm brand new release today. Go, if you haven’t go update because I’m telling you there’s some cool stuff. So thanks to Ecamm.

Shelly Nathan: Yeah. That’s still a squiggle. Love my school. Vols

Grace Duffy: play around with it a little bit. Yeah.

Shelly Nathan: The virtual mic thing is actually the coolest thing. Yeah. So

Jeff Sieh: Gary goes of Gary Stockton, our friends watching over on YouTube. He goes virtual microphone. Holy decibels, Batman. Yeah. Gary, go [00:03:00] check it out. He’s a big Ecamm user. He’s also a musician, so I’m sure that’s gonna come in handy to him.

Very cool. All right, great. Just start picking

Grace Duffy: it. We can start piping in our applause, Jeff, on our little pat on the back, right?

Jeff Sieh: Yeah. That’s what we need to do. Yes. We need to do that. Grace, take us away. Are we talking about this strategy for YouTube? So I’ll let you kick off this first section.

Grace Duffy: Yep. So level set. We’re going to start this conversation off with knowing that YouTube is mandatory for your marketing. If you’ve got a product. You’re building a personal brand. Hey, it’s conference season right now. And for those of you that are looking to speak or present, or be part of these conferences that have the Social Media conferences that have been launching or are launching, starting this coming week, we, a lot of times you only want to go on there and.

Yeah. When you’re looking to see if like you want, you bet your speakers, it’s a good way to present yourself and also to position yourself as an expert in your industry and has also [00:04:00] given that video, what, whether it’s on YouTube, whatever platform is absolutely necessary. We also know that YouTube is connected to Google.

Of course, the best search engine in the word world. No one wants to sit on forums to find out how to do something. Now, email is too slow. If you want to show up for your customers and your clients, and also build your business a video, is it, and also it’s not too late to get started. That’s a question we get all the time.

It is not too late to start it. And guess what? All that video beginner content, it can also be found on YouTube, but today we invited. On because she is an expert video creator and a YouTube coach. And we wanted to talk to her about how to troubleshoot your YouTube channel. If your current strategy is not working for you.

I wanted to start this off with saying that you’re a potential client. You are a video coach. And so let’s say that I’m a potential. And I’m coming to you as a YouTube coach. And [00:05:00] I have a great niche. I have a great product. Let’s say that I, I’ve already developed my brand voice. I know exactly who I want to reach.

And I find myself at this point where I’m doing everything right. I’ve watched all the videos. I’ve watched all the shows, but it’s not quite doing what I want it to do. YouTube is not meeting my YouTube strategy. Isn’t quite meeting my marketing strategies. Let’s say that someone is coming to you as a potential client.

What is the first question you ask them when they come to you asking for, to do a video.

Question To Ask Potential Clients

Shelly Nathan: Ooh. Okay. So one of the first things that I would ask of any of the people coming to work with me that, there’s two big ones is like, who are you talking to? So hopefully you’ve ideally put out your ideal client avatar and you know who they are, not only their demographics, but their psychographics, what really makes them tick?

What keeps them up at night? Where are they shopping? What kind of questions they’re asking? And then to the next one [00:06:00] is really. Like, how do you define success? Because some people are erroneously doing it by, did I get enough views instead of did I book a client? Did I make the phone ring is my, appointment book, full there’s, different levels and measures of success.

And a lot of the time when you see someone who’s I don’t think my channel is doing all it should. And I’m like maybe it’s because you have the wrong success metric started and you’re not working backwards from that. So those are the two that I would say.

Jeff Sieh: So a real quick question. So there’s, I’m sure this, there is a ton of YouTube experts out there with a lot of expert channels.

So let’s say I’m a brand and I want some help with my YouTube channel. What do I look for in an expert? Do I go, just buy, they have a big YouTube channel or they’ve worked with like big brands, like Coca-Cola what do I look for? When I wanting to find an expert to help me with my current.

What Do I Look For In A YouTube Expert??

Shelly Nathan: I think that [00:07:00] a lot of where people start is do they have a big social media following somewhere? Which I think is wrong because I don’t know if you’ve ever been inside of your Instagram, DM’s or anything like that, but you can buy a social media following for about 20 or $30. And it doesn’t mean that the engagement ratio is correct.

It doesn’t mean that they’ve actually done work. And what’s interesting about that is there’s a lot of fake it And fake gurus out there. I’m just going to put that, I’m going to put that out there, and how you can start to spot some of the. Real ones versus others. Who have they worked with? What channels have they helped grow?

Do they have any certifications? Are they going to industry leading events? How do they keep up with education? Are they still teaching you things like you really should be doing hours and hours of keyword research to make sure your green tags are ranking on YouTube. And we all know that it isn’t the most important thing.

Like how do you really [00:08:00] defined because it’s really easy for some people to sell that as a course and be like, look at us, we’re going to get all these green ranking tags when it’s really just oh, did you do a variation of how you spell it? Did you use a long-tail keyword? It’s not really It’s not really the most And interestingly enough, some of the best YouTube coaches that I’ve worked with, they don’t even have a YouTube channel because they’re so busy in the businesses of other people’s YouTube channels behind the scenes. So you would never know. And the only way that you hear about them is through word of mouth of people.

Who’ve actually worked with them. So I think if you can get testimonials from people, who’ve actually worked with them. If you know that you’ve seen them talking on stages, Places like, vid summit if you see that they’re actually in there and doing the work, then you know, that’s a person you want to be working with.

Jeff Sieh: So you mentioned like certifications and stuff like that. Is there like a YouTube academy that you can go through and is there any sort of certification or is it all just [00:09:00] other companies have their own certification or what.

YouTube Certification Program

Shelly Nathan: Interestingly enough, there was a YouTube certification program.

And so I was YouTube certified in a couple of different categories, channel growth, content strategy. And they have since discontinued the program or actually changed it in such a way where the way that it worked is you would take a certain amount of online classes and then you would take a quiz. It was a timed quiz and you had to get a certain score to.

Receive a certificate in one specific area. And then you could use this little badge that said YouTube certified. And not only that, the certifications technically had an expiration date on them of about a year or two, and then you would have to go in and recertify. So I was going into recertify for a couple of these certifications.

At the time they had four, they don’t even offer these categories anymore. Interesting, but they actually changed the rules. So now the only way that you can get into the program is to have a partner channel manager who is. [00:10:00] In the roles you themselves, and you only are assigned a partner manager once you are above a hundred thousand and you’re part of the like content ID system.

So it’s now much, much harder than it was before. And some companies used to be required to also do it, to be listed in a directory, but they have. Since they’ve deprecated, this kind of program, it’s really hard. So also anyone out there who’s saying that they’re YouTube certified, which it is still a thing, but technically their certifications expire.

So if they’re not willing to tell you that their certifications are expired, because some people I know will be like I’m certified. And I’m like, yeah, but technically it does have an expiration date. So if they don’t want to admit that to you, then maybe they’re just not very honest. And maybe that’s also another indicator that you don’t really want to work with them.

Yeah. But there was an entire program. Yes.

Jeff Sieh: You need to do the step test. The sniff test always works for me. So let’s say, okay, we, we’ve done our due diligence. We’ve looked and saw that Shelly has worked with [00:11:00] all these great people. She does all this stuff, her bonafides checkout, what are as a client?

What are some questions I need to ask you? Cause we’ve all had, people we’ve done business with when we have those type of clients, then we have the really good clients who know the questions to ask and are on, right there with us working through the problem.

What do you want your clients to ask you when they first.

What Do You Want Potential Clients To Ask You?

Shelly Nathan: So some things that I would want to be asked is how are you going to support. And do you have any experience in this particular niche? Because there are some certain principles when it comes to YouTube that are universal across everything.

And then there are some that are maybe specific to a niche. So if I’m in like real estate, there are people that I would maybe trust to look at for real estate YouTube advice. I may not go to someone who’s doing something. When it comes to beauty and lifestyle as much, there are still some general principles that they can apply.

But if I really wanted success, I might actually go after someone who’s [00:12:00] modeling it. So I might say do you have any experience with working in this field or how do you think you would work with someone who’s in this field? That would be an important question for me as a person. Who’s about. Spend money, because if it’s also something, it doesn’t align personally Hey, I want to help you and your all about veganism.

And I love barbecue. That’s not a great, even if the food channel, all of a sudden that’s just maybe not going to be the best advice. So I would be like, Maybe our values should align a little bit also, like what kind of access do I have to you? Is this going to be, something where it’s only email support or what are the hours in which I can contact you?

Or like what kind of timeframe should I expect a response back or what kind of measurements, should we have in place to make sure that we’re meeting these goals? Because it’s one thing, if it’s just consultations and I tell you to do something and you do it or not, doesn’t matter how your money or is it coaching where you actually helped me [00:13:00] discover the answer.

We make changes. We come back and check on those changes and we go through the iterations of, was it successful? Did it do what we wanted to do? How do we move forward from

Jeff Sieh: here? Gotcha. Funny story. I think it’s important. You mentioned having the right niche of, expert. You’re going to, I had somebody reach out to me on, because on Pinterest, she was a, an instant.

Influencer. And she went me help with her Pinterest and she was a bikini model. And I’m like, have you seen my profile picture? Because just don’t think that. And I’ve been married for 26 years, so I’m very smart on that stuff. So I had to pass on that one. But yeah, I was like, I don’t think that’s going to be a good fit because you

Shelly Nathan: want to have the right fit.

Yeah, not raving in a bad way, but raving in a great way. Like I had such a great time working with Jeff or Grace, they were the bees knees, the dogs, tuxedos, the cat’s pajamas, all these things. They tell everyone, right? Because that is the best advertising is when you’re like, oh my gosh, you have to work with this person.

You have to be top of mind when someone says, oh, [00:14:00] Help with Pinterest or, whatever else it is. Absolutely.

Jeff Sieh: Yeah. In the mankini photos, just, they didn’t do well on Pinterest. Anyway, didn’t do it. They did not go viral. Like I thought. So anyway, you had a question.

Shelly Nathan: Okay, Shelley.

Grace Duffy: So when you are conducting an objective YouTube channel review, and we’ve already talked about some of the areas you examine and where do you even begin?

There was a comment in one of our chats here talking about how people know what they need to do. We’ve gone to the seminars, gone to talk, cause we know exactly what we need to do, there’s sometimes there is some difficulty in. Started or even knowing where to start. So my question to you is how many, like what tests or experiments do you initially set up within the first 14 days?

So first 30 days. And as you are doing, as you start the channel review with with a potential.

First 30 Day Optimizing YouTube

Shelly Nathan: Yeah. So it’s [00:15:00] interesting. The first few days, and everything are just a little bit nerve wracking. And so when I want to work with someone and they’re a brand new channel, I usually am an a blow their mind because I won’t let them publish a video for like at least a week or two when they really need to drill.

Who are you helping? What are their problems? What questions do they have? What are the top 10 questions when it comes to your business? What are people asking when they’re thinking about your product, those videos, you have to start first. Then we go a step further and we’re like, and you’re not going to be able to hard pitch self.

Right away in the first video, it has to be relationship-based. It has to be making deposits in a piggy bank before you asked her withdrawal and it’s difficult. And then they’re like, but now I have to make a video and I’m like, oh no. You have to make three videos. Cause because we’re not going to put out one video and then just have it be like, let’s Dole another out in a week.

We’re going to do. And then do once a week from there. So you’re really gonna have to be on your game and ready to launch. It’s a real launch strategy, but when it comes to, how do I look at a channel [00:16:00] and what am I actually gonna look at when it comes to someone who’s already established, I’m going to come to your channel, your homepage.

And I’m going to look at you. Your homepage and do you have playlists set up? Do you have some sort of ordering system? It does your banner does, is it a clear value proposition? Do I know when you’re going to upload those kinds of pieces of information, then I’m going to look at your content. How consistently are you publishing?

And I’m gonna look at your about section, right? Did actually give me reason to want to contact you. Do you have an email listed there? What are the links that you’re using? Do all the links work spring cleaning is a big thing where I will go to someone’s channel a click on a link for someone’s Instagram.

This was for a channel review. I offer channel reviews and also consultations. And I clicked on five of their links and four of them didn’t work. They went to, and they’re like, oh, I changed my Instagram username. And they’re like, then why do you have a broken link here? Help anybody. And I’m like, if anything, that gives a bad impression, cause people will click on it and be like, it goes nowhere.

It’s a 404 error. So it’s like, why would you want to work with a business or a [00:17:00] brand who doesn’t even have a literal presence with a link? Can’t even do that correctly. It’s very easy. So little things like that. And then I’m gonna go to one of their videos and look at their description box.

How did you optimize it? How did you put your description? Do you have your canned information about how to reach you? Like how easy are you making it for me to work with you? So that’s some of the stuff I’m looking at.

Jeff Sieh: So real quick Martin, over on LinkedIn asks. So how do I secure a paid YouTube channel audit?

And we’re going to do this at the end of the show too, but I wanted to go ahead and let give that information out because you got some people asking. So how do like people get in touch with you, Shelly, to get an audit, if they would want to pay for your.

Shelly Nathan: Oh, yeah, you can. If you go to my Instagram, there’s a book now button, it’ll take you to my calendar and you can book a session.

Yeah.

Jeff Sieh: And if you three guys listen on the podcast, she has a page set up with all her links. If you go to Shelly dot F Y I, that gives a landing page and the her Instagram is right there too. And so you can get all our links right. From shelley.fyi. [00:18:00] And make sure to get that out right now. So

Grace Duffy: pretty cool.

SHELLY dot FYI. So those of you listening on the podcast one day, make sure, cause there’s a lot of ways you could spell that.

Shelly Nathan: Always trying to add an extra E like EOI and it’s not UI. Yeah, no,

Grace Duffy: The Y okay. You and I have both worked on the brand side. And we know that we’re always testing, experimenting, coming up with different ideas and sometimes, you do something and it doesn’t work and it’s time to pivot.

So my question is how long does it typically take for a channel to start making positive strides, following a complete channel audit? I’ve seen some stats where. Yeah. People have shared that. It’ll take a four months of consistently doing something before you can see an uptick. I’ve definitely worked with people that are like we did the one video.

Why haven’t we gotten any more sales, right? Or, oh my gosh, do we keep doing this? When do we pivot? So we get [00:19:00] what is a good sense of timing as far as like, when we can expect to start seeing positive results, say assuming we doing everything you’ve told us to do

Shelly Nathan: 90 days, 90 days. Okay, cool.

Grace Duffy: Yep. That’s a good, solid answer.

I love that.

Shelly Nathan: So

Jeff Sieh: we’ve got some great questions about, and I am Gary brought up a great question cause I’ve had the same issue. He goes, one of the hardest things he has faced is the ability to add our domain to YouTube. They don’t make it easy for large corporations with multiple business units. So can you speak on that is and in fact, it’s hard to even get a, a custom URL on YouTube.

I’ve gone. And I have all that, everything, I have owned the name for Social Media News Live and all this stuff, and they still won’t let me change it. They want me to add something onto the end. So can you talk to that YouTube frustration a little bit, Shelly,

Creating A Custom URL On YouTube

Shelly Nathan: there’s a lot of frustration when it comes, but I think you might be referring to your custom URL, is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah. [00:20:00] You would have to contact. Then if you noticed you should have now the ability to do a community chat, once you’re inside of YouTube studio, I would actually start with chat for your particular issue. And as long as you have the URL available they can help you change it. Okay, cool.

So I would do open a chat for there. When it comes to linking other URLs, I have found. Similar to where the verification process, not the one with the check mark, where you actually have the verified check mark, but the one where you go in and you verify your phone number and stuff, it’s actually simpler than a lot of people think, actually, because I thought it was going to be really difficult to change mine a couple of times.

And once I put it. With the URL. Sometimes they’ll ask you to put a little something in the top of your like if it’s a WordPress site or something like that, sometimes I’ll ask something like that to link it. And sometimes they’ve just accepted it on different channels that I’ve had. So I haven’t had too much difficulty with that.

But the other thing that you can do is you can [00:21:00] always add a link at the top of your, about section, and then you can disappear. Up to five links in your banner, if you want to, and you could put something in your channel banner with an arrow that says, click here for whatever, and then you could go to your website and link it from there and then make sure it’s in your description box of all your videos.

Jeff Sieh: Awesome. So hopefully Gary, that answer to your question, but that was a great one. Thank you for asking that Paul G over on LinkedIn says he can not agree. More broken links are red flags. It’s all about the little details. There are so many companies who do not have that stuff. I did an audit for somebody of their day and they had all sorts of broken links on there, like homepage.

Yeah.

Shelly Nathan: Not only that, but even mistakes such as in their about section, they will literally spell out their website details when I’m like someone has to copy and paste from here. You’re making it so difficult for anyone to work with you. And you’re wasting valuable character limit space here. Put it as a link so that someone can actually click on it.

Okay. Put in about section that [00:22:00] is actually relevant to you. Why someone would want to work with you want to get to know you, anything like that is better real estate time, investment ROI than what you have.

Jeff Sieh: Gotcha. So real quick. Since we talked about this the customer chat option, he said, Ian says he cannot find it in his YouTube studio.

Now he’s in the UK and they do weird things over there. But do you know if w can you direct him in the right spot to find it? He can’t find it in the UK.

Shelly Nathan: Typically, if you have more than 500 subscribers and you had access to the community tab, now you should also. In the creator studio, there should be I can pop in and also follow up with you offline.

Cause I am going to be on his podcast in the next couple of weeks. So I’ll have an answer for you before that. See what the screen shot.

Jeff Sieh: Cool. Real quick before we move on to the next section I wanted to ask you, because like I said, I had stopped to your channel and been watching you for a while, but you had mentioned recently that you are changing the [00:23:00] direction of your do YouTube channel.

In fact, you had, I think it was the post that says I’m blowing up my YouTube channel. So talk to us why and how you’re doing.

Why Shelly Nathan Is Blowing Up Her YouTube Channel

Shelly Nathan: Okay, so for Ian as well. So if you are in your dashboard home page so there’s your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner. If you go over to the left of one click, you’re going to see the create button.

You go over another click. There’s a question, mark, go over another click. It says chat with creator support. And then if you had to buddy installed, it would be to the right of that icon. So that’s where I’m looking and it says chat with creator support. So hopefully that’s where you. And it’s so interesting when I said I’m blowing up my YouTube channel.

I had someone come to that stream and they said something like, oh, I’m so excited that you’re you’re blowing up. I want to know how to do that too. And I was like, oh wow, thank you for the positive connotation thought, but it’s actually the opposite. I was like, maybe that was the wrong type of title or the right one.

I’m not sure, but I have. Private ID [00:24:00] probably about 285 videos on my YouTube channel in the last month or so. And that is because I don’t want to continue to receive traffic on items that I no longer want or need to be known for. So I was doing how to make videos through video editing tutorials and how to do YouTube.

And so I even went to a point where I created a course on how to edit videos as well. I found now that 90% of my views were coming from things that I didn’t want to continue making videos about. It was just like how to make a subscribe button and how to do animated overlays and how to do something in a movie.

Because I feel like I’ve done that I’ve offered it. I’ve created a whole course on it, and now I want to help people do the next step, which is now that I know how to make a video, how do I use it to propel forward? What I want to do and share what I love with the world. Still be able to make money. So that’s what the new focus is, which is funny because I’ve always had a special gift of [00:25:00] being able to help anyone make money except for myself.

But if you ask me, I will like, and have a conversation with you. I’ll think of five different ways that you could probably monetize something and go make money. But when it comes to. I don’t know. And it’s funny, like when I was in college, I was helping people write their renegotiations and with job offers, and different things like that would happen.

And I can help people make brand deals with brands and oh, you should say this, or, oh, you should ask for this or, oh, do this. But when it comes to myself and I’m just like, okay, so those. Teach. So now I’m like, I should just embrace it. Let’s just teach it. I had to make a very hard pivot and decide, like I can’t keep driving traffic from 90% of these video views on something that’s not what the true focus of this is.

And so instead of making a new channel and starting again, I was just like, we’re just going to cut off the water at the source. And so that’s what we did. And so we’re focusing now on, all right, I’m going to assume, you know how to make the video now let’s take it the next [00:26:00] step and actually do something.

Cool.

Grace Duffy: Dustin pinpointed, exactly why I always work for companies because that right there of I have a million ideas for everyone else. But when you’re like, what are you all about? I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t

Shelly Nathan: know.

Jeff Sieh: So Dustin, my fruit doesn’t sound says it’s always harder to turn into working sales to our own business and that’s very true.

So I want to know shell. How hard was that decision and how long did it take you to make it? Cause, that’s a lot of content that you’re taken down and that’s, and you worked really hard on that. So how long did that decision process take and, before you actually pull the trigger?

Cause I know that was super hard

How Long Did It Take You To Pivot?

Shelly Nathan: years, man, years, and it’s difficult when you’re still getting views and before I was even like, oh, but I’m helping people and I’m like, yes, but that’s not. I always say you can’t ride four horses, like with one, but right. Sometimes you gotta pick a horse and sometimes it’s gotta be can’t [00:27:00] ride a horse with just one cheek.

You’re gonna have to pick a lane. And so this is the lane that I picked because I thought, you know what? There are people out there that can help you make videos. And there are people out there who can show you how to. Talk a little bit about TikTok or vertical video or whatever else it is because I do, I love all those things and I’ve always been a little bit of an add squirrel brain where I just want to be like, I don’t know, let’s try it.

Here’s the new thing. And let me give it a shot and tell you and report back. And I’m just here in the trenches, but after a while, Okay. You can go out there and, do all of these things or you can go really, instead of the, the breadth thing, you can do the depth thing and figure out if that is going to make your life any better, because what you’re doing right now, Gotcha.

Grace Duffy: Why is your audience reacted to that? Because that’s a big question because, you’re still doing video. You’re still in that field. But when you are creating a lot of that content that people are relying you on, relying on you for, [00:28:00] and then you pivot and go do something different or you drill down somewhere else.

There is that fear. I know of I don’t want to let go of those people, but how did your audience react with when you decide to quote unquote blow things up?

How Did Your Audience React When You Pivoted Your YouTube Channel?

Shelly Nathan: I think a lot of people, they don’t like it and a lot of people don’t know. So the more and more videos that I put out on content that they’re not interested, the more they will unsubscribe.

And that’s fine because I would rather have a lot of people rocking with me that really want to be there. And I’ve also been in a season of my life before, this is nothing new because I’m going to make a video. In fact, how I failed my way to success in some certain ways, because I have done everything wrong you can think of when it comes to a YouTube channel eight.

I have so many lessons to teach and talk about including how going viral is not like the blessing that you think it is because there was a period of [00:29:00] 18 months where every time I put out a video, I lost a hundred subscribers because for 18 months straight, all I did was lose subscribers. And so this is nothing new at all.

And I’m fine. I’m fine with it because I’ve made the decision that it’s not the subscriber number that is paying me. It’s the people who are working with me that actually.

Jeff Sieh: So by the way I want to pull this up because this is coming from your channel Blaine Locklear says $5 Superchat.

Shelley’s doing something right. This video is the first one on my homepage when I signed on. So here’s you made some yourself some money, so thanks. Thanks Blaine for doing that. It’s really cool doing that

Grace Duffy: show. More than I’ve made on this show. So

Shelly Nathan: congratulations. I can help anyone make money.

So you’re welcome.

Jeff Sieh: So I think you, you resonated with a lot of people cause Carrie, even Carrie says she’s a cobbler with no shoes as well. So I think a lot of people feels the same way. The funny thing is when you said the you can’t ride four horses with one, but it sounds like a Texas saying, but the thing is [00:30:00] you actually can’t.

So during the COVID lockdown, I bought a bread machine, so I definitely. I can ride a horse with four horses with what my buck right now, because of the amount of bread I consumed. So

Shelly Nathan: I was trying to keep it clean for you on your show. If you want me to swear on if you were on my show, I would say something about you can’t do anything quarter acidly you got to do it with your whole.

I thank you for that.

Jeff Sieh: Nothing. That’s right now we have to believe everything. All this editing now. No, just teasing. So that’s good. You’re fine. So real quick Grace, she had a question about live streaming. I wonder because you aren’t. Of course,

Shelly Nathan: I always have a question about life. Like you

Grace Duffy: do a lot of live streaming on your YouTube channel, but also on Amazon and a number of other places.

How do you feel? How do you see that live streaming on YouTube is different than any other on the other [00:31:00] platforms that you go live on? I know we talk a lot about multi streaming going to one place, but you do have to nurture. Community a little bit differently, but let’s talk about YouTube today.

Pros and Cons Of Live Streaming On YouTube

Shelly Nathan: Yeah. Oh, that’s such a good question. Thank you for asking. So it’s interesting because I do have a lot of experience cause I live stream on Amazon. Like you said, I live stream on Twitch. I live stream on YouTube and then sometimes I’ll use restream as a tool with, in conduction, with Ecamm and restream out to Facebook and LinkedIn and just like I’m doing right now with pairs, which is a great feature and restrained by the way.

I, it is such a different audience. So if I know if I’m on LinkedIn, typically, I would say. Use the bad body language words that I’ve already used. So I’m sorry about that. But ’cause it’s a different audience, and I keep those usually a little bit more succinct and on point, if it’s something for YouTube, I don’t mind hanging out, just answering questions that are coming up.

I feel like, especially I’ve been live streaming every Thursday [00:32:00] for a year and a half now. And it’s every Thursday and. I have a certain core group of people that really rock with me and they tune in every week. And that’s the thing is with YouTube, those relationships can go really deep. It’s not always, it can be a great way to build up watch time, but it really is the place where you’re going to nurture the audience that’s been with you.

Those are your true, thousand core fans that you’re talking to there. It’s not like the regular video on demand where you’re going after. Maybe search or browser suggested. This is it’s not that it’s just nurturing the audience that you have. I love live streaming so much.

I was like at one point in my YouTube thoughts, I was like, I should only live stream and then just pull out snippets and have them be like the Joe Rogan show where it’s just like the, this answer question thing and have that be because I just, I love the interaction and the real-time conversations that I get to have with.

Jeff Sieh: Totally agree. That’s [00:33:00] awesome. Greg, quick question from Ian. If I can speak, he goes can gogi live on YouTube harm? The channel people will watch the short and prerecorded videos aren’t necessarily going to watch the live streams. Is there a good percentage of live versus be recorded?

Can Going Live On YouTube Hurt Your Channel?

Shelly Nathan: Yes, absolutely.

So like I was just talking about video on demand. They’re usually short they’re condensed they’re value-packed hopefully, and they are as long as they need to be in not longer than that. And a live stream is really about like shooting the breeze and if you’re doing it well, maybe what you’re doing is a presentation in the first half an hour.

Maybe it not a ton of interaction or acknowledgement with your audience so that you could, if you want to chop off the entire last half. I think using questioning with the audience and it can still be a very valuable like almost video on demand and someone who does that really well. I am in all the way he does it is Sean Cannell over on think media he’ll usually have the presentation first half hour, and then they’ll come back in if they do have FAQ or they could, even if they’re [00:34:00] broadcasting, they will cut off the video.

Let’s say on YouTube. And then just answer the rest of the questions on Facebook or something like that. Or. Then he can go in and chop off some five minute question where I answered something specifically and put that out as video on demand. So if your channel has a mix and has always had a mix or something like that, it can be okay.

And you are not always going to see everyone that you see. On the video on demand that you’re going to see in the live stream, because video on demand is usually coming up in search or, suggested where it’s, I’m looking for an answer for a specific type of thing. And I want to know just this thing and with the live stream, people really have to either catch it by happenstance or schedule it, or they really have to be interested in the person more.

So maybe the topic, but a lot of the time, the person, because you have. Be able to stay on their personality for an extended period amount of time without the cuts. So it really is a different audience. Sometimes they overlap a lot of the times. Gotcha. [00:35:00] Yeah.

Grace Duffy: Yeah. Brian, the UK was saying, he, the idea of watching an hour video turns me off, but I’ll turn up here every week and we appreciate it.

Notice that Brian, because it’s live and we do try to make this more interactive and rely on our audiences to get our audience questions answered. Other than that, I wanted to bring you up.

Shelly Nathan: I was just like, that’s what people, why people love live video. They’d like to be acknowledged. They like to be spoken to, they like to have questions answered in real time.

And you’ll find that a lot of the time typically as well, even if you don’t get as many viewers, the average view duration is usually five times longer in a live stream. If they’re actually interested in person or topic than it is in a video on demand.

Jeff Sieh: So we streamed a Social Media News lives, YouTube channel, and like a lot of people here are watching right now live from YouTube.

And. Experimented. And I continue to experiments with short form content and it doesn’t just, it doesn’t do very well. Once in a while, it will. But yeah, so I totally agree with your, sometimes they’re coming for one thing and not the other. But [00:36:00] I’m not going to stop because people really like it on YouTubetube.

Grace Duffy: Yeah. So we have a question from Michelle. She says those YouTube penalize you, if you put a video on, as a short, but then also edit a full piece to a different song, a different piece of content. Does YouTube notice that some of the content is the same and penalize you, or is more better? I have an.

But you’re going to actually give me the expert answer. So you tell us your expert answer and I’ll give you the opinion I have

Shelly Nathan: when it comes to shorts. I would say no. Yeah. They’re not going to penalize you. If you put out the same thing with different background music or something slightly different, they’re not, no, your audience might, but the thing is.

Grace Duffy: Okay. I think short videos like shorts, it gets me interested in it. So I do a lot of like I spent a lot of time watching TikTok and that’s like of people just doing those short clips of whatever it is that they’re talking about. And it has actually [00:37:00] drawn me into listening to their podcast or watching their live show because it does give me like, oh, this is actually interesting.

And or that 30 seconds earns the next 30 seconds the next week. I don’t think it hurts because me as a user, I know how I react to it. And it just gives me, it gives me the info that I want, but also entices me to watch more of you.

Shelly Nathan: Now you do want to be careful if you were to talk to YouTube, they would be like, just go live or, just go in the moment and put it out there.

And I’ve been in several cause I’m actually part of the shorts community where they will actually do these once a month kind of meetups. And you get to talk to representatives that YouTube and other. Creatives and people who are very successful in some of them are, but not five to seven shorts a day.

It’s amazing. And a lot of them are just repurposing their TikTok and whatnot, but there is this consensus. There’s no, like too much when it comes to shorts, especially if you are like a shorts channel, but keeping that in mind, if you are going to upload a lot of shorts [00:38:00] do keep in mind that YouTube has a notification limit where they won’t put out more than three notifications in a 24 hour period.

So if you plan to put out more than that, and you have a long video on demand that you’re going to put out as well, you would want to go into the back end of YouTube on the current. And check mark the option for do not notify my subscribers of this. If you want to save that notification for a longer form video, and that’s only available on the desktop version, not on the phone.

So you would want to upload it to private or unlisted, then go publish it from the desktop version, hitting the button saying don’t notify.

Jeff Sieh: Very cool. Grace I’m going to call an audible because we’re starting to get into short form content and I want to make sure we go to the section about first I’m going to, I’m going to ask Shelly, what’s a good tool.

We’ve talked about two buddies. Are there any other ones besides two buddy that you would recommend for people trying to do this themselves?

Tool For Optimizing YouTube

Shelly Nathan: I think too, buddy is a great tool. And one of my [00:39:00] favorite parts that they have in it is if you’re on the version that is going to give you access to all of the bulk tools.

So if you have 500 videos and you need to change out an affiliate link, which has happened to me before you have some brand new promotion or something, you just changed your website. Let’s just say you updated your social media handle and you want to make sure that it’s updated everywhere in all of your videos.

You can use a bulk update tool that is going to do that basically for you in minutes. And that’s. The true, like bread and butter, like one of the best workhorses pieces that they have, as well as the ability to test your thumbnails. Because if you it’s the best version of AB thumbnail testing that is currently available out there because no one else really has this ability.

And what they do is they cycle out your thumbnail for 24 hours and then they collect a bunch of metrics. This is what you want the information from your audience, what are they clicking on? What do they like? Do they like it? When you have your face in the thumbnail? Do they not? Words on a thumbnail or not.

If you’re making certain expressions, it’s amazing. The kind of data that they can pull, including things like if they [00:40:00] clicked into your thumbnail, how much like video enjoyment, like how much of it did they watch? So those types of things aren’t available to you, unless you’re like some numbers, guru, a fishing out of doing it all yourself and like they can do it for you.

So I would do that in the book, updating tools, like there.

Jeff Sieh: Awesome. Very cool. Yeah. I know Mitch dong used that a lot for social media examiner channel and grew it by doing all these split testing and it he really took that to the next level over there. So very cool tool. Want to pull this up from Gary?

And so this is the power of live video folks. He goes, Shelly, I just use your affiliate link to buy that mobile vlogging setup. So there you go. That’s what’s so cool about our community. They’ll spend money. So thanks. Thanks Gary for that. I want to go really well and we’ll save the news about the podcasting to the end if we have time, because I really wanted to get in this because we had some questions about it, but it’s TikTok versus YouTube.

We’ve talked about shorts. We’ve done all this stuff. Shelly has I, she’s been doing a lot of shorts [00:41:00] and she mentioned she was in there that kind of the creator. And it’s really strange to me because it seems like TikTok getting longer. They’re letting up to 10 minutes now. YouTube has had the shorts and I’m like, okay.

Are we going to ever find out what’s the best length of video is because it just seems to be going all over. And there’s so many questions. We had people asking inside of volley should we do a separate shorts channel because that’s a huge convergence conversations that’s happened over on YouTube too.

So talk to us about shorts and what you found successful over there.

Tips For Creating YouTube Shorts

Shelly Nathan: Shorts are fascinating. I think they rolled them out clinically and but Adley and they really, they didn’t have probably a very good plan. I think it was reactionary in terms of everything that was happening down with in India and some of, all of the restrictions that were coming into place and they really needed to release something like then.

[00:42:00] And so there was all this weird stuff. It was in beta for so long. And then it was like, how do we monetize this? And what does it do to your average view duration and your own like channel metrics? And should I start a new channel? It’s been so messy. And so to this end, I’m going to say something maybe it’s a hot take, but I would say unless.

Your content is so drastically different or topic or subject matter or something like that is so different. I would not start a separate shorts channel. I just wouldn’t do that. I think that they will pull out the metrics separately enough, especially if you think about how they’re introducing like clips and different things like that.

They’re encouraging these small little snippets of you. And I think that shorts and stories and stuff like that, it’s a great way for people to get an introductory or something. Before then being inundated with the rest of it. So just like I said, like I watched a few shorts, I’ve been to a few shorts and I wanted to watch the whole thing.

But if you watched a few shorts, binged, a few shorts then had to go subscribe to a different YouTube [00:43:00] channel to get different notifications of long-form content. All of a sudden your money in these water is am I going to do that? No. And anything that puts more barriers between you and the person who’s sitting in the button, you don’t want.

For me personally, I would probably just keep them on the same channel, unless I’m a cooking channel. And now all of a sudden, I want to make shorts about how to cobble shoes. All of a sudden that’s not the same customer. That’s not the same interest. That’s not the same person. So then that makes sense.

Let’s have it on a separate channel because I’m so multifaceted and multi-passionate then do it that way. But otherwise,

Jeff Sieh: It was interesting because one of your shorts you sounded like one of my east Texas neighbors and I’m like is Shelly to have a Southern accent. And I’m like, and I had to go look and don’t know.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that was no, you’re like, y’all, you’re doing something I’m like, oh, there’s a short.

Shelly Nathan: Y’all is always intentional because I had gone through some training about inclusion and whatnot. And so it was an intentional choice for me to [00:44:00] try and say, y’all more than guys, Hey guys, or something like that on my channel.

So I do get that a lot. Are you from Texas? Are you from south now? And I’m like, no, it’s just, cause I say y’all a lot. Cause. Try and be inclusive of everyone. Cause otherwise if you catch me on my show, I’ll see them like, Hey guys, and gals. So it’s always this reflects this was,

Jeff Sieh: you were actually, you sound like dumber pile.

You actually did, like you were doing an accent. So I, it wasn’t just that. So often you’ll find that you don’t

Grace Duffy: did you just take it through your east Texas filter job? And she sounded normal, but if they had to like a little UN

Shelly Nathan: translator,

Jeff Sieh: she was doing an accident, I’ll go find it.

Cause it wasn’t just her saying. So anyway, all right.

Shelly Nathan: Sometimes, you get a little excited and who knows the Southern comes out. So let’s talk about YouTube charts as well.

The YouTube Shorts Explosion

Shelly Nathan: Okay. So one thing that I think is so fascinating as well, the way that the shorts explosion can happen on a channel in terms [00:45:00] of channel growth and audience size.

I have a friend Lisa Wynn who was re posted all for tic talks about food, where she used to go out to restaurants and. She couldn’t because of everything happening with the panini. I don’t want to say the word and get you. And because of that, all of a sudden, these views started blowing up about food and she started making all these food videos.

And so she got the 2 million on her YouTube channel with shorts, no long form, just shorts. And so it can happen. A lot of the monetization that would start happening wasn’t from shorts itself. It was from all of a sudden later brand deals and from the shorts fund, which was later released and the shorts fund itself is especially interesting because if you think about it, they committed like a hundred million dollars.

It’s very nebulous about who gets it, who qualifies, and you don’t even have to be in the regular partner program to get a payout from the shorts fund, which is just fascinating to me because they have all of these new things and countries opening up that don’t even [00:46:00] participate in monetization except for the shorts fund and their whole shorts.

Can’t be monetized in many different situations. So if the short. Which will not contribute to your 4,000 hours of watch time. If they’re coming from the shorts shelf, which is different, which is where you want your video to be, because that’s where the majority of the views come from instead of your homepage.

But if the shorts views do come from your homepage, those could be monetized unless you use the shorts, music, library, selection, and then no matter where the views are coming. Those can never be monetized. So they have all of these weird rules. So you could also take a video that was 15 seconds from Instagram, and then try and put it over here.

And you could get hit with a copyright claim. Even though it’s the same song that’s available, if you didn’t add the song from the shorts library inside of YouTube, you could get dinged. And also they have said that if your video I know it’s fascinating. And then also if your video has Ava’s bill watermark from something like TikTok or.[00:47:00]

Instagram, it would not be eligible to participate in the shorts fund as well. So you could hit get hit with a claim. You wouldn’t get a payout anyway, but so many people do it. And so it’s if you don’t even read the rules, it’s just fascinating to me. And what are you doing in your collecting?

The subscribers will count for your 1000, but none of those views will end up counting towards your monetization requirements. So it’s just the wild west out here when it comes to shorts. I just threw a lot at you. Do you have questions about

Grace Duffy: we’ve got it. We’ve got a theme. We’ve got like the half butts and the y’all.

So right now, How much are you repurposing your YouTube short video, the content, the actual video that you’re making on to other platforms? Like you mentioned Instagram, we’ve talked about TikTok. How often are you doing.

Can I Repurpose TikTok As YouTube Shorts?

Shelly Nathan: A lot of the time. So what’s interesting is I will sometimes intentionally shoot vertically or I will shoot horizontally and shoot cut [00:48:00] down the middle just so that I can put it onto all the other different places.

whether that’s Pinterest video pins. TikTok reels I will put that same video everywhere and you just don’t know what’s going to happen. So like I have one that is about a coffee pump. These Torani syrup, coffee pumps. I put that over on TikTok and it got 320,000 views. It got a repost from the brand and they sent me some syrups as a thank you.

I put that same video on YouTube. I think it has 2000 views. I put it on. Pinterest. It has 50 views. Like you just never know what is going to happen. So one of the reasons why I love vertical video so much is once you have it and you have something under 60 seconds, put that thing everywhere and just see what happens.

Jeff Sieh: Totally true. Like I made the I’m on the Facebook real program. We had Molly on last week, I had the goofy picture of my dog, got up to 15,000 views and I made 150. Yeah, it’s crazy. Yeah. So really quickly before we get [00:49:00] a man with this show is fine, but we’ve got to do a part two with Shelly. I, we just have to go with all these questions.

Yes. This is something I want to talk about really quickly because it is, it’s breaking news that just happened not very long ago. But this thing about. From Bloomberg is YouTube off. YouTube is offering to pay individual podcasts, podcasters, and podcasting networks. If they upload video versions of their shows the grants could be from $50,000 for four independent raters to $300,000 for a larger network.

So I know you do a lot of podcasting. You do a lot of recording of doing a live show on YouTube and it tips over to podcasting. What are your thoughts about this? And, will this be available to little people?

Shelly Nathan: Honestly, I don’t think this is that exciting. And I know a lot of people would think it is, but here’s the thing is shorts is a hundred million dollar fund that was being paid out over, let’s say like a year and a half.

And I wasn’t sure if it was $300,000 total, or it could be up to 300,000 [00:50:00] per instance, but no total listed. So I had a question about that. I wasn’t quite sure because. For me, I just put it on YouTube as one more place. So I have one more place where my name is showing up, but I also have found that sometimes if you were to do a poll, the majority of your listeners of any podcast, usually aren’t doing.

On YouTube and it’s, apple podcasts and Spotify, even in Spotify as experimenting, especially like I host my on anchor and they’re integrating with anchor for video podcasts. I can put it there for free too. So I’m already multicasting and putting it on there. If YouTube wants to pay me additional money to do it, it’s not going to entice me more for some of the people who are podcasts only audio only, it might entice them.

But I think that. Not that many people who are super excited because podcast as a medium by itself is so interesting because you do it while you’re doing other things. You do it while you’re doing housework or you’re, running around, riding a car commuting [00:51:00] and stuff like that. And a lot of the time exactly.

With only one booty. And if you have to do that, like same time, like it, I don’t see it being. That’s just my hot take on it. I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal. Awesome. So with a few extras, but not a lot. Gotcha.

Grace Duffy: With that in mind, do you think it makes sense for podcasters to release clips, like little video clips of that?

The question, answer whatever, rather than putting full episodes on YouTube. So that’s a good strategy, right?

Shelly Nathan: I think you could still do both. I think the short things are the ones that get people interested. It’s the question about, it’s always about the question that’s being answered because so many people who are watching on YouTube are search based driven, and it’s selfish.

I want to know the thing. I want to know the answer to this question and this query, and I want to have it answered now, and I don’t want to Wade through 60 [00:52:00] minutes of fluff to get to the five minute question that is. This thing. And so I think that if you can get people interested in it, great, and they want to watch the rest of it.

Great. But if you can’t, you can still be a trusted resource to answer the question that they did have, and then we’re searching for at that time. Great. Cool.

Grace Duffy: All right. Can we ask Michelle?

Jeff Sieh: I wouldn’t have one last question. That was the Michelle about that YouTube shorts, because we talked about that and it’s very fascinating.

I know a lot of people want to know this. She goes, okay. Pretty much just answered this other question, but about the shorts fund, which you have to be invited to. No other way to monetize short,

How Can I Monetize YouTube Shorts?

Shelly Nathan: you can still monetize it, but the views will only count for monetization. If they’re coming from your homepage watch page or something like that.

Versus if it’s found in the short shelf where people are scrolling. And that’s also interesting because when they look at the metrics and stuff, CTR, which is click-through rate, which is how often like people see your thumbnail and how often they click on it. That actually can’t be measured when it comes to the short shelf, because there is no [00:53:00] scrolling capability to view a thumbnail.

So there’s so many things that don’t apply if it’s inside of the short shelf. So CTR won’t apply. And so monetization also doesn’t apply, but also if you use music from the shorts music library, it doesn’t matter where they view it. You will never get monetized for that. But if you were doing a talking head.

30 second video. And you had it from your homepage and someone watched it there. You could monetize that, but also keep in mind that with the CPM and RPM on that, because there’s so little watch time, you would need to get so many views from it. It’s never going to pay out a lot. It’s going to be like 5 cents or something.

Its just not going to be a lot to be a lot

Jeff Sieh: All right. So if you’re so confused about all, like we were talking about CTRs and, watch times and all this stuff, you know what you need to do. You just need to help you just need to hire Shelly, because he’s amazing. So Shelly, where can people find out more about you?

Cause you have been an awesome source of information today.

Shelly Nathan: You can come to my YouTube channel. Shelly saves the day. You can hang out with [00:54:00] me on Instagram, send me a DM or book time. Yup.

Jeff Sieh: Yup. And she’s also found@shelley.fyi, S H E L y.fyi. You can find her there and get all her socials, go follow her everywhere, go, go subscribe to your podcast and leave her a rating review.

Cause that really helps other podcasters get the word out. So if you do that, I would appreciate that. And as always, you guys are amazing, such great questions today. You guys are so awesome here in our community. Thanks Gary and Michelle and everybody who’s been watching today, we really appreciate you, Grace.

Where can people find out about the amazing grace.

Grace Duffy: You can find me here every week doing this live show with Jeff and we’ll be back next week, Friday, March 18th at 11:00 AM. Eastern 10:00 AM central. I’ve also been checking out that tool volley. So that’s where you can find me. I pre I did a quick little video of what it takes for me to get ready for the show.

Obviously not enough time.

So [00:55:00] join us there

Jeff Sieh: and also thank you to our hosts are our sponsors Ecamm. You can find out more about them at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm They have a brand new release that dropped today 3.10. And it’s amazing. We have virtual mic. We’ve got all sorts of new overlays, new destination, so many cool things.

So make sure you guys get. Once again, you find out more about them at socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm. Thank you folks so much for being here. Thank you, Shelly. I’m serious. This is just, it blew my mind so much. Good stuff today. Thank you to everyone. And we will see you guys next week.

Bye everybody.