As a reminder, I launched three channels:

• Tony on Tech: about programming, technical marketing, and technology;
• Antonio Cangiano: about self-improvement;
• Take it Outdoors: about the outdoors and my hobbies.

Views, Watch Time, and Subscribers

Everybody loves concrete numbers, so let’s start off with statistics for each channel.

Tony on Tech

In the past month, this channel had a total of 843 views and 1,746 minutes (29.1 hours) of watch time. It grew from 0 to 40 subscribers. I published a total of 5 videos. By order of views, they ranked as follows:

1. Kindle vs Kobo. Which ecosystem should you choose? [366 Views]
2. How to Choose a Technology Stack for Your Projects (4 Things to Consider) [256 Views]
3. Why You Should Learn to Code [82 Views]
4. Introducing Technical Blogging (2nd Edition) [95 Views]
5. How to get a job as a programmer: Specialize! [44 Views]

Antonio Cangiano

My self-development channel had 1,998 views and 1,375 minutes (22.9 hours) of watch time. It grew from 88 to 93 subscribers. [1]

Of the 6 new videos I published, the most popular were:

1. How to Become More Productive By Blocking Distractions! (7 Tips) [72 Views]
2. Going back to Keto (and New Plans for This Channel) [54 Views]
3. Short Term vs Long Term Mindset [51 Views]
4. August 2019 Weight Loss Accountability [18 Views]
5. Set your future self up for success [16 Views]
6. Why You Need a Personal Mission Statement [12 Views]

Several of my existing videos – which were randomly published over the years – outperformed these new ones. I’m not surprised given that a couple of them have 40K views or so to date.

Interestingly, I published a handful of videos from my Tony on Tech and self-improvement channel on IGTV (Instagram’s version of YouTube) and they tend to get 100-200 views each on average.

Take it Outdoors

My outdoor/hobbies channel had a total of 4,837 views and 8,165 minutes (136 hours) of watch time. It grew from 0 to 15 subscribers. I published 4 videos:

1. The Story of a Broken Man (An Ode to Those Who Love Fishing.) [4,572 Views]
2. Nanuk 909 vs. 910 Plastic Cases Unboxing and Comparison [133 Views]
3. Akaso V50 Pro vs iPhone XS Max (4K Raw Footage Comparison) [123 Views]
4. Storing Knives and Guns in Nanuk Cases (Nanuk 909 vs 910 Follow Up) [29 Views]

OK, these are just numbers and they don’t paint the whole picture. So let me give you some preliminary thoughts.

Thumbnails and video length matter

Across the board, the majority (80%+) of the traffic to these videos came from external sources. In other words, YouTube’s own search engine and algorithm didn’t do me any favors.

The video that did the best, was an adaptation of a theatrical piece I translated from Italian. It pulls at the heartstrings a little and as a result, it did decent on Reddit and was picked up by a couple of foreign sites that tend to share feel-good videos. That helped increase the view count to a few thousand.

YouTube tends to be biased towards content with a high degree of engagement and view time. So they prefer polarizing content, longer content (at least 10 minutes), and content with high Click-Through Rate (CTR). (Basically, when your video shows up in a search or recommendation, how many people click on it?)

The take-home lesson here is to shoot for 10+ minute videos and have attractive, bold thumbnails with very legible text. Take a look at my first thumbnail and at my latest.

(I have been experimenting with a great web app called Visme to create thumbnails with better CTR. I like it a lot so far.)

Still, my thumbnail-fu has lots of room for improvement. I also need to start shooting longer videos.

I want to mention that I noticed a slight increase in subscribers once I added a Video Watermark in the bottom right corner, inviting people to subscribe.

Definitely, add this if you have a channel.

Improvements and Limitations

As a non-native speaker who is not exactly flattered by the camera, I’m at my most vulnerable on video. I enjoy making videos but I find a million flaws in them.

From how I pronounce certain words to how I look on camera. I also noticed that speaking off the cuff, I will do mistakes which I immediately catch while reviewing the video. Unlike text, you can’t easily edit them out. You either live with them or go back and reshoot a portion of the video.

I obviously do better when I prepare a script and read it for the camera, instead. This is to say that I foresee some improvements in this department, especially if I start using a script more consistently, but there are some inherent limitations as well.

Then there is the audio and video quality itself. You can read about my equipment in this post about the gadgets I use on my Programming Zen blog. I don’t think I have made massive progress on the video front (though perhaps its quality is acceptable) but I believe I made some progress in terms of audio.

Compare the audio quality of this early video with my latest one.

I don’t feel like I have quite the right settings or postprocessing workflow in place, as my highs tend to be too strong (and annoy the hell out of me), but the Zoom H4N Pro and Countryman B3 lapel microphone combo has certainly improved my audio quality.

My videos also lack animations and fancy graphics. It’s either me speaking on camera, or some kind of stock footage/presentation mashup with my narration on top. The latter tends to do better than the former. A true testament to my striking handsomeness.

Value vs Effort

Yes, your thumbnail matters. Yes, video length matters. But fundamentally, it’s about your content and your presentation. Your views are a function of the value you provide, rather than your effort.

Presentation challenges notwithstanding, I think I can provide more value than I have so far. I clearly have not figured out yet how to create popular videos given my, for lack of better words, limitations. I will have to continue to experiment and see what works. I’ll be sure to report back.

For reference, my most popular blog post published in the past month had well over 10,000 readers, which makes videos with a dozen views feel rather underwhelming.

However, I’m reminded of the advice within my own book about not getting frustrated by the lack of early results. I haven’t cracked the code. Yet.

Along the same line of following my own advice, I plan to be a little more strategic with my content. So far I’ve just winged it, by publishing whatever videos came to mind. I plan to start using some of the SEO tools I already use for blogging a bit more.

Focusing on two channels

At the time of my announcement, I mentioned that I had probably bit off more than I could chew. I was right. Two blogs plus three channels require a lot of content.

Producing and editing video is also very time-consuming. This isn’t my full-time job so it’s something I just do during the evenings and weekends.

This is a reminder for fellow bloggers not to take on too much. Focus on one thing at the time. It’s hard for me to do as I have many interests, but focusing is likely the only thing that will lead me to achieve a degree of success on YouTube.

Amusingly, having to produce so much content led me to spend very little time outdoors and on my hobbies. So I ended up having less content (and ideas) for my outdoor channel.

So a month in, this will be my first cut. I’m going to focus on Tony on Tech and my self-improvement channel. I’m not shutting down the outdoor one, but I will only occasionally publish a video when I have something to show. It won’t be a regular weekly effort.

Instead, I’m going to focus on the other two channels and I honestly believe I’d be better served by only focusing on one (likely Tony on Tech). But for now, I’ll give both an honest go.

Conclusion

All in all, the experiment hasn’t been overly successful to date, but I don’t consider it a complete failure. Some videos did okay and the subscriber growth of the Tony on Tech channel is not terrible.

Still, I need to experiment more to find what works best for me and my channels.

I expect to post future updates on this experiment, so feel free to subscribe (below) as well as to the channels themselves, to see how things pan out.

I’ll make sure to share more tips on what works, as soon as I find out. Stay tuned.

1. Technically, my Antonio Cangiano channel has been around for over a decade, but it wasn’t a coherent effort. I tossed a few random, and I do mean genuinely random, videos up over the years. And many of them managed to attract traffic in the thousands. Go figure.

The post My YouTube Experiment: First Month Statistics and Thoughts appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Looking at the direct sales subset to date, the numbers are encouraging. So much for the waning interest in blogging!

Holding Your Book Is a Great Feeling

The book is finally in print and this week I received my complimentary author copies.

It’s always a great feeling to hold the final product in your hands after investing so many hours in a project.

When I received them, I grabbed a copy and immediately opened a random page and started reading it. I had a wow, this is actually good moment. I know the book is good based on early feedback, but I tend to be a perfectionist and hypercritical of my own work.

Yet this edition feels right. From the cover (which I prefer over the dated first edition) to the actual content and how it’s formatted in the book.

I’m Starting a YouTube Channel

Following my own advice in the book, I decided to get a little more serious about video. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do but for one reason or another, never did.

I’m happy to announce a brand new YouTube channel I’m starting, called Tony on Tech. The plan is to use this channel for both technical and marketing topics. Hence, you can expect videos on programming, tech, content marketing, and social media.

If any of these topics interest you, I recommend that you subscribe now (use the bell to get actual notifications from YouTube).

In a way, video is not the ideal media for me. I learned English in my twenties, so I speak with an accent. Unlike carefully crafted words on paper, when I speak on the fly, I’m more likely to introduce a few mistakes here and there.

Yet, I like being able to make a stronger connection with my audience by expressing myself through video. I also believe that video is going to become more and more critical in the future. Always go where the audience is and give them content in the manner they prefer. And most people binge watch video content.

My First Video Is a Promo for the Book

A nice side effect of me experimenting with video is that I’ll get to share everything I learn about producing and marketing through video with you.

Incidentally, my first video for this channel is a promo video for my book. I find this video very unpolished, but it’s a starting point. The good news is, I can only improve from here, audio and video quality wise.

(If you are the very generous and forgiving kind, a like would be very much appreciated.)

I Will Share What I Learn About Video

Truth be told, I’m sort of running an experiment in which I’m launching three channels (perhaps biting off more than I can chew).

Specifically, I’m launching a new channel for my hobbies (related to the outdoors). Plus, I’m revamping my existing personal channel, which will be about self-improvement.

It’s not an approach I would recommend to others, but there are some benefits and a method to this madness. I’ll get to see how the techniques I employ to grow these channels affect different channels on various subjects.

It’s sort of a race between the three channels and it’s possible I won’t keep all of them forever if one manages to take off in a major way.

Subscribing to this blog (and the channels) is the best way to stay up to date with this video experiment and my future comments on the subject.

Thank you, everyone, for your amazing display of enthusiasm towards this new edition of my book.

The post New YouTube Channel and Promo Video appeared first on Technical Blogging.

The shortest answer I could give is that today YouTube is as important as having a blog.

Here is why:

• YouTube, which is owned by Google, is the most used search engine after Google itself.
• When a quality video matches a query that someone searched for on Google, that video will be returned with the rest of the web results… at the top. I don’t have conversion statistics, but I can only assume a sizable percentage of viewers will click on the videos both due to their location in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) and the nature of the content (watching a video takes less effort than reading an article). In other words, YouTube is an easy SEO shortcut to the top.
• Humans are highly visual animals. People are much more likely to watch a video than read an equivalent article.
• YouTube goes out of its way to promote your channel and videos if they consider them to be interesting and engaging. This helps you reach a potentially large audience for free.
• Playlists let you keep the viewer engaged with your content and message.
• Unlike Facebook, which will only allow you to reach a subset of subscribers unless you pay for a broader audience, once you have a YouTube subscriber in place, you can easily reach them every time you post a new video.
• Video can tell so much more about your product and the company behind it (even if there isn’t a product that’s being sold per se).
• With more people canceling their Cable subscriptions in favor of smart TVs, media boxes like the Apple TV or Chromecast, or even tablets, expect to see far greater numbers of folks tuning in to watch video content on such devices.
• Social media is very keen on video, as it works well for people who are in “surfing mode”. Videos also tend to be shared more often than textual content.
• YouTube allows people to link to their external sites on their channel page, in video descriptions, and even within video annotations. So you can certainly send people to your YouTube channel via your blog, but you’ll also get a wider audience to learn about your blog through YouTube.

This blog audience can be broadly divided in the following categories, which at times can overlap:

• Professionals interested in advancing their career via blogging.
• Freelancers interested in finding clients via blogging.
• Startup owners interested in promoting their startup via blogging.
• Company owners or workers interested in promoting products via blogging.
• Non-profit or open source developers, interested in promoting their non-profit projects and initiatives via blogging.
• People interested in making extra money online by sharing their knowledge via blogging.
• People interested in making a full-time income via blogging.

Replace “via blogging” with “via YouTube” and you’ll quickly see how applicable YouTube is to each one of these types of readers.

I would recommend that the same type of content you use for blogging also shows up in your YouTube channel. A freelancer for example, will need to showcase their expertise and offer solutions to problems that their customers might have. That’s as true on their blog as on YouTube. In fact, if available, calling your YouTube channel the same as your blog is definitely not a bad idea either.

You could then leverage the strengths of each type of media and opt for articles about particular problems and videos for others. A screencast is sometimes easier than trying to explain things in writing, for example.

Interestingly, while I have read and studied extensively this subject, I don’t have a personal YouTube channel for this or any of my other blogs. This, however, is something that I intend to fix soon.

On that note, one of the best courses I have ever come across on this subject is this one on Udemy, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to give YouTube a go or to take their channel to the next level.

The post Is YouTube Worth Your Time as a Marketing Tool? appeared first on Technical Blogging.