Creating content that attracts attention can be a challenge, especially when you're building your reputation from scratch. This lesson will provide actionable strategies for positioning yourself as a representative of your profession, mastering titles and thumbnails, experimenting with formats, and avoiding common content creation mistakes.
Representing your profession
Presuming you're not a well-known creator, it will take some time to build a reputation, and people will click on your content because it's you talking. Until you get there, there is a way to have a solid chance to attract a lot of clicks, even if you're literally anonymous. It all comes down to positioning yourself not as you but as a representative of your profession. A great example is a lawyer who reached millions of people by reacting to and rating the authenticity of legal details from a popular TV show Suits - the videos are titled along the lines of "Real Lawyer Reacts to Suits". Nobody cares what some John Doe thinks about the legal accuracy of Suits. But what does a real lawyer think about it? That sounds interesting! And the real lawyer may well be John Doe, but that doesn't matter.
You can apply this concept to almost every profession and spin it in many different ways. You don't have to react to TV shows or movies - you can pick something else. The advantage of TV shows and movies is that they are constantly being produced and watched, so there's always a new movie or TV show to react to and be the first one while already having an audience ready. Don't worry about not having your name mentioned in the title. You can do so in the video description, and people can easily find it in your profile, too.
Titles and thumbnails
Right after the content quality, naming and thumbnails of your videos will be the next deciding factor in how many people you'll reach. It applies mainly to videos, but you can also help your text posts by giving them a catchy first line that will be separated from the rest of the text, supplemented by an image that will catch the reader's attention if the beginning of the text won't.
For creating them, we have only one piece of advice: study how the best creators do this and copy the attributes of their titles and video thumbnails as closely as possible. Look at more of them and learn what they have in common. Don't bank on your creativity or gut feeling - bank on what actually works for others.
Experiments
Feel free to experiment with content templates as long as you maintain your production quality level. Stick to the content template principle mentioned in the third lesson. When you figure out a new template, use it to create 3-5 pieces of content so you can better analyze its performance and don't get misled about its viability by producing only one piece that underperforms.
Analysis
Using content templates makes it easier to analyze the performance of your experiments and your content in general. Looking closer at the numbers can show patterns and reveal what elements make content succeed or fail.
Apart from views, look at their ratio to engagement, such as likes and comments. With videos, a very relevant metric is how much of a given video people watch - whether on average they see 80% of it, or whether half of them leave within the first 10 seconds.
Daily shows & Q&As
In the daily show, the title and thumbnail should communicate the most important topic you address in the video. Usually, it's the one you started the show with. Make clear transitions between the topics so you can clip each one afterward. The title of a Q&A video should include 1-3 of the most interesting questions you answered.
💡 Keep in mind
Producing long-form daily shows is a full-time job, and it's difficult to break through. We recommend addressing specific topics in separate videos where you're not tied by duration requirements and publishing frequency of the daily show.
Careful with creativity
And now, our usual word of caution - this time about trying to be super creative. If you ask any web designer or branding specialist about the worst kind of client, they'll probably tell you it's the overconfident creative type. Some people pride themselves in being very creative, feel very strongly about their ideas, and can't stand being confronted. The problem is that these ideas are often the opposites of best practices unless they understand the practical side of web design and branding. If applied, they would greatly damage the website or brand in question. The person doesn't understand how a given thing works and, therefore, is unaware of how ridiculous their creative ideas are.
We used this analogy to illustrate what we want you to avoid doing with content creation if you happen to be this creative type. When you see that most successful content out there has many things in common, it's not because the creators lack creativity - it's because that approach works. We suggest you do the same - learn from the best and do what they do. If you want to plug in something of your own, make sure it doesn't contradict or sabotage any of the best practices. If you're not confident you can make that judgment, limit your creativity to a minimum.
Using your native language
If you aren't from an English-speaking country, create content in your language unless you have a very good reason to use English. No offense, but your English isn't probably good enough to capture English-speaking audiences without automatically looking less competent because of your accent - maybe it sounds harsh, but that's how it is. On the other hand, smaller countries have much less competition and lack quality content in their language, which makes it much easier to break through. It's also unlikely your network will interact with English content - this is especially true on LinkedIn.
💡 Keep in mind
Talking to a camera is very challenging for most people even in their mother tongue, let alone an acquired one.
Remember
👉 Positioning yourself as a professional representing your field will give you relevance even if nobody knows you.
👉 Titles and thumbnails are crucial—study top creators and replicate what works.
👉 When experimenting with a new content template, create at least 3-5 content piece before drawing conclusions.
👉 Long-form daily shows are tough to break into. Stick with regular videos instead.
👉 Creating in your native language can make it easier to reach people and will avoid huge competition in Enligsh-speaking content.
👉 Don’t let your creativity go against established principles that work.
Homework
1️⃣ Find videos where creators represent their profession and notice all the ways this format can be approached.
2️⃣ Look at the best YouTube creators, write down the characteristics their titles and thumbnails share, and implement them in your YouTube videos. When your title and thumbnail are complete, compare them to theirs. If they're not similar, try again.
3️⃣ If you're not from an English-speaking country, compare the reach of successful creators producing content in your native language with popular English-speaking creators. You'll be surprised that the numbers aren't that far apart, especially considering your country is probably smaller than the English-speaking world.
👏 Unstoppable journey!
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Distributing content →
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