Producer: Lisa Ma | Videographer: Steven Yen
The Opportunity: There are a lot of incoming college students wondering what it’s like to attend a certain college. It’s hard, however, to get a good feel of what it’s like there unless they plan a visit, which is difficult for many due to financial and time constraints.
The Outcome: I produced 2 videos that helped provide an idea for what it was like to attend UT Austin. These were viewed 60k+ times and more than doubled the amount of subscribers from 400 to 980+ and counting.
The Process
1) Identify trends on YouTube. As a small channel with only 400 subscribers at the time, it was important to conduct keyword research and to utilize trending topics to have the YouTube algorithm recommend our video.
One of the easier ways to do this was to monitor what type of videos were recommended to us on our homepages. These videos are determined to be successful by YouTube due to these metrics:
- total watch time and % of video completed
- # engagements (likes, comments)
- # subscriptions on main channel
As I observed what the homepage recommended me, a consistent topic that caught my eye was “A day in the life”. This one video, in particular, was interesting to me because of its success despite the YouTube channel being relatively new with only a few thousand subscribers:
2) Identify keywords. From there, I went to see if anyone had any major success in creating this type of video for UT Austin and at the time, there wasn’t. The most watched video was only 97k, which was very small compared to 1M+. With less competition, there was a better chance a small YouTube channel like ours would be able to stand out from the crowd.
In order to confirm my hunch on whether “A day in the life of a UT student” would perform well, I used a tool called TubeBuddy, which would be able to map the search volume vs the competition of the keyword, which confirmed my hypothesis.
3) Executing Pre-production Requirements. As the producer, I needed to be able to answer these questions:
How long will the video be?
Although shorter videos succeeded in the beginnings of online video, videos that are closer to 10 minutes or more perform better simply because longer videos = longer watch times. From my research, this is one of the most important KPIs for YouTube success
Who will we film?
Our subject would need to be engaging and “camera friendly”. Since Steven is much better operating the camera, by process of elimination I was chosen to be the student we would follow around.
What will we film?
Naturally I have a busy schedule with a variety of social, professional, and academic activities, so it was just a matter of asking the other subjects for consent to be a part of the videos
When will we film it?
Since Steven lives in Seattle, it would need to be a time when we’re both in Austin. In addition, to have a better ambiance in the video where there is good weather, we decided March would be a good time to shoot.
When do we want the final video?
According to Google trends, keyword searches on “UT Austin” peak in the fall. I decided that we should release the video in the spring so that when fall rolls around, there will be enough views on the video for others to be interested in watching as well.
4) Finalizing Post-production and Publishing. Here is what we came up with:
5) Read out on video results. This short 2 videos were viewed 60k+ times and more than doubled the amount of subscribers from 400 to 980+ and counting. The video ranks as #3 for the keyword on UT Austin, beating the UT Austin YouTube channel as well as a video from Jimmy Fallon with 1.1M views.
Key Learnings
When it comes to success on YouTube, the marketing and storytelling behind a video is often more important than a video’s production quality.
This video was shot on a mid-tier consumer camera and edited by a hobbyist with no formal education in film with a $0 budget. At the same time, was able to outperform videos on watch time, engagement, and views, created for corporations by production crews and large $20k+ budgets. I hypothesize this is true for a few reason:
1) People watch YouTube to feel connected.This is why vlogs perform well – you feel like you’re a part of a friend group that’s different from your own. Corporate videos don’t have the benefit of having a relatable subject at the front and center, which is very important to YouTube’s users. Even with hiring an actor of the same target demographic, it can come across as fake and not authentic.
2) Corporate videos are often unable to take advantage of trends and important keywords. Because we are a small channel targeted towards Gen Z, we aren’t restricted to what type of content can be posted due to the bureaucracy that comes from larger companies. This gives more room for experimentation and to take advantage of more opportunities.
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