Why Making A Good YouTube Video Is Hard (For Businesses)

There are tons of reasons you want to be on YouTube, build an audience, and get discovered YouTube algorithm.

YouTube is the second most popular website in the world and YouTube videos can appear in Google search results. This makes a presence on YouTube combined social media and SEO strategy. Entire businesses can be built on YouTube.

But most YouTube videos are crap.

Maybe “suck” is an unkind or imprecise word. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that most YouTube videos do not find an audience. This is probably because they are not good videos.

In this article, we’ll talk about what makes good YouTube videos, how to tell if you have the potential to make them, what to do if you don’t, and why a poorly executed YouTube strategy can hurt your business.

Why it’s hard to succeed on YouTube

they exist 14 billion videos on YouTube and 65.4 million YouTube creators. Only 21% all YouTube channels have more than 1000 subscribers. 1000 subscribers is the threshold for reporting advertising revenue.

YouTube represents a great opportunity, but it is not easy to take advantage of it. You have to be in the top 21% on the platform just to start earning advertising revenue.

In other words, you have to be better than 79% of all other creators as a baseline – better than all the hobbyists, enthusiasts, amateur and professional filmmakers, businesses, essayists and commentators in that broad segment.

Creative talent is difficult to develop or find

Making good YouTube videos is difficult because not everyone has these things. If you want to succeed on YouTube, your first question should be: do you have things

A “thing” can be many things. Drive and passion, experience and knowledge, charisma, technical skills, artistic vision… the list is long and anything can be found on it as long as it gives you an advantage.

There must be something unique about you or your business that will translate well into an entertainment-oriented creative medium.

For businesses, this means that producing good YouTube videos is expensive. People who can make good YouTube videos and their time is worth a lot of money.

YouTube’s algorithm pulls videos for users

Many people wrongly assume this YouTube’s algorithm “push” videos to the audience. As I explained in my article on YouTube SEOYouTube’s algorithm finds videos for users, not users for videos.

It is more than a semantic difference in word order. An algorithm pulls videos for users, finding what they might like. Your video does not need to try to find the audience to which you will market it. The user comes first, not the video.

If your video isn’t truly interesting and engaging, if it doesn’t grab interest quickly and keep it, the algorithm will notice that people aren’t very engaged, or that the video doesn’t appeal to the audience you’re trying to push it to, and won’t recommend it to similar users.

Users have high expectations

YouTube is a platform for enthusiasts. People create because they want to. As they learn and get better, their content improves, and audiences begin to expect certain standards.

The standards may not be what you think.

While many successful channels have high production values ​​and tight editing, there are still many successful “vlog” channels and low-budget, low-tech creators.

By high expectations, I mean that users expect a lot of effort. Whatever that effort looks like for your level of skill and maturity with video production. Users are surprisingly willing to forgive trash if they can see passion, authenticity and value in a video.

This is one of the reasons why brands have trouble finding an audience on YouTube. It’s primarily an entertainment platform – brand-centric content without human connection and authenticity isn’t set up to perform well.

Users don’t want to be sold on YouTube

Take a look at the top Top 100 YouTube Channels and you will see creators, music brands, musicians, movies, kids shows, etc. What you won’t see is a brand focused on one product.

SEJ keeps the list most subscribed individuals on YouTube, kicking out production companies. They are mostly musicians, entertainers like MrBeast and children’s creators like Like Nastya.

People are on YouTube to be entertained or informed, not to be sold to. There are a lot of ads and sponsorships in the video already trying to sell things.

Is your content entertaining? Are you providing information that people actually care about?

Time is precious and there is always something else to watch

Users are spoiled for choice. If a video doesn’t immediately appeal to them, YouTube has other recommendations they can click on on the page.

They don’t even need to click the “back” button. There’s something new, with a colorful thumbnail ready to catch their eye.

This not only makes it difficult to distribute videos, but also makes it difficult to make good videos.

Sometimes video performance is just luck

Videos that you know are good will fail. Videos that you’re sure are bad will get attention. People are confused, especially when it comes to what they are watching and why. They will watch something they hate to experience hating it. They will stop watching something they like when they get what they need from it.

More than on many other search platforms, sometimes you just have to be lucky to succeed on YouTube.

What makes a YouTube video “good”?

Good YouTube videos must start with knowledge your audiencepassion for and knowledge of your subjectand love for the craft of video production.

That might sound a bit corny, but that’s what built the YouTube platform and that’s what users are still looking for.

Videos must be engaging and satisfying

Videos are more difficult to review than text. You can improve it by using chapters and timestamps, but the reader can’t just scroll past what doesn’t interest them. The viewer must wait for it to pass or actively jump over it.

It doesn’t really do you any good to have people jumping around, because that means they’re not engaged, and being engaged is the first rule of good video.

Engagement means watch time, interaction signals, and even what users do after watching your video.

This is why intros and hooks are critical to a video’s success. You immediately have to convince someone that it’s worth continuing to watch.

However, it’s easy to go too far and create “clickbait” that over-promises and under-delivers. Even if this buys you watch time, YouTube’s algorithm filters for satisfaction as well as raw engagement.

It can distinguish good engagement from not-so-good engagement. If someone watches the entire video expecting something specific and doesn’t get it, that’s high engagement, but a bad experience.

User signals on YouTube are much more complicated than raw CTR and watch time figures. Watch time, however, remains one of the main indicators of success.

Self-assessment is hard: do it more

It is difficult to self-assess creative content. It’s not easy to look at something you’ve made and ask yourself: is it actually something good? Would anyone watch it? Is it worth someone else’s time?

But you must practice self-criticism and seek criticism from others. You have to approach videos from the point of view of the person watching them and find the point between what you need to communicate and what they are ready to watch.

Sales must be in line with the content

Unless you’re a BIG brand with an exciting release that people are genuinely looking forward to, users probably won’t care about your business or what you’re trying to sell while they’re on YouTube.

YouTube is not really a platform for promotional videos, about us videos, product videos, etc., at least not if you expect algorithmic success.

That’s not to say you can’t be successful with mid-to-low-flow type videos, but they need to be part of a broader strategy — not your entire approach to the platform.

Your first duty with a YouTube video is provide true value to the viewer. “Value” can be learning, news, or laughing at memes. If you focus on your business conversion goals first, you’ll lose your audience early and hurt your metrics by burying your videos.

If you know SEO, you already know this. YouTube videos are most successful when they are a “top of the funnel” strategy. Give something of value and expect only time in return.

As a customer gets to know and like you through your videos, they will become more interested in your value proposition as a business or service provider.

Good YouTube videos are made for the love of them

Doing things because you love them isn’t just reserved for individual creators. As a team, as a professional, as a company, you can do it too. It just means that you care about what you post and who you post it for.

If you have a brilliant creative team, put them to work on a YouTube channel! If you’re passionate about helping people, solving problems, providing good information, or just letting your team be in front of the cameras, it’s a great idea to start some kind of production.

This can look like a podcast, a tutorial, or a series of demonstrations. Or even something unrelated to your business, but of particular interest to someone on your team, that you can use for testing.

This may not seem like advice, but trust me, users can tell when the videos were made with love and when they weren’t. There is no way to replicate or counterfeit it. You just have to do it. Or fund the people who do it with advertising.

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